A big rousing standing ovation for Gord of Bop City music in Courtenay. After I believe 27 years of serving the Comox Valley he retired April 2. Thanks Gord for your exceptional music knowledge and selling tickets to countless concerts all over the region. Thanks for special ordering obscure music titles and just being an adult drop-in centre. You are an oasis in jungle of box stores that only carry top 40 titles. And to the new owners, big shoes to fill but we know you can do it!! And Gord鈥�.so much for freedom 85. Enjoy!Interesting that some Comox Valley residents think potable water delivered to their homes and business is next to free! The CVRD will be charging 1,500 metered rural customers $501,000 for water delivery this year 鈥� and it's going up, next year. Way up.A humbling and light-hearted beef to the five-foot, two-inch 70-plus lady who moved here on March 1 and wrote a long letter to the Editor "Garbage Service Not Good Here." A number of businesses have had the pleasure of serving her, just to be confronted with the same attitude. Dear lady, please try to relax and enjoy life!! We welcome you in to our community. No one should feel "incarcerated here!"A Big Thank You to Habitat For Humanity for putting on an inspiring and informative evening at the First Nations hall last Tuesday. Though I've participated in a Habitat build overseas what I learned from the talks is that there are many ways locally to give families a hand up in owning their own home. The most exciting thing for me was finding out that there's a women's build locally. All ages and experience levels are welcome. If construction isn't your thing there are many ways to participate by helping prepare meals, musical entertainment. For more info you can go to www.habitatnorthisland.com or call 250-334-3777, ext. 312.Big purrs for franchise owner Jason Havelock and Petland Courtenay! Thanks for stepping forward and giving the Kitty Cat P.A.L. Society a new adoption centre in their store. So many more stray cats will be taken care of and be able to find their forever home. This is great news! I will now shop in this store for my own cats, to support their kind and generous contributions for all the rescued, homeless kitties in dire need.Why are local churches unable to take a stand, or respond to questions asked by potential parishioners? While looking for a new spiritual home, I sent emails to five different churches asking them three simple questions: 1. What is your stance on ordinating women? 2. Do you conduct gay marriages in your church? 3. Do you accept other religions as being equally valid pathways to God? Of the five I wrote to, only one responded to my message. The minister that did write back, didn't answer any of my questions but invited me to phone him as "these issues are too complicated to be responded to in an email." What's so complicated about answering questions that only need yes or no answers? Since I've already made my mind on how I feel about these issues, I'm looking for a church that reflects my inclusive beliefs. What's wrong with local religious outreach committees? Are they too ashamed to write their church policies down in a concrete form that might come back and bite them? When I contacted several other churches last year with these same three questions they had no problems telling me what their policies were over the phone.Here we go again with stage three water restrictions 鈥� emergency conservation measures due to BC Hydro maintenance. However, good timing 鈥� there is little need for water sprinkling, but you can't wash your car at home 鈥� the only option is commercial car washes which are allowed to use 10 times as much potable water/wash. More car washes are on the way and CVRD metered residents will be subsidizing their water costs! Brown lawns to provide cheap water to high use commercial customers does not inspire conservation.Large spring bouquets to London Drugs (Courtenay) and Rhodos Coffee Roasting Company for their generous sponsorship of ImageFest 2012. Affordable Picture Framing, Joel鈥檚 About The Art, South Hollow Gallery & Leapenhi Paper, Whyte鈥檚 Custom Framing, Opus Art Supplies, Pentax Ricoh Canada Imaging Inc., Arlene Bishop, Claude Dalley and Peter Hamilton were wonderful for their generous donations of door prizes for the event. Thanks, too, to all the dedicated volunteer members of the Comox Valley Camera Club who stepped up to make our production such a great success!
