Apropos to recent discussions inspiring massive trash and dune conservation, and just to show that ideas can be put to practice anywhere, even here, an item posted by Costa Rico's Lapa Rios Ecolodge, telling the tale of their preparations to meet all guidelines for a Certificate in Sustainable Tourism:

This complete, and rigorous, certification system, which is the only certification endorsed by the Costa Rican government, awards hotels 'leaves' on a scale of one to five based on their sustainability achievements -- much like the Mobile star rating which evaluates hotel services -- The CST bases its judgements on four factors:

1. Biological-physical: How does a property impact and/or protect its surrounding environment
2. Services and Infrastructure: How do the property's operations (including product use and disposal, water and energy management, etc.) affect the environment
3. Social-Economic environment: What impact does the property have on nearby communities to promote/provide education to its staff and community and to work with community service providers
4. External client: How does the property promote and teach responsible tourism with guests who visit

Currently, the CST is not mandatory for all properties in Costa Rica. For this reason, it is imperative that the consumer take an active role in looking for properties that are indeed participating in the certification process.
[ Lapa Rios Ecolodge ]

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Yes, these are barbeque coals. Hot barbeque coals. Dumped in the open parking area beside the children's playground next to the Sauble Library. There was another pile just like them behind a rock right on the edge of the playground by the slides, that pile covered with trash. I found two nearly full bottles of water in that trash and poured it on the heap of coals; not nearly enough, but I figured the pattern in the ashes would maybe alert young children (older than the toddlers, anyway) not to pick up the odd grey 'stones'.

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Years ago, I had this dream where every organization in the SBP could list their events in just one place, and that one place could be used by every other place to give us all one unified canonical authoratative list of what's happening where and when and why throughout the year. It seemed like a really good idea, too.

Few years back, at a town-hosted inter-org all-tourism meeting down at the Sauble Community Centre, we were all asked by the town's tourism director to kindly submit our events to their official town calendar and I, of course, endorsed the idea completely on condition this one true master list would done so as to be useful to one and all, insertable on our individual websites, downloadable to our calendars, always current, open and free, and most of all, instantly editable directly by those who actually owned the information.

It wasn't, so I didn't, and there it sat, a great idea in search of an implementation, undone for two or three years, an itch left unscratched until Google stepped up to do it for us ...

Wouldn't it be great to be able to keep track of all the events in your life, coordinate schedules with friends and family, and find new things to do -- all with one online calendar? We thought so, too. Learn More

• Seeing the big picture
  
  With Google Calendar, you can see your friends' and family's schedules right next to your own; quickly add events mentioned in Gmail conversations or saved in other calendar applications; and add other interesting events that you find online.

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Forget Great Lakes Jam, this summer's premier block-buster concert fest is coming to our own block! Perhaps a perk of the new sponsorship deal between our Speedway and the Tiverton Brewery -- No mention yet of who might be on the bill on the two-day rock festival slated for our neighbourhood loud spot, but the official advice is to just keep your browsers tuned to the Steelback Sauble Speedway or the Steelback Music Fest Website ...

... with a great mix of cars, stars and Guitars. Sauble Speedway President Joe Chisholm is very pleased to announce that the Steelback Canada Day Music Fest will be held on Friday June 30th, and Saturday July 1st - Canada Day at Steelback Sauble Speedway. This popular music festival is in its 3 year and for the first time will be held at the speedway.
[ via WhoWon: Sauble Speedway to host Steelback Canada Day Music Fest ]

For those who like to speculate, Ross Kentner tells us the prior headliners to this festival included acts like Burton Cummings and Kenny Rogers, and of course, Frank D'Angelo.

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It cost about $47,000 and brought in at least $100,000, maybe more if tourist fines get paid, some 2% of the letters received praised it, 42% wrote in protest, 13% hated it enough to vow never to return, and the options on the table now include $300,000 to replace summer student jobs with robots, expanding the blight to 2nd Ave and a concession to only tax residents a little bit less than our visitors.

Yes, it was the Paid Parking Public Meeting, and no, I wasn't there, I had a very important Oliphant Market to attend, but as we drove by and saw the half-full parking lot at the Amabel-Sauble, I had hoped someone would be kind enough (or riled enough) to post the real story here on the SBP; instead, all we have are some minutes so scant as to be seconds, a bullet list of if's and's and a few but's.

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The Sauble Lions' Street Dance, Huron Feathers' ice-cream, watermelon, licorice and tricycle races (10th year!) plus the Sauble Daycare Baby Pageant (31st year!!) and your best chance to dunk Mark Wunderlich ...

and, of course, acres of amazing sand sculptures.

This year, Sauble Sandfest was not only a whole day of of beach-fun, but stretching all the full 14K from south Saugeen across into South Bruce Peninsula up to the North Beach, this is not only a unique cross-cultural beach party, but Sandfest also has to be one of the geographically longest beach festivals in the world!

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Rope on a pole on the beach is that what we get for a $25,000 Trillium grant?? They are a long ways from the water and not easy to get off the rack. So here is the scenario. Many drownings have coincided over the years with days when there are huge waves and a mighty undertow. Something attracts the people into the waves. So you lose a swimmer...just gone.

Quick run up the beach and try to get the pole off the post......Now you have the rope on a pole run out into the same crashing waves and flail it around. You have better odds of snaring a Salmon. This is not the community swimming pool.

If a piece of this equipment is missing at the time when (heaven forbid) a wage earner supporting a family drowns the lawyers will have a field day.

After the Trillium money runs out the property owners will be paying for the program. Not parking revenue, it will be net negative.

What purpose does Blue Flag serve?
Why is Blue Flag a can of worms that Mayor Noble may find objectionable?

Noble will be a history footnote in 2006 but we might have to end Blue Flag somehow.

As to the first question when Environmental Defense made it's Blue Flag presentation to Council in 2004 the presenter was escorted by Cliff Billyea. For all I know the Chamber may have paid the travel expenses. So it is just another roundabout way for the Chamber to suck money out of the ratepayers in the hope Blue Flag will line a few main street pockets with tourist dollars. I am sure they don't drive in from Owen Sound because the flag is here it is a desired Chamber advertising hook.

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If hiking up the Bruce is not your ration of rum, how about a 5 day tour of duty up the Peninsula as a member of Capt.Ray's crew aboard an updated restoration of an authentic 1891 tugboat? James Ellsworth brings us some tales from his seafaring days aboard the Dawnlight ...

The abrupt phone message said, "Pack a bag for five days and be in Tobermory's Little Tub Harbour tomorrow." Throwing my readied duffle bag into the car and going off to sea was the stuff of romance and fantasy about to become real.
[ via Cambridge Now: Luck and Magic: Five Glorious Days ]

For cottage managers and motel, campground or cafe operators planning to offer local area wireless Internet (WiFi), getting in the game just got a lot easier. All you need now is an old Pentium, a low-cost wireless router, and the ZoneCD:

ZoneCD is a bootable CD with software pre-configured to create a WiFi gateway. The CD is a mini operating system with automatic hardware detection, and includes support for WiFi end-user authentication and web content filtering.
[ via PUBLICip ]

If anyone is interested, I have a supply of ZoneCD available; just leave me a note through the SBP. ZoneCD is Linux, but you don't have to know anything about Linux to use the ZoneCD. You just place the CD in your CD-ROM, and turn it on -- couldn't be simpler.

And best of all, each ZoneCD station is set to co-operate with other nearby ZoneCD sites, so there's no confusion, and offers us a technology to provide wide-scale wireless coverage, one location at a time. Now how cool is that!?

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