March 28, 2008 by Claudia Brogan.

Folks:
Remember the children’s fable where the character ’spun gold out of straw’? That’s a little what it felt like at our SRT meeting on Monday March 24.

Or, put another way……we were small (in number) …but we were mighty!

I stepped in at the last minute when we realized that there was no substitute Mtg TM confirmed, and I was glad to do so. Every person in the room was put to work fruitfully — if not a speaker, folks were asked to serve to either complete a manual written speech evaluation, or to serve as TR, CP or GE. We had two great speeches and a good round of spontaneous Table Topics. Seven members attended, all with something to do. Here’s how it unfolded:

After setting up the room with a bounty of Easter refreshments & some beautiful fresh strawberries from M.M., we were ready to start. I led the Pledge of Allegiance, and President Pat Schmalzreid offered her welcome and opened the meeting. Then we listened to Merrilee outline for us the great benefits of Daydreaming. Rather that wasteful ‘wool-gathering,’ this practice (as she reminded us) can lead to our dreaming up solutions to problems that stump us, can help greatly with stress relief, and can motivate us to make changes and improvements in our situations. She also talked about the power of being able to ‘imagine completing a project successfully’ with a mental rehearsal and reminded us that daydreaming can help us keep loved ones near. Whether we imagine and reflect on things in our past, or things that have not yet happened, daydreaming is not a habit to scold children to avoid, but actually is good for any of us, any age, any stage.

Our second speaker was Pat, conducting an assignment from an Advanced Manual on “Giving a Toast.” She used this time to practice a wedding toast she’ll be giving in a couple months at former-SRT member Lisa Verhoff’s wedding in the Virgin Islands. Complete with our raising our plastic champagne glasses of Ginger Ale, Pat demonstrated a good balance of sharing affectionate stories about the bride & groom with also giving a sincere, hearty wish for the couple’s best happiness and long lives together.

After a break of Easter goodies and bright red strawberries, we reconvened to conduct a spontaneous round of Table Topics, since speaker #3 was delayed up in Kennesaw for a work project. Our attendees rose to the occasion and hailed this new practice of ours, to insert TT when possible.

We adjourned two minutes early, after our time together of ’spinning gold out of straw.’ We’ll see you next time!

BONUS NEWS: Had you heard this scoop yet? Our own Kelly Vandever won the Division G event of the International Speech contest, held on March 22, and will now advance to the May 3 District Contest. She used that speech she’d presented to us (colloquially titled ‘that one where the arm lifts up’) on Visualization and Positive Beliefs. Congrats, Kelly… good luck ahead.

~~Respectfully submitted,
Claudia B

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March 11, 2008 by Deborah.

Hello Fellow Speakers,

We had a full evening of delightful speeches tonight, and your secretary was late and missed 2 of them. However, that being said I’ll tell you what I know. We had 11 members and 2 guests. We used the room adjoining the parlor and loved it.

Our SAA Keith Schroder welcomed us and helped us pledge our allegiance to the flag.
Paul Johnson was our acting President and welcomed members and guests, then introduced Merrilee Morris, our Toastmaster. Merrilee kept us entertained with “Guess What?” facts – fascinating tidbits about many things including snowflakes.
GE: Donna Satchell
GR: Kelly Vandever
Timer: We had two tonight (!) Jon Swartz and Iris Grimm
Camera Person: Paul Johnson

Our speakers:
Dr. Rui Li gave a persuasive speech on “China, a Threatening Lion to the United States.”

Keith Schroder gave a delightful speech on Mother Goose, fairy tales and networking.

We had two impromptu speeches, as well.
Bill Hosken spoke on “I’ll Never Visit a GA Ghost Town Again!”
Jon Swartz entertained us with “The Doomsday Rock (Asteroid) Is Out There! What’s the Plan?”

We had lots of cookies during our 8 minute break.

Dues are still due for some of you. You will receive calls this week to see if you’re still interested in joining.

BTW, it is our policy that you can become an inactive member if you need to take a break. However, Toastmasters International requires that you continue to pay dues to maintain your Toastmasters membership. Therefore, we’ll still need your $51 from inactive members. Right now we only have 15 dues paying members.

We started on time and ended on time.

See you next week.

My Best,
Deborah Hill
Secretary

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March 8, 2008 by Vicki Willard.

Monday’s meeting was a super treat for lucky attendees!

Claudia presided over a very entertaining meeting that included 5 speakers. Yes… I did say FIVE speakers.

Iris led the evening’s talent with a discussion of “Impromptu Speaking.” Her topic generated much discussion and resulted in a ground swell of interest in adopting new options for our club.

More to come on this in a moment.

Kelly offered us valuable insights into self talk… don’t we all do it. She gave us great food for thought.

After the break we reconvened to put into practice Iris’s suggestions for doing impromptu speaking. Claudia offered each of 3 volunteers 2 topics. Volunteers then spoke 5 minutes on the topic of their choice. There was tons of laughter and creativity.

Everyone agreed that “extended impromptu speeches” were a component that we wanted to add to our meeting agendas.

We all agreed that while we were not particularly interested in 1 or 2 minute table topics, extended impromptu speaking (5 or more minutes) would offer members a new and challenging way to improve their speaking and organizational skills.

Ways to include this option included making one night each month or each quarter strictly impromptu speaking. All roles and speakers would be drawn from a hat after the Presidents welcome remarks.

Speakers could choose from a list of broad topics rather than a specific question. Examples of broad topics might include… current events, politics, religion, personal events, and any other topics of interest that the group chooses to include.

As the TM, GE, TR, GR, and CP explained their roles the speakers could use that time to make a few notes, should they so choose, to organize their thoughts.

The challenge for the speakers would be to deliver a well constructed speech and avoid rambling.

There are any number of ways we can choose to incorporate this new option. Think about it and be ready to offer your input in upcoming meetings.

We had 2 guests each of whom enjoyed our thoroughly entertaining meeting.

Every Monday offers new opportunities for growth and enjoyment! Don’t miss out!!

Be There or Be Square!!!!

Vicki

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