Minutes from Friday, May 16, 2025
Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from our President, Toastmaster Kerstin Haase. She mentioned being on campus at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL and a conversation with a surgical provider about “what keeps (him) up at night.” One of these being the loss of research funding and the disproportionate effect this may have on people of color. This led us into our moment of silence in recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality. She concluded with reminders such as use of the bias flag as a tool toward becoming more conscientious speakers before turning it over to our Toastmaster of the Day, Toastmaster Tim Murphy. Tim welcomed our guests Anurag Srivastava and Chang Yu and led us through a quick round of introductions. He then established our positive vibe word of the day “grace” which represents kindness or assistance for others, for no other reason than wanting to be a kind or helpful person and expecting nothing in return.
Toastmaster Summer Murphy introduced our first speaker, Toastmaster Matthew Choate who was presenting his ice breaker speech entitled “Matthew, not Matt.” Matthew gave us a glimpse into his life, mentioning a new position that requires more public speaking which ultimately led him to Toastmasters. He spoke of his lifelong experience with congenital hydrocephalus which requires him to have a VP shunt to drain fluid from his head to his abdomen. Matthew described a 7 year period in which he was plagued with headaches and getting into cycling as an attempt to determine if greater activity would reduce severity and frequency, as well as advocating for himself leading him to new providers. This ultimately led to revision of the shunt and full resolution of headaches. He concluded by reiterating that the VP shunt is here to stay, and that though the headaches had represented years of suffering they had led him to his love of cycling. Bravo Matthew!
Toastmaster Kendra Hiatt introduced seasoned Toastmaster Dave Burr who spoke about “100 Years of Researching Topics.” Dave described how Toastmasters had started in Santa Ana, CA in 1925 with the only potential research opportunities being the public library. We traveled through time with him, as he referenced use of Cliff’s Notes for an 8th grade report on “Last of the Mohicans”, through college and projects requiring the use of microfiche to research published news articles, advancing to the Internet and Wikipedia as a starting point to finding other sources of information, and culminating with Artificial Intelligence or “AI”. Dave recognized AI as a good tool, but noted that it does not recognize attributable sources. He emphasized the importance of completing your own research, knowing where the information is coming from, and that the responsibility to follow this sound advice ultimately lies with the speaker. This was a timely topic in our rapidly changing world.
Table Topics was led by Kerstin, who focused on our word of the day. Toastmaster Bettina Ross shared that she demonstrates grace by speaking with everyone, giving compliments, and sharing her bright smile. Kendra mentioned realizing that in her support of Technicians in her department she may have unknowingly delivered grace, and in return received unexpected grace when she was recognized by a Technician as being a mentor. Summer described some of the greatest challenges in giving grace being when you are in a fundamental disagreement with a person. Chang described the grace he received from his mother as a role model and how she is always thankful to see her children as successful adults.
We then moved onto the Breakfast / Lunch of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations. Toastmaster Norris Bass served as our General Evaluator, turning it over to Summer to complete Speaker 1 evaluation and then to Kendra to complete Speaker 2 evaluation. Toastmaster Savannah Murphy served as Timer and Tina Joe as Grammarian.
Food for thought:
Remind yourself to be kind and not reactive.
We all bleed the same.
Set an example for society.
No AI was used for this speech
Roles for Friday, May 23, 2025 are as follows:
Toastmaster: Kendra
Speaker 1: Abdulrahman
Speaker 2: Norris
Table Topics: Savannah
Gen Evaluator: Tim
Evaluator 1: Summer
Evaluator 2: Stiles
Timer: <open>
Grammarian: Matthew
