IndexWa.org August 2008 NewsLetter

August 2008

Greetings from IndexWa.org:

1st up: Congratulations to Louise Lindgren, her team and all of the supporters that helped bring Friends of Heybrook Ridge together and finally, after months of worry and struggle, found light at the end of the tunnel. Thank YOU ALL. Heybrook Ridge has been saved and for those of you that missed out on the Newsletters that we sent out (like two or three in a row) toward the end of July, you may review all the information about what happened right on the Town of Index Blog, http://www.indexwa.org/blog as well as http://heybrookridge.org.

We apologize for taking advantage of you folks by sending so many bits of news, so fast and over a 24 hour period, but this news was too important to hold on to for the August Newsletter. Things can happen quickly in our fast-paced world and we want to keep you informed. Even the small towns are vulnerable to the rat race pace of the outside world! <grin>

My Stupidity Costs! - Please Read. News As It Happens Now Available

I should have caught this long ago, but the brain just does not work at times the way it should and I am by no means some type of marketing genius, otherwise I would be retired by now.

There has been a LOT going on in our neck of the woods as of late so I send out info to you folks as it comes in. WHY WOULD I DO THAT TO A NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBER? Honestly, I don't have an answer but I do know we lost a subscriber quite possibly to this situation.

Effective August 3, 2008 we will no longer send out any news as it comes up to our Newletter subscribers. It's just plain rude and a breech of our promise not to spam (it is not spam but probably more than a person expects from a NEWSLETTER).

That said, we have ADDED another LIST that you may subscribe to called NEWS AS IT HAPPENS. You may subscribe to News As It Happens along with your current Newsletter subscription by clicking the link http://www.indexwa.org/mail/lists/or copy and paste it into your browser. You will see NEWS AS IT HAPPENS as another available option, and YES, you may be on both lists at the same time. Just click the button for News As It Happens and follow the confirmation directions. Now, the NEWSLETTER is JUST FOR A NEWSLETTER PURPOSE and no other. News As It Happens is a separate subscription and if you don't subscribe, you get only the Newsletter and nothing else.

If this is too much work for you just email me and we will set you up. e d @ i n d e x w a . o r g. Place ADD TO NEW LIST in your subject line. (Remove the spaces in the my email address please).

AND DON'T MAKE ME BEG FOR YOU TO SUBSCRIBE TO NEWS AS IT HAPPENS. :-)

Thanks and we apologize to the one user that canceled. We do understand and learned from this experience.

Index Arts Festival

Final Reminder:

Saturday, August 16th, 2008
4th Annual Arts Index Festival
10am - 8 pm

Festival activities are located in the town park and on historical Avenue A.

Covered venues and open air activities fill the schedule
Approximately 50 artists participate & sell their work at the festival
Outdoor Painting
Live Music on Stage
Poetry Readings
Crafts Marketplace
Plein Air Artistry
Food & Beverage Cabana

August is the perfect time to plan a road trip up Stevens Pass Highway / Route 2 to enjoy the natural beauty of the Index area and the festival activities. Plenty of parking too.

Changes & Hits @ IndexWa.org

We have made some changes to the format of the newsletter (HTML VIEWERS - we are sure you have noticed). Also, by being subscribed to the newsletter, you will receive it about 2 weeks before it is put online. We thought it appropriate to give the subscribers first shot at the newsletter.

Strange things are happening on the site as well. We have not quite figured out "wassup". We thought it would be just a small town site with bits of information about the Town of Index. Well it is just that HOWEVER, we put the site on a shared server thinking it would never really be that busy...maybe 10-15k hits a month. It has been getting 21-25k hits a month on average, but in July we had a major jump to 60,500+ hits! Is it just a summer phenomenon? We don't know as of this moment but we should know more after 90 days.

We are scratching our heads over that one but we are THRILLED at the popularity of the site and most of all we APPRECIATE YOU, our visitors and subscribers, for boosting the growth of the site. You are truly AWESOME. THANK YOU.

Another thank you goes to A Cabin on The Sky (David Meier) (http://www.acabinonthesky.com) and Wildsky Lodging (Steve Higgins) (http://www.wildskylodging.com) for placing an ad on the site. We don't like to use the word advertiser(s) so we chose supporter(s) as they are the ones that pay for our hosting, newsletter and other major expenses when it comes down to it. If you are from out of town and need a place to get away for a few days or weeks, please consider our supporters first. They are helping us hold this thing together. We don't mind the expense but it sure is easier when it is shared and we are able to give something in return.

We apologize if this seems like advertising (we are trying to keep away from that in the newsletter) but we felt that a one time plug for our supporters is due.

Photographs.....

Somebody has offered us some excellent digital photos from the Town to put on the site. This person is quite generous in his offering and we have agreed to take him up on it. Catch 22 is they will be watermarked to protect the photos from plagiarism, which is another thing we agreed on. We can appreciate the watermarking and understandably as gigantic as the web is, somebody will eventually take advantage of the goodness of somebody else and so on and so on....you get the picture (hey, that was a great play on words).

Look to the site or the blog in the near future for updates on some photos. We will notify you when it happens.

My wife and I were advised that if we move to Index it will get old real quick. There is only so many pictures a person can take of mountains and rivers and hills and and and..... Either we are very boring or?? as to this day the beauty of everything around here never ceases to amaze us. We have been here about 5.5 years so possibly we need to stick around for 20-30 years before we get bored. Nawww, there are plenty of people that have been here that long or longer so we guess it just takes a certain type of person to live in a small town with beauty all around. Nature is wonderful! The only thing that gets old is the commute to work, but you even get used to that, except when you are sleepy. Fortunately I am a partner in a business and was able to cut my hours to 4 days a week for a while effective 2 months ago. Now if the employees show up to work and do their jobs, I can keep my 4 day a week commute.

In the event any of our employees receive this newsletter "You guys are great"! We are very lucky to have people that stay with our company for the long term (well, most of the time). Shortest term at the present is 5 years and longest is going on 13 years. As an employer, YA' GOTTA' LOVE THAT.

The Index Eagle

We have been so busy that we have not had time to commit totally to the Eagle (some of you will remember it). We got permission from Bob Hubbard to reproduce his old writings from the Eagle and we are working on it right now. Leigh Christianson has a TON or should I say ALL of the past issues and we whipped off an email to her this morning to see if she has the time to go through a few of them. If so, we will scan them in and post one a month for your reading enjoyment. They are really fun to read and give a lot of insight to the Town of Index.

Do you attend the Town Council Meetings?

If you are a local and have an hour and a half (some time even an hour), please try to attend the Town Council Meetings on the first Monday of each month at 7:00pm (19:00). They can prove to be quite interesting and informative most of the time and it gives you a chance to put in your 2¢.

And the Meeting Minutes were posted to the site on August 5, 2008. The minutes are always a month behind as the previous minutes are read at the following meeting and voted on for approval by the council. The minutes are located at http://www.indexwa.org/minutes.htm.

Out Of Town

My wife and I will be out of town of town for my wife's yearly family get together (and she has a huge family). We usually take a couple of extra days to spend with very close family members before the herd shows up. In the event you email me and you do not get a response within 24-48 hours, you will know we are not here. We will be in Mossyrock. I'll shoot a few snapshots of the landscape there and post them to the blog when we get back. It's not the same beauty as Index however, it is a different kind of pretty if that makes sense. They don't have the mountains but there is a very nice lake, dam, and the lay of the land is really nice. They also have their version of Highway 2. They have Highway 12, not quite as many lives have been lost on that road, but it is pretty dangerous at times. We tend to drive the back roads (Roy, Graham, Yelm, Rainier, and a few others that I can't recall) and we then come up through Morton onto Highway 12. Great hunting and fishing territory (alas, I do neither). Also super views of Mt. St. Helens.

Until the next newsletter,

PS - as a subscriber to IndexWa.org, you may hit REPLY to comment on anything in the newsletter. Please do not quote the complete newsletter, only the piece you are responding about. We have read the entire newsletter already. (grin)