12_07_04 Geospeakers Meeting Summary

Vice-President (Public Relations) Mitch Smith called the meeting to order -- ably standing in for President Ann Gunderson, who was unable to be with us. Mitch also stood in for Carol Reiss as Galvanizer, because she also had to be absent. The galvanizing quote, from Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," was brief and to the point: the immortal sequence that ended Scrooge's "Bah! Humbug!" A perfect lead-in to today's theme.

Club business: Neil Shapiro reminded us that officer-training schedules in 2005 are now being posted at the Toastmasters District 4 website.

We were also pleased to have a visitor from Stanford, Melinda Su. We hope she will visit us again.

Mitch then introduced our newest member, Lauri Kanerva, serving as Toastmaster for the very first time. Lauri introduced the theme of "Love/Hate the Holidays." He admitted that he didn't feel he had something to celebrate, but did feel he had plenty to be grateful for.

Gretchen Luepke Bynum served as Master Evaluator. Shane Detweiler had two roles, as "the Wizard of Ahs" and Wordmaster/Grammarian. And --once more into the breach-- Mitch stepped in as Timer.

We had two prepared speeches today. Fran Hostettler spoke first. Her speech, "Holiday Shopping - 'Tis the Season" (from the Humorously Speaking advanced manual) was, according to her description, "a synthesized redux of previously given humorous speeches." Fran really knows how to put the humor in HUMBUG. She kept everyone in stitches with her priceless takes on "the holy season of shopping," with everything from contemplating the latest in advertising "post-young apparel" to the story someone successfully selling on eBay a likeness of the Virgin Mary on a cheese sandwich. This brief write-up in no way does justice to this speech. I for one wish she’d make a recording of it; I’d willingly buy a copy.

Gary Curtis followed with a most interesting speech entitled "Drugged Waters." This was Speech #3 from the basic manual. The objectives here were to prepare a well-organized speech with a clear purpose. The purpose here was to alert us to a potentially serious problem of pharmaceuticals entering into the water supply via disposal of human waste. Normally scientists and layfolk alike have thought, "the solution to pollution is dilution." Gary pointed out that the situation was far more complicated and required a new concerted effort.

Chris Gutmacher took center stage as Table Topics Master on "love-or-hate-the-holidays" theme. Everyone present had a great time with this one.

• Mitch won Most Humorous with an explanation of how he goes from loving certain holiday movies to getting tired of them and thereby ending up hating them.
• Gretchen won Most Eloquent as she showed her impatience with HUMBUG and GRINCH attitudes and described how much she loved Christmas.
• Neil tied with Gretchen for Most Interesting; he talked about arranging the upcoming Bat Mitzvah for his daughter and keeping a religious focus, thus making it more than just a party.

As our trophies decorated with mineral specimens were distributed, Lauri spiced up the recognition part with, "Time to distribute some rocks!"

Neil was his usual eloquent self as he evaluated Fran's speech. Stephanie Ross evaluated Gary's speech with both words of praise and helpful hints for improvement.

The last word came again from Dickens: Scrooge simply repeating his "Bah! Humbug!" phrase. But as usual there was nothing "humbug" about the way Mitch and Shane stepped up in taking over necessary extra roles. Many thanks to them. And congratulations to Lauri on his first time as Toastmaster.

As they say on Dateline NBC, "Nice job, everybody."
Gretchen

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