Our parking lot attendant, President Bill Kovach, did a great job with semaphores, getting us and 10 guests to our temporary meeting room on Monday evening. The good news is that our next meeting on Monday, November 16, 2009 at 6:00 will be back in the big conference room in Building E at 5775 Glenridge Drive. Here is our agenda for November 16th.
Toastmaster: Steve Cohn GE: Rui Li TR: Iris Grimm
Speakers: Rich Hart CP: Paul Johnson
Cara Iovino GR: DonnaSatchell
Vicki Willard
Please confirm your role with Steve or find a replacement. Steve conducts a well organized and fun meeting, though he’ll have to stretch himself to be as sweet, graceful, and gracious as last night’s Toastmaster, Donna Satchell. She tied the entire meeting together with peanut butter and a smile. We were pleasantly shocked to learn that November is National Peanut Butter Lovers’ Month. A great teller of stories and peanut butter lover, Paul Johnson was first to speak.
Paul’s mission was to deliver a touching story from the Storytelling Manual, Project #4. That’s exactly what he did in his speech “A day to Decide, A Day to Remember.” We met Paul’s mom through the eyes of toddler Paul, clanging pans and playing space ship in the kitchen cabinets, grade schooler Paul, chunking mortar out from between the bricks of his home, teenager Paul, playing in band, and adult Paul, loving son. To his amazement, she’d been a patient and understanding mom throughout his life. She retired to Florida in 1979 and their in-person visits became limited, even in the years following the death of his father. However, the day came in 2006 when his mom at age 87, decided it was time to move close to Paul and his family. In 2008, she was diagnosed with advanced cancer and given barely two months to live. Paul compared life to a vacation and gave us three guide posts. Life, like a vacation, is over before you know it. Live according to your beliefs, experience life, do things that create a history, and finally gather memories, these are shared and processed experiences. Even if your mom doesn’t set the car on fire, or own a dolphin bathroom rug, make each day a day to remember. Paul has a lot of wonderful memories.
Peanut butter must be 90% peanuts to be called peanut butter. Our next speaker is 100% Toastmaster, our SRT President, Bill Kovach. His speech, “That Darn Dog”, was to be entertaining and of course, it was. Bill used his dog Baby to focus on annoying habits which limited her experiences. Bill drew her yard paths, on the white board, creating a triangle comfort zone which Bill aptly called her terror barrier. People, like Bill’s dog Baby, stay within their comfort paths, rarely venturing towards the woods or to what they haven’t experienced. When this collection of habits comes to rule our lives, it is known as a paradigm. Bill listed three keystones for breaking out of habit limiting behavior. 1. A strong desire, 2. Reinforcement of realistic goals, and 3. Total belief, there is no half-stepping. Bill passed out cards and asked us to list habits we wanted to break. He showed us the tattered card list he used it to reinforce breaking his annoying habits. He interspersed his talk with an enlightenment story, his battle with cigarettes, and then suggested books he’d read and highly recommended. An entertaining and motivational speech, Bill!
We had a no-food break but found satisfaction chewing the fat with our guests and each other. Guest Oscar Hoffer’s name was drawn for table topics. He entertained us with how to motivate your children through falsehoods and collusion with your neighbors while out trick or treating. I hope I got that right, Oscar!
GE Kelly Vandever called on her evaluation team. Keith recorded Paul and his disk was formatted and ready. Timer Jon Schwartz reported that Paul’s speech was within his requested time. However, Jon gave a couple of “A hems” to Bill for exceeding his time and to Claudia for her non-30 second eval! Rui Li pointed up several excellent turns-of-phrase and a couple of speaking misdemeanors, but declared meeting ahs and ums missing. Kelly praised Donna for a well run and fun themed meeting. We now know that most smooth style peanut butter fans are East Coast folks and yep, West Coasters like it chunky.
If you haven’t bookmarked www.toastmastersatlanta.com, do it now! Bill thanked Rich Hart for facilitating our meeting place. Thanks to each of you for attending our meeting and straining to be on your best behavior for our guests. Their feedback was positive, even glowing! SEE YOU ALL ON NOVEMBER 16TH AT 6:00
