End of a cold week

On Friday most area schools were closed because of the extremely cold temperatures. The forecast for next week is for even colder temperatures, with brutally cold temperatures for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. It will be interesting to how many school delays and closings there will be next week.

The rain on Wednesday helped clear the roads so that City streets were mostly clear on Thursday. However, we are now getting more snow over the next few days so the roads will again be icy next week. If you must get out, drive carefully.

In the December 12 City Council meeting the Council approved a pole attachment agreement that came from interest by unnamed companies that wanted to attach lines to the City's utility poles. Last week I noticed a company doing that. The company is Advanced Communication and Data or ACD. It is a Michigan company. I do not know the rest of the story but I suspect that there is an interesting story here.

The hotel at Fair Oaks Farms opened a couple days ago. I suspect they want a quiet opening to work out any bugs and get staff trained.

Work at Autumn Trace has enclosed the building so there will not be much change until they finish the roof and give the exterior walls their final layer. The company put some pictures shot from a drone on the Internet this past week so I will link to one of theirs rather than post one of mine.

Rensselaer's Habitat for Humanity is no more. It is now affiliated with the Fuller Center for Housing. Their website explains: "This organization no longer has any affiliation with Habitat for Humanity or their partners. Both Habitat and Fuller Center were founded by Millard Fuller and have many goals in common and the same final goal, but are separate organizations. Our affiliate was started in 1994 under Habitat, and changed to a Fuller Center covenant partner in December 2018." (Their Facebook page is here.)

The first meeting of the task force concerned with the consequences of the closing of NIPSCO's Wheatfield generating station met in DeMotte on Wednesday evening. The Rensselaer Republican has a report of what happened at the meeting that is published in their Saturday edition.

The diocesan paper of Lafayette had an article about an after-school violin class at St. Augustine's School. You can read it here.  The class got some start-up money from the Jasper-Newton Foundation.

Fowler is featured in a BP ad that has been airing on television. I have not seen it there but it is on line here.

The former Country Bumpkin/Thee Dragonfly is busy moving from Kellner to Washington Street next to the bakery.

That is all I have for this week.