Fellowship, Leadership, Mentorship: An Exciting Week in Toastmasters!

Fellow Toastmasters,

Last week’s Toastmasters events are best described by the three “ships” from a recent speech by President Brendan Epps - fellowship, leadership and mentorship.

Fellowship: We started the week on Sunday afternoon 12 November with a terrific potluck gathering at Fred Sadler’s lovely house in Carmel, where he and fiancée Edi whipped up some great beef stew augmented by other goodies from about 20 fellow Toastmasters and family members. With Arnie Buss and his fiddle, Glenn Tolle on mandolin and Joe Tacker on tambourine (he would have brought his tuba if he knew), we had some great Irish music. Glenn also gave a “dry-run” presentation of his Division-winning humorous speech, but alas, it wasn’t enough to win at the District contest (see below).

Leadership: On Friday 17 November, we had our regular meeting with 22 members and 5 guests. The meeting was anything but “regular”, as first-time Toastmaster Brian Anderson led a well-planned and thought-out meeting with a theme of “Marine Corps Birthday. Brian was decked out in full dress regalia, ramrod-straight! Spouse Angi Anderson had the shortest opening remark ever, using a birthday party-favor “tooter” to give us one toot and no words as the opening remark! She then gave us all a “tooter”, which we then used to acknowledge every use of the “word of the day”, which was “gala”. This was followed by three great speeches:

• Alec Metz presented a very humorous #6 “Vocal Variety” speech about history teachers he had in college. This got him both “Best Speaker” and “Most Improved” awards.
• Angi Anderson gave her #2 speech about what it takes to succeed in Toastmasters (she read the manuals!), which easily could have passed for a #10 speech; it was that good and that motivational.
• And finally, Glenn Woodson, not to be intimidated by the first two speakers, gave us a terrific Icebreaker, with the subliminal theme of the importance the number “4” has played in his life.

There were three terrific evaluations by Andy Hamann, CTM Robin Walker and CTM Brendan Epps. Robin was awarded “Best Evaluator,” and would probably have also won “best dressed,” had we such an award, in his tuxedo (worn for the benefit of the opening of the new James Bond film that evening).

One interesting quirk of fate was when the three “Eliz(s)abeths” in our club randomly happened to sit next to each other, and we had “Eliz(s)abeth row”! Of the three, Elizabeth Mitchell of MIIS was among those called on for Table Topics, and she won that award.

We also elected the following officer slate for the upcoming Jan-Jun 2007 term:

President: Glenn Tolle
Vice President for Education: Robin Walker
Vice President for Membership: Fred Sadler
Vice President for Public Relations: Angi Anderson
Treasurer: Warner Howser
Sergeant-at-Arms: Brian Anderson

Mentorship: We all mentored Glenn Tolle as he won the Club, Area and Division Humorous Speech Contests with his metaphorically-challenged “Humble Pie, the 5th Basic Food Group”. Glenn gave yet another resounding version of his speech at the District 4 contest in Milpitas on Nov 18th, but alas, the competition was much tougher and Glenn didn’t place. The winner was Joel Lachter of Jetstream Toastmasters at NASA-Ames in Moffett Field, who basically spoke on why the judges should vote for him! The contest was part of a terrific all-day District Four Fall Conference. NPS was also represented by President Brendan Epps, VP Education Warner Howser, Area A-1 Governor Arnie Buss and District Parliamentarian Carl Thormeyer. NPS did not come away empty-handed, since our club newsletter, resurrected and edited by Brendan Epps, won the District 4 “Golden Quill” award for the district’s best club newsletter.

Reminder: The final meeting of the year will be our annual fun-filled holiday gift exchange meeting on 15 December. Information on this holiday meeting will be promulgated soon - it’s loads of fun and laughs! Plan on bringing a wrapped gender-neutral gift worth no more than $10.00.

Meetings will then resume the first Friday in January, when the newly elected officers will be installed. The schedule for the rest of the year has been posted on our Web site, http://www.npstoastmasters.org.

For better listening, thinking and speaking,

- Carl

P.S. - REMINDER - NO MEETING NEXT WEEK - THANKSGIVING FRIDAY (NPS is closed that day). Next meeting on 1 December.