Notes, August 19

Business
Jim Barbour acted as Presiding Officer. Instead of the Pledge to the Flag, Jim offered an Invocation which consisted of a story about two pots for carrying water, one of which was cracked. Although using the cracked pot resulted in less water getting to the destination, it allowed flowers to be watered along the way. The message of the story was that, like the cracked pot, all of us have unique flaws that can be turned into advantages. The differences between us are what make life interesting and rewarding.

The meeting was well attended with David Taylor, Kris Hauser, Ted Zuschlag, Susan Gelberg, Mark Williams, Karen Stephenson, Jean Bonifas, Antigone Cook, and Yue Zhang present, in addition to Jim. We had one guest, Jingye Zhang, Yue’'s father. Mr. Zhang is a physicist from the University of Tennessee, a proud father and grandfather, and enjoyed the meeting. Thanks for inviting him, Yue!

We had several announcements.

• Jim reminded us again of the Officer Training to be held August 24 at Consumer’s Power.
• Dave mentioned he would be attending the district meeting in Wilsonville tomorrow where he would be trained.
• Yue passed around a sign up sheet for her membership building committee, asking us to sign up for a month to perform tasks. She said there would be prizes for those making the best effort. "Best effort" is defined by Yue's secret scoring system. Ask her.
• Dave mentioned the possibility of changing our officer elections to once yearly, which we have discussed before. He informed the club that he has a copy of the by-laws and forms for doing so. As this task is primarily a President and Secretary responsibility, Kris will read the requirements and come prepared to move forward with voting on the issue at the next meeting.

Yue was voted Best Toastmaster from last week’s for her Icebreaker speech. Best Evaluator was Marie Oliver.

Speeches
At the end of the business session, Jim introduced the Toastmaster, Dave Taylor. Dave warmed up the audience: he told stories from the local newspaper about animals running amuck. The first involved a dog that bit a UPS worker. The second was about neighbors shooting gophers-- a neighbor woman reported a gunfight outside her house. What a neighborhood!

Mark acted as Grammarian / Ah Counter and supplied the Word of the Day. Mark chose a difficult word – “parley” - meaning a meeting with an enemy for the purpose of calling a truce. Despite the unfamiliarity of the word, it was well used during the meeting.

Jean Bonifas was the only speaker and took advantage of this. She spoke longer. Her speech was called “"Life Is an Improvisation".” She stimulated us to notice we improvise all day long -- there is no script for day to day activities like parenting or talking to one's boss.

She gave us three rules of improvisation taken from the book "Improv Wisdom" by Patricia Ryan Madson, and then demonstrated the rules using improvisation exercises.

1. The rule, "“Say Yes"” was illustrated with the “Proverb Game.” Using one word from each member of the audience, we came up with the proverb, "“When time is very short, apple may fall down.”"
   
2. The rule “"Pay Attention"” was illustrated with a memory exercise. We closed our eyes and tried to describe what was on the table in front of us; then looked to see what we had failed to notice.
3. The third rule, "“Just Show Up”", was demonstrated by seeing how our perspective changed when we moved to a different location in the room. We became more alert!
   

As Table Topics Master, Susan Gelberg asked us to recall her speech from last week about women and power. The questions for table topics all related to power.

• Jim talked about his personal qualities that show he has power. He told us about a Toastmasters Leadership project he did around the “Moments of Truth” program and indicated he would be asking us to try this program again.
• Mark talked about who he would give more power to, indicating that he thought the President and the Supreme Court had too much, so he would give more to people at the grassroots level.
  
• Kris talked about who she would take power away from, saying she would like to see media and entertainers have less power to influence people's’ opinions.
• Yue was asked to talk about a time she gave power away and told a story about a bad work evaluation she had received. She failed to question the reviewer because she confused his authority with 'power over her'.

In her evaluation, Susan praised people who knew what they were going to say right away as well as those who did a good job of finding their topic as they talked. She gave individual recommendations to each person.

Ted evaluated Jean'’s speech under the guidelines for the “"How To Say It"” project. (Long-time Toastmasters may know this project as the “"Work With Words”" project.) He was challenged not to get involved in the overall effectiveness of Jean'’s presentation, but focus on her use of language. Ted commended Jean’'s skillful organization of her speech, excellent word choice, and the participatory nature of the presentation. He also liked that Jean used a lot of space, and recommended she consider the significance of moving to different areas in a presenter's space. He suggested she use a longer conclusion to help the audience grasp what they had heard and experienced.

Jean’'s speech was 14 minutes, twelve seconds. All the Table Topics were between one and two minutes. Besides reporting good use of the Word of the Day, Grammarian Mark praised Jean’'s use of word pictures. In her General Evaluation, Karen stated that she liked how different elements of the meeting alluded to other meetings, past or future. It helps us feel there is continuity in what we do as a club. The speech and the Table Topics were fun today!

After reviewing next week'’s duty assignments, Jim closed the meeting.