Lewis and Pesh Art Exhibit

There is a new art show at the Lilian Fendig Gallery that will run until January 31 with the artist's reception on January 24 from 7:00 until 8:30. The show features the work of two artists, Jason Lewis and Karl Pesh. Here is the artist biography of Karl Pesh:

Karl Pesick was born on March 3, 1932 in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from college, he enlisted in the Navy as a photographer. When his tour of duty was completed, he returned to the Chicago area and worked 23 years for a photo studio.
After retiring from photography, he took a position as a Sergeant of Security at the Palos Heights Hospital and later at the Orland Park State Bank. It was during these years Karl began painting. When his health began to decline, he fully retired from employment and began painting full time for pleasure.
Fame and fortune were not his object, thus the collection began. Karl Pesick passed away on May 1, 2012, and his widow began selling his fold-style paintings.

(I do not know why the program lists him as Pesh and the biography refers to him as Pesick. Update: from a comment, "Karl Pesick chose to sign his paintings as Karl Pesh.")

His pictures are small and very detailed. The picture below is an acrylic titled "The Blue Lake Lighthouse, Lake Village, Indiana" and is available for only $75. Most of the other pictures are also very small and most are for sale for less than $100.

 (I do not know what the Blue Lake Lighthouse was. If you know something about this structure, leave a note in the comments.)

The other artist whose work is featured is Jason Lewis:

Jason Lewis is a graduate of Rensselaer Central School Corp. and has lived most of his life in town. After five years at Purdue studying Forestry, Fisheries and Aquatic Science and one year in North Carolina installing commercial landscaping, he returned for four years as the assistant superintendent at Curtis Creek Country Club.
Since 2008 he has been summering in Alaska working in the adventures and fishing industry and has been employed by David and Scott Lakin as a seasonal farm hand. He recently moved to Montana to work in the activities department of a guest ranch.
Jason has spent a lifetime outdoors, enjoying all aspects of camping, fishing, hiking, and wildlife. His parents, Jim Lewis and Deb and George Ellis gave him ample opportunity to enjoy his passions on summer vacations and the freedom to explore the mighty Iroquois. Jason has taken art classes throughout his entire education, but with help from Roger Beehler and Kelly Spurgeon seemed to find a medium he enjoyed. This is a collection of pieces from high school to the present.

 The piece below, done in pencil, is called Duck Family and is in the collection of his mother.

Stop by and see what else they have done.

Four meetings

Weather postponed two county meetings that were scheduled for Monday, the Commissioners meeting and a drainage board meeting. Both were rescheduled for today (Friday).

There were several interesting items in the Commissioners meeting. A report on from the IT director revealed that a new website for the county will be up and running next Tuesday. It will have the same url as the current website, but will be easier for the various departments to update. Also, 44 new printers were in the process of being installed in various county facilities. (I had seen them about two weeks ago when I was showing some visitors the court house.) The county leases this equipment and it was, according to the report, cheaper to upgrade than to continue to maintain the current equipment.

The Sheriff reported that repairs to the jail were almost done but had been delayed by the weather. In the 72 hours after 8:00 am Sunday the department had 2181 non-emergency calls and just over 300 911 calls. They responded to 43 slide offs and accidents (which does not count those stuck in the road) and transported 16 motorists. On Tuesday many of the non-emergency calls were asking what a county road was--people wanted to know if they would be ticketed if they drove on the state or U.S. highways. There was one fatality that may have been caused by the weather. A trucker stopped on the SR 10 exit of I-65 went into diabetic shock. The ambulance responded but was slowed by the poor road conditions. By the time they reached him, he was dead. Perhaps they would have saved him if road conditions had been better, but perhaps not.

Both the sheriffs department and the highway department had problems on Monday with diesel fuel jelling because of the cold. There is some additive that will liquify the fuel and it was used when necessary. The cold and snow also caused mechanical problems--at one point only three of the state's 16 or 18 plows in the area were operational. The sheriff's website had 13,000 hits during the the snow emergency. The sheriff and the commissioners were pleased with how well the emergency telephone announcements went--there are currently over 10,000 numbers on the list to be called. (If you did not get a call and want to be notified in the future, go to the sheriff's website at www.jaspercountypolice.com  and click on "Code Red Registration" on the left under the heading "Pulbic Resources.") REMC reported only one person with a power outage during the emergency.

A concern of the Sheriff was with the reach of their radio transmissions. He was interested in putting receivers either on a cell phone tower or on a 340 foot tower that is near Gifford. He will investigate further about options.

There were two citizens with concerns. One wanted a hunting club in the northern part of the county shut down. The other argued that DeMotte and maybe the county were not following county ordinances. I did not understand either position very well, but neither did the two commissioners who were at the meeting.

The commissioners meeting adjourned and a few minutes later the Finance Committee, with the same commissioners but a different supporting cast, met. The meeting was very short and approved some reports.

In the afternoon at 1:00 the Bi-county Drainage Board met. It consisted of the two Jasper County Commissioners who were at the morning meeting and one Newton County Commissioner. Two other members were absent, but a quorum was three. They opened two bids for clearing a ditch that drains into the Kankakee River on the border of Newton and Jasper County and accepted the lower bid. The Bi-county Drainage Board then adjourned and the Jasper County Drainage Board opened its meeting. There was nothing exciting in the meeting--much of the discussion involved a question of how to correct a mistake in billing that affects 166 parcels of land along some ditch. The initial billing was wrong, and trying to correct it on the computer for the next four years was deemed more difficult than just doing the billing manually. The most interesting part of the meeting was at the end when two members of the audience expressed concerns. Both said that the city government of DeMotte was not transparent and that attempts to gain access to documents that should be available to the public were met with considerable resistance.

New at the library (updated)

If you have "liked" the Jasper County Library on Facebook, you probably know that the Rensselaer branch is still closed because of plumbing problems:

The Rensselaer Library remains closed today due to broken water pipes. Our DeMotte and Wheatfield Libraries are open regular hours. You may also visit us online at www.myjcpl.org.

or

Due to broken water pipes, the Rensselaer Public Library is in desperate need of barn fans and dehumidifiers. If you can provide please call...

 I needed some exercise this afternoon so I decided to stop by and see if I could learn more. I was surprised to see some big equipment parked next to the library.

A check on the Internet reveals that Dryco is a national company that specializes in climate control for structures, especially dehumidification. The nearest office is in Downers Grove, IL. Judging from the pictures on their website, it appears that the library is using a power generation and a desiccant dehumidifier.

Next to the machines is a small pile of insulation that implies that the water leakage was in the ceiling.

I wandered around to the front of the building looking for more information, and by luck I was able to connect with the librarian, the only one who was willing to talk. I learned that in the twenty plus years since the library was built, it has never had this problem, which indicates just how severely cold we were. Pipes froze in the ceiling and they were not part of a sprinkler system, as was the case at Purdue. The break was over a staff area that processes new items and there was some damage to those items. The break has been repaired and the water system is back to normal. So why is the library still closed? Because the water spread over more than half the floor, soaking the carpet. The library cannot open until the carpet is dry and no one is sure how long that will take. Pay attention to the library's Facebook page or the radio station for updates.

There is some good news. The insurance adjuster put the library in contact with Dryco, and I assume that means that at least some of the cost of cleanup will be covered by insurance.

I initially thought it was strange that the water pipes should be in the ceiling, but that placement makes sense. I think the library is built on a concrete slab, so the alternative to putting the pipes in the ceiling would be to put them in the slab, where a break would be really hard to fix. The timing of the closing is unfortunate because with school canceled for the fourth day this week, a lot of kids would normally be congregating there. And school may be canceled again on Friday--currently there is a two hour delay, but that is what was supposed to be the case today. 

I know the library is not alone with the problem of frozen pipes. One neighbor I know had their sewer line under the house freeze. The local plumbers could tell us a lot more about how much trouble the freeze caused--I suspect they have been busy.

We received a bit more snow today (you can see it on the insulation in the picture above) but the forecast  for tomorrow (Friday) is rain with temperatures as high as 40 degrees. (What a week--it had almost everything: bitterly cold, heavy snow, high winds, sunny, cloudy, and also wet and mild.)

Update: Rensselaer schools were open today (Friday). 

The big dehumidifier at the library was humming today. It had impressively big hoses connecting it to the library. 

 Something new today was a dumpster. That must mean that there will be a lot of things to throw away.

 

Returning to normal

The area is starting to return to normal winter today as the temperature rises and the wind dies down. As I am writing this, it is a balmy 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Note the limp flag in Bicentennial Park. It was still too cold to stick your tongue on it, but walking outside was easier today than it was two days ago.

 The Iroquois River did not freeze all the way as it went through downtown, but a bit further downstream it was frozen over. This is the view from the Talbert Bridge this morning.

 The city is now moving snow in trucks instead of in front of them. I am not sure where the snow was coming from but it was probably going out to the old pump stations on Bunkum Road.

The schools were all closed but most businesses and government offices were open today. The Snow Emergency for Jasper County ended this morning at 5:00 am. The roads are still slick and hazardous.

I saw on Facebook that the fire department had to fight a fire last night. Also, the Journal and Courier has an article about what Fair Oaks Dairies are doing with the milk that is being produced. Because the roads were closed, they have had to dump the milk--they do not have enough storage capacity to hold it.

And while we are still thinking cold thoughts, take a look at something that is really cold--surfing on Lake Superior in the winter. (I took a dip in Lake Superior on the Fourth of July many years ago--the water was so cold that it was painful to even go in.)

Hunkered down, day three

Temperatures are rising a bit today. It was only eight degrees below zero this morning, and this afternoon the temperature finally reached the positive numbers. The wind has died down, though there is still a breeze that may be strong enough to cause some drifting in the country. I-65 opened again, though with warnings that driving on it was treacherous, and it may be closed again if too many end up in the ditch. All roads are have a layer of compacted snow on them that will become more slippery as the temperature rises. The slick roads make accelerating, stopping and turning dangerous.

Most schools will be closed tomorrow (Wednesday). The county roads in Jasper County are still closed and there is a $500 fine for driving on them. The city streets have been plowed but have a layer of compacted snow on them so drive cautiously.

The weather forecast says we are leaving the arctic conditions for warmer temperatures, but before we get above zero this weekend, we will get a few more inches of snow.

I saw this little snowman today as I walked around a bit. It must have been made on Sunday or earlier because for the past 36 hours it has been far too cold to make snowmen.

 The Iroquois River did not freeze over as it goes through downtown, but there are some small rapids as the river passes under the bridge.

 There were a few more businesses open. The post office may have been open Monday. Today there were quite a few people stopping by, though mail has not been going into or out of Rensselaer this week. R&M was open and had some business. They also had a delivery truck arriving, meaning we are not completely cut off from the rest of the world.

There is not a lot to photograph--just snow everywhere, none of it it dramatic.

I have not heard any trains for the past few days and I know that the weather has disrupted some Amtrak trains. Are the trains running?

Update: The Jasper County roads will be open at 6:00 am on Wednesday.