..wont say it..we all know what gulls are called ;) I have always wondered what on earth they were thinking when they used a gull as a mascot/advert .Yes..little children like to feed those birds..but all in all, they are best left to their own ..they make a mess, they hound you, they are almost as bad as blackflies. Maybe they should have picked a Canada Goose as the mascot, after all they definately leave a calling card..
:)

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"How does one "Throw a camel toe?Either you did or you didn't! "
-ZenLisa

maybe the first thing the town should do is hire Kee-May to do a thorough Feng Shui assessment of the beach urban architecture; fixing it all could be as simple as a few well-placed fountains or moving a doorway or two.

or not.

I'm sure I have a pad of that yellow green-lined notepaperstationary around here somewhere, just so's her final report presentation is up to snuff, so to speak, if you catch my meaning, as it were.

my 'Vision?' comment on another blog is applicable to this blog as well. linked rather than pasted.
kltpzyxm

About this vision thing, mxyzptlk writes:

"write to council and ask for their vision for the beach? ask the county planner his vision? is it what you want? how can you have a plan when you have no vision of where you are going? its a crap shoot like buying a random plane ticket to who knows where."
[ Criminal Activity Lodges its ugly head ]

You must admit, the general lack of vision in urban planning in our species is a very good rebuttal against Richard Dawkins anti-creationist attacks: If we are indeed assembled by a Blind Watchmaker driven by a Selfish Gene, rather than an intelligence inspired best deal for everyone Nash Equilibrium, Nature would anneal to a greedy toxic chaos.

Just a thought

Back to the topic at hand, when we moved to Sauble in 1996 I had a very thorough vision of where I wanted it to go: Sauble Beach was perfectly poised to become a model Community-of-Tomorrow

When we arrived, the beach was pretty much unchanged since maybe 1975; in many places it seemed like that was the last time a coat of paint had been applied or a new service unveiled. It was like a postcard; I told a Chamber meeting (that I attended in hopes of upgrading their communications infrastructure) that they should use the vintage car club and advertise Sauble with an American Graphitti motif to match the Crowd Inn. In a nutshell, the place had been passed over during the past 20 some years and had therefore escaped the mistakes made by the other communities. Sauble was a fresh palette.

That meant opportunity. The precious chance to leapfrog over the rest of Ontario, to become the paragon Community of Tomorrow. I even had a 5 year plan ...

Stage One: Ephemerialization of Industry

Step one was the need for a modern economy, a post-modern economy, an economy based on the manufacture of goods that have no tangible product. ie not stone, not wood, not plastics but products of pure idea: A knowledge-based economy.

It's clean, the cashflow is substantial and the reach is instantly global. This is the period when I wrote my papers on The Neo-Luddites describing communities of information workers able to co-exist with both Nature and with a sense of real home community. I worked with AT&T's Telecommute America and was interviewed by the Swedish ministry of labour for my work in demonstrating this new economy by living the life directly, as an architect of Sympatico and CBC News from the 'Digital Cottage' off the D-Line. I instigated what became the "Infocor Gateway" project to foster highspeed communications to the SBP (until the town gave it all to BMTS), the future seemed doable.

But it was not to be. The town would not risk on digital infrastructure, waiting instead for "Bell or Rogers to do it for us" which they did and, surprise surprise, it was not in our best interests. The town would not risk on inviting information-based industries, waiting instead for "outsiders to do it for us" which they did and, surprise surprise, today many of my neighbours work from home ... for a call-centre ... for wages barely above subsistence.

Stage Two: Eco-living For Tomorrow

I don't think many sane folk still question that western civilization's consumption/effluence model is not sustainable, and here, right here in Sauble Beach and especially in the UN Bio-reserve of the Bruce, right here in our own backyard, there are many sane and sound models for living that could demonstrate to the world that there are other ways for humanity to live.

This was the period when I prepared the infamous Alternative Waste Water Management package for Vince Artuso's Amabel council, and I proposed that part of our new post-modern economy could be to become a world-class Centre Of Excellence clearing house for research into sustaintable living strategies, not just mail-order houses selling swag catalogs, but like what I had done with my own Knowledge Economy business, amass first hand knowledge that we gain ourselves directly, we live the life.

But the town would not take chances on Living Machines, the businesses were spooked by the spectre of the Pipeline Regime and the world passed us by once more. Today we are now looking for sustainable living ideas that we must buy from elsewhere, we buy our Blue Flag, we buy microfilters and then we wonder why we don't have any money. It's because the money is flowing outward. Doh--

Stage Three: The Global Village

All set together, I had this foolish notion that Sauble Beach could be guided into a McLuhan-style Global Village, a place with the village feel of community self-knowledge and sensibility while being full and equal partners in the Global Economy, isolated from the dangers of humanity's prior mistakes while completely integrated with the economies of the world today. Our young people would be founding new business models of sustainable ecologically friendly and community minded, a place that could afford to be aware of the biological optimum rule that says a species fares best when it considers all members precious and sustains everyone regardless of their stature or fate.

I had trekked all over looking for a laboratory to probe these ideas. I had worked with the Snowden Project, been involved in the revitalization of New Brunswick, served on the board of Vint Cerf's Internet Societal Task Force, and despite my being an outsider sailing in to tell 'em what's what, nonetheless, it all seemed just so doable.

Castles of Sand

What I hadn't considered was the force of the status quo old-boys clubs and their piano-top rafts, and the tunnel-vision of the collective greed; although mathematically we can know the maximum overall wealth acrues when all members make choices for the good of the many, the self-destructive narrow-minded self-interest was everywhere the rule, the Machiavellian positioning to get the acerbic and paltry personal-most, a fool-proof recipe for economic disaster -- there is a saying about lessons of history, but I don't really remember how it goes, although I do remember it was good.

Second Star To The Right And On Til Morning

It would seem so simple, to have a unifying three-word motto, a guiding creed that simply said Best For All and then measure every move by this rule, to ask everyone, to account for all stakeholders, to proceed from this common vision and make every step a step toward that Community of Tommorrow.

Is it possible? Can we change this spiralling destiny and reach out at tomorrow's world? I still think it can be done, but only through our intentions.

We get what we intend; what we think, we become. Sun Ra famously advised, "Whatever you want to do, do it all the time."

Please insert photo of Wayne and Garth kneeling before you...

(garym adds ...)