Page 18 — Eden Prairie News — Thursday, March 1, 2007

WELCOME to the Neighborhood!For over 75 years, Welcome Wagon has been welcoming new homeowners to their new communities. We’ve greeted hundreds of families to Eden Prairie as they’ve begun new lives in their new homes. Our goal at Welcome Wagon has always remained the same: offer newcomers to the neighborhood a warm introduction to the people who work and live in their community.

Business owners interested in turning new neighbors into new customers, call your Account Executive, Jennifer Bruett directly at 763-458-8988 or toll free at 1-800-77WELCOME, Ext. 1464.

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Public NoticesEDEN PRAIRIE SCHOOLS

8100 SCHOOL ROADEDEN PRAIRE, MN 55344

ADVERTISEMENT FOR BIDEden Prairie School District 272

will receive sealed bids for the 2007Summer Project: “2007 GymnasiumRe-lighting at Eden Prairie HighSchool, Central Middle School,A d m i n i s t r a t i o n / C e n t r a lKindergarten Center, Prairie ViewElementary, Forest Hills Elementary,Cedar Ridge Elementary, Oak PointIntermediate School, and Eden LakeElementary”, In accordance with theDocuments that have been prepared,until 2:00 PM, March 16th, 2007. Bidswill be publicly opened and read aloud.Bidders are invited to attend. Bidsreceived after this time will be returnedunopened.

Bids shall be upon the formprovided by the Owner. Envelopescontaining the bid and documentsubmittals must be sealed, marked“2007 Gymnasium Re-lightingProject”, with the name and addressof the bidder, along with date and timeof bid opening. Sealed Bid Envelopsshall be delivered to: Bev Matheson,Eden Prairie Schools, 8100 SchoolRoad, Eden Prairie, MN 55344.

Copies of the Bidding Documentswill be on file and available for reviewat the Builders Exchange ofMinneapolis and St. Paul.

Bidding Documents may beobtained at the office of DolejsAssociates Inc., upon payment of$50.00 for each set. The deposit will berefunded if all documents are returnedin good condition within ten days of

the bid opening date.Each bidder shall accompany the

Bid Form and submittals requestedwith bid security as described in the“Instructions to Bidders” section ofthe Project Documents.

A mandatory pre-bid conferencewill be held at 10:00 AM at the CentralMiddle School (west main entrance /8025 School Road / Eden Prairie, MN)of March 5th, 2007; the walk though willinclude a visit to each school and Gymshown on the documents. Failure toattend these pre-bid conferences willresult in rejection of the Contractor’sBid and it shall be returned unopened.

The Eden Prairie School District272 reserves the right to accept orreject any or all bids or parts of suchbids and waive any formalities orirregularities in bidding. No bid maybe withdrawn for a period of sixty (60)days after the bid opening without thewritten consent of the School Board.

Independent School District #272Eden Prairie, MN

School Board Clerk: Ann Haines(Published in the Eden Prairie Newson Thursday, February 22 and March1, 2007; No. 3279)

The Public Noticedeadline for the Eden

Prairie News is at4 p.m.

on Thursday, for thefollowing week's

issue.

All that jazzNew Orleans ties inspire area man’s book about life’s lessons

PHOTO BY UNSIE ZUEGE

A lifelong love of traditional jazz, business trips to New Orleans, and guitar lessons inspired a rich gumbo of a story, written by fi rst-time author Micheal Lane of Victoria.

By Unsie ZuegeThe sidewalks of New Or-

leans will speak to you if you just stop and listen. That’s what Micheal Lane always heard about this richly historic city where jazz music was born.

New Orleans’ melting pot of African American slaves, Hai-tians, American Indians, the French colonists, the Creole, the French Canadians or Cajuns, created an intoxicating culture and history from which sprung legends of voodoo, mysticism, duels, pirates and smuggling. So it’s no wonder that New Or-leans is considered one of the 10 most haunted cities in the United States. Its rambunctious past is a perfect jumping off place for le-gions of restless spirits.

Not all of them are sinister. Just ask Lane. He remembers the night ex-

actly.It was February 2005. He was

in New Orleans on business. He had just finished a big dinner with clients and was walking in the French Quarter toward his hotel. It started raining and he was determined not to get wet. So he took shelter under an aw-ning of a voodoo shop. Across the street was Preservation Hall, a lo-cal landmark that was opened in 1961 to provide a venue for tra-ditional New Orleans jazz musi-cians to play and to celebrate the musicians who came before.

And then, suddenly, Lane was overwhelmed by the feel-ing that someone was standing with him.

“I just had this sense of an aging wise and very kind mu-sician,” Lane said, “whose wis-dom came out of traditional jazz. I just stood there for seven or eight minutes, just soaking in that feeling.” Later, at his hotel, he knew he found the story he wanted to write.

Three nights later, in Cincin-nati, he woke from his sleep. “The name ‘Yawdy Rum’ just came to me,” Lane said. “It was like the bright light of the copier. I saw the name. Now, I’ve never known anyone with that name. I Googled it. There’s no such person. The name just came to me.”

A salt guyLane grew up in Kansas

where his father owned a sales franchise. He remembers that the salesmen read motivational books such as “The Greatest Salesman in the World,” by Og Mandino, or “Think & Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill. Lane read them, too, enjoying their positive messages written in a way that enabled readers to re-member the principles.

When Lane grew up, he went into business, working fi rst for a Kansas salt manufacturer, then later joining Cargill’s salt divi-sion. He and his family moved to the Twin Cities and Victoria in 1992. His career as a Cargill executive kept him busy with frequent traveling. And at home, he and his wife, Sharon, were busy raising three children, Tauna, Taylor and Patrick. Pat-rick, the youngest. was born with autism, and over the years, the family has done everything pos-sible to enable him to reach his full potential.

The spirit of Yawdy RumThat night in New Orleans

By Micheal Lane Published January 2007 By Expert Publishing Inc. Hardcover 194 pages $24.95 Available online at www.yawdyrum.com A portion of the proceeds from book sales

will be donated to the New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund, dedicated to aiding New Orleans musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina and to the New Orleans Habitat for Humanity rebuilding project.

Author book signingMicheal Lane will sign books at the Barnes and Noble at Ridgedale at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 7; and Excelsior Bay Books in Excelsior at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 20.

The Wisdom of Yawdy Run

and the encounter with the spirit of the old musician put Lane on a new path. He and his wife talk-ed it over. He quit his job in May, stepping away from his position as vice president and director of sales of marketing at Cargill Salt, a division of Cargill Inc., to pursue his childhood dream – writing an inspirational book along the lines of those that fi red his imagination and taught him life lessons.

For two years, Lane wrote and rewrote. He spent time in New Orleans, in Preservation Hall, meeting and interview-ing traditional jazz musicians and jazz music history experts, including an old Twin Cities jazz musician Irv Williams, and Charlie DeVore, jazz musician and music historian, who fi rst learned about jazz when he was stationed in New Orleans in the U.S. Navy in the ‘50s.

Lane’s business background and discipline kept him on a schedule, writing six to eight hours a day. Along the way, he took writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. As the book took shape, he joined a writing group and enlisted the help of Twin Cities author and book editor Mary Logue.

New Orleans. Their love of music begins a friendship in which Yawdy’s wisdom and Hurricane Ka-trina provide lessons in what is most impor-tant in life, set-ting priorities, and pursuing dreams.

A book benefi ting musicians

As Lane developed the story and the book, he knew for certain

that part of the proceeds of the book sales would be donated to the New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund, which is dedicated to aiding New Or-leans musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina and to the New Orleans Habitat for Hu-manity rebuilding project.

Lane spent two weeks in New Orleans in December, help-ing to clear homes of rotting sheetrock, carpets, woodwork and debris from the hurricane. Although the hurricane struck nearly one and a half years ago, there’s still so much reconstruc-tion and recovery ahead, Lane said.

In looking for a publisher, Lane turned the tables and in-terviewed them, seeking some-one willing to let him donate a portion of book sale proceeds. He found a local publisher and assembled a creative team of lo-cal designers and typesetters. “There’s a wealth of resources in this town,” Lane said. “I can’t say enough about the local tal-ent we have here. And the Twin Cities is the second most literate market in the U.S.”

Unsie Zuege can be reached at uzuege@swpub.com.

Several years ago, he also be-gan guitar lessons. As he wrote, and as he learned about mu-sic, and how to play guitar, he found that music taught power-ful lessons about life, and that his fictional character, Yawdy Rum, was the perfect character through which to teach them.

He had just begun his book when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. As he watched the events unfold in his beloved city, he and Logue agreed that the hurricane had to fi gure in the climax of the story.

Part memoir, part fi ctionPassion for music, especial-

ly traditional New Orleans jazz, frames the story in “The Wis-dom of Yawdy Rum.” It folds in many aspects of Lane’s own life, that of a senior marketing executive trying to balance the demands of corporate politics with a relentless travel sched-ule, his family life and the chal-lenges that come with raising an autistic child. Like Lane, “Mike” is taking guitar lessons and day-dreams of leaving his corporate life to write. “The Wisdom of Yawdy Run” opens with Mike and Yawdy Rum, an old jazzman being seat mates on a fl ight to

Speech results

At this point in the season, the Eden Prairie High School Speech team is ranked as one of the top 10 high school speech teams in the state.

At the Feb. 24, East-view Lightning Speech Tournament, EPHS took sixth out of 19 teams.

Top performers in-cluded:

Steven Shonts, who placed fi rst in Discussion (Honor Final).

Alec Kunkel placed third in Extemp. Speak-ing (Honor Final).

Alec Kunkel also placed third in Prose (Honor Final).

All told, Eden Prairie had 17 finalists at this tournament.

Music departmentis Grammy fi nalist

EPHS is a fi nalist for the 2007 Grammy Signa-ture School Award. The award considers all ele-ments of the high school music program.

Out of the finalists, the top 40 schools will be selected and named “Sig-nature Schools.”

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENTS

SUBMITTED PHOTO

National Merit Scholar FinalistsAll of the 23 National Merit Scholar Semi-Finalists from EPHS have been named Finalists. The high school has more fi nalists than any other school in the state. The next step in the process is to be named a National Merit Scholar. The fi nalists include: Front row (from left): Madelyn Lenhard, Laura Schneider, Catherine Bult, Andrew Kelly and Gautam Kan-dlikay Middle row: Tyler Mingo, Tony Grandelis, Brittany Bull, Danny Crichton, Rebecca Lam, Timmie Sharma, Anna Crist and, Anupama Dathan. Back row: Nathan Wagner, Matt Byrne, Trevor Davis, Sam Blake, Ian Birrell and John Davis. Not pictured: Richard Liu, Rui Li, Alex Haines, Lucas Imes.

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