This and that: Skating into a Saturday
Faith East sets input session for new skatepark. Recruiting ramps up for Read to Succeed. Another Boilermaker readies for liftoff.
Thanks for support today from the Builders Association of Greater Lafayette, presenting BAGL Parade of Homes 2023 this weekend, Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 9-10. The event features 17 beautiful new homes to tour this weekend, including 12 completed homes, five dusty boots (not quite finished) homes and three new subdivisions to explore. There’s no cost to tour the homes. See you this weekend. For maps and more information, here’s your link or click the link below.
Thanks, also, today to sponsor Tippecanoe Chamber Music Society, which opens its season Sept. 17 with its Teachers and Mentors concert. The concert will be 4 p.m. Sept. 17 at St. John’s Episcopal Church at Sixth and Ferry streets in Lafayette. For tickets for that concert and for the rest of the season, go to tippecanoechambermusic.org.
This and that for a Saturday morning …
SKATEPARK DESIGN COMMUNITY MEETING SET
With news dropping that Greater Lafayette could be in for a couple of skate parks in the next few years, planning for one has started and will include a meeting Sept. 25 to get input from the skate community.
Faith Ministries plans to work with Lafayette and Tippecanoe County to replace a wooden skate park – installed in 2007 and torn out earlier this year to make way for an expansion of the Faith East community center – with a concrete skate park on the Faith East campus along Indiana 26.
Pastor Steve Viars said Faith expects to hire Hunger Skateparks, an Indiana-based company that has built parks in nearly a dozen states, to design a park over the winter and have it ready to build in 2024. The project, estimated at $600,000, would be built by the Faith Legacy Foundation, a part of Faith Ministries, with the city and the county each putting $200,000 to the work.
(Viars shared a couple of rough sketches of what Hunger Skateparks said $600,000 would buy – as well as one for an $825,000 version “in case there are other community members who would like to sweeten the pot.”)
For more about plans at Faith and conversations the Lafayette Parks are having about a skatepark in a central part of the city, here’s a story from a week ago: “Not one, but two skate parks in the works in Greater Lafayette.”
IF YOU GO, PART I: The community input night with Hunger Skateparks will get 6:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 25, at the Faith East Community Center, 5572 Mercy Way, Lafayette.
IF YOU GO, PART II: The next Lafayette skater callout and tournament, sponsored by Simpson Skates and the Lafayette Parks Department, will be 1-5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 1, at the Loeb Stadium parking lot, near Kossuth and Main streets.
UNITED WAY LOOKS TO REINVIGORATE UP ‘READ TO SUCCEED’
The United Way of Greater Lafayette is looking for volunteers for a relaunch of Read to Succeed, a program designed to offer an hour a week in local elementary schools to bring students up to state benchmarks with reading. The program once had 600 volunteers. The pandemic ate into that corps, with fewer than 200 Read to Succeed volunteers today. The United Way reports that it needs 150 volunteers to fill opening in classrooms where teachers have requested Read to Succeed time.
“For just one hour per week, volunteer readers can make a significant impact in the life of a child,” Kelci Fox, United Way community impact associate, said in a release. The program is designed so volunteers may pair with others and alternate weeks to lighten the commitment.
To sign up, go to www.uwlafayette.org/readtosucceed. To learn more about the Read to Succeed program, contact Fox at kfox@uwlafayette.org or call 765-742-9077 ext. 233.
ANOTHER BOILERMAKER PREPARES FOR LAUNCH
NASA’s “Houston, We Have a Podcast” had good interview with Loral O’Hara, a Purdue grad preparing for a mission this month to the International Space Station. O’Hara, who earned a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue in 2009, was selected for astronaut training in June 2017. For her first spaceflight, O’Hara will be part of a Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft crew that includes Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin. She’s scheduled to spend six months at the International Space Station.
Asked in the podcast about dreaming about this moment since she was in first grade, O’Hara said: “I mean at kind of the most basic level, my goals are just to do a good job, do good science, take care of space station, and then also to have really good relationships. … Personally, I am really excited just to get to space and look back at Earth for the first time from that perspective.”
How many times have we heard a Purdue grad say that? (As of now, Purdue’s “Cradle of Astronauts” include 27 grads.)
For the full interview, check it out here.
ICYMI … WHAT’S UP THIS WEEKEND: Need a few ideas for the rest of the weekend? These came from Based in Lafayette correspondent Tim Brook: “Tim’s Picks: GermanFest, Starry Night, Shakespeare …”
Thanks for support today from the Builders Association of Greater Lafayette, presenting BAGL Parade of Homes 2023 on Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 9-10.
And thanks to the Tippecanoe Chamber Music Society, which opens its season Sept. 17 with its Teachers and Mentors concert. For tickets and a look at the rest of the season, go to tippecanoechambermusic.org.
THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING BASED IN LAFAYETTE, AN INDEPENDENT, LOCAL REPORTING PROJECT. FREE AND FULL-RIDE SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS ARE READY FOR YOU HERE.
Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.