June 30th 2015 Theme: Something About Plants

“If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of 10 years, plant a tree; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people”. ~~ Confucious

 

Welcome to the fifth and last meeting in June blog. Today, we had 3 guests attend our meeting. 

Alice was our toastmaster and told us about unusual carnivorous plants. These included a Pitcher plant that consumes mice (one at a time), Venus Flytraps that eat insects, Squirting Cucumbers (only when ripe) whose output feeds certain caterpillars and Water Lilies that create air pockets and act as clouds for the water they are in.

The GATE  team was: Jim  as Grammarian (Florid), Nicki as the Ah Counter, Grace as the Timer and Kathy as General Evaluator.      

Amritha was our first speaker today. She gave a talk from the Competent Communicator Manual, Project 6 [Use Vocal Variety]. It was entitled “A Lesson From My Daughter” and was delivered within 9 minutes.

Amritha began her talk by role-playing an interaction between her two children, Shreya (older sister) and Yosh (younger brother), who were arguing about who should have Shreya’s water bottle (which Yosh currently possessed). Shreya began to get angry and frustrated. When she noticed this, she calmed herself and started to write and not let her brother see. He soon lost interest and after about 2 minutes, she was calm. Shortly thereafter, they played near two sinks where they dipped magic markers to color the water and showed delight in cooperating.

Shreya demonstrated and Amritha realized the importance of acknowledging and expressing anger in a calm manner. (You can be angry and not upset.) Amritha learned not to suppress anger but let it out by walking, jogging, journaling, drawing cartoons, and sharing with someone else.

Amritha was voted best speaker (tied with Lynne).

Barb was her evaluator. Barb appreciated Amritha’s dramatic role-playing of each of her two children. Barb thought her speech was well-structured, had great pauses, and offered a “Goose-bump” ending.

Barb was voted best evaluator.

Our second speaker was Lynne.  She offered her 3^rd Speech from the High Performance Leadership’s Manual (Project #3 – Lessons Learned). Her speech was called: “Afterglow” and was completed within 7 minutes.

Lynne offered a talk about the lessons learned from her High Performance Leadership Project as Chairperson for the 2015 Opening Day Boat Parade in Everett. She took to heart and learned about her ability to:

• persuade others to help her by volunteering

• solve problems (Co-chair defused a voting issue) by depending on your leadership team

• appreciate those that help by positive feedback, giving more than asked.

Her confidence has increased significantly to take on future leadership activities as a result.

Lynne was voted best speaker (tied with Amritha).

Robert was her evaluator. Robert felt that Lynne was pleasingly flamboyant in her Seahawks fan outfit. He admired her enthusiasm and dramatic cheerleading body language. He also liked her word equation:
  Persuasion = Confidence + 
                         Enthusiasm

He thought that she used props very effectively, such as a Blue-Green wig and pom-poms snatched from her back pockets.

Kathy was our General Evaluator and reviewed the conduct of the club meeting. She complimented the toastmaster, Alice, for her last minute role reassignments due to absentees.  She was pleased with the completeness of descriptions for the 3 GATE Team Roles of Grammarian, Ah Counter and Timer. She was impressed by the speakers and their corresponding evaluators.

Sep(ideh) was our humorist for today. She related a story that her grandfather told her. It concerned a man, who complained of drastic eye pain whenever he drank tea. After going to various doctors and enduring various tests, they could find nothing wrong with him. Finally he went to a sage, who watched him drink tea and offered a surprising alteration in his procedure to eliminate the eye pain.

Attendees were:  Jean, Jim, Kathy, Lynne, Robert, Barb, Pauline, Amritha, Grace, Chizuko, Alice, Nicki, Sepideh, Jung  as well as 4 guests: Julie, Andrew, Rance, Stephanie.

Our active membership total at months end is at 29, with guests Julie, Andrew and Rance joining our club.

Starting in July 2015, Amritha is assuming the role of Secretary. Please offer her your active and written support. It has been a pleasure to preserve the memories of our club meetings in writing.

~~~~~ Respectfully Submitted by Robert, the Secretary [final comments to me] ~~~~~