Happy Valentine's Day! My husband made me heart-shaped pancakes for. breakfast. I bought him a burial plot (cheap... true story)! Well, I really didn't buy it as a Valentine's Day gift, it just happened to be purchased on this day. But there you have it. We are both very thoughtful. Right?
Just about time to kick off Elections for the annual Clan MacFarlane Worldwide, INC. Board of Directors. So if you are considering running for the Board, we will be kicking it off very soon. In the meantime, the Board of Directors met last night, and the Elections committee put forth a recommended change to the CMW Bylaws. It was quite simple, really. The Bylaws had a pen and ink error, and the Committee asked for a simple change to correct the information.
Section 8.1.7 (8) Election Committee Currently reads:
“E-mail ballots to each eligible voting member on August11, and close the voting at 11:59 p.m., Central Standard Time September 12.”
Motion to change the wording should read:
“E-mail ballots to each eligible voting member on August11, and close the voting at 12:00 p.m. Central Daylight Savings Time on September 11.”
The Board discussed and approved the motion. The Bylaws will now reflect what the Committee has done every year.
So now, you might ask yourself why you did not vote on this measure? Well, if it is a simple pen and ink change, the Board does what it is tasked to do, conduct the business for CMW. However, if it is a major addition or change to how CMW conducts business, then a vote is taken to the voting members.
CMW is an all-volunteer 501c3 corporation. Please consider volunteering your time. Elections will kick off with nominations very soon!
Are you superstitious? Do you wear the same pair of shoes for an interview that you consider lucky? What do you do if you see a black cat? It appears superstitions are universal, and the Scots have their very own.
I have an entire book of Scottish superstitions. So I thought I would just share one or two of them here today. Taken from "Scottish Superstitions" by Raymond Lamont-Brown, 1993.
Nuns are considered lucky if you see three of them walking together. The opposite is true if you see 3 Monkey Puzzle Trees in the same day. So, ok. I think I would consider myself "blessed" if I was in the presence of nuns, but triply blessed if there were 3 of them together. But a Monkey Puzzle Tree? First, other than hearing about this tree in the "Ghost and Mrs. Muir" movie as well as the TV show from several generations ago, I have no idea what a Monkey Puzzle Tree is or what one looks like.
The Araucaria araucana , rather the Monkey Puzzle tree, or the Monkey Tail tree, or the pinonero, or Chilean pine is an evergreen. It grows as wide as 1-1.5 mt (3-5 ft) and as tall as 30-40 m (100-130 ft). It must be fairly hardy because it appears to live a very long time and is called "living fossil." You can certainly read more about a Monkey Puzzle tree on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_araucana#Habitat. But I'll include a few photos just in case you want to watch out for all the Monkey Puzzle trees you DON'T want to see in one day. Horrors!
12 February 2019 - This is a new addition to our Clan MacFarlane Worldwide website. We've decided that there is so much to share about CMW, our shared heritage, and more, then why not a blog? So why not?
First - what shall we call it? Well... because CMW is truly a global group, I've decided the Diaspora is appropriate. Why? Because the Scots have scattered around the globe. If you visit our CMW facebook page, you will find that we have members on our page from just about every reach of the globe. So the Diaspora reflects our differences as well as shared heritage. It is my hope that our blog will do this too.
If you research the Scottish Diaspora, and you open the Wikipedia link about the Diaspora, it lists the countries where our Scots are now concentrated: United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, England, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile and Brazil. However, there is also a long-standing history of Scots in Poland I happen to be of the opinion that the Scots are absolutely everywhere.
During the celebration of the 2014 Homecoming, a project was sponsored where over 300 panels were brought together from Scottish communities from around the world, to create one large beautiful tapestry exhibit. If you want to gather more information about the Diaspora, the 2014 Homecoming tapestry project, you can find it here:
http://www.scottishdiasporatapestry.org. And with that, we have our very first blog entry!
