Hi from Joanne and Don,

To give you something to think about on these long summer evenings, it is our pleasure to introduce ‘Viewpoint’. This innovation to our pages presents an opportunity to anyone living in the Clyde Valley to send us their thoughts or point of view on local cultural matters. To start us off Karen Gillon, our local MSP, gives us her thoughts on Funding Culture.

If you would like to respond to Viewpoint now or in the future, you can share your thoughts with us all in Forum.

This month in our showcase we have an article - ‘India’s Southern Charms’ and a photograph - ‘The Elephant’s Blessing’ by Aline Dobbie, ‘Solace’- a painting by Mhairi Callan, a sculpted wooden chair by David Owen, a song - ‘Rifleman Khan’ by Nick, and a poem - ‘Greeting my Grandfather’ by Andrew McCallum.

Our thanks go to Karen Gillon for Viewpoint and to all those who have contributed to this month’s Showcase.

We have been having trouble with receiving some emails recently and several people have told us that emails they have sent us have returned marked 'undeliverable'. We apologise for this and we are investigating this problem with our website host but so far have not been able to find the cause of the problem and solve it. If it cannot be resolved, then we will have to change our hosting provider but there just never seems to be a good time to manage this. In the short term, if you know or suspect that emails you send are not getting through because you are not getting a reply within a day or two from us, then please let us know by phoning us or by re-emailing to these alternative addresses which do work:-

joanne@clydevalley.free-online.co.uk

don@clydevalley.free-online.co.uk

We rely on our group contacts to keep us up to date re holidays/ breaks or changes of personnel and/or contact information. At this time of year, it's probably worth checking your group's listing. Remember, you can change/update your listing at any time by emailing us. You can also change your thumbnail image by sending in a new one .

Best wishes from us both,

Joanne and Don