Capital City Toastmasters Meeting Recap - May 27, 2010

Submitted by Brian Simpson

Today's Theme: How do you stay healthy?

At 7am, Dean DiLillo welcomed us to a healthy Toastmasters meeting run by April Young. April is passionate about working out and staying fit, and she shared health tips with us throughout the meeting.

Jason Grimes shared a terrific invocation with us. Scroll down to the bottom of this recap to read it!

Martin Rock shared some health-related humor (advising us to make sure we have a variety of colors in the food on our plate -- like M&M's!!) and got some good laughs from the crowd.

Wade Hudson gave us the Word of the Day: robust, which means "strong and healthy, hardy or vigorous." (Everyone did a great job of working in April's theme for today's meeting.)

Cameron Henley gave us the time parameters for speaking roles.

I don't remember attending a meeting like today, in which we got to meet 3 new members through 3 consecutive Icebreaker speeches. Very cool! In her speech, "Communicating Across Cultures," Tanya Hunte told us about some of her earlier experiences in life. Dennis Smith advised everyone to "Follow Your Dreams and Be Safe" in his speech. And Sonja Person opened up to the group with an explanation of her journey to Raleigh in her speech, "A New Beginning." As Andrew Solinka would later point out in his General Evaluator's report, all three speakers sounded like veteran Toastmasters rather than new members. Each of them already has a base of strong positive qualities upon which to develop further public speaking and leadership skills, and we look forward to watching them grow in our club!

Alyssa Mozingo challenged Trey Bason, Gwen Vass and Tom Beaulieu to answer her Table Topics question. She asked them to imagine they were representatives for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and defend the company's right to exhibit at a UNC health fair. Gwen and Tom remembered to use the Word of the Day, and all 3 responses were highly creative and interesting, to say the least! We certainly have some talented spur-of-the-moment speakers in our club!

I evaluated Tanya's speech, Trey evaluated Dennis' speech, and Uzoma Nwosu evaluated Sonja's speech. We emphasized the strengths the speakers already have and encouraged them to try doing a few things differently in their next speeches. It's all about learning from one another and supporting each other in Capital City Toastmasters, as April would point out at the end of our meeting.

Cherry McRae gave the Grammarian's report, and Andrew brought it home with his General Evaluation.

April kicked off the drumroll and -- after a little humor from Tom Presley and Dean -- announced today's winners:

Best Table Topics: Tom Beaulieu

Best Evaluator: Brian Simpson (me)

Best Speaker: Tanya Hunte

As promised, here is Jason's invocation:

~ from Bertrand Russell's book, The Conquest of Happiness:

Suppose one man likes strawberries and another does not; in what
respect is the latter superior? There is no abstract and impersonal
proof either that strawberries are good or that they are not good. To
the man who likes them they are good; to the man who dislikes them
they are not. But the man who likes them has a pleasure which the
other does not have; to that extent his life is more enjoyable and he
is better adapted to the world in which both must live.

What is true in this trivial instance is equally true in more
important matters. The man who enjoys watching football is to that
extent superior to the man who does not. The man who enjoys reading is
still more superior to the man who does not, since opportunities for
reading are more frequent than opportunities for watching football.

The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of
happiness he has, and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he
loses one thing he can fall back upon another. Life is too short to be
interested in everything, but it is good to be interested in as many
things as are necessary to fill our days.