Minutes from Friday, March 14, 2025
Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from our President, Toastmaster Kerstin Haase. She is traveling for work and joined us from Minneapolis, MN, which has recalled thoughts on the events leading to the death of George Floyd. This led us into our moment of silence in recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality. Kerstin concluded with reminders such as use of the bias flag as a tool toward becoming conscientious speakers before turning it over to our Toastmaster of the Day, Toastmaster Bettina Ross. Tina Joe welcomed us all and introduced the word of the day “invigorate” which has various uses and meanings such as to give life and energy to, stimulate sense, and to animate. She shared her personal sense of invigoration with meeting some of her own goals and dreams and feeling like she’s bringing her “A-game.”
Kerstin introduced our first speaker, Toastmaster Kendra Hiatt who recounted the story of “The highly intelligent raccoon- a camping tale.” She shared photographs and memories of family camping along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Fall with their dog Molly, and a particular night a determined raccoon came to their campsite and stole Molly’s dog food. This was an event that Molly would be unknowingly & forever thankful for, as it resulted in her receiving scrambled eggs for breakfast the next morning and occasional treat of the same for the rest of her life!
Toastmaster Anu Parvathaneni introduced our second speaker, Toastmaster Norris Bass. Norris spoke on the concept of success being a personal matter and not simply meeting the expectations of others. He shared the need to not allow others thoughts overly guide you from your own path as it can lead to “what if” moments in the future. Norris also noted the importance of opportunity as a significant part of the chance for success. He concluded with some surprising factoids of unexpected failure by author Stephen King and artist Vincent Van Gogh.
Table Topics was led by Toastmaster Savannah Murphy who used the words of author Terry Pratchett as inspiration for her questions. There were a variety of thought provoking questions. These ranged from when do you think a need for close-mindedness may be a good thing, how to cope with people who may exhibit too much instinctual action and impulsivity, is it still magic if you know how it works, and is it really a rule if it is ignored. As always, an enjoyable range of answers from all who participated.
We then moved onto the Breakfast of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations. Toastmaster Dave Burr filled the dual roles of General Evaluator and Timer, and even threw the bias flag on himself for using the phrase “manned flight” instead of “human flight”. Kudos to Dave for all of that! He turned it over to Kerstin to complete Speaker 1 evaluation and then to Anu for Speaker 2 evaluation. Toastmaster Abdulrahman Albazie filled the role of Grammarian.
Food for thought:
Speak life into each other.
A brisk walk in the cool morning air is invigorating.
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. Thomas Edison
I’m on battery saving mode.
Roles for Friday, March 21, 2025 are as follows:
Toastmaster- Kerstin
Speaker 1- Savannah
Speaker 2- Abdulrahman
Table Topics- Anu
General Evaluator- Tina Joe
Evaluator 1- Dave
Evaluator 2- Norris
Timer- Kendra
Grammarian- < open >
