Minutes from Friday, July 11, 2025
Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from Toastmaster Abdulrahman Albazie, leading his first meeting as President of Sunrise Toastmasters. He went over the core mission of Toastmasters being to help members become better leaders and public speakers and noted that Sunrise Toastmasters in particular is a group where all are welcome and all can grow. Whatever your personal goal may be as member, we strive to make it as fruitful as possible for all. This led us into our moment of silence in recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality. The introduction was concluded with reminders such as use of the bias flag as a tool toward becoming more conscientious speakers before turning the meeting over to our Toastmaster of the Day, Toastmaster Anu Parvatheni. Anu welcomed our guest Tasni Tkaredathabdulazis and led us on a round of introductions before introducing the word of the day, “play.” She was in part inspired to select this word as a result of reading the book “The Anxious Generation” which marks the importance of play or playtime in our children’s lives.
Toastmaster Norris Bass introduced our first speaker, Toastmaster Summer Murphy who spoke on the topic “Sign Me Up!” Summer spoke about sign language and her desire to learn it years ago, despite not have a personal connection to the deaf community as an impetus to do so. There are several sign languages throughout the world including American Sign Language (ASL), German, Mexican, and Qatari. As a second language, it is not a common choice among society but is of great value not for just the hearing impaired but also for those with certain health conditions like ALS and Down’s syndrome. Summer described it as fun, much like charades, and that the generous use of facial expressions and gestures can help a person to become a more impactful speaker as well. There are many opportunities available to learn sign language, including You Tube and University Language Centers. Summer would be happy to help point you in the right direction if you have that interest.
Abdulrahman introduced our second speaker, Toastmaster Dave Burr who had volunteered to fill this role by completing a pocket speech (impromptu speaker role). Dave used this as an educational opportunity for the club as well, describing his formula for a pocket speech entitled “Tell me something you wouldn’t know by looking at me” and using the system of 3. In this case, 3 times of his life. Dave told his about his boyhood school friend Ronnie “Skipper” Reagan, and enjoying Icees and “cold headaches” with him. He spoke of his time living in Venezuela, where the garage door opened into the living room… and that is where the car was parked! The hot water heater was always off, so the choice was turn it on and wait for it to heat up or take cold showers. Dave had many cold showers. Last he spoke of his love of airplanes, an easy guess from our view of his office on Toastmasters Meetings. Apparently there are far more airplanes in the office than the one behind his desk that we can see, and in fact he also has the standard “back of the seat” airline instructions on his desk chair!
Table Topics was led by Toastmaster Kendra Hiatt who focused her questions on our word of the day. Toastmaster Stiles Burr described “Bop-It’ as a game he loved to play as a young boy as it was fun & sometimes frustrating, but that hockey was the best example of something he had loved even though he could come home with bruises afterward. Toastmaster Tim Murphy described family vacation travel in their 1969 Ford Country Squire station wagon, as the 8th of 9 children, with 11 family member sardined into the vehicle and fun travel games they played. Toastmaster Chang Yu told us about returning to music and guitar after taking many years off and the added bonus of developing a special connection with his daughter who has also embraced this interest.
We then moved onto the Breakfast of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations. Stiles served as our General Evaluator, turning it over to Norris to complete Speaker 1 evaluation and then to Abdulrahman to complete Speaker 2 evaluation. Toastmaster Kerstin Haase and Tim filled the Timer and Grammarian roles.
Food for thought:
Easy peasy, it’s just brain surgery.
Some screws are a little bit loose.
And that’s a pocket speech!
You are in the right place.
Roles for Friday, July 18 are as follows:
Toastmaster: Norris
Speaker 1: Stiles
Speaker 2: Matthew
Table Topics: Tina Joe
Gen Evaluator: Savannah
Evaluator 1: Kim
Evaluator 2: Dave
Timer: Abdulrahman
Grammarian: < open >
