A slow week

Goodbye Nordberg

It has been a slow week, with no public meetings that I was aware of. There was activity at the power plant where the last of the engines to be scrapped was removed from the building. I missed the actual removal, but did get some pictures of the body of the engine on a 30 wheel truck.

Below are a couple of close-ups.

The City tried to sell it at auction but it did not sell. Here is a link to the auction, which may not be available for very long.

The truck left early this week but another large piece of the engine remained. Work also continued inside the building but I could not see what they were doing.

On Thursday bits and pieces of leftover scrap were being loaded into a dumpster.

Courthouse drainage

Work has started at the Courthouse to install drainage to keep water from leaking into the basement. 

Earlier this week there was a deep hole near the gazebo.

A day later some concrete catch basins or manholes (I am not sure what the name of these are) had been installed.

On Thursday there was a trench leading to the big hole.

Winter

Rensselaer had another few days of real winter this week. It was cold enough so parts of the Iroquois River froze over. 

The winter has been mild overall. As of February 1, the ice cover on the Great Lakes was only 12%, which is lower than it was for that date in 2022 and 2019, but slightly above than in 2021 and 2020.

Days are getting longer. On Friday the length of day from sunrise to sunset is 10 hours, ten minutes, and 53 seconds. (It was 9:16:59 on December 21, the winter solstice.) Each day we get a bit more than two more minutes of daylight. 

Odds and ends

I got the following in my e-mail last week:

Hi, R.A.,

I am a new-ish Hoosier, volunteering for the City Nature Challenge Chicagoland Area. This is a four day contest or opportunity to observe nature. It is free. It requires using a free app called iNaturalist on a smart phone. Here are two links that explain it: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2023-chicagoland-region and https://www.chicagowilderness.org/page/citynaturechallenge. There are lots of ways to participate, from observing a spider in your laundry room, to strolling through a natural area looking for spring flowers, to snapping photos of your catch while fishing.

I am writing to you because I really know very little about Jasper County. While searching the internet, I found your informative blog. I hope you could steer me towards nature groups or clubs at the high school, or hikers, or birders, or other people with similar interests who might enjoy participating. For example, is there a "Friends of" group at a local park?

I am grateful for any help you can give me.

If you are interested and want contact information, e-mail me at my rensselaeradventures at yahoo address. 

What has happened to the Jasper County Chronicle? It got off to a great start in January and now has been silent for a couple of weeks.

Rural Bling announced a grand opening for March 8, 3:00-7:00 pm. The business is already in the former GRG Auto Repair building on South College, but does not yet have retail hours. The grand opening announcement said that another business, Backyard Blooms, would also be part of the grand opening.

Finally, I saw a picture on Facebook of a bank note issued by the Bank of Rensselaer, which apparently was only in business for a couple years, failing in 1855. Rensselaer has an interesting banking history, with a lot of banks, several of which failed.