Olaf's COVID induced writing binge

So why am I showing you a photo of 16 month old me?  I  do not remember much from 1967, although it was a big year for me.  I learned to walk and well, I got inspired for a project that it took 48 years to complete.  Now it is 2021....and whoa!  What a rush.  I have been a writing machine. I am just finishing up a contract volunteer writing and research project creating a 214 page book on the history of a storied campground and community in the Upper Midwest, that will be the sixth book I've finished since the start of COVID, but one in which is not available to an outside audience but the other five.....  I've also even finished a magazine article on rare butterflies, and way too many blogs, although truth be told, I have not put too many blogs up this summer as I have just been too busy writing. 18 months of lock down, isolation and I somehow got in the biggest creativity and researching mode of my life.  All thanks to COVID.

I decided to not list any of these books on Amazon, as I'd have to sell 10-20 books to put through the costs of one, and on the historical books, writing them was more about sharing things I liked or were meaningful to me, than making money, but I would like to lose less money on any project.  So all of these are available from me, directly, email me at storolaf@yahoo.com.

Book events, I did just two.  I am have a presentation of my Rolite book in Grantsburg on the 14th for the Rotary Club, and other that will be me only event for this book.  A little advertising on Facebook, a couple of emails and well, I sold a few, good enough.

So here is what I put together:

ROLITE: Eggs to Nails to Tin Cans

The history of Grantsburg's niche camper manufacturer that existed from 1960-1973.  Selling a book describing a niche manufacturer that only made 6065 campers and the last one was built 48 years ago.  Lots of good memories there with the original motorized pop-up hard-sided camper.  It was not a perfect book, the information on the company is quite scattered and unfortunately a couple of people have information and we just could not connect, for reasons unclear.  Oh well, in not too many years all of what I did not put in here will be gone.    

So back to 1967.....the year my great uncle showed me a competing brand and I was not very impressed, so he bought a Rolite.  Well sort of....

From photos of the trailers to even photos from inside the plant.  I even got to do a book event at the Grantsburg Rotary Club.

CLUB ORIENT: A Photographic History

This is a photographic history of St Martin's iconic clothing optional resort destroyed four years ago from Irma, and first opening in 1981.  Of course it is NSFW, and as I did marketing for the resort in 2008, and with all I had, who else could put this together?  I managed to get photographic work from four world renowned photographers to include, stumbled upon some other tidbits and put together a colorful 230 page 8.5 x 11 book with 200 photographs to catch the flavor of a place like no other in the world. It also includes shots from the 1992 movie "Treasured Island" shot there, not an Academy Award winner but a rather funny little movie produced by an European travel agency as a marketing project and released to get people to think about the place.

If you want to see the uncensored views of this one-of a kind place destroyed on September 6, 2017, this is it, but if photos such as these offend you, this IS NOT the book for you.  This is an accurate depiction of life on the Caribbean's largest and most famous naturist beach, so I just depicted life of what was photographed and the way it was.   It is a place you can still dream about, paradise on earth.

Brown Boobies, Hairy Peckers, and Great Tits.

Although this book documents my (our) experiences from 2017 through Covid 2020, it mostly looks at our 2019 adventures around the world to see places less travel and less attired to a circumnavigation of America by RV, to South America, a voyage across the south Atlantic, safaris in Africa, and life in France, I visit places some do not even know exist.  Definitely, the road less traveled. 

We followed in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, famous author Robert Heinlein, and Thor Heyerdahl along with many other notable people and events at many of our stops.   

From the grave of Ernest Shackleton of South Georgia Island 

To the beach where Charles Darwin first came ashore on South America aboard the HMS Beagle and maybe where he conceived his theories on evolution of species while bathing in Uruguay

To Olaf cruising around with 2000 naked people all over the Caribbean 

GRANTSBURG: The Golden Years

The history of Grantsburg Wisconsin, my hometown from about 1920 to 1985.  I wrote this as a bucket list item with my mother (that was the bucket list item).  Grantsburg has had some quirky past and many interesting businesses and as such, this 420 page book, was a very nice and so far, well received historical document of the community.

 

We discuss mail order brides, a decade of lying about the weather, an opera diva, bank failures, a toll bridge empire, and well, many of the characters along the way

Dr Anne Carlsen, a woman who made severe handcapped seem normal (being given a award from Richard Nixon)

To Dr. John Toepfer, the man who literally wrote the book about the greater prairie chicken, a person I met randomly looking for the birds back in college

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The Search for Paradise

This is a compilation of many of my photographs from all over the world.  I look at 50 of my favorite places

The photos include butterflies, landscapes, animals, and birds from six continents, and the arch in Malta no longer even exists

Magazine Articles:

My research on photography of two South Dakota threatened and endangered butterflies which will be feature in the South Dakota Magazine next spring:  Dakota skippers and regal fritillaries need to be saved. 

Dakota Skipper

Regal Fritillary 

So that is what I did last summer.....next winter and summer IDK, maybe I actually send Christmas cars.