Our magnanimous President, Kelsey Long, opened this week’s meeting by introducing the visiting Division F Director, Joyce Morant. Joyce talked about the upcoming District Conference and encouraged all members to attend. After Joyce’s informative talk, Kelsey segued into our weekly discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement by noting the importance of celebrating the accomplishments of our black citizens. She heralded the achievements of astronaut Jessica Watkins, the first black woman to go on an extended mission in space. Kelsey shared an inspirational quote from Watkins before leading us into our usual minute of silence in support of the BLM movement. After a quick reminder about our new club policy on flagging bias, Kelsey turned over the meeting to the Toastmaster of the day, Savannah Murphy.
We had 13 members and one guest in attendance. Savannah chose blink as her word of the day, and encouraged members to work that word into their talks before turning the meeting over to the first speaker of the day.
Tim Murphy presented a Level 2 project on using Effective Body Language from the Presentation Mastery pathway. In his speech titled “Interdependent Individualism” Tim talked about the major themes he has taken from interviewing people for a book he is writing. After talking with 30 “digital natives,” or people who have grown up with access to the internet, Tim has gathered perspectives on the broad categories of communication, health, education and fitness. His takeaway is that this generation is creating their own individual interpretations of being human, and recognizing the need to appreciate others’ individualism, thus creating a more “kind” interdependence. Tim closed by voicing hope for the future based on this new perspective of “human kind.” Karen Rhodes served as Tim’s evaluator, noting that he started with a very professional opening and that the speech was well organized. Karen also complimented Tim on making the speech interactive by pausing to have the audience relate the talk to their own experiences.
Greg Sutton was the second speaker and gave a speech titled “Be Kind, Don’t Rewind.” Greg started his talk with a look back to his childhood when renting VHS tapes was popular, and each rental store had a sign that said, “Be Kind, Rewind!” Greg then transitioned into talking about how we can sometimes be unkind to ourselves by giving too much focus on past mistakes. He used personal anecdotes to illustrate how we are often more forgiving of mistakes that others make than we are of our own blunders. He closed by asking us all to give ourselves grace and encouragement and to “be kind and don’t rewind.” Greg’s evaluator, Renuka Korlipara, noted that his talk was clear and not rushed, and that repeating his key phrase made it more memorable. Renuka also praised Greg’s eye contact and use of humor throughout the speech.
Anu Parvathaneni served as Table Topics Master, and challenged the group to “sell” products using only language available during the time period the product was invented. Members and our guest extolled the virtues of gramophones, ball point pens, diesel engines, x-ray machines and band-aids.
Dave Burr served as the General Evaluator, and gave a thorough review of the meeting. Kerstin Haase filled in as the Timer, and reported on times for the prepared speeches, Table Topics responses and speech evaluations. Alvin Powell served as Grammarian, and noted the grammar faux pas and filler words used by individual speakers in the meeting.
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Sunrise Toastmasters is exceptionally proud of Amelya Black for representing our Club, Area and Division in the District 37 International Speech Competition. Although she will not be moving to the next level in the competition, Amelya’s dedication and outstanding performance have been inspirational.
The May 6 meeting will be the last meeting (for a while anyway) for our wonderful president and friend, Kelsey Long, before she starts a new chapter of her life in San Francisco. We will miss you, Kelsey!
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The next Sunrise Toastmasters meeting will be at 7 am, May 6 EST on Zoom.
The roles for that meeting are as follows:
Toastmaster: Anu
Speaker 1: Karen
Speaker 2: Norris
Table Topics: Summer
Gen. Evaluator: Tim
Speaker 1 Eval: Greg
Speaker 2 Eval: Maria
Timer: Kerstin
Grammarian: Kelsey
Be kind to yourself! Join us at Sunrise Toastmasters and start your interdependent individual journey to become a more confident speaker and a more effective leader!
