Planning for the future

Signs of spring keep appearing. Last week I saw several robins and several turkey vultures. I am always excited to see the return of the turkey vultures both because it means spring is coming and because they are very graceful as they soar overhead.

The Jasper County Tourism Commission met on Friday morning. The funding request that they considered was from the Fountain Park Chautauqua, which will be celebrating its 125 anniversary this summer. Its first year was 1895 and it now has 70 cottages and a 30 room hotel that dates from the very early days of its history. The Chautauqua movement started as training for Sunday School teachers but has over the years changed to be mostly a celebration of the arts. The Remington Chautauqua is open to the public with a $5.00 daily entry fee. This year it will run from July 18 to August 3.

The Chautauqua requested $2500 to help pay for country singer Nich Lynch from Chicago. (Website here.) He appeared on American Idol sometime in the past. After some discussion and mention that the Council was cutting everyone this year, the members approved a grant of $2000.

Another item on the Chautauqua entertainment schedule this year is a retired professor talking on the history of toilet paper.

The Tourism office and JCEDO is preparing new trifolds promoting Jasper County. There was mention that IDOT is planning a welcome center for the rest area at mile marker 230. The focus of the exhibits will be the Grand Kankakee Marsh. (The rest area plans were mentioned in an October 2019 post.)

There was also discussion of other ways that the area could highlight its pre-settlement history and habitat. Residents who collect Indian artifacts know that this area had large Indian populations, some of which may have been seasonal, in the past but there is very little public recognition of that history and it is something that might have a tourism angle.

A group in Northeast Indiana is trying to do public murals in that part of the state and there was discussion if their efforts might be coordinated in some way to help the local mural project.

Speaking of local murals, the RENARTWLK has a website (here, note that it is a .org not a .com site) and is currently trying to raise money to do a round two of murals. The total budget is $30,000 and $10,000 is being raised from the public. The campaign is not quite to 50% of that $10,000 goal. (See here.)

A silver lining from the fire is that I can now take a decent picture of the mural on Janet's Kitchen. On the other hand, the view of the back of the buildings is not attractive even with a few murals there. Perhaps the second round of murals will greatly improve the view.

On Sunday Rensselaer had its second annual International Woman's Day event. It was well attended, both the morning talks and the afternoon boutique market.

Finally, as I was going to the Tourism meeting on Friday, I noticed movers taking furniture into the former PMC Bank Building. I assume that was for the Probation office, which should now be out of the old annex and in the basement of its new building.