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I kind of doubt there was a huge turnout yesterday for the local election. But the two items I was most interested in ended sort of ok. One was for library board members as I wrote about yesterday. At the end of the day, four of the six running were elected, 3 of whom were those who opposed the use of the library drag queen events and other gender events. Only one who was in favor was re-elected.
It will be interesting to see how things go in the future, and who has the majority on the board.
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We are looking at local offices tomorrow. City Council, County Boards, School Boards, Library Boards, township boards etc. Many offices have candidates with no competition, others have several people vying for the office. Historically these elections have low turnouts which has always puzzled me. Yes, the national and state elections are important, but local elections deal with who will decide things where we live.
One race has garnered more attention than others which is odd because it is for spots on the library board.. Who knew our library board race would get attention? Today's St. Louis Post Dispatch had a long front page article on the library candidates and why they are in the spotlight. Seriously, this front page story is long. It boils down to the emotionally mixed reaction to the recent Drag Queen Show the library put on for children.
We are living in a new age. I was on the library board for 12 years and I can tell you, that board would be horrified. But it's a different age. It's a sorry thing that this area has no local paper as in the past when local news kept things up to date twice a week. This drag queen show got some attention on Facebook, but in general it got lost. Maybe after today, if people read the Post Dispatch, more will know. In order to read it online you have to register a user name and password. I can link it, but nothing will show up. I'm glad we got the paper today, everyone should have.
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Ever since the Collinsville Herald-Journal went out of business and the Belleville New Democrat pretty much stopped bothering with any news except from wire services, there has been no real way to find out what is going on locally.
But now comes a fairly recent addition to news where we live and that is the Collinsville Daily News. This news source has a website as well as the good use of Facebook. Finally there are news stories for Collinsville and the surrounding area. They even have the obituaries, local sports and civic news. I hope they don't end up going the route the Belleville paper went by insisting on subscribing to read the stories. With the BND it is just not worth it. One the other hand, if the Collinsville Daily News finds they must do this, I may break down and subscribe if they stay local.
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Tonight's Friday night fishfry at the American Legion in Collinsville has more cars and people filling the parking lot and the street than we've seen in years. It's Lent, but even so, the number of people at this week's fry is astounding. We just hope the Legion people are prepared for all these orders. Click to enlarge the photos a bit.
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We knew this was coming but had hopes there was a chance it could be avoided. St. John's Lutheran Church in Maryville decided their last service will be this coming Sunday, January 2. Dale preached there in October (actually Halloween) for its 175th anniversary and listened to many members grieving over this possibility. Membership had been going down for some time, there had been no full time pastor as well.
What makes this particularly sad is this is the mother church for almost all the local Lutheran churches in the area, most of whom are doing well. It is a beautiful church, a historic white, clapboard exterior with a gorgeous sanctuary. It was begun in 1846 while Holy Cross in Collinsville was begun in 1848, one of first to come after St. John's. What's difficult to take in is why they could not make a go of it, Maryville is growing by leaps and bounds, but without a full time pastor, things get tricky.
The amazingly high pulpit has long been a hallmark at this church and something many visiting pastors had qualms about climbing into it.
Our friend and Holy Cross member, Louis Meier attended that Sunday. He grew up in that church. Actually quite a few people from Holy Cross were there that day.
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It's getting close to putting out our Christmas village we call Tiny Town. The front yard gets filled with lighted trees, animal figures and buildings Dale has built over the years. We have a couple of houses, a store, a barn etc. These get spotlights in front of them. We always encourage people to walk around and enjoy. This was originally built and put out into the side yard of our house at the seminary, but last year we were able to make it work here in Collinsville. Over the years a couple of our lighted animals bit the dust, so I replaced them with a new dog and a cute teddy bear.
Here are the new guys waiting to get out and joy the party.
Oh, and here is Dale this morning repairing some of the houses in his workshop which is supposed to be a garage.
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This is just my opinion, but the red stoplight on eastbound Main at 159 is too long. The traffic often backs up a full block while we wait and wait for the green. My best guess is this has something to do with IDOT of whoever, wanting the north and south traffic moving through 159. But, the eastbound red is longer than necessary in my experience.
This kind of drives Dale nuts as well and he is usually fairly non-plussed by most daily life things. We've taken to going down the alley and going out behind the former Herbert's Eye place and getting the Clay street light.
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This morning I noticed a hanger on the hook in the bathroom. It has been there for a few days after Dale took his suit off of it and never came back to it. But today I took a good look at it because it's a really nice hanger, red and new looking. It was the name on the hanger which gave me pause: Imber's Men's Wear.
Now isn't that a blast from the past. Imber's has been long gone on Collinsville's Main Street but the nice hanger still exists.
KInd of cool, but also sort of sad thinking about all the places which are now gone.
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One of the memories on Facebook which popped up today was an announcement that this was the first day of sweet corn sales at Keller Farms. This was in 2012. Last year they had sweet corn nearer the end of June. This year Keller's posted their stand would be open around mid-June, 7 days a week.
Can't wait.
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Dale was heading over to the seminary this morning to teach a class and he asked me if I'd run over to Kruta Bakery and pick up some donuts to bring into the maintenance workers. They work very hard in and on buildings and landscape and he likes to spend break time with them periodically. He's brought Krutas in to them before and they all rave about that bakery.
So. I get there at 6:45 and it is already crowded and it isn't Saturday. The difference from other times was the amount of donuts and danishes people ahead of me were buying. One guy wanted 6 boxes, several others were getting 3 boxes. Finally I turned around and looked at a woman behind me and we both laughed. Kruta's is the best bakery anywhere and always rather busy, but this was unusual. I asked the woman behind me what was going on, I was getting worried the donuts would be gone before my number was called. She said she had a big order as well to take into her kids' teachers as it was the last day of school.
But, then someone else said, "It's National Donut Day". Well, that explained it. everyone in there was getting things to take to work or school. The bakery was giving a free donut to all as well. One of the bakery workers who has been at Kruta's for many years said, "This is always a big day and we'll be busy all day long."
I'm just happy I got there early.
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