Minutes from Friday, August 1, 2025
Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from our Vice President of Education, Toastmaster Bettina Ross. Tina Joe reminded us that DEI is not simply meeting a quota and noted that North Carolina A & T University in Greensboro, NC was the tangible and quantifiable education source of many high level Black engineers and agricultural graduates. 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 Abdulrahamn Albazie. Abdulrahman led us through a round of introductions for our guests Yuko Honda, joining us from Japan, and Xiao Zhang, joining us from College Park, MD, before introducing the word of the day “peculiar” and noting that he wanted to use it as an example of embracing the unfamiliar.
Toastmaster Kendra Hiatt introduced our first speaker, Toastmaster Anu Parvatheni who spoke on the topic “Growing and thriving – learning from unusual teachers” and the experience she was currently living: her beautiful, peaceful yard / garden that had transitioned to a jungle in the last few weeks due to a burgeoning and tenacious weed population. Her amazement at the common weed and its lack of need for perfection which allowed it to thrive in soil poor areas and without adequate water or fertilizer was evident. Quite unlike the level of care needed for the more intentional aspects of her garden! Anu had learned to recognize resilience, flexibility, gumption and respect in and for these invaders while acknowledging that did not mean she intended to give up the battle. She was still working on acceptance.
Toastmaster Kerstin Haase introduced our second speaker, Toastmaster Norris Bass who spoke on his experience becoming a certified Life Coach and the process this training entails. Norris explained that class sizes were limited as this program is meant to encourage interaction, with each member taking on roles of coach, client, and observer providing feedback throughout the training which is 60 hours of education and 15 hours of business and marketing. The role of a Life Coach is to help the client a goal, challenge, or dream, to help them make decisions on their own and not give advice. It requires open ended questions that provoke thought and conversation and in that way aids the client in their own decision making. This is particularly important because Norris is aware of moments in a client’s life that are shared with him, and not necessarily the entire picture.
Table Topics was led by Toastmaster Matthew Choate and focused on our word of the day. Toastmaster Melissa Dunmer’s shared that she and her husband had enjoyed a week of hiking and outdoors in Scotland a few years ago. Toastmaster Lucrecia Abasto described fried insects at a summer-fest in Frankfurt, Germany as the most peculiar food she had ever had, and did not care to have again. Toastmaster Stiles Burr, considering himself to be painfully predictable, felt a dose of peculiarity in his life would be a good thing while at the same time saying he did not care to be considered a wild card! Toastmaster Tim Murphy noted that in 2 hr he would likely recall a peculiar encounter with a stranger, but would have to go with the fact that his best friends all had peculiarities and that was why they’re such good friends. Toastmaster Savannah Murphy shared the most peculiar object in their home was likely “Jake”the giant leopard stuffed animal that Savvy has had since 10 years of age and it had traveled far and wide during this time. Toastmaster Summer Murphy chose to also remark on a peculiar food she had tried in Hawaii called Ogo, a dried seaweed with a very distinct flavor and one of the worst things she had ever eaten. Kendra shared her experience with two peculiar creatures, one thought to be exotic flying squirrel encounter in her backyard, and realizing it actually lived in NC. The second creature was just last week while on vacation, a huge banana spider that was as long as her forefinger!
We then moved onto the Breakfast of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations. Stiles served as our General Evaluator, turning it over to Kendra to complete Speaker 1 evaluation and then to Kerstin to complete Speaker 2 evaluation. Toastmaster Kehinde Eniola and Toastmaster Chang Yu filled the Timer and Grammarian roles.
Food for thought:
Normal is only a setting on a washing machine.
Your life is a photo album; I only see the snapshots.
Roles for Friday, August 8, 2025 are as follows:
Toastmaster: Dave
Speaker 1: Kerstin
Speaker 2: Savvy
Table Topics: Tina Joe
Gen Evaluator: Norris
Evaluator 1: Stiles
Evaluator 2: Abdulrahman
Timer: < open >
Grammarian: < open >
