Sigh. I saw an email a while back from one of the vendors who has a shop on the square downtown in Glen Rose, in which the owner exhorted the people who live in Glen Rose and Somervell County to do their shopping locally, support our local merchants before driving to some other town. The idea, of course, is that we want to create a thriving community where people can afford to live here AND offer shopping. I agree with that. I can't say that I always buy locally, but I do call first or drive to stores here to check for items before looking elsewhere. And sometimes, if I'm not in a time crunch, I certainly have no issue with putting in special orders which, in my experience, the local merchants are quite happy to fufill.

So it was with some surprise that I saw an ad in this week's Glen Rose Reporter newspaper about the Glen Rose Chamber of Commerce Awards dinner, to be held on January 30 at the Palace Theater. The guest speaker's topic is "The Importance of Buying Local". I thought that was pretty great.

But then I my eyes dropped down to the second line. "Tastings by: Bluff Dale Winery, Veld-Huizen Cheese Shop,Wiseman House of Fine Chocolates". Are ANY of these companies in Glen Rose OR Somervell County? ... No. They are NOT local unless you want to include neighboring counties that are not Somervell nor Glen Rose. Bluff Dale is in Erath County, the cheese shop is in Lingleville, also Erath County, and Wiseman's chocolates is in Hamilton County. I've had Bluff Dale wine-on one occasion I got it from the liquor store in Granbury, another time a good friend gifted me with a bottle-it's very good and I will continue to get it. I haven't had the cheese yet but a couple of people have told me how good it is, and of course fine chocolates are always tops on the list. And it seems the tone is to have a sort of more elegant  wine-tasting affair for showing off the Palace Theatre, which the 4b aka GREDC is considering purchasing.

I'm certainly not above getting dressed up to go to a wine tasting, although my own tastes run more to the icea tea and pickles area. And of course this is an awards dinner, so one would want it to be a special occasion.

I do think that when you're telling people to buy local, when you're hosting the event in an historic building that you hope to use to attract even more people to come here to use AND BUY LOCAL, then it would not be such a juxtaposition to have, say, Pie Peddlers provide the dessert, or Jitters provide coffee for tasting, or La Rositas provide their delicious burritos or Hammonds (always reliable) provide the barbecue. We have, in other words, in my opinion, some really wonderful food vendors that are not chains, ARE local, and maybe aren't the pinkies up tone of a wine tasting but would be in line with the Buy Local theme.

P.S. I noticed in looking at the Glen Rose Chamber website, that, while there are at least 3 hosting providers in the chamber (and I believe there may be two more brand new computing consultancies in town), the website seems to be hosted by a provider in Granbury.

Registrant:
Glen Rose - Somervell County Chamber of Commerce (glenrosechamber.com)
P.O. Box 605

Glen Rose, TX 76043
US

Registrar: DomainPeople Inc.

Domain Name: glenrosechamber.com
Created on .............1999-08-27-17.58.30.000000
Expires on .............2010-08-27-16.58.27.000000
Record last updated on .2009-06-02-12.41.14.971000
Status .................ACTIVE

Administrative Contact:
Glen Rose Chamber of Commerce
Trish David
P.O. Box 605

Glen Rose, TX
76043, US
+1.2548972286
+1.2458977670
grcc@granbury.com

Technical Contact:
Hood County News
Rick Craig
P.O. Box 879

Granbury, TX
76048, US
+1.8175737066
+1.8172798371
rcraig@hcnews.com

Domain servers in listed order:
ns1.hcnews.com
ns2.hcnews.com

(glenrosechamber.com)

P.P.S.Suppose that the Chamber says "Well, heck, Erath County is local". So's Granbury. Gee, I might as well do all my shopping in some other *local* county if that's the criteria. No wonder the Chamber has problems getting people to shop local when they don't even tout it themselves. And while I"m on it, a slightly different take, not on local, but I don't really care a whole lot about football. The guy that is coming as speaker is a football guy and that will probably be the bulk of his speech. Fine. I hate to sound sexist but I'm willing to bet at least a percentage of women attending this dinner could care less about football stories of the old days, too. I guess there was nobody *local* in town they could ask to be a speaker that had some great stories and uplifting experiences about making business succeed or how Glen Rose has grown or anything simliar.  Have to go get some non-local guy to come talk about football and auction off a Roger Staubach football.