Beauty and The Beast

Last week the Carnegie Players presented Beauty and the Beast, a musical based on a Disney cartoon movie. The Players have been presenting plays since 1994, usually two a year, and this was one of their best productions. The costumes were unusual because the plot involves people who are turning into objects. There were costumes for players as knives, forks, plates, a clock, a chandelier, a tea pot (Mrs Potts was cast as Mrs Potts), a vanity, and a duster.

The sets were attractive and I liked the way that the stage crew shifted them between scenes in the village and the castle. The production had some talented singers not only in the major roles but in the chorus and dance scenes.

The crowd was respectable but not a sell-out as the Fendig Theater productions are, but then the Summer Theater audience has a lot of parents that attend all three shows. A cast member told me that the audiences reacted differently on each night--Friday night was louder and reacted more than the other two nights.

The cast was quite large with eleven named parts and 22 others in choruses and ensembles. Some of the cast came from distance, with one cast member living in Watseka, Illinois. There are a lot of people who enjoy performing and the Carnegie players give them the opportunity to be on stage.

There were a number of small girls in the audience who were Belle fans and they were delighted not only to see the play but also to have their pictures taken with Belle and other members of the cast

Overall, it was a high-quality community theater production that was very entertaining. (Even when it is not quite professional quality, community theater can be more entertaining than professional theater because the audience knows some of the cast.) Checking the Internet, I see that a non-cartoon version of the story will be released in March, 2017.

(The program said that the use of cameras was prohibited so I am not going to share any pictures. There were lots of pictures on Facebook of Fendig's Wizard of Oz but I have not seen any of Beauty and the Beast.)

It's gone

I have not been in the area of the Babcock Quarry recently, so today I decided to see if the old house was still there. It is not. It must have been removed a few days or weeks ago because there is no trace of it left.

 The water level in the pit keeps rising.

 There are piles of stone in the storage area north of the road.

The masonry work on the building at the high water treatment plant construction site has been completed. Late in the week the remaining blocks were loaded onto a trailer pulled by a city truck and hauled away.

 There is something emerging from the eastern pit. I assume it is a form for a concrete pour.

The western pit seems to be bigger and it contains a lot of rebar in a circular pattern. There were problems with the walls caving in and stone and plastic seems to have been the solution.

On Wednesday I attended part of the Airport Authority Board meeting. It started late because several members were going over budget numbers in the office. While the other members were waiting they discussed several things, mentioning that there was less crop dusting this year because corn prices are low. They also said that traffic to the air show in Oshkosh had been brisk and resulted in a lot of fuel sales.

The meeting began with a presentation from a representative from their fuel supplier suggesting that the airport fuel farm become branded with the Phillips name. There are some benefits to that and no apparent downsides, so the board agreed to become a Phillips dealer.

A second presentation was about a preliminary investigation of establishing an avionics shop at the airport. It would be a private business as Excel Air is or might be a partnership with Excel Air. The board was interested but there are many steps to be taken before this becomes a reality.

The T-hangar contract has been signed with Hamstra. The contractor wanted to know what color the trim of the building should be. 

I suspect there was much more business to discuss, but the sun was setting and I needed to leave. (Have you noticed that the days are getting shorter?)

Voting is now open for the bicentennial bison at the Indiana State Fair.  If you are on Facebook, you need to like the Indiana State Fair in order to vote. You can only vote once every 24 hours. Jasper is currently far ahead of the other bison. Go here for more. (Jasper County is on the second page.)

Tonight will be the final showing of the Carnegie Players' Beauty and the Beast.

Culvert replacement

SR 114 east of I-65 (I started writing west of Rensselaer and then realized that all of SR 114 between US 231 and I-65 is within the city limits of Rensselaer) is closed as I write this for the replacement of a culvert. I expected the culvert in question would be the one by the airport because the road there is very rough, but it is further west, past the county highway garage.

I asked the lady at the barricade on Airport Road where she was sending trucks. She said that she was telling them to turn around, go back to US 231, and then north to SR 14. The cars were detoured to Bunkum Road.

Three meetings

August’s Commissioners meeting was remarkably short--it only lasted an hour. There was not much on the agenda or off the agenda.

The director of economic development for Pulaski County asked if their bike-trail system could use some Jasper County roads. Pulaski County has an OCRA grant to develop the system and the county is trying to link all the communities. There are two places along the their western edge where the Jasper County roads are in better shape (paved rather than gravel) than the Pulaski County roads. The Commissioners agreed to his request. 

The representative from the Sheriff’s department was late because of a serious accident that morning and the coroner jumped in to say that the northern annex was having problems with rot in walls. He was allowed to seek estimates of how the problems could be fixed. He mentioned that his office had had 46 cases this year so far. 

A sheriff’s deputy reported that the communication tower is still not operating and that communication had been bad for the morning accident. Most of his discussion was about jail transport. A female transport officer who was pregnant had taken a dispatch job and so he wanted the department to have permission to fill the vacancy and also to retain a part-time officer who was working transport and court-house security. The request was granted.

The proposals for matching grants for road repairs have been submitted. Jasper the Bison traveled to Indianapolis on Sunday and is now standing in the little lawn by the glass barn (I have no idea where that is) with 49 friends. After a few routine items the meeting was adjourned. 

The Drainage Board met in the afternoon. There was a long discussion about a request to lower a drainage tile on the Jasper Newton border and eventually the Board decided that the matter needed to be handled by the joint Newton-Jasper Drainage Board. Next was discussion of a plan to install fiber optic cable to the Whispering Pines subdivision. It came before the Board because there are drainage tiles in the subdivision. There is disagreement between the surveyor and the company that is supposed to be fixing the Gangloff tile that was damaged when a fiber optic cable was installed along SR 114. There were a few other items discussed, including mention that there will be a meeting of the joint Benton-Jasper Drainage Board on Aug 22 at 9:00 am.

In the evening the Rensselaer Park Board and Park Corporation met. Most of the meeting was about soccer. About half way through, a representative of the soccer program arrived. In the next week the future of the program will probably be decided. If SJC wants to continue sponsoring it, it will need to provide the fields. If the program uses the park fields, the Park Board wants it to agree to become a park program in 2017. We will see what happens. 

The Staddon Field property still has not transferred. Work is scheduled to begin this week on the gazebo roof in Hal Gray Park.

A new piece of equipment has arrived on the construction site on Lincoln Street.

High school sports teams are beginning practices. My grandchildren in the Indianapolis area are already back to school. Below is the running group for middle school kids that has been exercising for several weeks. There were a lot of them.

There is a for-sale sign in front of the bowling alley building. I cannot find it on the Internet.

Rock the Arts and more

Jasper the painted buffalo made an appearance at Rock the Arts on Saturday.

 A line of booths were selling various forms of art.

 The stage was impressively large. There were eight different musical arts on the schedule.

 The same stage from the other side.

 There were many pictures of the event on Facebook, most posted on Saturday.

For several days there has been a speed monitor on College. It is sensitive enough to register bikes and in the process of taking the picture above, I had to test it.

 If you came to Rock the Arts via the bowstring bridge, you might have seen the new sign on Renew Salon.

 The restoration of the facade of the old Oddfellows building seems to be complete. The people visiting the bakery are happy about that.

 Last week two dump trucks were hauling dirt from the construction site on Lincoln Street. I asked one of the drivers where they were taking it and he said they were dumping it at the sewage plant west of SJC. He also said it was one of the nastiest cargoes he has hauled. It is muck.

 The construction has brought a lot of truck traffic to the area and the trucks were repeatedly taking out the utility lines over Abagail. I think the low lines are TV Cable and telephone. Finally one of the utilities, I think Century Link, got permission from the city to raise the lines a bit. They also requested that the trucks not use Abagail. I think the folks along Elza are now getting the traffic.

 Several years ago I got a Compass Plant to grow in my yard. This year it has finally flowered. It is one of a dozen or so plants that has yellow daisy flowers. You can see false sunflowers and coneflowers in the background, other yellow daisies.

 There is a less pretty sight (and site) in my garden. The soil is saturated from all the July rains and the wet soil has rotted the roots of cabbages and carrots. They were looking so good at the beginning of the month.

The corn, squash, and sweet potatoes do not seem to mind the wet soil.

Time is flying by--it is already August and the summer will soon be over.