Toastmaster & President Kerstin Haase greeted members and opened the meeting with a note on the fear of not paying attention to the happenings around us. Remembering the incident of George Floyd that occurred a few blocks from her cousin’s house in Minneapolis, Kerstin recalled the impact the incident left on her cousin as a reminder to observe the world around us, and the injustices and struggles meted against the less privileged in our society.
Kerstin encouraged us, as toastmasters, to acknowledge the challenges we face with unconscious bias when speaking and recognize those biases to support each other to become competent speakers.
Toastmaster of the day, Norris Bass introduced the “Word of the Day” (WOD), “Aspire,” meaning to direct one’s hopes or ambitions towards achieving something. Norris expanded on the meaning by referencing people doing great things in their life to accomplish something. In particular, the success of Sunisa “Suni” Lee, an American artistic gymnast, 2024 Olympic team champion and all-round & uneven bars and 2021 Olympic all-around gold medalist. During the first half of 2023, Lee was diagnosed with two rare kidney diseases, leaving her entire gymnastics career in jeopardy. Aiming still to make the U.S. Olympic team for Paris 2024, with a new perspective and a modified training regimen, Lee worked through her health condition to only return to the Paris 2024 Olympics six months later and be recognized as one of the top performers for the U.S. Olympic Women’s gymnastics team.
Toastmaster & President Kerstin introduced the first speaker of the day, Toastmaster John Doggett, to deliver his speech titled, ‘How to milk a Cow and a Goat,’ highlighting his whole farm experience including animals, work, and with 4-H, a U.S. based youth organization that provides kids with positive youth development, mentorship, and education. 4-H in the name refers to Head, Heart, Hands, and Health. John shared his story of growing up as a kid on his grandparents’ farm with his siblings, learning ways of farming and milking cows and goats on the farm, and now raising his children on the farm, and teaching them farm ways of life and living. Being an active 4-H member gave John and his siblings the opportunity to visit other farms with neighbor farm kids and adults, attend 4-H meetings, and travel to places for shows and fairs, including country fairs, state fairs, and more. As a 4-H member John shared pride in his fun-filled experiences, and in learning how to take care of animals, and in turn taking care of his family, life, and work.
President Kerstin congratulated John on a well written speech in storytelling format, coupled with examples and explanations offering insights into his farming life. Commending on John’s teaching approach to sharing his message without any authority and grandiose, Kerstin pointed to his efforts to speak from his heart and soul in his message and with appropriate vocal variations and hand gestures to support. While recognizing John’s exceptional ability to stay far enough from the camera for the audience to see, Kerstin also urged John to avoid reliance on his notes, and practice TED talk approach to appear conversational and extemporaneous.
Toastmaster Hema Kellett introduced the second speaker of the day, Savannah Murphy, to present pocket speech on her journey so far in Mexico since her move a few weeks ago. Savannah shared her experience of moving to Cancun with her partner, challenges at the new place, and learning ways to navigate the new place, including people, food, culture, and most importantly learning Spanish to engage in conversations with the locals. From 105F heat in the kitchen, to fresh cool winds blowing through the large open windows, infestation of ants, and visit of hurricane Barrel, the experiences kept their lives and days interesting, exciting, and invigorating. Their aspirations to become Mexicanas, build new relationships, learn local phrases, take Spanish speaking lessons, and to learn slangs, showcased their excitement and enthusiasm for their new venture. Savannah reminded the audience that being in a new place and learning a lot showed them new ways of experiencing and living their lives by choice and urged us to aspire to make choices that we would never have but dreamed of and not let things intimidate us.
Toastmaster Hema commended Savannah on her delivery of a truly engaging speech filled with stories, examples, and fun filled insights into her day-to-day experiences in a new place. Commending on Savannah’s ability to speak off-the-cuff on an unplanned topic, Hema highlighted Savannah’s vocal variation, facial expressions and upper body gestures that supported her on point, hilarious storytelling, and motivational speech.
Toastmaster Anu Parvathaneni thenled the table topics session using the word of day aspire. Remembering some great women politicians and leaders, Anu invited members to share their thoughts on various WOD based topics, their aspirations, beliefs, values, etc.,
Toastmaster Dave Burr served as the General Evaluator for the day and offered members evaluations on their performances. Aspiring for some calm and peace while vacationing at the Carolina beach, Dave reflected on the speeches that taught us all something new and encouraging.
Toastmaster Kendra Hiatt served as the Timer. Using two colored tennis balls and a pillow, Kendra engaged us with the colorful objects to remind us of our speaking time. As a grammarian for the day, Toastmaster Anu commended on a few clean speeches and reminded us to pay attention to the use of fillers ‘ah,’ and ‘ums.” Anu also captured a few quotes from speeches that were motivational including ‘Embrace change to grow yourself,’ and ‘Know what you put in your body, mind and soul.’
Toastmaster Dave transitioned from general evaluations onto Toastmaster of the day Norris for closing. Norris transitioned to President Kerstin whoofficially adjourned the session with a quick overview of the activities and speeches and invited us all to continue to aspire to becoming better speakers.
The next Sunrise Toastmasters meeting will be at 7 a.m. on August 9, EST. If you would like to join our meeting as a guest, contact us for the meeting link.
The roles for the next meeting are as follows:
Toastmaster: Abdul
Speaker 1: Hema
Speaker 2: Tina Joe
General Evaluator: Savannah
Table Topics: Kerstin
Evaluator 1: Stiles
Evaluator 2: Dave
Timer: John
Grammarian: Anu
