Website and Newsletter

The score of a century is perhaps something to be celebrated! This is the 100th blog I have written since I started the McIlhagga Clan Blog in January last. It happens to come in the month of October which in the past seven years has been the month when Neil in Ottawa and I have produced an annual Clan Newsletter. You can read all the past ones on our Clan Website at freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~clanmcilhagga. Neil and I feel that now we have this blog there is less need for an annual newsletter. I would be happy to put any clan news on the blog and also publish any items people would like to write for us, given that they are of clan interest. Also, to be frank, not only has the Newsletter taken a lot of time to produce - it has taken us most of a month each year - it is also expensive to produce. We have never asked for a financial contribution towards it and the cost of paper, ink and postage has kept rising.

I know that many of you have appreciated receiving the Newsletter either by email or through the post. I recently received a message saying how much someone was looking forward to the next one, and I confess to feeling a bit guilty that we had taken our decision. But I hope the items in the blog are a good substitute. And the blog doesn't arrive just once a year! I've published 100 items in 9 months! And you have the chance to respond to a blog item immediately. I realise that most of the blog items have been historical, but some have been 'contemporary', and more can be. I know there are still people without a personal computer, but a majority do now have email and have access to a computer, so I hope they will understand. Neil and I will write to everyone later this month. At the same time I hope to include in this blog some items that would normally have appeared in the Newsletter.