So what happened to all of the Wombles last night? Did a tour around Sauble and found zilch. Was really looking forward to the recycle and reuse frenzy!!! I guess nobody has any neat stuff to turf! How was the rest of the Bruce?

Yes, free websites, only it's better than that, it's a free website that you can make as public as you like (within teledyn.com) and doesn't require any web-geek skills to create or maintain.

Owen Sound has clicked to the lunacy of bottled water, and responded with a bottle ban in city owned buildings:

Council voted 5-3 in favour of the ban -- Councillors Tom Pink, Peter Lemon and John Christie voted against it. Wright says it seems unnecessary to supply bottled water when Owen Sound is equipped with a dependable water distribution plant.
Bottled water will not be available at City Hall, the North Grey Union Public Library, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery.

[ Owen Sound bans water bottles ]

Mind you, corporate-sponsor buddy-deals run thicker than water, so bottles will remain in the Pepsi machines in the high-use Lumley and the Colliseum, but at least the low-traffic town halls and galleries will cease $1-a-pop contributions to the landfill!

Fish quotas are working, or so says a survey of 50 years of catch across 11,135 fisheries worldwide; in the vast majority of those sampled, competitive fishing is rapidly leading to economic collapse, but in the sliver sample of the 121 cases imposing individual quotas, the long-term prospects were remarkably improved.

Costello said he was surprised to find that the data showed such clear support for a fundamental tenet of resource economics: A change in incentives can remove the motivation to out-compete someone else and switch to longer-term conservation.
He likens it to handing a milkshake to five kids with five straws. "The incentive is for the kids to slurp like hell even if they get a brain freeze," Costello said. "Contrast that to dividing the milkshake into five little cups. The kids can enjoy it as long as they want and get a higher payoff." That's exactly what we find in fisheries."
[ Sharing the catch is good for fishermen -- and fish ]

PLAY in Bruce Grey is a slick new website launched by the Grey Bruce Health Unit. The site is filled with tips on where, when and what to play in our local area community facilities, aimed at getting our parks busy with kids playing games, and families and neighbours out together enjoying our great outdoors.

I have a question and perhaps Wayne can help me with it. My neighbours are concerned about a problem rental cottage in our area with a firepit that tends to be too close to neighbours and trees. This rental has sometimes had 15 or more people saying there and they will sometimes build a huge fire then take off leaving it unattended. The smoke is also a problem.

My question is if I call the fire dept about putting out the unattended fire who will be charged the fire response fee? Will it be the rental cottage owner or the person who called it in? Neighbours, not myself, have talked to the owner and received no cooperation. We all believe our properties are in danger but none of us wants a $2000 bill from the Chief or obviously to be named as the caller in fire reports.

I have been made aware that one or two other neighbourhoods may have the same problem. Wayne?

From 6pm on Friday Sept 26th until 6pm on Saturday the 27th, the Town of SBP asks that you leave your still re-usable offerings out on your curbside, then bundle up the family and go out walkabout around the neighbourhoods to see what treasures you can score!

Swap Day is a fun, environmental program which allows people to recycle unwanted items.

Place unwanted items such as furniture, books, tools, sporting goods, toys, etc at the end of your driveway or the edge of your lawn. Tie a white plastic bag to one or more of the items to indicate that the items are meant for Swap Day.
[ South Bruce Peninsula Crier: Swap Day September 27 2008 ]

Kind of like a Trick or Treat for the homeowners, or being a Womble for a day :) I think it would be great fun to do our rummaging under cover of the overnight darkness, our whole town a midnight buzz of wagon-toting torchlit human racoons, maybe some lanterns, street vendors and buskers to make it more alive and festive, and then everybody wakes up next morning and voilà! All your old trash is completely replaced with new trash! This could be a real Happening! Be like an Art Event: The Night of the Recyclers

I have heard our wonderful bylaw officers give warnings on a number of occasions and have never witnessed tickets being written. Has anybody else noticed this? Their job is not to create their own personal social network. They must be missing a lot of revenue and people are starting to view the bylaws as a bit of a joke, methinks. But just try to walk your dog. They then become Dog Police. Ain't never seen a dog turd on the beach but sure see illegally parked vehicles. They also seem to be missing the boat with fireworks. I wouldn't mind a job driving around , smiling and talking to the tourists. Maybe the Commerce guys have more influence on them than job conscience. I also heard a rumour that one of our councillors encourages them not to write tickets. Any truth to that?

I counted about 200 entries to the car show and they stayed until almost 2:00 pm and what beautiful babies they were. These are true, dyed in the wool car nuts who actually drive their babies in bad weather....true enthusiasts all. Sunset Cruisers be proud. I take my soaking wet hat and tip it to all of you. Kudos also to Friends of Sauble Beach, feeding the throngs and finishing the day by distributing free burgers and dogs to the Cruisers. What a great day! Surprising that so many showed, even considering no Sandfest Looking forward to next year, hopefully in the sun.