Dawn redwood

In front of the Science Hall on the Saint Joseph's College campus is a medium-sized tree that looks like and evergreen tree but it loses its leaves in the winter. It is not a native tree to Indiana, but a recent transplant. It is a dawn redwood, a tree that was discovered growing in 1941 in China.
The SJC tree does not have the usual shape of a dawn redwood, which usually has a single trunk rather than the multiple trunks that this one has. Yet it you look at it from a distance, you can see that one of the branches seems to becoming dominant and taking the shape that the tree should have.

You may wonder why is this tree here. it is probably because in the past one of the priests at SJC, Fr. Reuve, was interested in trees and planted a wide variety of trees on campus, so that just about any tree that can grow in Indiana can be found somewhere on campus. Unfortunately, no one is likely to replace any of the strange trees if they die, so over time the campus will lose some of its diversity of trees, and perhaps that has already started to happen.

The dawn redwood has a distinctive cone, shown on the bottom in the picture below. The cone at the top is from another conifer that loses its leaves or needle, the bald cypress.
Does anyone know of any other dawn redwoods in Rensselaer?

Plaques: Monnett School for Girls

One of the most interesting of the various plaques that you can find around Rensselaer is near the Monnett Grade School and the Rensselaer Central administration building.
The plaque is unusually verbose:

Grateful Acknowledgment to Miss Cordelia P. Monnett
Monnett School for Girls
In 1908 Miss Cordelia P. Monnett bequeathed to the deaconesses of the Trinity Methodist Church of Rensselaer, Indiana property to be used for a girls school, and for two years it was to be used as such.
In 1910 the board of trustees changed the school to a boarding school, with instruction through the 8th grade.
In 1913 and again in 1925 additional wings were added to the frame structure. In 1925 a brick dormitory was constructed, now being used for school administrative purposes.
In 1942 the school was separated from the church influence and became a nonsectarian school owned and operated by a board of trustees, and was accredited through the 8th grade.
In June 1954 the school closed its doors as the type of student was taken over by the state and welfare programs and the classification for which the school was created was thus terminated.
The trustees sold the property in July 1954 to the city and the city deeded it to the Rensselaer Public Schools in April 1955.
They then erected "The Monnett Public Grade School" with five class rooms and opened the building for use in September 1957.

The right side has the trustees in 1966 and the trustees who have served in the past, but I do not want to type in all those names. You will have to go read them yourself.
I searched the Internet trying to find more information, and did find mention of the school in an educational journal and a book.

From The Educator-journal (published in Terra Haute, Indiana Vol XV No. 1 September, 1914 p 423):

The Monnett school for girls at Rensselaer now has a total of thirty-two girls, which is four above their capacity limit. Miss Simpson is principal of the school and is anticipating better conditions when the proposed new building is erected.

From Indiana. A Guide to the Hoosier State By Federal Writers' Project, United States. - Works Progress Administration, afterwards Work Projects Administration. - Federal Writers' Project
(Published by US History Publishers, 1947 ISBN 160354013X, 9781603540131) p 324:

At ll m. is the Monnett School for Girls, an elementary school founded in 1903 and maintained by the Methodist Episcopal Church of Rensselaer. The school accommodates 40 pupils.

Both of these were part of Google's effort to digitize all known books.

From one of my local sources who remembers the Monnett School for Girls, the girls kept to themselves and did not mix with the local kids much.

Shopping at Kirby Risk

I decided to visit Kirby Risk when I saw that they were building a new building. Their current building is on McKinley about a block south of the railroad tracks. It is nondescript, and I think it was originally built to house Valade Electric. I do not recall when it became Kirby Risk, but it was a while ago.
Kirby Risk is a chain of electrical supply stores in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. It is to electrical supply what 4-County Supply is to plumbing supply. (Sorry if you do not know what 4-County Supply is. I will eventually get to it.)
Their early hours (they open at 7:00 and close at 4:00 Monday through Friday), plus the coffee and pop corn in the store, tell you that their primary customers are contractors, not do-it-yourself customers.
The interior is very functional and utilitarian. The signs proclaim that they carry wide variety of manufacturers.

I visited the store early one morning and took some pictures while a customer was picking up supplies. I wanted to talk to the store manager about the store and the planned move, but I got tired of waiting and left. A couple days later the manager saw me and stopped his truck to ask why I was taking pictures. I explained to him that my goal was to document over the next year or so as many of the stores in Rensselaer as I can and that I was not an industrial spy. (I wonder how that pays and how one becomes an industrial supply. I know people who were at one time mystery shoppers. Is that sort of the same thing?)
I asked him why they were moving. He said that they needed more room. The present store does not have enough room to stock all the electrical supplies that they would like to stock.
Let us close by taking a look at construction progress on the new building. In mid February workers brought in sand and stone to make an entry way and prepare surfaces. The unprepared field is mud and any heavy vehicles sink several inches into it.
With the stone and sand in place, they could bring in a construction trailer and a lot more machines. They then began to work on building forms for the foundation.
Not quite two weeks after the entryway was constructed, they poured concrete.And two weeks after the picture of the truck dumping sand was taken, the forms were off the concrete foundation.

Winter choral concert

The Saint Joseph's College Winter Choral Concert took place on February 24. To see a sample of what they sang, click here.

Living stations of the cross I

Today is the first Sunday in Lent, the 40-day period of fasting that has traditionally proceeded Easter. One of the devotions of Lent in the Catholic Church is the Stations of the Cross. Virtually all Catholic churches will have the stations along the walls of the vestibule. An earlier post displayed the outdoor Stations of the Cross at the grotto at Saint Joseph's College.

Six years ago some of the Hispanic parishioners of St. Augustine parish performed a living stations of the cross. Because this sort of religious devotion is quite common in Latin America, watching it was both a religious experience and also a cultural experience. The re-enactment began on the steps of the church, where Pilate condemns Jesus to death.
Stations three through nine took place on the walk to the site of the crucifixion.
The living stations of the cross have a long history, going back to the passion plays of the medieval period. After the Reformation, they died out in some parts of Europe.
The final destination was the Susan lot that serves as a playground for the St. Augustine school children.
This re-enactment was complete with the two thieves who were crucified with Jesus.
It took a lot of people to raise the cross.
And finally all the crosses are up.
I thought the picture of with a truck carrying swimming pools made an interesting juxtaposition.
A year of two later there was another performance of the living stations of the cross, but none has been done since then.

What the stations of the cross are to Lent and Easter, the creche is to Advent and Christmas. There are also re-enactments of the creche, but those are now more often done by Protestant denominations than by Catholics, which is rather ironic considering the history of the creche.

(No--I have not run out of Rensselaer churches to highlight on Sundays. There are still many more to do--check back next Sunday.)