Minutes from Friday, October 10, 2025
Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from Toastmaster Dave Burr who was filling dual roles today. Dave delivered our weekly One World Many Voices meeting opener, commenting on the acts of violence of U.S. missiles against boats in Venezuelan waters and the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Venezuelan Maria Corina Machado, in recognition of her work against an authoritarian regime. This led us into our moment of silence in recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality. Dave then segued into his role as Toastmaster of the Day. He led a quick round of introductions for our guests, Robert Shephard and Paulina, reminded us of the use of the bias flag as a tool toward becoming a more conscientious speaker, and introduced the word of the day “relegate”.
Toastmaster Stiles Burr introduced our first speaker, Toastmaster Abdulrahman Albazie who spoke on the topic “The Pursuit of a Good Life.” This can be a seemingly indefinable goal but Abdulrahman was able to share the results of the Global Flourishing Study which was conducted with over 200,000 participants in 22 countries. Core measures ranked high to low were happiness, physical and mental health, meaningful purpose, virtue, and lastly financial or material stability. Modern society tends to value things as signs of prosperity and flourishing, but this did not play out as such in the study.
Toastmaster Chang Yu introduced our second speaker, Toastmaster Melissa Dutmers who delivered a 5-7 minute talk entitled “A tool for you- how to write and deliver a good speech.” Melissa had researched and described the framework of a Ted Talk, which she first defined for those who may not be familiar with these events. Key elements, which could be applied to any speech, were to start with an iterative approach. The initial plan may branch off as the speaker prepares and it is beneficial to allow yourself to be flexible. It should have a strong opening, contain one liners to capture the audience, and be engaging as well as structured. It is also important to to remember that less is often more, as too much detail can make it difficult for the audience to follow. This was a valuable talk with key points that apply to each of us as members of Toastmasters.
Table Topics was led by Toastmaster Matthew Choate. Matthew had an engaging and sometimes comical group of questions for us. We were able to enjoy responses from 10 of our group. The following are some of the questions. What age would you like to be again? If you were hiking along a trail in the woods, would you take a path marked “Shortcut” that was not on the map? Would you open the secret door you found in the basement of a deep discount home you had purchased while knowing the previous owners had gone missing? If lying were absolutely impossible, how would that change your life? If you could be an animal, which animal would you be?
We then moved onto the Breakfast of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations. Toastmaster Bettina Ross served as our General Evaluator, turning it over to Stiles to complete Speaker 1 evaluation and then to Chang to complete Speaker 2 evaluation. Toastmaster Syed Shah and Toastmaster MC Adnan filled the Grammarian and Timer roles.
Food for thought:
I would choose 18 years old and tell myself everything will be OK.
The good life is not a destination, but a way of being.
We need to face our fears in order to live a courageous life.
Roles for Friday, October 17 are as follows:
Opening- Anu
Toastmaster – Melissa
Speaker 1 – Norris
Speaker 2 – Kendra
Table Topics – Tom
Gen Evaluator – Matthew
Evaluator 1 – Abdul
Evaluator 2 – Tina Joe
Timer – Guinara
Grammarian – Sophie
