11_09_04 Geospeakers Meeting Summary

Today's meeting once again showed the club's flexibility and willingness to adapt to changes. Due to the absence of many of the members, we had to do some last-minute role adjustments. But even with a relatively small turnout (seven), we still had a very interesting meeting. Standing in for Club President Ann Gunderson (who was present but still healing from two recent accidents), Shane rocked the meeting open, noted the upcoming District Contest, and galvanized the group with a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't promotion for vision-care benefits. Shane then turned the podium over to Toastmaster Chris Gutmacher.

Chris introduced the theme, "Benefits of Toastmasters Membership". Then Fran Hostettler, Master Evaluator, introduced her Evaluation Team-Lauri Kanerva as Timer, Carol Reiss (doing double duty) as Ah Counter, Shane Detweiter as Wordmaster/Grammerian, and Gretchen Luepke Bynum as evaluator of Carol's speech. Shane noted that the word-of-the-day was "velleity", the meaning of which (slight wish or inclination) is nothing like it sounds. We then moved on to today's speech.

Carol's speech was entitled "Mt. Saint Helens, past, present and future" (#4 from the Technical Presentations Advanced Manual). Carol gave a scientific exposition on our famous volcano neighbor to the north, starting with its eruption history, for which she had actual rocks dated at 23K and 4K years ago recording some of the ancient eruptions. She showed an eruption history of the entire Cascade range, from 4000 years ago to the near-present, which clearly indicated that Mt. Saint Helens was the most likely candidate to blow its top in our time. Then she showed the seismic history of the area just before its major eruption in 1980, and the recent seismic activity giving rise to the smaller, but still dramatic, explosions occurring since October, 2004. She noted that, with these relatively recent eruptions the science has evolved to where predictions and warnings of activity are quite accurate and dependable. She closed with the statement that the past and present of Mt. Saint Helens may be the key to the future.

Then we moved into Table Topics, led by Ann. Ann introduced the theme by mentioning that Geospeakers has given her help in becoming more comfortable revealing her thoughts and personality, even in disparate groups of acquaintances. As examples she mentioned talking with a group of "dousers" (kind of "woo-woo people") and attending a party for Blessing of her new granddaughter, where she felt perfectly fine being a little different. Others expressed where they felt Toastmasters had been beneficial to them.

• The award for Most Interesting went to Lauri, who noted that Geospeakers provides a safe environment in which to become comfortable speaking, and the differences there are between speaking and writing. He is looking for help with speaking more easily, whereas a friend of his could use some help moving from ease of speaking to overcome problems with writing.
  
• The award for Eloquent went to Fran who noted that Table Topics makes it easier to think of things to say on short notice. She mentioned the changes over the years within the group from newcomers struggling to think of something to say to fill the 1-3 minutes required for Table Topics, to feeling much more at ease with speaking off the cuff.
  
• The award for Most Humorous went to Shane, who talked about how encouraging and appreciative the group has been with his forays into humor. He carries on his avocation of humor in writing the GD newsletter every week-which is always a pleasure (and generally a surprise) to read.
  

We finished up the meeting with the speech evaluation. Gretchen gave a thoughtful overview of Carol's speech, with both positive feed-back and a few suggestions for improvement. Shane added the Last Word, and we disbanded until the next meeting on November 23.

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