Some recent pictures

Grace Street between the bridge and SR 114 is closed for reconstruction and will remain closed to traffic for about a month. On Monday morning trees were being removed. The road is in poor shape and does not have a good foundation.

 The rains of last week refilled Weston Lake.

 The construction of the wet water treatment plant seems to be complete and the work there now seems to be mostly cleaning up. Last week the pipes used to test the plant by running river water through it were being hauled away. The large excavator that has been on the site for months is now gone so the heavy lifting must be over.

 The twice-a-year rummage sales at St. Augustines are under new management and the sale over the weekend went well, though the amount of stuff was quite low. There was not a lot left over--I recall sales when this truck would have been filled with what was left unsold.

 Construction continues at a rapid pace on the O'Reilly building. The walls were going up last week.

 I stopped by n Sunday to take a picture and found that workers were on the site. The picture below shows the building on Monday morning.

 Over the weekend there was a dinner for a local girl who has kidney cancer. The kids there got to smash a piñata. I found it amusing that they were whacking the pictures of the two main characters of the movie Frozen. I thought kids liked Elza.

 On Saturday the Lions and the Rensselaer Republican sponsored the annual egg scramble in the park. I got there a few minutes late because I was helping clean up the rummage sale so I did not get any pictures of the kids racing to grab candy.

SJC had its final choir concert on Sunday afternoon. Before the choir the small symphonic orchestra played its final performance. I think the orchestra was founded because the administration thought it would draw a substantial number of students. But the group never got very big.

 After the concert I talked to a faculty member who will be teaching at Wabash next year on a one-year appointment. I asked if it was to replace a professor on sabbatical but he said that it was a permanent one-year position, that is, each year a new person was hired for the position. That allowed the college to downsize without disrupting the permanent faculty if enrollments or finances suggested a reduction in staff. I thought it was a brilliant idea but I doubt if it would ever have been acceptable to the faculty at SJC.

I noticed that pavement is breaking up on the intersection of US 231 and SR 114 and that underneath are bricks. I suspect that there are quite a few bricks under the streets downtown.

Have a nice Holy Week.