Justin K stepped in as President to start our morning meeting.

Brett was our Toastmaster of the day and shared his perspective of how challenging it can be to catch a moment in time. He suggested we may want to seize the day instead by making the most of the present moment.

Shout out to Jimmy for his role as Sergeant at Arms for doing a stellar job of putting up signage and keeping us in order. He also had the role as an evaluator.

Bo was our Grammarian and introduced her word of the day Momentous. She was our umm and ahh counter and made suggestions to be mindful when using singular vs. plural nouns and using the correct tense of verbs.

Paula kept us on time with her role as the Timer

Dave was our first speaker, and he gave a humorous speech on “Land Mines”, in reference to having to scoop poop in his family’s back yard. He told his story with gestures, jumping, and funny facial expressions as he weaved his descriptive story and used his voice and body for emphasis.

Jovica burst onto the stage portraying Davy Crockett wrestling a bear and took immediate command of the scene as he explained how to keep bears away from people and people’s food away from bears.  His song and dance “the bare necessities” brought down the house with wild applause.

Moises, a guest speaker told a fascinating story of a road trip vacation he took as a child that left him with quite an impression of purposeful happiness. Invest in who and what matters most. Celebrate life!

Saher graciously gave an impromptu speech on how music fills us with emotion and is as important to our survival as our physical needs of food, water, shelter, a mate, and caring for our babies and each other.

Landon was our Table Topics master and asked about moments in time. One example was, “if you could only keep your old memories but not make any new ones, or make new memories but not remember your prior ones, which paradigm would you choose?”.

Justin was the general evaluator for the day.

The theme for today’s meeting was “Baseball”, and Steven started us off on time as the General Manager/President of the club. Kathy was the Toastmaster for the day and greeted the audience with a warm welcome to all the “sports fans”. She used baseball phrases throughout the meeting and even had a seventh inning stretch with a rousing chorus of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

Rachel was the Grammarian and incorporated the word “Agog” into our vocabulary. Isabella was the timer and our unofficial shortstop for the meeting.

Sande gave her second speech from the Pathway  Team Collaboration, and shared tips and tricks to solve the New York Times Crossword puzzle. We learned that Mondays are the easiest day to solve, and the most surprising disclosure was that she finds them more stimulating than coffee!

May shared her icebreaker speech, “The New Method of Teaching”. She explained how technology has opened a door for students from a rural area in China, to learn English from her even though she is thousands of miles away.

Mike gave 6 examples on what to do to get rid of your unused and unwanted items by using Craigslist to help your junk find a nice home and a happy consumer.

Lidia evoked a ballpark with her famous cries of “get your peanuts” as she accomplished her goal of using vocal variety for CC speech #6. She used peanuts as a prop and shared the history of how peanuts became a staple food at ballgames.

Bill was our Table Topics Master/Relief Pitcher, and he shared how he comes up with his questions to ask the audience based off of the theme for the day. He suggested we use this strategy to plan what we might say if called to speak.

Rachel won the Table Topics contest. Paula’s bid for the best evaluator ribbon was uncontested.

Steven introduces our Toastmaster of the day

Toastmaster Justin K., shared the theme for the day, “Revolutions”, and promised not to cause one at the meeting by going over his allotted time. Jimmy was our timer for the day.

May X and Kathy M shared the Grammarian role. May chose the word of the day “Temerity”. Kathy was the umm and grammarian officer.

Isabella completed her Pathways #1 –Ice breaker by reintroducing herself to the club. She shared her reasons of why she joined Toastmasters, and how it improved her confidence, speaking ability, and promoted her career. She is making forward progress and shared some specific areas she plans to target for future growth with the support of Toastmasters.

Kathy delivers the Grammarian report

Steven inspired us to prioritize our time by using an app to look at where we spend time on the internet- especially when it comes to social media such as Facebook or Instagram.

Steven delivers a speech

Aleli incorporates expressions into her speech.

Alelei entertained us with her 3rd humorous speech titled “How Scott Champion changed my life.” Her opening started with a funny, one-liner joke about a Polar Bear –which was a great hook to “break the ice,” and she reflected on a common experience of battling the loud thinking in her head with impromptu speaking during Table Topics. As one of the original members forming Sunrisers, Scott’s encouragement and evaluation has helped her tremendously on her journey as an effective communicator.

Rachel organized her speech CC #2 “Jet Era” in a smooth and interesting topic. She had a good opening line and told stories of the development of the airline industry, and its impact on transforming our world.

For Jovica, the Toastmaster of the day, the theme has special significance. When he lost his mother to suicide at the age of four, he thought it was the end of the world. However, this tragic loss marked a series of beginnings for him where his grandparents and later, his step mother, would shower him with love.

Lara, our Grammarian,  introduced the word of the day : Culminate.

Landon acquitted himself of the duties of Timekeeper very efficiently.

Thank you to our speakers today for four outstanding speeches:

Bill presented his Persuade with Power CC Project #9,Mindfulness, and boy, were we persuaded! Did you know that 47% of our time is LOST in thought? Mindfulness, which is the state of paying attention on purpose, in the moment has been proven to have many benefits: improved concentration and productivity, strengthened immune systems, enhanced short term memory and better sleep. No wonder big corporations are investing on mindfulness training for their employees! Bill gave the audience simple instructions on how to meditate and concluded his speech with a challenge to the audience: Meditate for 5 minutes for the next three days or shell $5 at the next meeting.  There were quite a few takers!

Be Mindful or pay $5!

Jimmy presented Pathways Project #2- Receiving Feedback in his speech titled: Pride 101.  In 5-7 minutes, Jimmy gave the audience an overview of the history of Pride, form the first parade in 1974 to the 44th parade this year. It took courage, persistence, suffering and many decades to get LGBTQ rights defined and established.

Pride 101

Steve presented CC project #7- Research your topic in a very original and entertaining way. In his speech titled ” Bye Bye Bonsai“, he took the position of a tree hater making a case for more logging because of the high incidence of tree related deaths , an estimated 3.8 billion of them since the dawn of times. According to Steve, there are 3 trillion trees that are alive and well and that mankind has to cut more trees to save humanity and ” stem the tide of the Murderous Maples” . Cut, pulp, and make paper- damn those paper cuts!

Beware of Murderous Maples!

Lidia presented CC project #5- Your body speaks. In her speech titled ” Unhealthy Fixation“, Lidia educated the audience about the various chemicals used in organic foods and enjoined the listeners to approach food labels with skepticism. Buyer Beware!

Paula led the table topics portion of the meeting.

Lidia was voted Best Table Topic and Justin Best Evaluator.

Thanks to Scott for taking our club picture today!

Our next meeting is July 14, 2018