Miscellany June 2 2014

The movie in the park on Saturday evening had a good reception. The Little Cousin Jasper people said that the crowd was about 350.

 On Sunday I wanted to see what was happening at the new Dollar General Store. On the way I noticed that the building trades house on Vine Street still needs a bit of work.

 On the west end of Vine digging has started to put in drainage tile. The old detention pond that was put in when Kirby Risk was build has been smoothed over and is gone.

 The Dollar General Store has a sign that it is hiring. They may be done--a small sign on the door said that interviews were May 30 at the library. As you can see, the landscaping is in. I could not see inside to see if the store had been stocked yet.

While Dollar General is hiring, the quarry is not. The water is no longer being pumped out and apparently no more rock is being removed. Compare the picture below with one taken two weeks ago. I heard through the grapevine that stone is being sold from the piles north of the quarry, but that the quarry itself is closed. If anyone knows more, feel free to use the comments. (How long do you think it will take for the quarry to fill up if it is in fact closed?)

Another place not hiring is the obstetrics unit at Jasper County Hospital. The unit is closed and the existing staff have been let go.

I saw soybeans coming up in the fields around Rensselaer reminding me that Jasper County remains Indiana's largest agricultural producer. From the Jasper County Economic Development Organization's June Newsletter:

 Agriculture is big business and once again Jasper County is Indiana’s top producer of agricultural products as measured by market value sold with $357,402,000. Of this total, crops represented $208,497,000 and livestock, poultry and related products $148,905,000. The Census is taken once every five years and in 2007 Jasper County also was the top agricultural producing county in the state with $293,544,000. In the 2012 Census, there were 615 farms in the county encompassing 282,831 total acres for an average farm size of 460 acres and a per farm average sold of $581,141. The Census is the leading source of statistics about American agriculture and considers a farm as any place for which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold. The estimated market value of farmland and related buildings in Jasper County averaged $2,819,873 per farm and $6,132 per acre. In terms of market value for machinery and equipment, Jasper County farms averaged $250,876 per farm. As a state, Indiana had 58,695 farms with 14,720,396 acres and an average farm size of 251 acres. For more information visit: www.agcensus.usda.gov 

The last day of school will be June 6. School will start again later this summer (we cannot really say "this fall", can we?) on August 12. That means that summer vacation is only two months long this year.

It was delicious

Before.

And after.  It was delicious.

Not really. The little pig was at the first annual CDC Resources Hog Roast on Friday night for a different purpose.

For a few more pictures, see here and click the arrows.

This weekend marks a change in leadership at CDC Resources--on Monday a new Executive Director takes over. Here is the press release.

The Board of Directors of CDC Resources is pleased to announce that Mr Onias Taruwinga has accepted its offer to serve as the next Executive Director, replacing Michael Cruz who is retiring after 21years with the agency. 

Mr Taruwinga comes to CDC Resources with extensive experience and success in organizations similar to CDC Resources. Since 2008 he has been the Executive Director of Mosaic Inc of Terre Haute Indiana. Mosaic of Terre Haute is similar to CDC Resources in the services it offers to those with intellectual and developmental disabilities and in its size. However, unlike CDC Resources which is an independent organization, Mosaic of Terre Haute is part of a much larger organization, one with operations in over a dozen states and a headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. 

Prior to leading the Terre Haute office of Mosaic, Mr Taruwinga spent over seven years in positions with ADEC, Inc of Bristol, Indiana, another agency that provides services for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. 

Mr Taruwinga was born in Zimbabwe, Africa. He came to the United States in the early 1990s to attend Andrews University in Michigan. He has an MBA from Bethel College of Indiana and has completed the course work for a Ph.D. at Purdue University in West Lafayette. 

A retirement Open House for Michael Cruz, will be held on Wednesday, June 18 at Pine View Banquet Hall, 1969 N West Shafer Drive in Monticello from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm EDT.

Ribbon Cutting A Home Away From Home

On Wednesday the Chamber of Commerce had a ribbon cutting at the new day care center, A Home Away From Home in the old Horton Building.

The little girl in the tutu was eager to show people around the building.

I noticed that the entranceway was made of cast iron. A century of foot traffic has worn part of it smooth and obscured the manufacturers name. You can still make out the "Aurora Ill."

They were eager to welcome Mayor Wood to the ceremony.

I missed the city council meeting on Tuesday night because I had another meeting I had to attend. The mayor told me that the council had had a good discussion about the land east of Weston Cemetery that the city had been hoping to develop as a park. The many DNR requirements probably make the project way too expensive.

The fire department has announced on its Facebook page that it has purchased one of the old fire trucks used by the department in the 1940s and plans to restore it. SJC has received a grant to aid in getting students into internships. Fair Oaks Farms published another picture of the restaurant showing paving that was not there a week or two ago when I was there and announcing an opening of July 1.  The Hog Roast sponsored by CDC Resources to help fund their programs for intellectually and developmentally disabled adults will take place this evening from 5:00 until 8:00. I hope to see you there. Maybe you will  be able meet both the outgoing executive director and the incoming executive director.

Blue at St A's

On Wednesday I noticed a three-hole golf course on the Susan Lot at St. Augustine's School. I stopped in the office to find out what the story was.

 The secretary was all excited about Blue visiting the school. I had to ask what Blue was. As most of you undoubtedly know, Blue is the mascot for the Indiana Colts (though it looks more like a chicken than a colt.)

 The visit was a response by the Colts to the Chaganti accident, which took the life a fourth grader at the school.

The golf course was set up for PE education and was done by an avid golfer.

Remember Green Stamps?

A couple months ago a elderly family member passed away and I have made three trips to Chicago as a result. While helping clean out the house, I stumbled on a bag of old trading stamps. Are you old enough to remember them?

The Plaid Stamps were a promotion of A&P and have no value, but I was surprised to learn that that the Green Stamps might. They can be converted to a successor product, greenpoints, but there are restrictions on the conversion.

I remember my mother getting these stamps in the late 1950s and early 1960s. However, my main memory of them was how much my father hated them. At the time he was operating a small drug store in Little Falls, Minnesota and competitive pressures had forced him into offering the stamps--everyone else was offering them and customers expected them. However, they cost him more than they were worth to the people who received them. The trading stamps were a fad for a few years and then stores started to advertise that they were offering lower prices because they were not offering green stamps, and the fad died away. I do not recall if he was able to get rid of them before he closed his store--he closed when the first chain drug store opened up in town. He was too small to compete and the town could not support a fourth drug store. The same dynamic played out in Rensselaer many times.