The July 2020 edition of The Claymore is now available.
COSCA 2020 AGM Rescheduled!
Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games—the regular site for COSCA’s Annual General Meeting of the Membership (AGM) since our founding in 1976—was cancelled for 2020. As a result, COSCA’s AGM has had to be rescheduled.
Due to continued closures and cancellations of large public gatherings, the decision has been made to hold this year’s AGM online, as is allowed by applicable state law. Accordingly, COSCA will convene its AGM remotely, via Zoom, on Saturday, November 21st, at 4:00PM (Eastern Time).
Directions how to join the meeting will be announced soon on the COSCA website (www.cosca.scot). Please consult the website for further details.
If you have not paid your dues yet for 2020, please act quickly to do so by contacting Scott Swann, our Membership Chairman, at scots1314@gmail.com. Only members-in-good-standing whose dues have been paid for 2020 will be allowed to vote on candidates for office and other matters up for a vote at the November AGM.
Also, each Clan Society and other Organizational Member of COSCA must designate one person to represent them at the AGM to cast their vote. While all are encouraged to attend the online AGM, as per our Bylaws only one vote per member will be counted—even if a Clan Society which is an Organizational Member of COSCA itself has many hundreds of members. To designate your Official Voting Representative (OVR) for the upcoming AGM, each Organizational Members of COSCA is asked to contact our Secretary, Charlie Sherwood, at tulsaexile@yahoo.com.
Robert The Bruce film is now available online:
Screen Media has released the film on most digital platforms. This year coincides with the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath, when The Bruce declared Scotland a free land, and the 25th anniversary of the release of the film Braveheart from which Robert The Bruce picks up the historical timeline. Angus Macfadyen once again portrays Robert the Bruce. See more here.
COSCA Strategic Planning Committee, by John Cochran, Chairman
Since January 2020, the Strategic Planning Committee has been meeting monthly to discuss areas of improvement for COSCA’s business practices, its communication, outreach endeavors, and most importantly its support for its members. Specific areas of discussion have centered on social media usage, providing an outlet to our members highlighting their Clans and Organizations, and streamlining our communication between COSCA’s members and it leadership. While we realize this will take some doing and be a lengthy process, the ideas thus far have been inspiring. I will present these to the Executive Board during our next meeting. Additionally, we are working on providing a survey to both our current and former members. It has been a lengthy process sifting through points of contact to whom we can send the surveys. I ask that each of you insure all of your information is up to date with our membership chair, Scott Swann. This will insure the widest, and most accurate dispersion of the survey. The information which you will provide in the survey is crucial in our plan development; please be as frank and detailed as possible in your responses. Those responses will go a long way in improving our organization
2020 COSCA Clan & Family Caucus – CANCELLED
We regret that COSCA’s Clan & Family Caucus 2020, planned for April 1 & 2 in Washington, DC, to be held in conjunction with the Annual Tartan Day festivities and events there, is cancelled due to the public health concerns surrounding the spread of the coronavirus. Everything related to Tartan Day in Washington has now been cancelled–the Congressional Reception on the 31st (Capital complex now closed to visitors, including all the office buildings)–and the Symposium on April 1 & 2 (DACOR Bacon House now also closed to meetings). The NYC Tartan Day Parade has also been cancelled. And the visiting delegation of Scottish Gov’t ministers, and our other planned speakers from Scotland, are now stuck at home, under that Nation’s strict social distancing policies.
It has been decided to invite all our scheduled DC Tartan Day Symposium speakers to come to New York City in mid-October for the annual Scottish North American Leadership Conference (SNALC) and speak there–delivering the presentations the had prepared for Tartan Day in DC in April. (If speakers from Scotland are unable to be there in person, we will again resort to streaming video to capture their live presentations for our onsite audience to view and hear, as we’ve done for the past two years at SNALC, and we will post a link on various organizational websites.) The venue we are looking at is the restored, historic Fraunces Tavern, located in lower Manhattan and dating from pre-Revolutionary War times, which has conference space and banquet rooms for rent.
And it has also been decided to reschedule the presentation of the Scottish Coalition, USA’s National Tartan Day Award to Bob Creighton of New Hampshire for that occasion, as most member organizations of the Scottish Coalition will be represented in NYC in October, at SNALC. Hopefully one or more of the Scottish Gov’t ministers who were due to travel to DC in April for Tartan Day can join us there–in person or remotely– and deliver the remarks they had in mind for Tartan Day. Perhaps via streaming video, as Lord Lyon Morrow did at SNALC last year.
700th Anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath
This year, 2020, will be a big year for us in the Scottish-American Community, as we join our cousins in Scotland to celebrate the 700th Anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath — the Scottish declaration of independence from the English king, signed and sealed by King Robert and the Scottish barons in 1320. FYI, this is the lead article in the January/February 2020 edition of The Highlander magazine, which I recommend to
you. Celebratory events are scheduled all year in Scotland, but a procession and a formal (in modern English) reading of the Declaration will take place in the town of Arbroath on April 5th. Learn more here.
Grandfather Mountain Highland Games
