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 3rd
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
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] ~~~~~
Robert, your minutes/blogs show us why guests become members. You always highlight the great speeches, super evaluations, and fun jokes. You also demonstrate how our meetings include great content, camaraderie, and team spirit.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your superb summaries. You've done an awesome job as secretary this toastmaster year. I will miss your creative and clear writing.