A lot of pictures

I went back to the Fair on Wednesday. The carnival rides were set up and ready to open for the evening.

The most intimidating ride is called the Joker. It spins on two axes to vary the g-force.

It was game night in the horse arena. In the contest shown below, the winner was the rider who kept an egg on a spoon the longest.

The fair features lots of animals. This bunny was especially photogenic. 

Wednesday was hot and muggy and all the animal bars had lots of fans.

There was pig judging in the show arena. I took several pictures and this one was the best.

The dog act was still doing performances. This dog climbed the wall to grab a target. Once he got it, he did not want to let it go.

Rensselaer schools will be in session soon. Some of the seniors have claimed parking spaces and are painting them. I will try to remember to go back in a couple weeks and see the finished results.

The new building at Genova now has walls. It is difficult to get pictures because the property is surrounded by a fence.

Earlier this month there was only the iron skeleton.

Construction has begun on the new warehouse for the electric department. On Wednesday these jacks were in Columbia Park across Vine Street from the construction site.

On Thursday they had been placed in the construction site. This seems to be a building for which the roof will be constructed first. Then it will be raised and the walls will be constructed. That is how the addition to Indiana Face Masks was done, and also a building on SR 114 between Pleasant Ridge and Hanging Grove.

On Friday morning Walmart had a ceremony to mark the end of their remodeling. Most of the people attending were Walmart employees.

The remodeling resulted in new floors, new signs, updated bathrooms, a new customer service area, more room for groceries and electronics,  and new facilities that will be used when on-line grocery shopping rolls out in a few weeks.

The people cutting the ribbon were employees who started with Walmart 28 years ago when it opened in Rensselaer.

As part of the grand reopening Walmart was giving customers a cupcake.

I saw this deer in Weston Cemetery. It stood about 20 feet from me and let me take its picture.  After I passed, it went back to grazing.

The grain in this field was harvested a couple weeks ago and the stalks were left to dry. The straw has finally be bundled into big rolls. 

Biplane rides have begun. They make a distinctive sound, unlike other prop planes.

Appleseed plans

 The Rensselaer City Council met on Monday with a short agenda. The meeting would have been very brief if not for a presentation during the Citizens Comments portion of the meeting. Adam Alson, representing Appleseed Childhood Education, told the Council what his organization wanted to accomplish in the near future and how they could help.

Appleseed is a not-for-profit organization that wants to bring a licensed child-care facility to Rensselaer. He outlined the reasons that this would be beneficial, arguing that it would benefit not just children and their parents but also the wider community. Employers benefit because good childcare helps them attract employees and reduces absences. 

Appleseed plans to open a facility that will serve 75 children. It will be open from 6:00 to 6:00 Monday through Friday and will be operated by Right Steps Child Development Centers of Lafayette.  Right Steps currently operates five centers in Lafayette plus the centers in Remington and Goodland.

The projected annual costs of the center will be a bit more than $1 million. Most of this will be met by tuition and fees, including vouchers that are available to low-income families from the state and federal governments. Each year about $300,000 will have to be met with donations and grants. He told the Council that Appleseed would like to have the City of Rensselaer be one of the entities that would help with funding, though he did not have any amount at this time. He mentioned that Appleseed was working with a large local employer to secure a site. After the meeting several people who know a lot more about what is happening in Rensselaer than I do asked each other where that site might be and none of them knew.

Turning to the agenda, the Council approved a transfer of funds and also approved spending $13k+ to clean water well #6. At the last meeting there was discussion of whether to continue paying employees in quarantine. At this meeting the Council voted to keep the ordinance, which pays for quarantine if the Governor has declared a state of emergency. The last item of the agenda was a proposal to waive the building-permit fee for a building at Brookside Park. It passed and the building should be installed in early August. (Work on site preparation began Tuesday.)

FBI will start working on the new storage building for the electrical utility this week. Work on South McKinley Street is finished. 

Going to the meeting, I noticed traffic backed up on College Avenue. There was an accident on I-65 that had stopped traffic. What was unusual about the traffic detouring through Rensselaer was that it was not going through the downtown on the highways. I suspect that the traffic was coming from people whose cell-phones told them of the closure and gave them the College Avenue route. Below is a picture showing traffic on College backed up to Lincoln Street.

In one other news item, Ray Seif announced that he will be leaving the Jasper County Airport to take another position. He has been at the airport for five years and has been a vigorous advocate for the airport and for flying.   

Mural Week summary

Mural Week 2021 ended on Friday and the last of the murals seem to have been finished over the weekend. There were seven planned murals and a few unplanned. The curator, the person who found the other muralists, was Cameron Moberg who did this glass of beer on the side of Fenwick Farms. He considers it a collaborative effort and signed it with his signature and that of a mysterious companion from San Francisco MNSTR Squad. 

The only mural done in the original RenArtWlk alley was by Moosy, who has developed a lot of skill since his contribution to the 2020 RenArtWlk.

The largest mural of the week was painted by Ian Ross. Here is what it looks for someone stopped at the stoplight at the intersection of US 231 and SR 114.

Another large mural, this one very visible for someone driving south on US 231, is Grizzly_Bear_Designs' octopus on the wall of Anders Water Conditioning.

Neverxtinct, an artist from Nashville, Tenneesee, painted this large mural on the northwest wall of Rule's Auto Care building. I talked to him and his friend Jack on Friday night as they were packing up for their six-hour trip back to Nashville. They hope to come back to Rensselaer in the future and paint more.

Rule's Auto Care had three of the seven planned murals. Alex Ann Allen painted another large mural on the southeast of the buildinging.

The final mural on the building was a Bronco-with-Flowers mural painted by Chicago artist Kristine Campbell.

Not planned at the beginnng but prompted by Cameron Moberg is a large mural in the cluster of murals on the alley next to Printco that was done by Ryan and Lindsey Preston. 

The mural that makes me smile is a small mural by Jackdoesart247. He came to Rensselaer to help his friend Neverxtinct work on the Love-Blooms mural but had some extra time and did this small mural. (Do you see the boat of the fisherman?)

Cameron Moberg's mysterious companion did this small monster mural. During the 2019 Mural Week there were several monsters painted on windows and manhole covers and all are now gone, destroyed or painted over. It is good to have a monster back in the alley.

There is one other painting done during the week that is almost impossible to see because it is on a roof on a uneven wall wedged between two buildings. It was done by Moosy after he finished his mural. With some effort I could make out what was in the talk balloon: "NFTs are dead."

I had to ask what that meant. NFTs are non-fungible tokens and are digital rights to a work that otherwise can be reproduced. The concept makes no sense to me, but you can read about it by searching for "non fungible tokens".

Previous posts about Mural Week:

The Start

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

For all the murals and a few extras see the unofficial guide at Art Walk Rensselaer.

Pictures from the County Fair

 The County Fair started Saturday. When I visited Sunday afternoon, the carnival rides had arrived but were not set up.

There were horses grazing south of the grandstand. They are horses that will be used in the rodeo, the grandstand attraction for Monday night.

There was a performance of the Canines in the Clouds dog show ending as I arrived. I tried to take some pictures but they did not turn out. I did get a picture of the queens watching the show.

Something new this year was a barrel ride. It cost $2.00.

Also new was what seems to be a laser-tag arena.

Roaming the fairgrounds was a person in a robot suit. 

Also roaming the grounds was Bufford Bear driving a little car. I took several pictures but none of them turned out well—the light was wrong.

A Huber tractor was in the retired iron building. I had never heard of the brand. It was manufactured in Ohio until WWII when the government told the company to make construction equipment. After the war the company did not return to tractor production.

Later in the evening there was a steam engine demonstration planned. I have a soft spot for steam engines because a grandfather and an uncle collected and maintained several. The two were in the farm implement business in central Minnesota.

Many of the food booths are different this year. The most unusual one was shaped like an elephant.

The many 4-H projects had been judged. This drawing rightly won some big awards.

I do not remember the gazebo from the fair two years ago. This is a view from the new Fair headquarters looking east.

By 6:30 the crowds were beginning to build. And that's when I left.

I noticed sycamore trees are shedding bark. I checked the Internet and found that shedding bark is normal and not a sign of a problem.

Mural week 2021 Day 6

(Day 5 is here.)

There was not a lot of change in the murals on Thursday. Only two of the original seven remain unfinished. I did get a good picture of the Octopus mural that was finished on Wednesday

The gray rose on Rules Auto Service added lettering.

Kristine Campbell continues adding details to her mural

The Preston mural in the alley looks like it is finished or almost finished. The flowers look finished but the fish seem like they will get more detail. Flowers and fish make for an unusual pairing.

Below is a picture showing some detail. It is hard to get a picture from a good angle when there are cars parked next to the painting. If you look at the surface of the wall, you can see why this wall was not immediately snatched up by one of the original seven muralists.

On Friday I found the artist of the alley fish at work. I do not know his name. Again, the wall is not in the best condition for a mural.

I will probably not post again on murals until all of them are finished.

Stopping by Abbie Parmelies open house on Thursday, I noticed a sign in the door of Turning Point Surveying saying that they had closed their Rensselaer office and anyone interested in their services should contact their DeMotte office. A week or so ago I was shopping for a bike part and discovered that Superior Sales and Service no longer is in the bike business. A couple of posts back I mentioned the parking spaces at Walmart that seemed reserved for customer pickup. I asked about them and was told that one of the uses would be for people who order groceries for pickup. There are coolers and shelves installed near the entrance for their orders. When they come for pickup, they call and tell customer service what parking space they are in and an associate will bring out their purchases.

The crop dusters are back this week. You can hear them passing overhead as they come and go from the airport. I have also seen several biplanes or perhaps one biplane several times. The Oshkosh Air Show starts on Monday, the 26th, so we may see some unusual aircraft passing by because some refuel at the Jasper County Airport. A couple of biplanes will be at the airport on July 29-August 1 selling biplane rides.

Work continues on the Pipestone Veterinary Services expansion. 

Mural Week 2021 Day 5

(Day 4 is here.)

More murals were finished on Wednesday. GrizzlyBear Designs signed his octopus on the Anders Water Conditioning building.

(I will get a final picture when the light conditions are favorable.)

Alex Ann Allen was finished Wednesday evening but had not yet signed the mural on the Rule Auto Care building.

Moosy added his signature to his mural.

And Ian Ross signed his mural at the top where it is hard to read.

Below is the finished mural with a drone taking pictures of it.

Earlier on Wednesday Mr Ross was making some final changes. He was the only muralist that I saw using a paint roller.

The artists tape the windows to keep them clean. Ross added a bit of whimsey to the  paper protecting the window. It is gone now that the mural is finished.

On Wednesday evening Kristine Campbell was painting flowers on her mural. 

Neverxtinct still had a lot of work left on his mural.

I asked him why he had left white squares. He said that they would be filled with color but that most of the rose would remain gray. He said that a friend who was helping him was doing a small fish in the alley by the green man. So I went to see what he was doing and found two of the muralists hanging out waiting for supper time. 

I was surprised to see three other paintings that had recently been completed or were underway. The Instagram for MNSTR SQUAD is here. I know who it is but cannot get him to confess.

The Prestons were doing a mural nearby.

Cameron Moberg had a banner made for them.

Ryan Preston does the preliminary preparing of walls for the murals, something the artists greatly appreciate. The Prestons had a mural on the Town Mall that was destroyed in the fire.

Up on a roof Trent Musch was painting something that will be almost impossible to view from the ground.

Cameron Moberg said that he had gotten permission to paint these walls but none of the scheduled artists wanted them because they were small and inaccessible. Maybe more pictures will appear tomorrow as some of the muralists have fun.

Walmart has been redoing their signage and I found these three signs made an interesting and somewhat confusing contrast.

The roof on the Court House gazebo is being replaced.

Finally, the basketball court at Brookside Park was given its final layer of asphalt on Wednesday morning. Perhaps soon people will be playing basketball there.