Take Time to Celebrate

It has been a long year of planning and working for the upcoming Logan Family and Highland Clan Convention in April of this year (you are registered, right?). The assembled team for Convention Planning and I have really pushed through a lot of obstacles to get us ready to unite in Edinburgh. The number of tasks to be accomplished have been many and taken so much time to complete, it hardly seems real that we are so close to the big day.

Today, one of many of those ‘tasks’ was completed and publicly released. It is a wonderful podcast created to both honor and follow along on the journey Clan Logan has been taking to find their hereditary chief. The inspiration, and much of the hard work, came from Linda Street-Ely. Linda had been following the work of Bagtown Clans on Substack for a little while when she hit upon the idea of asking the owner, Colby, if he’d like to do a podcast about Clan Logan and our upcoming convention.

The inspiration developed into a plan, the plan became a lot of work (especially for Colby and Linda) and once the first draft was finished, Sean Logan, genealogist extraordinaire, and I took part in the final edits. What a great time it has been to be part of the process. The finished podcast is available on YouTube as well as on Substack.

Why do I mention this today, instead of talking a bit more about myself like I’ve been trying to do so that you can all get to know me better? Glad you asked, dear Reader.

As I said, it’s been a long year, the tasks have been many, and sadly the workers few. With the completion of such a publicly visible task, I think it’s time to take a moment to celebrate all of the wins of the last 12 months. And more importantly to take a pause and give a warm thanks to the two women who have brought so many successes to the Convention planning – Tricia (Logan) Locke and Linda (Logan) Street-Ely.

It is not a stretch of the imagination to say that every good time we will all enjoy when the Logan Family and Highland Clan Convention 2025 happens has been influenced, planned, or worked out by these two dynamos. As part of the Planning Committee, it’s been an honor to get up early every Tuesday of this past year and work alongside them as they bring to life every detail of our grand ideas. It would take a long time to list all of the tasks, and undoubtedly you would be as impressed as I am at all that has taken place. Instead, I’ll list just a few of the many accomplishments:

• An acknowledgement and approval from Lord Lyon King of Arms for the Logan Family and Highland Clan to hold a supervised convention for the purpose of nominating a Commander of Clan Logan
• Obtaining excellent group rates and plenty of rooms at our wonderful host hotel, The Dalmahoy Hotel and Country Club
• Securing St. John’s of Dalkeith, an historic church, as our supervised convention location
• An outstanding formal dining occasion to celebrate a successful convention in the main dining room of the Dalmahoy Hotel
• A traditional Scottish ceilidh, complete with a live band and dance instruction to get us all moving on the floor in celebration of the return to prominence of an historic Scots family
• A day of local field trips inspired as much by the location as the history of the Logans, with the main purpose of giving everyone free time to get to know their extended family
• The Logan family will be joined on the day of the Convention by our very own family member serving in the UK Parliament, Seamus Logan MP (hopefully he and his wife will both join us for dinner and ceilidh afterwards)

…and we’re not done yet. We have much more to do, and thankfully we’ve been joined by Joanne Logan, who is helping to get the tickets for the functions together – along with about a million other details wrapped up.

Working with these talented go-getters, who are so passionate about their family roots, has truly given me a perfect view of the Clan Logan motto in action.

It is a wonderful – and HISTORIC – time to be a Logan!

HOC MAJORUM VIRTUS