At 5:15 pm on February 4th, Shelly Rucks, the President, called the meeting to order at the University Club. Shelly thanked the volunteers helping at the meeting, Carolyn Will, was the greeter, Susan Rostkoski for introduction of guests and Happy Dollars, Joy McEloy for the Inspirational Minute and Four Way Test, our amazing IT tech, Matt Majors, and the scribe Linda Mulhern.
Joy offered a short and important inspirational minute from the Book of Dares, to dare yourself to stand up for someone who is being bullied and also led the group in the four-way test. We also had cupcakes on hand to celebrate the February birthdays of Karin Ciano, Yvonne Ekdahl, Christoper Taykalo and Michael-jon Pease.
Shelly introduced Mark Nepper, a former college roommate of Shelly’s husband. He spoke about his book, “Glory Days in the Rear View Mirror”, a novel about life messages as a person moves forward in life. It is his first book after retiring from a career as an English teacher at West High School in Madison. Mark would often ask his students about Ferris Bueller, from the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and what he would be doing as an adult. His students would reply that Ferris would have a fast car and a great job, whereas most of his fellow teachers would state that Ferris would have peaked in high school and not moved forward to an interesting and productive life. The book centers on the character, Cam, as he observes the relationship between his grandfather and father, with flashbacks of high school. Mark wanted people to think about what they had done in high school, what you did or should have done as well as what you did that was forbidden, but you did anyway. Did your life end up the way that you planned? Mark shared many quotes from the book that were very important as well as instructions on how to live your life well. He noted that the characters in his novel use the following mindset of leaning on friends in hard times, there are second chances and family relationships are redeemable.
Mark noted that writing the book took time and it took 6 weeks of pondering the ending for the book but finally thought of the ending while in a crosswalk and sprinted home to finish it. The title is based on Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen. Mark wrote the book because he had something important to say to his audience. As an author, he noted that you must have a purpose for writing the book and know how to finish it. The most difficult process in writing was to give his characters dialogue that encapsulates themselves versus sounding like himself and it took a while to find that voice for each character. Mark has started another book about a family saga that he hopes will be as good as All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren that he had his high school English students read when he was a teacher.
The greatest difficulty was learning how to sell his book by using social media to get the word out about the book. Bookstores no longer have author readings done, so leveraging social media to sell the book has been his biggest struggle, although a niece has been happy to help him as directed.
Shelly presented a certificate for his time at the meeting and invited him back when he publishes his next novel!
Upcoming events include the Polar Plunge on Saturday, February 8th at 1:45 pm in Hudson for Susan, Dana and Karin. They are raising funds for youth programing including Camp RYLA and Rotary Youth Exchange, so please open your wallets for the “Superheros from St Paul” plunge! On February 11th, we will be having our joint meeting with the Minneapolis Rotary Club #9 and Andrea Roffo from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis will be speaking on the US economy and recent policy actions. On February 25th, Susan Schuster, a member of our club, will speak about Wish of a Lifetime from AARP. We continue to look for members willing to help at Camp RYLA, which will be April 25-29th this year. It is a great opportunity to work with teenagers about leadership while having fun at the same!
The meeting was concluded at 6:12 pm.