The next meeting is next Tuesday, August 17, at the Edgewater. Don't know who the Program Host is, but the program will be someone from "Booked For Murder." Located on University Avenue near Shorewood, the store features murder mystery books. There is more to it than that, as we will hear. After the print edition of the BULLetin was mailed, the editor was informed that next week's (Aug. 17) meeting would have MARK LARSON as Program Host, and the Dane County Coroner for the program. You'll have to come to see for sure. But remember what MARK does - The coroner will probably have something to say about that too.

Before we forget, the donation of approximately $1000 raised by last year's TailTwister, DALE MUELLER, went to the Burn Center at University Hospitals. The Muellers' son was very badly burned in a campfire explosion caused by a vandal several years ago, and required weeks of skilled hospital and surgical care to recover.

By action of our Board of Directors, MCLC has given $618.00 to Second Harvest Food Bank and $4,500 to the Lions Eye Bank of Wisconsin.

A couple Sundays back, our President LINDA BERGREN was featured in the Wisconsin State Journal's "Know Your Madisonian" column. Her work as a Lion courier for the Eye Bank was highlighted, and in addition to deserved recognition, she got Lions in general and MCLC in particular more public notice than we have had in years. Great job, LINDA! The "Madisonian" column was written by Barry Adams, who was our speaker for the meeting, and who definitely had stepped outside his usual "beat" to do this one. (See below.)

We are still doing "TailTwister By Committee", a new experiment which may catch on. Maybe each of us will get a turn, but last week a ghost from the past reappeared. GEORGE ALBRIGHT hadn't lost his touch, and touched us for a couple of good sums, aided by an auction of food items, including Babcock ice cream, donated for the occasion by new member PADDHE HEINEN. Rumor is that GEORGE will have the brass Lion Bank for the whole month of August. Two more meetings to go, on 8/17 and 8/31.

At our last meeting, President LINDA presided, OTTO FESTGE led the song, and ROSS ROYSTER gave the invocation. Only guest was Kvon Smith, DON NEVIASER's "Little Brother." DON regularly volunteers with Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

Announcements: BOB "Archbishop" BOHN still needs a couple more invocators. (You've always said you could outdo the visiting pastors, now prove it!). SHARON MOLL-BRENNAN's big bike ride begins on August 22. (See more below.)

All sorts of ideas are percolating as our new administration begins. We have a new bell, we are working on expanding our eyeglass collection project (you did know that we did that, right?), there are plans to dig out our eye donor booth(s) and have a booth at the Farmers Market in September, a special evening meeting is planned for the first week of October. September is Sight Month, and we should be out there doing what we do best - preserving and restoring sight.

LINDA introduced our speaker at the last meeting, Barry Adams, reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal. He started out in radio, but now does crime reporting for the Journal. In that specialty he covered the Audrey Seiler case, which went from national missing-person/kidnap story to exposure as a hoax. Like other local reporters, Barry was interviewed on-air by national media, CBS in his case. He said that in the past 13 months there had been an upsurge in major crimes such as murder - 12 or 13 incidents instead of the usual 5 or 6. Most originate from alcohol, drugs and mental illness, altho there have been more shootings by police than usual. A couple of them were deemed to be "suicide by cop" - situations in which the individual forced the officer(s) to fire either in self-defense or because the perpetrator was threatening the life of another. Adams noted that this much activity is most unusual for Madison - Rockford, half the size, has 2 or 3 times as many shootings. He said many of the stories he wrote were more at the level of the one which appeared that morning, describing a string of "purse burglaries" in which the burglar apparently spotted purses or other valuables through a window and broke in to steal them. Adams was a very interesting speaker, and his talk was cut short by the need to attend a press conference called by the police department. By general agreement of those present, we hope he can come back and tell us more.

Because the program ended early, OTTO FESTGE told a few war stories about City Hall reporters: How the State Journal reporter, June Dieckman, hid in the men's room to hear conversations a city committee thought were in secret, and how Times reporter Cedric Parker actually hid a body in the lake until the State Journal deadline had passed and he could report the finding in his paper.

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Lion SHARON MOLL-BRENNAN, hospital development manager for the Lion's Eye Bank of Wisconsin, will be interviewed at 6:40 a.m. Wednesday, August 18, on NBC 15 (Madison) about her involvement with the Five Points of Life Ride, to raise awareness about donation.

Lion SHARON will bicycle from Seattle, Wash., beginning August 22, to the Kennedy Space Center arriving in Florida on October 15 with 11 other riders to promote awareness of the five ways people can share life with others through donation of whole blood, apheresis, marrow, cord blood, and organ, tissue and eye donation WDN volunteer and transplant recipient Dennis Erickson is part of the support team. The Wisconsin Coalition on Donation is working on generating other news stories about them, as well.