Would you have re-visited our Imperial site if you had to pay for the
privilege? Would you have signed up for the mailing list if you had to pay
again? I suspect I would not have, to be honest. And yet it is one of the
best car sites out there. I have checked into many, as I am sure have the
majority on the list, and its my opinion that none compare, or even come
close, to what the site and this list provides.
In my own, unrelenting, way I have tried to give back to the list and the
site as much as I have gained, but its a hard task. There are some real
saints out there, doing fantastic work and if they do receive praise its
only because they deserve it. Manuel, Leslie, Mike & Christine Trettin,
Bill Johnson, Jeff Ingraham, Bradd Hogg, and many more I have not had the
pleasure of dealing with directly, are do an amazing amount of work. And
they do it for free, for the love of it, for the love of Imperials.
I have a small site of my own and get it at a knock down price of $35.00 a
year. Bargain basement. I cannot imagine how much the Online Imperial Club
site costs or the mailing list. As Joni Mitchell once said, "Don't it
always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till its gone."
Imagine if it had been announced that the site was being removed, or
converted into a pay site, or would have to be dramatically reduced in size
in order to survive. But, no, that's not why its being re-worked. It's so
it can be bigger, better and faster!
As I am finding with Imperialists, trying to organize anything is like
trying to train cats to swim in relay races. It's a rather impossible
proposition. Please don't delude yourself into thinking you are somehow
entitled to this site and that the people who run it somehow owe you
something. They don't. But you owe them something. Your respect and your
thanks. And a wee contribution towards Manuel's very real expenses wouldn't
hurt, either.
Hugh
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