December and winter arrive.

Winter

Winter fully arrived during the week of Thanksgiving. There were a series of days in which the temperature stayed below freezing. One result was that the fountain in Filson Park froze.

The dedication of the park is scheduled for Friday after the Christmas Parade. Will warmer weather on Wednesday bring down some of that ice?

Travels

I spent the weekend of Thanksgiving visiting family south of Indianapolis. The new section of Interstate 69 has been open for several months, and where we exited, we encountered three roundabouts within a couple hundred yards. That area loves roundabouts. I am still uncomfortable with them because I have not driven enough of them (and maybe because it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks).

I also do not like driving some of the roads there because when housing moved out, the county authorities did not realize that they needed to widen roads. So there are many busy roads that have two lanes with no room for shoulders or sidewalks because the utility poles (often on both sides of the road) are about 18 inches from the pavement. Some of the newer developments seem to have learned from past mistakes and are leaving more room for the roads and also putting in sidewalks.

A few family members decided that it would be fun to go to a professional basketball game during our stay. They did not go to a Pacer's game. They went to the other men's professional team in Indianapolis, the Indiana Mad Ants. The team was originally located in Fort Wayne. The G league is a developmental league for the NBA. I had never heard of this team or league. There seem to be plenty of seating available at its games.

In both going and returning I was reminded that I-65 really needs to be three lanes each direction for its whole length.

Commissioners meeting

I could not attend the Commissioners meeting in person on Monday because I was still not back in Rensselaer. I attended via Zoom. The meeting was in the CourtHouse and it would have been fun to attend one more meeting there. (The Sparling meeting room is being renovated, with the column in the middle of the room slated for removal.) I also prefer attending in person because Zoom does not capture everything. Sound from the Commissioners was good, but some of the speakers in the audience were hard or impossible to hear. Some of my audio problems were on my end; my earphones did not work well with my device.

A couple of buried cable requests, both from NIPSCO, were approved. The Sheriff had contracts for 2024 and 2025 approved. He was too far from the microphone for me to hear what he had to say. The contracts also need Council approval. He had some surplus property with little or no value and the Commissioners gave him permission to dispose of it. They also approved filling a vacant dispatcher position.

The Commissioners approved an agreement with Illiana Heating & Air for the north annex They approved a laser light display for the Court House that Main Street Rensselaer is planning. Sharon Colee's snow removal plan for the Fase Center was approved and she was allowed to pursue getting DeMotte water service for the Fase Center. She wants the Commissioners to do a walk through of the Rensselaer Center to show them the maintenance issues. The building is about 35 years old.

Jatin Patel has resigned from the Jasper County Tourism Commission and the Commissioners appointed Randy Rottler from Carpenter Creek Cellars to replace him. (Mr Patel's insights from the hotel industry will be missed.) The Commissioners approved a couple of conference requests and a GUTS agreement that I think was for lock-box services. They appointed Susie Howard to the Wheatfield Plan Commission Board, filling the remainder of a term of someone who retired. This position is for someone from Wheatfield's buffer zone. 

There was a short discussion of progress being made in the new public defender office. There are still details to be worked out. The Commissioners approved changes to the Unified Development Ordinance that had been recommended by the Jasper County Plan Commission. They approved a contract to inventory capital assets, had a discussion about a SAFE grant, trying to decide whether to be part of a multi-county proposal or going alone. The matter should be decided at the December 23 meeting. Snow plow quotes were opened and all were accepted, with Mr DeYoung abstaining.

There were several public comments. A woman who in the past voiced concerns about chemicals eroding from windmill blades gave some updated research. Someone had questions about the County agreement with Remington regarding the Remington EMS building. There were concerns about vandalism with the newly-installed lighted stop signs in the northern part of the County.

I do not know if there was a Drainage Board meeting following the Commissioners meeting. There was a Rensselaer Redevelopment meeting Monday afternoon that I was too tired to attend. The agenda did not look very interesting.

More painted windows

Continuing the showing of windows that the Rensselaer Chamber has been painting, the one below is from Kentland Bank. I wonder if this counts as one window or two. The Chamber says it has painted 90 windows and I would like to find as many as I can.

Two windows from SuperCuts in the College Mall.

Arni's a bit north of Strack.

M&W Insurance.

The law office of Samantha Joslyn.

Jasper County Abstract office.

The dental office of Jordan Balvich

Estel George's State Farm Insurance office.

The next two are windows of the Deerwood Group on North McKinley.

The doors of the Knights of Columbus hall.

Finally

Awaiting sunrise on a winter morning

Eclipse 2024

 Solar Eclipse

I had never seen a total solar eclipse and the eclipse of April 8 was the last chance I would have to see one, so I drove south to Greenwood on Sunday afternoon. I drove a day early because heavy traffic was predicted for Monday. The traffic on Sunday was not bad and the trip down was uneventful.

I stayed at my son's house and he and his family were joined by other relatives from Nevada and Minnesota. I had my eclipse glasses but I would not have needed them. People in the path of totality had multiple opportunities to get pairs. My daughter-in-law prepared an eclipse party featuring foods with a sun or moon theme such as Sun Chips, Eclipse gum, Moon Pies, and Sunkist orange soda.

We eagerly awaited the start of the eclipse. Then we watched as the moon slowly crept across the sun. If we had not known that there was to be an eclipse, I doubt if we would have noticed anything strange until the sun was almost completely covered. Then the sunlight was noticeably less bright. Even then looking at the sun without eclipse glasses would not have shown what was happening. Even a tiny sliver of the sun was blindingly bright. Suddenly we were in total eclipse and one could look at the sun directly. What one saw was a black circle surrounded by bright light. The light was coming from the solar corona, which is normally not visible from earth because of the brightness of the surface of the sun. I took a look through binoculars and saw an orange spot in the circle, which I presume was a solar flare or prominence. I tried to take some pictures but none of them turned out. 

I did get a picture of what the area looked like during the eclipse.

I was surprised to see Venus brightly shining in the sky to the west of the sun. Some people also saw Jupiter but I did not.

The spectacle was over in about four minutes and then a shaft of blindingly bright light appeared and it was time to put on the eclipse glasses again. People around me did not seem to be nearly as interested in watching the sun slowly emerge as they had been watching the solar disk slowly disappear.

I waited until Tuesday morning to drive back to Rensselaer. The traffic was not terrible. There was a delay north of Lebanon due to an accident. I was happy to have seen the total eclipse and also happy to be back home.

Meetings

Because I decided to view the solar eclipse, I missed the Rensselaer Board of Public Works meeting and the Rensselaer City Council meeting. The minutes of the BPW meeting are on the City website. The meeting lasted two minutes and had only one pay invoice to approve. The new water tower has been painted. This week's Rensselaer Republican has a couple articles telling what happened at the Council meeting.

On Tuesday I got back to Rensselaer in time to go to the Tourism Commission meeting. However, they did not have an quorum so could not vote on anything. They did hear a presentation from one of their consultants from Ball State who are working on a strategic plan. The presentation was recorded so those members who did not attend could view it. A lot of the presentation was focused on things that were discussed in December when a session with many members of the public were asked for input.

72 of the 92 Indiana counties have a tourism tax. The revenue from that tax provides the funds that the Tourism Commission spends. The presentation said that the Commission does not have the resources to do big things by itself. It needs to find ways to add value to what others are doing. The goal is to develop vibrant communities that attract visitors and provide amenities for residents.

On Tuesday evening the Airport Authority Commission met and I intended to attend the meeting via Zoom. However, I got involved in something and forgot to tune in to the meeting.

I will try to do better with meetings next week.

Façade grants

A second round of façade grants has been made and one of the two receiving a grant was Earth Magic. There was a photo opportunity on the morning of April 4.

I did not hear the amount of the grant, but it will help improve the look of the front of the second floor. Earth Magic recently announced that it would be partnering with Frey Catering and starting on April 23 Frey Catering will be providing all the food options.

The space that Earth Magic has is an alley stopper. The two walls are the external walls of the adjoining buildings. There is a second floor over part of the the space, but it can only be reached via a pull-down ladder inside Earth Magic. The owner would like to have a stairs and walkway on the back that would allow this space to be used as an apartment.

Brick Streets pictures

Most of the work on the brick streets is taking place near the intersection of Harrison and Van Rensselaer. The contractor dug a big hole near Ayda's. The line on the bottom is a combined storm and sanitary sewer. 

Two concrete manhole structures were put in.

and then covered up.

I noticed a big ugly concrete thing that had been dug out. I am not sure where it had been.

Notes

Ayda's is adding a layer of insulation to its Harrison Street wall.

The first round of Community Crossing grants has been announced by the Indiana Department of Transportation. Jasper County received $1.5 million and Remington $141,677.23.

The River peaked at about 10.7 feet (flood stage is 12) on April 4 and has been declining. We had a lot of rain early on the 11th that will send the River rising, but it is too early to tell by how much.

We have had some warm days this week and the warmth is making April feel like spring. The grass is growing and people have started mowing. A lot of trees and bushes are flowering.

If you have not filed your 2023 income taxes, you only have a few days left.

Miscellany June 12, 2021

 Eden Valley Farms, located just south of West Central High School, had an open house on Saturday. It was well attended, with tour groups of about 15 people starting every ten minutes or so. People on the tour had to wear hair nets and glasses and were not allowed to take pictures. At the end of the tour we were allowed to take a basil plant, so a picture of my basil plant is the only picture from the tour that I have to share. (There are pictures on the farm's website.)

The facility is divided into two parts. In one part herbs are grown in pots or trays and are watered in two different ways. This part grows organic produce. In the other part lettuce and maybe a some other things are grown without soil, hydroponically. This part was only being about 1/3 used. The facility employs 18 people full-time and another 7 or 8 part-time. Some of the output is sold locally under the Eden Valley Farms name, but most is sold under two other names, Farmers & Co and Edible Farms. The last is a Meijer label and Eden Valley is not the sole provider.

Murals are in the news. Cameron Moberg is finishing a large mural in DeMotte. A small mural was recently painted on the side of Main Street Bakery in Medaryville. Downtown Rensselaer also is getting a small mural, a flag on the Campbell Printing building.

The artist for this one is Rein Bontrager, who did the mural in Iroquois Park and who will soon be doing a large one in Kentland.  (My prediction from last year seems to be coming true.) The Kentland mural will focus on Newton County history. My guess is it will have people like George Ade, Sam Rice, and perhaps Jenny Conrad. Certainly it will have pictures of wildlife because Beaver Lake and the area around the Kankakee River were famous for wildlife. It will be interesting to see what he includes.

The curbs are in on South McKinley.

The Rensselaer Pet Care Clinic under construction east of Fountain Stone has been roofed and wrapped.

Walmart seems to be doing something with its sign over the entrance.

LaRue Pool did not open on Saturday but at least it had water. Filling started Thursday.

The Rensselaer Chamber of Commerce had a lunch in Brookside Park this past week and got to tour the new press box building. Below is the view of from the press box of the middle field.

The first item discussed at the Airport Authority Board meeting Thursday evening was the proposal for a 4-H shooting range northwest of the airport. This proposal had been brought before the Commissioners earlier in the week and also at their May meeting and Commissioners had wanted to know what the Airport Authority thought of it before they acted. The 4-H shooting sports are archery, air rifle, 22-caliber rifle, pistol, and shotgun for clay pigeons. The Airport manager pointed out that the area of the proposed range was under the flight path of some of the smaller planes taking off from the airport and said that the location posed safety issues. Further, the part of the year when the range would be most used, in July, coincided with the time when the airport had the most traffic. The Jasper County Sheriff said that though the people proposing the range had offered his department use of the range, the range would not be suitable for his department because the firearms that his people use are far more high-powered than those that the 4-H youth would use. The Board expressed support for the idea of a 4-H shooting range but voted to recommend to the Commissioners that it not be sited near the airport.

During the discussion it was mentioned that there was once a skeet-shooting range on the south end of the Fairgrounds. Prior to about ten years ago, the local 4-H had had shooting events for fair week. Those making the proposal said that there were other options for a site, and that the one near the airport was advanced because it was the closest to the Fairgrounds.

Next the Board turned to insurance. Some current insurance policies expire at the end of the month and the Board heard quotes for renewal. There were some tense moments and exchanges during the discussion, something I have rarely seen in meetings I attend. In the end, the Board voted 2-1-1 to renew the policies recommended by the existing insurance agent. (The Board should have five members but there is currently a vacancy.)

The State is ending the emergency meeting procedures that were instituted as a result of the COVID lockdown. The Board voted on an electronic attendance policy that would require that if any member is attending virtually, all votes must be by roll call.

The Airport received a $30,000 grant that will allow it to purchase three flight simulators to aid both existing pilots and those in pilot training. Although the Airport had the money in its account, it needed the Board to approve an additional appropriation before it spent the money.

The Airport is currently installing a back-up generator. It is mostly complete but it needs some gas pipes, which are currently in short supply. On Sunday the Airport will be offering free flights to 65 high-school aged students. Six or seven airplanes from around the state will be here to provide them. There will be an aviation summer camp this summer and 28 students are signed up. Indian Trails Career Cooperative will fund a half hour of flight training for each of the participants. The summer intern has been working at the airport for more than a week. She is a student at Kankakee Valley High School and would like to become an airline pilot.

The July meeting will have the 2022 budget on its agenda.

Odds and ends to start December

Christmas decorations are going up downtown. Lights were strung across the street last week. 

On Tuesday City workers were putting up the old wreaths with three candles.

Also going up were the new set of decorations, lighted snowflakes.

The Christmas tree walk in Potawatomie Park has a couple of early displays. It is scheduled to run from December 5 until January 2.

Speaking of displays, I ventured into Illinois for Thanksgiving and coming home I was surprised to see hundreds and perhaps thousands of American flags lining the highway from  Crescent City to Watseta. They were on both sides of the highway and spaced about 100 yards apart. Once in Watseka the spacing was much closer.

They were to honor Sgt. Jeremy C. Sherman who was killed in a helicopter crash in Egypt.

The motel we stayed at in Illinois was almost empty. There may have been only one other guest. Other motels looked like they were busier.

Back in Rensselaer, the car wash north of Strack & Van Til reopened a couple weeks ago. It has new car-washing equipment.

On Tuesday City workers were preparing sections of streets for asphalt patches. The picture below shows Vine Street where the street was cut to replace a culvert.
While in Potawatomie Park, I noticed a couple of paintings that I had not seen before. I think they are quite recent.

They are south of the river.

I graphed the number of posts that I have done each year since 2008. (You can see the numbers in the sidebar.) There is a clear downward trend. If it continues, this blog has about four years of life left.

Not much about Rensselaer

 On Tuesday morning there were a series of three meetings that were zoomed. The first was a continuation of the Commissioners' meeting. It began with a series of the nitty-gritty things that Commissioners do. They approved a cyber security agreement for voting that is State mandated. The bonds for the jail are being audited and they approved a contract for bond counsels. They approved an extension of vacation time for an employee and noted that Titan has begun work on renovating space for the Health Department in the former Youth Center. They approved the purchase of a mower for mowing the Court House lawn and, after reviewing the plans for expanding the office used by court reporters, approved a contract for the work by Titan for $19,740. They approved several purchases that should be reimbursable as COVID related, including a truck for the Health Department, a truck trailer, and a number of laptops. They ended the meeting with a brief discussion of a proposal by DeMotte to expand sewer and water services to the I-65/SR 10 interchange. 

The Commissioners then ended their meeting and reconvened as the Jasper County Water and Sewer District Board. I had no idea this group existed and it seems to be comprised of the Commissioners. They met for about an hour and the purpose of the meeting was to discuss DeMotte's plans to extend sewer and water to the Interstate 65 interchange. Technically the County has jurisdiction over sewer and water except where in towns and cities and where it has ceded that jurisdiction to operating utilities. The purpose of the meeting was to have the County cede jurisdiction to DeMotte for part of Keener Township outside of the DeMotte city limits.

The Jasper County Economic Development Organization believes that the interstate interchanges offer excellent locations for economic development and the development at the I 65/US 24 interchange east of Remington illustrates what is possible. However, except for that interchange, none of the others have a complete set of utilities. (The Rensselaer interchange has Rensselaer water, but the water main is too small to serve a new business that uses a lot of water.) Hence, the proposal by DeMotte would make the DeMotte interchange much more attractive to prospective businesses. As part of the plan proposed by DeMotte, a TIF district would be established with tax revenues that flow to the district being used to service the bonds that would be issued to finance the expansion of sewer and water. DeMotte would manage the financing.

There is some urgency in the matter because the new travel center being constructed west of the interchange would like to have DeMotte water and sewer. However, the Commissioners had a number of concerns. They wanted to make sure that there would be no unpleasant surprises for the County as a result of the project. There were a number of details that they wanted resolved before they voted on the matter, and the next meeting was set for October 5 at 10:00 (which means it should follow the scheduled Commissioners' meeting).

The third scheduled meeting was of the Jasper County Redevelopment Commission. It never got a quorum so there was no meeting, just discussion that mostly repeated what had been said at the Water and Sewer meeting for the people who had not been at that meeting. It will attempt to meet again on October 5. 

At least four County bodies will have to sign off on the project: The Commissioners, the County Council, the Water and Sewer District Board, and the Redevelopment Commission.

Other things

Saint Joseph's College has published its September newsletter. The most interesting bit for me was this:

"In recent months, individuals, businesses, elected officials and various members of the Saint Joseph's College Board of Trustees, have been approached by an outside group regarding the College’s future. This group, which is not associated with the College, communicated interest in working with us to rebuild the entire physical structure of the campus, bring back academic and certificate programming, and develop the athletic center into a community recreation center."

The six students who completed the Medical Assistant program took the test for certification and all passed.  The next group will begin in October.

The Core Building has had a new HVAC system installed and is the first building on campus removed from the boiler system.

The town of Remington is ready to begin a streetscape project partially funded by a $600,000 OCRA grant. 

In a meeting preparing for the Cemetery Walk, one of the guides pointed out a grave of her aunt who died of polio in 1946. She was a senior at Rensselaer High School, became ill, and was sent to St. Elizabeth's in Lafayette where she was put in an iron lung. There is still no cure for the disease once it is contracted. But what made this death really weird was on the same day in the same hospital a boy from Wolcott also died of polio and he is also buried in Weston Cemetery. What are the odds of something like that happening? For more information on the two, see here and here.

I do not think younger people realize how scary polio was before vaccines were developed in the 1950s. It not only killed, but it maimed and crippled some of those who suffered the disease. The March of Dimes was established to work for a cure. Once the vaccines were developed, its changed goal away from polio to improving health of mothers and babies.

The Cemetery Walk seems to be the only theatrical performance that was not canceled this year. Carnegie Players canceled, Fendig Summer Theater canceled. Did the high school have a play before everything shut down?

Some cornfields look ready for harvest.

Planes, trains, and buses

I spent most of the last two weeks traveling and as a result have not written about things that I normally write about, things such as meetings of the Commissioners, Park Board, and City Council. I missed the Taste of Jasper County and expected to miss the Birthday Bash for the Pool, but weather has delayed that by a week. Also the concrete structure for the SR 114 bridge replacement was set in place while I was gone.

My travel adventures were with my son and his family on a visit to relatives in Arizona and Nevada. The plan was to take Amtrak from Chicago to Flagstaff, Arizona, spend some time there before traveling to eastern Nevada, spending more time there, then flying from Las Vegas back to Chicago. They invited me to go along to help herd the cats kids. I was surprised to see that the train tickets cost more the the plane tickets.

Our Amtrak adventures got off to an usual start. Flooding had closed a railroad bridge at Fort Madison, Iowa, so Amtrak chartered five busses to take the passengers from Chicago to Kansas City, Missouri where we would board the train. The five busses did not travel as a group but each went its own way. Below is a picture of our bus at its one stop for food on the route.

 We arrived in Kansas City a couple hours later than the schedule and boarded a train. We were in the last car so as the sun rose over Kansas in the morning, I took a picture through the window at the end of the train.

 If the train had been on schedule, we would have passed through most of Kansas at night. But it was behind schedule and we saw much of the state. It seemed that flooding and water had delayed planting there as it had in Indiana.

 We were supposed to arrive in Flagstaff a between 8:00 pm and 9:00 pm. Instead we arrived between 2:00 am and 3:00 am. We got a ride to a second son's house and settled in for a few days. We took some day trips. One trip took us to Sunset Crater National Monument and Wupatki National Monument. The latter is shown below. The monument features ruins of ancient Indian dwellings.

Another excursion took us to Sedona. Sedona is much lower in elevation than Flagstaff and as a result is much warmer. One of the tourist attractions there is the Chapel of the Holy Cross, shown below

 Another tourist attraction is a hiking trail at Cathedral Rock.

Sedona relies heavily on tourism and it features some very expensive homes.

 When time came to leave Flagstaff, we headed north to Page, Arizona. Page is about the size of Rensselaer but with a much shorter history. It sprang up as a result of construction of Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. The Dam has tours and we took one. The tour led down to the generating room.

 There is a bridge over the canyon that carries the highway traffic. It looks small from the bottom of the dam.

 Of course we had to stop by the Grand Canyon. We visited the North Rim. The kids were not overly impressed with it. Perhaps if we had spent a few hours of hiking down into the canyon they would have better appreciated just how enormous it really is. Note the people on the unfenced overlook in the picture below. We did not visit that overlook.

 The toilets at the visitors center were out of order so visitors had to rely on a row of port-a-potties. I could not resist a picture.

 From the Canyon we headed north into Utah on the way to Cedar City. We made a quick stop at Cedar Breaks National Monument, which is located about 10,000 feet above sea level. There was still a lot of snow on the ground. This past winter was a very snowy one for the western peaks.

 The kids thought the view below was more impressive than what they saw at the Grand Canyon.

 After Cedar City the next stop was Baker, Nevada, gateway to Great Basin National Park. We were in Baker during its annual Snake Valley Festival, which has a small parade. Below is an unusual piece of farm equipment. The second section is a hay baler. Does any reader know what the piece of equipment that is in front of the baler does? I doubt if there are any in use in Indiana. (Hay is to Nevada as corn is to Indiana.)

 Great Basin National Park is home to Lehman Cave, a small cave that is very rich in cave formations.

On the road to Las Vegas, we stopped by Cathedral Gorge State Park between Pioche and Caliente Nevada. Its badland formations have some fascinating narrow slot canyons that are almost cave-like.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. The kids all said that they preferred the train ride to the airplane ride, which I did not expect. I know my grandkids a lot better than I did two weeks ago.

It will take me a while to catch up now that I am back in town. One interesting item I noticed is that SJC is trying to find a tenant for its Drexel Hall quarters. I am guessing that means that they plan to move their offices onto the campus.