May 12th, 2015 Theme: Birthdays

“I wanted to buy a candle holder, but the store didn’t have one. So I bought a cake.” – Mitch Hedberg

Welcome to the celebration of the double anniversary of Toastmasters and our Club meeting in May blog. Today, we had 10 guests and a single digit aged child and infant with us.  

For this special meeting, Jim was our toastmaster and hosted a catered meeting with the theme of birthdays. (One of our guests, Nate S. celebrated his birthday today as well.)

There was no GATE team nor any Speech Evaluators.  

Jean was our only speaker today. She completed her 1^st new speech from the Competent Communicator Manual Project 1. The speech was entitled “The Ripple Effect” and was delivered within 15 minutes. 

Jean first talked about Ralph Smedley (1878-1965), who designed and created Toastmasters on March 24, 1905 (unofficially), meeting in a room at YMCA (men only) in Bloomington, Illinois. The purpose of the Toastmaster Club was to teach members how to speak, conduct meetings and plan programs. Regardless of where Ralph relocated in the YMCA network, the clubs he founded did not survive his absence. Finally, in 1924, in a brand new YMCA in Santa Ana, CA, the first Toastmaster International Club (#1) occurred on October 22, 1924 and in 90 years has grown to 313,000 members in 126 different countries. To replicate the club organization and structure, he wrote a pamphlet about the 10 rules for Public Speaking. [See more information about Ralph Smedley  and  Toastmasters history.]  
Early meetings offered 3 minute speeches,1 Minute evaluations and 1 minute table topic talks.

   

Jean  next talked about the founding of our Club, Public Speaking Northwest (#9406). It was begun in 2003 in Bothell and moved to several places including the Bothell Police Department, until it finally found it’s current location at the Seattle Times Building.  At that time, There was a course called the Speechcraft.

Jean concluded her speech by inviting the audience to sing Happy Birthday to Ralph (in a picture on a chair) and to our club.

 

Barb was the Table Topics Master for today’s meeting. She invited volunteers to talk about What Toastmasters means to me, first in their native language and then translated into English.  This was a very exciting way to hear multiple languages spoken. [As far as I could tell, Toastmasters is pronounced “Toastmasters” in all the non-English languages.] 

 

Naser spoke in Malayalam incredibly fast and then translated it into English, also very fast. All I could get was that he talked about Toastmasters.  :-) 

 

Alberto, one of our guests, spoke in Mexican and disclosed that he came here to learn to speak English to supplement the one course he took. He was also startled as he noticed that the Mexican Restaurants here didn’t serve real Mexican food. For example, sour cream is an American condiment and rice and/or beans are eaten and served at home, not in a restaurant.

Amritha conversed in Hindi (which was derived from Sanskrit) about Toastmasters allowing her to offer her ideas and a place to ask for help.

 

  Jung who spoke in Korean, talked about all the holidays that Korea celebrates in May:

May 4: Labor Day; May 5: Children’s Day; May 8: Mother’s Day; May 15: Teacher’s Day (as well as an ancient King’s Birthday)

Grace talked in Chinese (Mandarin?), about a story of two wood cutters who had a contest to see who could cut more wood. The younger wood cutter cut wood continuously with no breaks; The older wood cutter cut wood for an hour and then took a 5 minute break. The older wood cutter won the contest and when asked how come he could cut more wood, he said, he took a 5 minute break to re-sharpen his saw.

Chizuko spoke Japanese, about her 7 years of experience and living in several places in the United States and Canada and is now residing in the Pacific Northwest.

Announcements:

Pat Sultan, our Division E Governor, announced a presentation by Bruce Meaker, DTM about Effective Evaluations. He will be appearing at the Willows Voices Toastmasters Club located at 11715 North Creek Parkway S. #110 in Bothell, WA on June 5, 2015 at 7AM-8AM.  

Jim announced that he will be working on organizing a Toastmaster Club for Kids. This is called a Gavel Club. It will be starting up later in the summertime. Diana has been instrumental in causing this to become a soon-to-be reality. Help and support were requested by Jim.

Attendees were:  Linda, Jean, Jim, Robert, Barb, Lynne, Naser,  Sue,  Pauline,  Grace, Chizuko, David A., Diana, Kathy, Kimberley, Preston, Amritha, Jung as well as 12 guests: Nate S., Donna H., Mia, Yan Z., Diana’s Husband Howard W, Diana’s Daughter, Jackie M., Pat S., Alberto,  Tensina K. and baby Alina (See above), and Yosh I.  

 
Jackie M. joined our club today. This increases our membership total to 28.

~~~~~ Respectfully Submitted by Robert, the Secretary [Why not comment while I’m away?] ~~~~~