New photo gallery puts focus on Erin

As published in The Erin Advocate

Perhaps it is a short attention span that has led me to try a lot of different things, without becoming an expert at any of them. The pursuit of variety makes life interesting, of course, but still I envy people who can concentrate their efforts and be very successful.

I got a film camera as a present for my fifth birthday, a simple plastic box with a lens, and my friends thought I was a bit strange, going around the neighbourhood in Welland taking snapshots of trees and flowers.

Well, I’m still doing that with the Town of Erin as my neighbourhood, and while the quality has improved slightly, I’m just figuring it out as I go along. I’ve realized that if you wait for perfection, you’ll be waiting forever, and if you don’t share what you’ve got, you miss an opportunity to have some useful fun.

Putting stuff out there for the public has been central to my careers as a writer and graphic designer. The 345 columns I’ve written for the Advocate in the last 7 years are republished on a blog: erininsight.blogspot.ca. They are fully searchable, organized by date and topic.

Some articles have photos with them, but until recently the content was 99% words. In January I started a new section within the blog called Somewhereinerin. It is a gallery of photos I’ve taken in the Erin area (plus a few vacation sunsets). Just click on the tab at the top of the home page to take a look.

At first, I was trying to post a new photo every day, until I discovered just how difficult that is while trying to make a living doing other things. A few new ones every week is more realistic.

Of course, I’m not the first photographer to take an interest in Erin. I admire the professional work of Martin Lamprecht (featured on the new Town of Erin website), Tristan Clark who does local news and portrait/wedding photography, and former Advocate photographers Sandra Traversy and Jill Janson, all of whom have web sites.

Whenever I post an article or a photo, I’ll normally send out a tweet – a very small sound in a noisy world – in an attempt to spark some interest and link readers to the blog. You can follow me on Twitter using @ErinWriter, and sign up as a follower on the blog.

Part of the blogging game is to drive traffic to your site, in order to sell products or make money from advertising. My blog, however, is more of a community service than a business, especially since I can’t be competing with The Advocate while working for them.

Still, I thought I’d try putting non-local ads on the blog, to see if they would generate some income. It’s easy to sign up with Google. They put a constant rotation of ads onto the blog that are somehow linked to the content, but you really only make money if people actually click on them.

I’m not much of an ad clicker and it turns out that my readers are not either. After ten weeks, I’ve made a total of $4.85, and they don’t send you anything until you hit the $10 mark.

With an average of more than 80 visits to the blog every day, I thought I might do better than that, but I had no illusions about hitting a jackpot. Still, you never know. Maybe a photo or story will go viral some day. Maybe I should learn how to shoot video.

The curious thing about traffic to the blog is that while the content is all about Erin, most of the visitors are not from Erin. Of the 86,200 all-time visits, less than half are from somewhere in Canada.

The topics obviously have a broad appeal, since I’ve had 20,000 visits from the US, 7,000 from Germany, 3,300 from Russia, 3,000 from France, 2,300 from Ukraine, 1,400 from the United Kingdom, 601 from China and 460 from Saudi Arabia. Go figure.

Few applicants for tax rebates

As published in the Erin Advocate

I saw an ad the other day about a Wellington County program that provides partial rebates of property tax increases for low-income seniors and disabled persons, and decided to get more information. It turns out that very few people are applying.

The program provides a rebate of any increase over $150 on the total tax bill for property owners 65 and older who receive the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), or disabled persons who receive benefits under the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP).

People need to re-apply each year to the Town office, and the deadline for this year is November 1.

Only 21 applications came in from the whole county for 2007, down from 47 in 2005, said Emma Reddish, Property Tax Analyst at Wellington County. The average rebate was $300. The program can be of particular value if taxes rise due to property reassessment.

“People should not pre-determine whether they qualify based on tax bill comparison – if they receive GIS or ODSP they should apply or call,” she said. “Applications are extremely easy to fill out.”

All rebated amounts are shared between the local municipality, Wellington County and the Boards of Education. The rebate is only made once all the property tax for the year has been paid. The program used to apply to tax increases over $300, but in the spring of 2006, County Council lowered the threshold to $150.

Low-income disabled persons who do not receive the ODSP may still qualify for tax relief, since eligibility may be determined on a case-by-case basis in consultation with the County Social Services Department.

There is more information at the bottom of your tax bill. You can get an application at the Town of Erin office, the County Administration Centre, or on-line at www.wellington.ca. Call Emma at 519-837-2600, ext. 2940, or email: emmar@wellington.ca.

• • •

I’ve never been fond of idle chit-chat, especially in written form, so the idea of launching a blog had never really crossed my mind.

Recently, however, a number of people have asked if the Erin Insight column is available on-line. The opportunity to publish my writing at absolutely no cost, to an unlimited number of readers, was certainly worth investigation.

It was so simple; I set it up during a lunch break. Now, you can aim your trusty web browser at www.erininsight.blogspot.com, and read, well, what you are reading right now.

That might seem redundant, but it opens up some interesting possibilities. For example, my Mom and Dad can now read the column, as can anyone else who does not get The Erin Advocate. Columns will be posted on the blog in the week after they appear in the newspaper.

When the site appears on your screen, you will see the most recent column, followed by previous ones. You can scroll through them, call up various ones by title, or click at the side to see related columns according to topic.

Over time, I hope it will create a portrait of Erin from many different angles.

A blog (short for web log) is like a diary or scrapbook. You can set a simple one up for free with Google or other companies, or pay a small fee to get a fancier site.

The author has control over who can read it; some blogs are restricted to family and friends, but mine open to everyone.
Some blogs have many authors posting submissions, so they become complex, wide-open forums for debate. I plan to keep mine simple. I will be the only one posting articles, normally the same as what appears in the newspaper, but sometimes with extra material that would not fit onto Page 7.

Many blogs allow readers to attach their own comments to a story, for all to read. I am not providing that option, at least for now, mainly because I do not have time to screen and moderate the process.

If anyone wants to contact me with alternate views, additional information or ideas for future columns, send an email to: erininsight@gmail.com. This will be private correspondence; I will not publish your letter, quote from it or use your name, unless you request that I do so.

To comment publicly, send a Letter to the Editor, to the address on Page 6, or via email: editorial@erinadvocate.com.