It was another challenging and rewarding morning at Sunrise Toastmasters. We had ten members in attendance, including our newest member, John Doggett – welcome, John! We were also fortunate to have one first-time guest, Kerstin Haase, and returning guest, Nereida Sutton, join us for today’s meeting. Our esteemed president, Kelsey Long, opened the meeting with our usual minute of silence in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, reminding us that each small thing we do to fight racism is one more pebble added toward building a mountain of equality.
Angela Marsh served as the Toastmaster and started with a round of introductions in which each person gave a word they associate with the word of the day, “bored.” Sports seemed to be the club’s favorite way to experience boredom, especially baseball and hockey, which each got two votes. Angela also gave us several quotes, sprinkled throughout the meeting, relating to boredom and how it can be a catalyst for positive things to happen.
Our first speaker, Dave Burr, presented a Level 2 project for the Motivational Strategies pathway. With descriptive phrasing and obvious passion, Dave introduced us to a group of mentors that helped him journey from camper to camp counselor at a transformational time in his life. Once achieving his goal of becoming a camp counselor, Dave was given his camp name, Burrito. His speech, titled, “What’s a Blonde Burrito for?” was evaluated by Kelsey Long. Her enthusiastic feedback was overwhelmingly positive, highlighting the expert way in which Dave used vivid imagery to make everyone feel they had visited the camp and met his cast of characters.
Summer Murphy presented the second speech, a Level 3 project from the Visionary Communications pathway. In her persuasive talk, “Let’s Plan to Communicate,” Summer introduced the goal she wishes to achieve during her tenure as club Secretary. She is excited to develop some best practices that will help members improve their personal and professional communications both within the club and within other organizations in which they are involved. Her speech evaluator, Amelya Black, noted that Summer had given the hopeful and encouraging type of talk that keeps Amelya excited about showing up for Toastmasters at 7 am each Friday.
Dustin Johnson often challenges us with a creative, story-telling style of Table Topics, and today was no exception. Setting the scene on an artificial island shaped like a palm tree, Dustin charged each member he called on with weaving an exciting and elaborate tale that included a possible benefactor/possible kidnapper named Tom, a worrisome scorpion/mongoose infestation, a livestock-wrangling Toastmasters group, and a well-placed fence that saved the day.
Norris Bass gave a general meeting evaluation, noting that all roles had been filled and executed in an exemplary fashion. Savannah Murphy reported on the times for each speaker and the adherence to the agenda timing, and John Doggett, in his first role as a Toastmasters member, noted that the speakers had done well with their grammar and word of the day usage. Congratulations, John, on completing your first meeting role!
Next week’s meeting will be at 7 am, July 16 EST on Zoom. The roles for that meeting are as follows:
Toastmaster: Norris
Speakers: (1) Kelsey, (2) Karen
Table Topics: Amelya
Gen. Evaluator: Angela
Evaluators: (1) Anu, (2) Bettina
Timer: John
Grammarian: Nereida
Join us at the next Sunrise Toastmasters meeting for an enlightening experience and another opportunity to grow as leaders and communicators!
