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Stan Carignan offered the invocation, using St. Francis of Assisi's Contigo to the Sun in honor of next Monday's solar eclipse. Wally Cole led us in song. John MacFarlane then introduced Salvation Army Lieutenant Anthony Nordan, a recent arrival to our town with his wife (also an Army Lieutenant) Elysia and their five week old child; his previous assignment was in Chicago. Keith Olson said it looks like our peaches will arrive on Friday the 25th, with an outside chance they may be here by the 24th. Please e-mail or contact Keith if you can help out behind his store upon their arrival. Ryan Welle reported that our Exchange Student, Avendano Jose Antonio Ramos (who goes by Pepi or Antonio) will arrive this Sunday, August 20th. He should be at our meeting next Wednesday and everyone is encouraged to greet him warmly. This writer promoted signing up for Rotary Minute Plus Insurance for 2017-18. This year, if you contribute $62.50 to the Annual Program Fund of The Rotary Foundation, the Club will give an additional $67.50 in your name; if you contribute $30.00 to PolioPlus, the Club will give an additional $37.50 in your name. To summarize, by you giving $92.50 a total of $197.50 will be submitted to The Rotary Foundation in your name. All but two of our members present at the meeting signed up, so we are off to a good start. (After my comments, I was asked about the acknowledgement a Rotarian just received from The Rotary Foundation; that was for last Rotary year's contributions that were collected between July 1, 2016, and June 30, 2017, almost all of which were sent into The Foundation in June. We start over again every July 1st.) Dave Johnson led off the bragging, contributing $5 and noting that he missed a couple meetings because their whole family had gone on an Alaskan cruise on the inside passage and then he and Dolly extended their trip by going on to Denali and Fairbanks, stating when they left the latter the temperature was a balmy 85 degrees. Dave threw in another dollar to promote the aforementioned Fish and Game Club's steak fry. Keith Olson then promoted the concerts by Men of Note also previously referenced and bragged about being able to provide his wife on August 21, their 35th wedding anniversary, a solar eclipse. Katie Johnson contributed $3, one for her daughter Sophia and Emma Fitzgibbons (the latter one of our RYLA students this year who we heard from two weeks ago) for a successful blood drive in Underwood yesterday, with donors providing 40 pints of blood; another dollar for her son Theo coming home from working at a Young Life camps in Colorado, and the final dollar for participating this past weekend in a 5k run to raise funds in the fight against childhood cancer. Scooter bucks were also received from Steve Andrews and Mary Pettit. Kathy Austvold introduced our speaker, Dan Biermeier, a past Rotarian (for 14 years) and author of the Hobo Kingdom book series. Dan has lived in the Detroit Lakes area since 1990, when he became the manager of its Holiday Inn. He described having his interest in the subject matter of his books ignited by three different newspaper articles he read over the years about freight train riders and deaths at railroad crossings, making him wonder if there really are good and bad freight train riders, with the latter killing the former and being able to pass it off as an accidental deaths at railroad crossings. His stories are all fictional and epitomize the battle of good versus evil and good winning out. According to Dan there are three levels of transients riding the rails: "hobos" whom he described as hard working Americans that don't want the trappings of American life and are on the move; "tramps" who are like hobos but don't work; and "bums" who he said don't even have the gumption to move around. His first book went on hold for seven years as his job at the Holiday Inn came to an end; after a short stint at Bergens in Park Rapids he went to work for Breezy Shore Resort outside of D.L. By the time he got back to work on his story and crafted the ending, Dan discovered he could publish his novel at no cost, through Amazon, just the budget his wife had given him. The company even had a cover that he initially used, only to discover that four other self-publishers had decided to use the same cover; he ended up using the work of a street artist (translate graffiti) in Detroit Lakes for both his first and second book. Through Amazon's Create Space, Dan has been able to produce hard copies of his work and is now even having an audio version made, through Amazon's ACX subsidiary. The name of the first book is Chase of Blood on Steel, its genre was described as adventure fiction, and you should be able to find it on Amazon or through the local library. As I understand it, Dan is working on his third book now and a fourth in the series is likely. |
