05/24/05 Geospeakers Meeting Summary

Our VP, Shane Detweiler, standing in for an absent Ann Gunderson, rocked our 5/24/2005 meeting open with a "howdy-doodeli neighborino!" We had some Club Business right off including our new slate of officers for 2005-6:

• President: Chris Gutmacher
• Education VP: Shane Detweiler
• VP Membership: Ann Gunderson
• VP Public Relations: Mitch Smith (with help from Stephanie)
• Secretary: Carol Reiss
• Treasurer: Carol Reiss
• Sargeants-At-Arms: Gretchen Luepke Bynum and Gary Curtis

We also had 4 guests with us: Daniel Malmon (his second visit), Mary Caroline Meade-Mattly (her second visit as well), Liz Streckert, and Sharon Metzler.

Toastmaster for the day was Carol Reiss who introduced our topic for the day, "finding your voice," by noting when each member of our club had joined in an effort to find their voices. Carol introduced Master Evaluator Mitch, who in turn introduced his team: Gretchen stepped in as timer today. Cynthia was wordmaster/grammarian, providing a very insightful quote from Emily Post on people who talk too much and say too little, and giving us the word of the day, "Verbalize." Lauri was Ah Counter and he gave a very creative intro to his role, spicing up the explanation with hand-signs. Evaluating for the day would be Shane and Chris.

Neil Shapiro gave the first prepared speech, working his persuasive talents on the topic of "I Won't Take the Initiative." Neil delineated the increasingly undemocratic nature of the state proposition process that has been hijacked by big moneyed interests. Neil moved deftly from the very personal of having to deal with petition signature gatherers outside Safeway to the larger political realm of our state legislature.

Stephanie Ross followed Neil with her prepared speech called, "Finding Your Voice." Here she described workshops and books she had read on the subject of finding-and raising-one's voice to speak out in public. Some of the advice she got helped her and some she found less enthralling, but she gleaned out the best of it for us in her speech.

Stephanie did double duty today as our Table Topics Master in addition to her speech. Table topics continued her focus on finding one's voice, but now she directed her questions toward us instead of herself. She provided an inflatable microphone to each of us so that we did not forget about our voice and the need to speak up (and the antics of Shane and I with the mics had everyone rolling in the aisles! Well, not really). Stephanie also handed out a list of questions that we could choose our table topic subject from. They included:

1. Have you ever felt that you were not heard? Why do you think it happened? What could you have done differently?
   Carol thinks it has to do with lack of confidence. Mitch also answered this, explaining how loonies in the Green Party often are heard better than the quieter, saner voices.
2. Have you ever taken someone else's advice even though it didn't feel right? How did you feel? Did things turn out as you would have liked or was there something missing?
   Mary Caroline answered this, talking about some bad investment advice she wishes she had not taken.
3. Have you ever wished you'd spoken up about something? What stopped you?
   Lauri described his frustration at not having the courage, or quite knowing what to say, to his racist neighbors. Neil talked about not speaking at a meeting deciding the fate of an organization because other people had already voiced similar opinions. Gretchen talked about her co-worker who had welfare ambitions. Liz told a powerful story as well about being sent out to hunt crows when she was a little girl despite being a great animal lover.
4. Have you ever found the courage to speak out about something even though it was difficult for you? Did something help you find that courage?
   Carol gave a brief second answer, describing how Toastmasters had helped prepare her to speak to the local school board about Megan's Law.
5. Have you ever used humor or a creative method to get a point or message across?
   Cynthia explained her secret for getting men to obey her every whim! (At least those having to do with closet re-design).
6. Is there anything you currently wish you had the courage to speak up about?
   Daniel told a story about finding a mentally retarded man living in a car out in the desert and learning that the local ranger cared nothing about his welfare. Chris answered this with a discussion of her noisy neighbors and their noisy dog.

Our newcomers almost swept the trophies with Daniel getting Most Interesting and Liz sharing Most Eloquent with Chris. Cynthia kept up the hometeam pride by taking Most Humorous.

Evaluations were provided for Neil by Shane, who noted Neil's poise and grace and the difficulty of finding too much to improve upon in the speech. Chris gave similar high praise to Stephanie's speech.

After the Timer and Ah Counter and Grammarian reports, Mitch gave the overall evaluation for the meeting, noting how Gretchen had refused to allow us to misplace the timer reports as we all too often did. Lauri also got kudos for his creative introduction of the role of Ah Counter. Mitch also asked us to push our creativity in Table Topics by fibbing more in order to make a good story or a more eloquent shape to the extemporaneous talk. But the day's Table Talks were among the best in no small part due to the penetrating questions Stephanie came up with.

Shane closed out our meeting and due to the 2 speeches we ran about 10 minutes over.

Geospeakers Home   |   About Geospeakers   |   About Toastmasters International
Map and Directions   |   About this site   |   Links
Officers   |   Meeting Schedule   |   Meeting Summaries   |   Memorable Club Events