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Our April 8 meeting will be an Open House. The meeting will include guest speaker Linda-Marie Miller, 1st Runner Up at The World Champion of Public Speaking in 2020, who will give a talk titled titled “The Power of Your Voice Can Change Everything.” There will also be two Table Topics sessions so as many people as possible get a chance to speak. Invite your friends, family and co-workers to join us on Zoom for this special meeting.
Amelya Black will represent Sunrise Toastmasters at the Division F Speech Contest on April 9. The contest will be from 9AM until Noon on Zoom. We are proud to have Amelya representing our club and welcome everyone to log in to the contest and show our support!
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Our mindful President, Kelsey Long, opened this week’s meeting by sharing a story about a business gathering she attended where a vendor did not just give lip service to diversity and inclusion, but listed specific people in their leadership team who are from minority populations. They then pointed out that the hosting company still had a way to go in their efforts toward leadership diversity. Kelsey encouraged us all to find ways to be similarly courageous as she led us into our minute of silence in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. After a quick reminder about our new club policy on flagging bias, Kelsey put on her Toastmaster hat and introduced the theme of the meeting.
We had 14 members in attendance. Kelsey, in celebration of April Fool’s Day, chose playful as her word of the day and spoke about the importance of allowing ourselves to feel joy, even during difficult times. She then turned the meeting over to the first speaker of the day, Dave Burr.
Dave gave an insightful talk about how the history of our country has been crafted to be more a mythology about American exceptionalism than a true telling of events that shaped our country. In his speech titled “What We Learn – History or Mythology” Dave explained that US History taught in schools began as essays written by white males and progressed as textbook publishers altered the language to placate school districts. He reminded us that although we have a shared history it’s only been told from a white perspective. Dave closed with a call to action for each of us to pay attention to where our historical knowledge comes from, and how it is sourced, and to read books from different perspectives. Serving in her first role as an Evaluator, Tanuja Reddy gave Dave feedback, noting that his topic was relevant and interesting. Tanuja also complimented Dave on his connection with the audience and his relaxed and natural speaking style.
Savannah Murphy was the second speaker and gave a Level 4 Elective speech on Creating a Blog from the Effective Coaching pathway. In her talk titled “The Advantage to Being Uncool” Savannah shared her experience of creating a blog on the website tumblr.com. Savannah has been creating posts and fan art about Star Wars for the past six months, an endeavor she describes as uncool but inspiring. With 2000 followers who read her posts and appreciate her artwork, the blog has made her fall in love with creating things again. She noted that sometimes coolness can be the opposite of joy as you cannot be unabashedly who you are. We were fortunate that Savannah shared some of her artwork with the group, which we thought was totally cool. Savannah’s evaluator, Norris Bass, cheered Savannah’s elective presentation, noting that it is the first talk our club has heard on creating a blog. Norris also complimented Savannah on relating her blog experience to the importance of finding fun and joy in what we do.
Alvin Powell served as Table Topics Master, and after a quick April Fool’s joke on us all he then posed questions to the members about April Fool’s Day. Members described waking up early because their brothers changed the clock, neighbors bringing a ‘dinner’ of rocks hidden in silver dishes, and tricking spouses into going on a hike, as well as knowing when a prank might be ok and when it’s best to leave it alone.
Greg Sutton served as the General Evaluator, and gave a thorough review of the meeting, including a new perspective on making sure the timer signals are clear to people with color-blindness. Karen Rhodes was the Timer this week, and reported on times for the prepared speeches, Table Topics responses and speech evaluations. Nereida Sutton served as Grammarian, and noted our grammar faux pas and the word of the day usage as well as some quotes from our speakers that particularly resonated with her.
The next Sunrise Toastmasters meeting will be an Open House at 7 am, April 8 EST on Zoom.
The roles for that meeting are as follows:
Toastmaster: Summer
Guest Speaker: Linda-Marie Miller
Table Topics #1: Tanuja
Table Topics #2: Angela
Gen. Evaluator: Kelsey
Speaker Eval: Savannah
Timer: Renuka
Grammarian: Maria
Invite your friends and family to join us at Sunrise Toastmasters for our Open House on Friday, April 8!
