respublica

This is awesome

Everyone in these parts (Illinois Metro East and St. Louis) know this weekend will see a huge NASCAR race at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison Illinois. This raceway is right along Interstate 55/70 and very close to downtown St. Louis. And, these NASCAR races bring in tens of thousands of fans from all over. All of which means the entities involved want the area to look its best and why this happened.

Track owner Curtis Francois noticed graffiti along the interstate in East St. Louis along the route to the track. It wasn’t a pretty picture for visiting race fans so he worked with community groups and IDOT to clean it up. The workers removed the graffiti and replaced it with special murals.

Most everyone who lives in the metro east and goes to St. Louis has noticed the graffiti on overpasses, railway walls, and any other flat surface. We've often talked about this as we go back and forth and wonder just how in the world these graffiti (artists) manage to get to these awkward and public spots and paint without being noticed by anyone, especially authorities. But for now, thanks WWT owners, these things are gone.

Good for him.

Spray Paint Vandals

It seems the Illinois State Police are now searching for the vandals who spray painted the outside of their Collinsville headquarters. I'm glad to learn they want to find these guys, but I wish they would put more effort into finding the spray painters who use highway walls and overpasses etc, as their easel as well.

There are all kinds of places on the Illinois side of the river along interstates which have been spray painted. Highway walls, box cars, railroad walls and on and on. How these things can be done without anyone noticing is beyond me. It is also beyond me how they are physically able to do many of these things up high and in narrow places. Yesterday when we drove over to St. Louis we noticed along a stretch of road in East St. Louis more graffiti and this was on a stone wall only 4 feet or so from the interstate roadway. The wall was fairly high. How could this have been done without not one car or state trouper noticing.

It had to have been also very dangerous. So, good on the Illinois State Police for wanting to catch their own vandals, but how about stopping more of the rest.

Maryville to hold mobile DMV event

If you are in Madison County and need to renew your drivers license or get stickers of some sort, then next Tuesday (September 14 from 10-2) you will be able to do this in Maryville. It will be a mobile event. You can also get license plate stickers.  Mobile event is not a drive through, it just means some sort of office trailer will be on site.

This is good news for anyone who dreads the wait time and travel distance at brick and mortar facilities. The one thing not a part of this is getting a Real ID.

How many of us in Southwest Illinois have been vaccinated

A very interesting round-up of vaccination percentages by city/town on the Illinois side of St. Louis. This is a fairly complete listing of all the towns. The worst percentage is in East St. Louis and towns in that vicinity. All in the 20's percentile. The highest percentages are in St. Libory, New Memphis, Radom,Hamel, and Maryville, all in the 60's percentile.

Collinsville is at 47 percent, sort of in the middle.

The local newspaper

I find it frustrating to come across  news stories dealing with local things, linked by the Belleville paper. But the stories are not readable unless you subscribe to the paper. The odd thing is, this paper is about as thin as a sheet of copy paper. It used to be the go to paper for Metro East people, filled with all sorts of things of interest. Not now, at least in the hard copy.

I have no idea what has happened, maybe no advertisers, but it's sad. But I am not going to subscribe to the online version. I still can't get over how tiny this paper is when it's tossed on people's lawns.

St. Louis area counties with the most Covid cases

This is depressing for us in Illinois. The most St. Louis area counties covid cases recently are found in 5 Metro East counties.

1. Clinton
2. Monroe
3. Bond
4. Jersey
5. Madison

What is the deal here Illinois? St. Clair is in 8th place which is somewhat better than the others. Washington County was not listed for some reason and that county is certainly in the St. Louis tv viewing area.

Virus on the move again

Just when we relaxed a bit over this Covid worry, here it comes again. The news is all over this virus once again and it is troublesome. Supposedly we who have been vaccinated don't have much to fear. We may get a small version, like a mild cold, but nothing which would hospitalize us. However, we could spread it unknowingly to someone we pass in a store who isn't vaccinated.

What shocks me is how low a percentage of people in many Missouri counties have ignored the vaccine. Our new cottage down in Crawford County is in a county where only 22 percent have been vaccinated. We are isolated from people where we are, but it will take some nerve to go into any store for provisions. And, Crawford is on the cusp of Covid traveling east big time.

Compare this to our own Madison County, Illinois which has 55 percent vaccinated. Not perfect and should be better, but at least it makes us a bit more secure. The comparison to other Illinois counties is interesting. In the Chicago area the percentages are in the 60's percentile. Cook County is 68 percent and DuPage County where I grew up is 75 percent. Here is a link to all Illinois counties. 

The lowest counties in Illinois with some in the 30's and 40's are in rural areas. Only one county is in the 20's, Alexander at 20 percent. This place is the southern most country in Illinois, bounded on the west by the Mississippi River, county seat is Cairo.

Because of the new outbreaks, mask mandates are being talked about once again. The Madison County Board recently had a meeting on mask wearing for kids when they head back to school. Because of lots of parental input against any mandate, the board decided to leave this issue to individual school districts.

MidAmerica

MidAmerica Airport near Scott Air Force Base schedules some commercial flights with Allegiant Airlines, a company I'm not really familiar with. It seems their main focus is on flights to and from Florida, Georgia (Savannah), Charleston,Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Punta Gorda. I have no idea where Punta Gorda is but people must want to go there.

The main draw for many, and would be for me, is the ease of getting there and the ease of parking and getting into the terminal. I just don't know enough about Allegiant to feel comfortable. But we aren't going south anytime soon anyway.

Where we live we get a clear view from our back deck of the planes flying into MidAmerica. A few minutes ago, one went fairly low right over our garage. There aren't many each day, though.

And, we also get a good view of Air Force planes coming into Scott. My impression is Tuesday and Thursday are the busiest days for them and we can almost read the markings they fly in so low.

Kind of cool.

Meanwhile we wait

We've been watching the vaccine issuance for some time now and we can't make heads or tails out of how this is being done in Madison County. It just seems like surrounding counties and areas are way ahead of us. We heard to today from someone who is sort of involved that Madison was just overwhelmed and is trying to keep up.

What I read is St. Clair County has vaccine times at several places. Part of St. Louis will be adding vaccines at Walmarts and Sam's Club. Around here? no.   Walgreen's and possibly CVS is doing the shots, but when I check I get the notice that nothing remotely near us is doing this.

So, my question is, was Madison slow on the uptake with this? I have friends in the Chicago area, a major population place, and they have had both shots. Same for others in places other than here. It's very frustrating to read news reports that Illinois and even Madison will be extending the list of those who can now get the shots including kids. I mean, come on, those of us who qualified in group 1B have heard nothing except they were overwhelmed and now they will add even more numbers to this list.

We are doing our best to stay safe, staying home except for grocery runs and wearing two masks. But it's getting exhausting not letting our guard down especially when reading the cheers from so many others posting they got their shots.

I do recommend double masks, though. The paper type under a cloth mask feels much more secure. And, oddly, easier to breath.

And one more update I just read from the Post Dispatch. Missouri said it will double the doses to the St. Louis region after local officials complained. Now there's an idea for Madison County.

 

Ok, I have to say this once again

We woke up to very cold temperatures and snow. The snow was maybe 2 inches or less, but miserable to clear off in the cold. However one thing never changes in this area and that is traffic reports of one accident after another during the morning commute.

But, since Dale had to drive into Clayton to teach a class today, I was paying more attention to the traffic reports. Almost every report from local news stations mentioned how much better the roads on the Illinois side were than on the Missouri side. Every year it's like this. For some reason MODOT cannot get this winter weather clearing right. Each year I get on here on beg the MODOT people to come over to IDOT headquarters in Collinsville and take a lesson on how to do winter weather clearing.

But they don't it seems and drivers over there pay the price of accidents and sitting in long jams. This is not to say the Metro East has no snow/ice accidents but they are far fewer. It makes no sense.