Minutes from Friday, March 28, 2025
Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from our President, Toastmaster Kerstin Haase. She started by reminding us that March is Women’s History Month and citing some important dates and individuals in history such as women gaining the right to vote in 1920 and the historic 1955 bus ride of Rosa Parks, in which she refused to give up her seat. This led us into our moment of silence in recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality. She concluded with reminders such as use of the bias flag as a tool toward becoming conscientious speakers before turning the reins over to our Toastmaster of the Day, Toastmaster Norris Bass. Norris introduced the word of the day “love” defining it using the Ancient Greeks seven types of love. Among those described, particular mention was given to the importance of loving oneself as a tool for being able to love others. Norris also described selfless or universal love being the “pay it forward” type of love, the act of giving or caring for others for the shear joy of it without expecting return.
Toastmaster Bettina Ross introduced our first speaker, Toastmaster Kendra Hiatt who spoke on the topic “Rise up- adventures in baking”. Kendra described how her interest in cooking & science, and watching hobby bakers on the Great British Bake Off led her to take on the challenge of baking bread. The science of baking became evident to her in watching these individuals from all walks of life with the common ingredient of an absolute love for baking. It served as an impetus for her to try again, sustain some failures, but plug on to success. Kendra described some of the important tools she uses such as her digital scale for weighing ingredients and microwave as a closed environment ideal for use as a proofing box, and led us through the steps toward achieving two beautiful loves of bread boosted with quinoa for extra protein. She was looking forward to her toast with coffee after Toastmasters!
We improvised to fill an unexpected absence today, with an extended Table Topics session which was led by Toastmaster Abdulrahman Albazie. He had planned well to incorporate our word of the day with a list of 30 questions to choose from by number. We were able to appreciate how our understanding of love evolves and grows over our lifetimes, the idea that love can exist despite an absence of trust, and how some can creatively show their love for family and friends through acts that may be seen as ridiculous (e.g. swinging on a rope like Tarzan to splash into a beautiful, aquamarine cenote).
We then moved onto the Breakfast of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations. Toastmaster Tim Murphy served as our General Evaluator and turned it over to Tina Joe to complete Speaker 1 evaluation. Toastmaster Summer Murphy served as Grammarian and Toastmaster Dave Burr served as our Timer.
Food for thought:
Last week’s meeting and Norris’ love for Sunrise Toastmasters inspired his choice for the word of the day.
Love is complex and there are many ways of seeing and expressing it.
Amor is big love, lo quiero is valued and personal love.
Roles for Friday, April 4, 2025 are as follows:
Toastmaster: Savvy
Speaker 1: Dave
Speaker 2: Kerstin
Table Topics: Stiles
Gen Evaluator: Tina Joe
Evaluator 1: Anu
Evaluator 2: Norris
Timer: Matthew
Grammarian: Abdulrahman
