A very busy week

Five posts in five days--it has been a busy week.

WPUM had its final broadcast and has gone silent. The station started broadcasting in the 1970s over carrier current, which means that the signal was carried on the electrical wiring. It was originally AM but then switched to FM. In its early days on the air it was limited to 10 amps of power, which gave it a range of only a few miles. The first and last song played was Year of The Cat. A video of the last twenty minutes is here.

(Someone needs to update the Wikipedia entry on the station to include its history. Also, there are many comments about the closing on the Facebook page St. Joe's Little 500!!! One Last Time!!.

On Friday morning the last Core lecture was presented. A video is here.

On Friday morning the City Council met for a special session to enact an ordinance establishing an underground and buried utility district. This is a reaction to a bill that the state legislature passed changing the rules for small cell towers or cell booster towers. The bill, authored by Senator Hershman who represents the south part of Rensselaer, is intended to improve cell phone performance as technology changes. It greatly limits how much local governments can regulate small cell towers or boosters unless they have established before May 1 an underground and buried utility district. The City and many other local governments in Indiana are establishing these districts so that they will have some say on the placement of these poles. Here and here are two articles that I found on the issue; more will be published in the coming days.

Mentioned at the meeting was a bill passed by the State legislature that continues the highway grants to local governments. The new formula is 75% state money and 25% local money for communities smaller than 10,000 residents. That is good for Rensselaer.

Speaking of paving, it began this morning for the construction on Lincoln Street. Someone told me that the asphalt was coming from Peru, IN.

On Grace Street sidewalks and ramps were being poured and a strange machine was putting dirt into the gaps next to the recently poured sidewalks and curbs. The boom rotated and extended but it did not bend.

The annual Photography exhibit is on display in the Fendig Gallery and the reception is this evening. Tomorrow is Town-Wide Garage Sales and some of the sales started today.