Rotary District 6440 Spring Training for new and experienced board members is taking place on Zoom, Saturday, May 5, from 9 a.m. to noon. There will be an opening general session featuring training in Youth Protection, Crisis Management, and the Learning Center, followed by role-based informational breakout sessions. 

 

Don Gwinn showed slides and thanked the following Rotarians for their work on Rebuilding Together at 743 Brown St. last week: Steve Goranson, Joan Borg, Chris Joyce, Dan Coyne, Myra Janus, Georgia Vlahos, Helen Oloroso, Hal Gerber, Randy Usen, Bill Vernon, John Osterlund, Bruce Baumberger, Linda Gerber, Helen Dickson, Vishal Vaghani, Mark Lowry, and Dave Stumpf.

 

Bill Glader and Randy Usen: Please send your ideas for possible sponsors for the Taste of Evanston. 

 

Marisa Naujokas asked members for their input about the style of bike racks with the Rotary Logo.

 

Kathy Tate-Bradish announced that Steve Goranson will continue to chair the Environmental Justice Committee, which is one of two committees that the Bylaws Committee will propose be elevated to board level, along with our new DEI committee chaired by Clarence Weaver.

 

Hillary Hufford-Tucker announced that our club needs volunteers for the Umbrella Arts Festival, in celebration of our Asian, South Asian, and Pacific Islander communities through arts, music, dancing and food! The event will take place in Fountain Square on Saturday, May 14, from 1 to 6:00 p.m.  Set -up will take place at 11 a.m. We will be sending a Sign-up Genius registration and request that club members help greet guests at the table to support this important event. In addition to celebrating Asian-American Heritage Month, it will be a chance for us to let people know more about Rotary. Please contact Marisa or Kathy for more information.

 

 

 

Raised in Evanston, Jeff Bishop graduated from ETHS in 2012 and from The University of Illinois Champaign with a degree in Economics in 2018. He now lives in Los Angeles and his job of musical supervision involves selecting songs for TV shows including Love and Hip Hop, and working on his second book. He is also the stepson of Steve Steiber, but he asked that we not hold that against him.

 

His first book is coming out in a couple of months. Fiction for young adults is a growing gendre. In 2017 he was selected for a program called Pitch Wars, which linked Jeff as a new author with a mentor who worked with Jeff for about two months on his manuscript. Jeff worked with Christopher Schelling of Select Artists starting in December 2017 and his book was sold to Putnam/Penguin in August 2018 after being taken out for submission. Christopher continues to be his agent. The book, A Heavy Dose of Alison Tandy  is coming out on Buzzfeed later this month and is loosely based on his time in Evanston.

 

It's a bit of a throwback to the John Hughes movies which were based in “Shermer” Illinois (a former name of Glenview) and many of which were filmed in this area. He talked a bit about current publishing houses and their history.

 

Jeff was able to give input on his book cover design, including a reference to pills taken without it being too offensive to the parent audience. He recounted the stages of this process as well as the process of selecting blurbs for the cover and the many details that they pay attention to.

 

Jeff also explained the options process and the fact that most books do not get made into movies, but the author may continue going through the process and getting checks every 12-18 months over a long period of time.  

 

Jeff Bishop