04/26/05 Geospeakers Meeting Summary

After rocking the meeting to order, President Ann Gunderson introduced the meeting's Galvanizer, Carol Reiss, who led our warm-up vocalisthenics with a playground chant.

Ann then conducted club business:

• First-quarter awards were presented to those absent from the awards' formal announcement at our previous meeting. Carol Reiss and Mitch Smith were rewarded, ironically enough, for perfect attendance. Mitch was also rewarded both for his achieving the Triple Crown of table-topics honors and for his all-stops-out overture of a previous meeting's "Mood" theme.
• We discussed Division C's plans to realign Geospeakers out of Menlo Park's Area C2 and into Palo Alto's Area C3. Thanks to a motion by Carol, seconded by Chris Gutmacher, a vote was taken to propose an amendment to cancel this realignment plan. Everyone voted yes, including Gary Curtis in a chance sidewalk interview after the meeting.
• Chris mentioned a $9/half-year increase in Toastmasters International dues. This met with general acceptance as it was noted that this is the first increase in 10 years.
• Gretchen Luepke Bynum noted that, after 10 years of names, the Toastmaster of the Year (ToY) plaque lacked the space for Shane Detweiler's long name as the 2004 ToY. So a new plate had been put on the plaque with just Shane's name as the headliner for a new decade of ToYs. Gretchen also unveiled a plan to purchase a larger plaque onto which each decade's plate of ToYs could be transfered as each plate becomes full. This larger plaque could be hung on the Geospeakers bulletin board while the old plaque would hold the current decade's ToYs and be in possession of the reigning ToY. An informal vote indicated consensus on Gretchen's plan.
• Ann awarded the newly-plated ToY plaque to Shane amid clamorous acknowledgment.
• Neil Shapiro announced the unanimous acceptance by Geospeakers of Imelda White as a new member. More clamor.

The lectern was then turned over to Neil as the meeting's Toastmaster. After introducing the day's theme, "School Days Memories," Neil let the meeting's Master Evaluator, Lauri Kanerva, introduce the meeting's evaluation team of Chris as Timer, Ann as Ah Counter and Carol as Wordmaster/Grammarian. Carol identified "reminisce" as the word of the day and exemplified its use with a sentence that referred to both school and geology.

This would normally be the phase of the meeting for prepared talks but none was scheduled. Neil resourcefully gruntled everyone by cleverly penning in Harpo Marx to not give a talk on "My Favorite Movie Lines" for the Work Without Words speech 6a, an adjunct to the Work With Words speech 6, from the Communication and Leadership manual. Needless to say, Harpo's mute idiom made easy work for Ann and Carol as Ah Counter and Grammarian.

So the main event of the meeting was Gretchen's Table Topics on "School Days Memories." Gretchen warmed up the topic by saying that her 5th grade teacher completely transformed her bad attitude about school into a lasting verve for learning. Gretchen's questions related to all levels of school, from kindergarten to college, along with questions on reliving some grade, on being a teacher's pet and on teachers in general. Everyone had ready answers -- talk about unsuccessfully-repressed memories! (Actually, Shane did talk about trying to block certain memories.) Gretchen also conducted a poll revealing that only about half of the Geospeakers present had been to kindergarten.

On to evaluations, Lauri did not introduce Chico Marx, whom Neil had penned in to evaluate Harpo's lack of speech, but did revisit Chris, Ann (with half a pen) and Carol for the Timer's, Ah Counter's and Wordmaster/Grammarian's reports.

Neil wrapped up his duties Toastmasterfully with a preview of next meeting's roles, a reminder of the May 13/14 District 4 Spring Conference in Redwood City (details at http://d4tm.org), and the doling out of Table Topics honors. Most Humorous was Shane, for his memories of being chased in high school by "riffraff" with power saws, for his definition of being "sexiled" by college roommates and for his success in setting and achieving the goal of visiting every facility on campus that catered to a certain variety of corporeal functions. Most Eloquent was shared by Ann, for her desire to relive some of the playground frolics of 2nd grade, and Fran Hostettler, for her discussion of her daughter's missing kindergarten and for the story of a friend from their small schoolhouse who died in Vietnam. Most Interesting was Mitch, who began with an admission that he had been too naughty to be a satisfactory teacher's pet and continued with a description of the "evolutionary cycle of fighting" that his classmates and he experienced over the course of many recesses.

Ann regained the lectern and asked Carol to read the Last Word, a humbling quote from Plato about knowledge amounting to little when compared with ignorance. Upon that thought, Ann rocked the meeting to a close.

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