Smedley Saturday Momentum

A Second Smedley Saturday already! Thirteen participants from the NPS club rallied for this special speakathon event. The presentations ran the proverbial gamut......

from Shahid's appeal to learn a second language ("Doing Something Special," Basic #2);

to Pete Blouin's alliterative-laced description of parachuting (Basic #4, "Manic Mindset Manifestation vs. Restful Realization of Relaxation"---say that fast three times);

to Glenn Woodson's detailed and smooth presentation on the 21,000 troop surge in Iraq (Basic #3, "You're Being Recruited") with wife Karen in attendance;

to Brian Anderson's aptly titled and professionally delivered "A Big Dam Project" (Basic #7); to GT's emotional appeal for supporting the military (Basic #9, "Uncle Sam Still Wants You,") and a memorized rendition of Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech. (Interpretive Reading #5);

to Robin Walker's energetic foray into advanced speaking (Entertaining Speaker #2, "JJJ" -- a clever tale of mischievous mountaineering in the Pacific Northwest).

Quite a gamut! The evaluations were top notch:

Angi Anderson rendered a thoughtful review of Shahid's growing public speaking skills; Elizabeth Sussex confidently tallied the strengths and improvements on Peter's parachuting speech;

Brian Anderson reviewed Glenn Woodson's speech using the sandwich method--with extra beef!

Andrew Kennedy yielded polished, entertaining feedback on Robin's advanced entertaining speech while pulling double duty as the Timer.

Resident DTM Carl Thormeyer yielded a seasoned analysis of GT's #9 speech, while Area 1 Governor Arnie Buss articulated helpful pros and cons of GT's first advanced manual speech. Angi Anderson tallied the votes and presented the Best Speaker award to Brian, and the Most Improved award--by a landslide--to Peter. Angi and Arnie tied for Best Evaluator. The bar just keeps getting higher....

Thanks to everyone for "going the extra mile" and making this second Smedley Saturday a success!

Club Contest

Today was a special meeting: the club Table Topics and International Speech Contests to determine the speaking champions who will represent our club at the Area contest - and beyond. We had 18 members and eight guests, including Barbara Sadler from Bayview Toastmasters.

The meeting got off to a rousing start with Glenn Tolle serving as acting Sergeant at Arms (for the unfortunately ill Brian Anderson) as well as his usual role as El Presidente. Member Mary Lineberger brought a gaggle of guests from MIIS, who all seemed to enjoy the meeting.

The Table Topics contest began with Chief Judge Carl Thormeyer explaining the rules for the contest and Fred Sadler taking the lectern as Contest Toastmaster. His question about finding the blessing in a seemingly tragic event challenged each contestant's impromptu speaking skills. Glenn Woodson spoke about how his fear of raising $20,000 caused him to go to college instead to study engineering, a path that eventually led him to the Army National Guard and most important, meeting his lovely wife Karen. Robin Walker then spoke of how a college breakup led to more insight into himself. Angi Anderson rounded out the contestants by describing how the difficulties of growing up in a military family prepared her for life being married to a Marine. Angi was voted the club winner for Table Topics and will advance to the Area contest. Glenn was runner-up, and will compete in the Area contest if Angi is unable to.

The International Speech Contest featured three of our club's best speakers. Angi was a contestant in this contest as well, speaking about the voices in our heads that can build us up or tear us down, and how we can learn to silence the "bad" voices and bring out the affirming ones. Glenn Tolle' spoke of learning to conquer one's fears through facing the dreaded dental visit. Glenn's imitation of the sounds of the drill were amazing, and brought the experience home to the audience in a visceral way. Fred Sadler also spoke of conquering the fear of public speaking by ... speaking in public - and was inspirational in relating how Toastmasters is such an aid in overcoming that. When the dust settled, Fred was voted the club champion, with Angi the runner-up. The next step for Fred is the Area contest - and after that, the Division, District, Regional, and ultimately the World Championship of Public Speaking!

Congratulations to Angi and Fred for such an outstanding job and for being such exemplar toastmasters! We look forward to hearing you compete at the next levels! Let's all turn out to support them at the Area contest on March 24th!

The club contest was a huge success, thanks to the many members who helped put it on. Fred Sadler was the Toastmaster for the Table Topics Contest and Robin Walker for the International Speech Contest - your work behind the scenes in organizing the events made them the successes they were. Yours truly was the chief vote counter. Thanks to Carl Thormeyer who served as Chief Judge for both contests and kept us on the straight path in conducting them (as well as verifying the vote counts for accuracy). Thanks to Mary Lineberger and Eric Timmerman who served as exemplary timers. Finally, thanks to all the members of the club who attended to support their fellow members as contestants and to cheer them on in future contests.

This was another outstanding meeting, continuing our tradition of excellence in the club! I was proud to have all the guests observe the meeting, and their responses indicated that they too were quite impressed with what they saw, with several indicating interest in becoming members.

Love is a Many Splendored(?) Thing

Fellow Toastmasters,

Twenty members and two guests were present as the meeting agenda went back to normal under the outstanding tutelage of VPM Fred Sadler as Toastmaster and VPE Robin Walker as Acting President. Robin started the meeting by leading the vote to accept and then inducting the following four new members:

• Scott Ceremuga (reinstated to NPS TM; now a dual member),
• Mashbat Otgonbayer (previously a frequent guest),
• Monica Rodriguez (reinstated; formerly of the same Washington, DC TM club that Robin belonged to before coming to NPS), and
• Ryan Squires.

Welcome to all! This brings to 27 the number of new members we have inducted since July 1, 2006; seven of whom have joined since 1 January. One more new member before March 31st wins us another “Talk up Toastmasters” membership contest ribbon.

It being Valentines Day week, Toastmaster of the Day par excellence Fred Sadler chose "Love is a Many splendored Thing" as the theme of the meeting. Angi Anderson led a vibrant Table Topics session, pointing out in passing that "splendored" is actually not even a real word. She called on some of our newest members. Rosetta Ishag won Best Table Topics by describing when and how she felt like a queen on her wedding day. Not to be outdone, hubby Elie Ishag responded by winning “Best Speaker” with his #2 speech about “Traditions”. (Ed. Note: Elie and Rosetta return to London this coming week and will not be with us again until May. We will miss them!) Most Improved was Eric Timmerman, with his Icebreaker entitled “E.T. Call Home”. Ned Powley continued his march through the manual with his #4 speech. Armed with PowerPoint and the “smart screen”, he discussed his research into how communities cope with tragedies such as the Columbine shootings, and related his personal experiences with a similar incident in Cleveland.  Congratulations to all the winners!

NEXT WEEK 23 Feb: Club International Speech Contest and Table Topics Contest. Robin Walker and Fred Sadler are the respective Chairs.

NEXT WEEK 24 Feb: Our second monthly “Smedley Saturday” at the La Mesa Community Center. Ten (10) speakers have signed up, including two advanced speeches!

Submitted by:
Carl Thormeyer, DTM
NPS TM Club Historian

Newsletter Update

Thanks to our club Vice President for Public Relations Angi Anderson, the latest club newsletter has been published. Hard copies were distributed at Friday's meeting, and you can also view it online here (You will need an Adobe Acrobat Reader).

Thanks Angi!

!Gniteem Sdrawkcab ruO

Fellow Toastmasters,

Twenty members and five guests were present when, for the first time in decades, NPS Toastmasters held a “Backwards Meeting”! As expected, this was hilarious… everything in the room was placed in the reverse position from where it normally resides (lectern, banner, timer, etc.), and things went in reverse from there! President Glenn Tolle opened the meeting by adjourning it, and then calling on guests. He then thanked backward-dressed Robin Walker for being the Toastmaster of the Day (see photos). Robin started by calling on Vote Counter Karen Woodson who announced the “results”, and her prognostications were probably pretty close to what might have been had we actually voted. (It would have been neat to start with a can full of completed ballots, pulling them out one-by-one as the can went around the room, but I guess that would have been too hard!) And so it went… Ah Counter, Grammarian, Evaluators, Speakers, and Table Topics in that order. Of course, we had to play the role… if the Grammarian mentioned something we said, then we had to say it when our turn came! Perhaps the funniest incident occurred when General Evaluator Brian Anderson said that Evaluator Glenn Tolle shouldn’t speak in such a monotone…. When Glenn spoke, he maintained a monotone only with extreme effort… I thought he was going to explode!

The speakers went along with the backwards theme by tailoring their speeches to the evaluations they had received beforehand. Peter Blouin presented three ways to lower automobile insurance premiums and got in his plugs for Notre Dame. Ned Powley recreated the famous 1984 Macintosh super-bowl commercial for us, and Luke Lazzari (even giving his speech backwards, and it still made sense!) spoke about dog training in a condominium.

Table Topics was better yet - the participants spoke for two minutes on a subject of their own choosing, and Table Topics Master Shenequa Mitchell then had to figure out the topic! Starting out was Warner Howser, who spoke on - you guessed it - taxes! As did those who followed.

Thanks to VPE Robin Walker for his thorough and innovative efforts at a successful backwards meeting!

Special note: Our guests included Past Area Governor Rachelle Onishi, plus a very special returning past member - Cantemir “Charlie” Ahciarliu, CTM, who is a LT Colonel in the Romanian Air Force. A former international student at NPS, Charlie was a member of NPS Toastmasters from May 2002 - March 2004, and was visiting the U.S. with his family. Thanks for coming back to see us, Charlie!

For better listening, thinking and speaking,

Carl Thormeyer, DTM
Club Historian

Here is Robin in his DoMT mode, taken by our fearless and intrepid leader Glenn Tolle. You can view other pictures from the meeting here.

"Do-Overs"

The February 2nd meeting was expertly organized and run by Angi Anderson in her first time as Toastmaster of the Day. You would never know it the way the meeting flowed smoothly and expertly. Although a "first-timer" at being TMoD, Angi executed like an well-seasoned, experienced toastmaster. Congratulations Angi! Her theme was related to the fact that today is Groundhog Day, and she put a twist on that by making it "Do-Overs," with reference to the Bill Murray film. Continuing our tradition of well-attended, enthusiastic meetings, there were 17 members, with returning guests Sterling Woodson (a model of infant-ry discipline!) Monica April-Rodriguez, Dave Schultz, Eric Oliver and Ryan Squires, along with first-time guest Regine Oh. After the meeting, Monica, Ryan, and Eric signed up to be members and will be officially voted in at the next meeting. We welcome them to our club and look forward to their joining us in the quest for improved listening, thinking and public speaking in Toastmasters!

It was in fact a meeting of many "first-times." Serving first time in their respective roles were Ned Powley as timer, Eric Timmermen as vote counter, Karen Woodson as Opening Remarks, and "Dressed For Success" Shahid Abrar ul Hassan as Table Topics Master. Speaking of Table Topics, Shahid's creative questions stimulated even more creative responses, with Robin Walker putting forth the thesis that Superman and Punxsutawney Phil are one and the same (evidence being that they have never been seen in the same place together). Glenn Tolle responded with a call to groundhogs everywhere to throw off their chains of bondage and achieve world domination. Both responses had the club roaring with laughter, and Glenn edged Robin for best Table Topics speaker.

We were graced with three excellent speeches. Rosetta Ishag give her Icebreaker speech (yet another "first" for the meeting) and inspired us with her stories of a childhood in Cairo, Egypt, her longtime marriage to Elie, and her work with charity organizations. Rosetta was followed by Andrew Kennedy, returning after an extended absence, who gave a moving speech about being allowed to make his own mistakes, the wisdom he has gained through that, and his sad but inspiring journey through painful episodes in his life. Finally, Elizabeth Sussex gave a persuasive and moving call for people to take action to solve the humanitarian crisis in Darfur Sudan. Rosetta however won our hearts and minds for best speaker and most improved. Congratulations Rosetta!

The meeting was capped off by  outstanding evaluations by Carl Thormeyer,  and Glenn Tolle, with Glenn getting the nod for best evaluator. Another outstanding meeting full of energy, fun, enthusiasm - and learning.

-- Arnie