April 12th last week was a gorgeous warm day after many long months of winter. Wagner Rotary members gathered for their weekly meeting with one guest present, Julie Doom. Rotarian Bill Heermann gave thanks for the beautiful day and warm weather.

Song leader Gerrit Juffer led the club in “Happy Days are Here Again” with his Bluetooth accompaniment. Results were a little sketchy as the song covered four pages in the songbook and left everyone trying to figure out where the words began and ended.

Rotarian Ken Cotton spoke about Opportunities for Fellowship for our weekly Membership Minute. The weekly club meeting is a special privilege of Rotary membership. It provides the occasion to visit fellow members, meet visitors and new members and share personal friendship with other members. Friendly clubs usually follow a few simple steps. Members are encouraged to sit in a different seat or at a different table each week or sit with a member they may not know very well. Our Wagner Club does not do so well in this respect. A former President made it a rule to sit at a different table every week, but the practice has fallen by the wayside. All Rotarians realize that warm friendship is the cornerstone of every great Rotary Club. Our Wagner Club IS very friendly!

Sergeant at Arms Jordan Weber began his weekly fine report by fining Jeff Doom $3 for being a slow learner; $3 to Jerry Weber for calling Bryan Slaba and “oddball” and $3 to Bryan Slaba for being an oddball; $4 went to Joe Stedronsky for 0ver charging Ed Kirwan for his first baseball glove way back in time; $3 to Scott McAdaragh for running out of Coors Banquet Beer at his store; and $5 each to Bryan Slaba Joe Stedronsky, Linda Soukup, Amanda Bechen for not being able to help with the road ditch cleanup. Happy Fines came from Jeff Doom for turning Joe Stedronsky into an avid book reader $3; $10 from Patty Frei for the W Chapter of PEO celebrating their 100th birthday party.

Guest Julie Doom drew the lucky number and tried to win the Queen of Hearts drawing for Jeff but came up short when she drew the four of Spades.

Secretary/Treasurer Craig Krsnak reported the Queen drawing is up to $382.00 and it was a perfect attendance day for both teams.

Rotarian Bill Frei was the program chair for the day, but he had enlisted the help of Jeff Doom who brought Ed Kirwan to the club to report on his latest project.

Ed is no stranger to our Wagner area, his father lives across the river and Ed grew up in this area. Ed and Jeff Doom met in college and became roommates and lifelong friends. Ed is a permitting biologist who works for companies who are engaging in mining minerals from the earth. His work has taken him around the world. His services as a biologist are for the protection of natural species in an area where a company wishes to excavate minerals. He recently spent time in Malmbjerg, Greenland to do a feasibility study on a planned molybdenum mine.

Molybdenum is the third most abundant element in the Earth’s crust and is mined as a principal ore and recovered as a byproduct of copper and tungsten mining. The world’s production of molybdenum is mined by China, the United States, Chile Peru, and Mexico.

Ed has been working on the east side of Greenland. It is very desolate and isolated. There are no roads in or out. All commuting is done by helicopters. The current project is located between two glaciers. The product that is removed will be transported by an old method of conveyers since there are no roads. There will be barges by the shore and the goal is to mine twenty to thirty tons a day. They are planning on 1200 employees who will be flown in, and they have rented a cruise ship for them to live on while working on the project. The climate at the project site is in the lower 80’s in the summer and the winters are 40 to 50 below with wind chills more than that.

As always, Ed provided some little-known information about a huge project that we can only imagine about.

The meeting was adjourned with our recitation of our 4-Way Test.