Texas Stars Toastmasters: March 18th Meeting

Our theme for the evening was "Sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left." by Itzhak Perlman, Symphonic Violinist. DTM Tim Manson later explained to us how this violinist was playing his violin in a concert when a string broke in the middle of a song. Because his fellow musicians continued to play, Itzhak Perlman recomposed the music he played to avoid the notes requiring the broken string. Table Topics for the evening dealt with this theme.

We had an exciting meeting! It's always a little more exciting to have a meeting when there are guests and lots of prepared speakers. On the 18th we had three guests and three prepared speakers!

Our Guests:

We had returning guests Elsa Lozoya and Gale Brazier visit and announce their intentions to join the club! We also had an MBA student from Mary Hardin Baylor, Victoria Lin, visit. Victoria is Chinese and English is not her first language, although her English was very good. She hopes to join Toastmasters next semester if her schedule allows in order to improve her English and to help her understand American culture better.

Our Prepared Speeches:

CC Lita Daniel gave a demonstration speech from an Advanced Toastmasters manual about table settings and what to do with all of the dishes and silverware at a formal dinner. She even brought some wine glasses to show us that different wines require different shaped glasses and why. It was a very interesting speech.

Next, ACB/CL Frank Jaworski regaled us with a toast from the Specialty Speeches Advanced Toastmasters manual. He reminded us old-timers about when the club began almost five years ago! But he also gave a brief history of the club to help newcomers understand how far we've come in the last five years. Unfortunately, we cannot have beverages (aside from water) in our new building, but we Toastmasters have active imaginations and enjoyed the toast anyway.

Our last speaker of the evening is one of our newest members, Lynn Johnson. She gave speech #2 from the Competent Communicator manual and showed us exactly why she has joined Texas Stars Toastmasters. Her speech was one she would give at her company's Board of Directors meeting and showed her prowess as a businesswoman. Lynn has prior public speaking experience from being in Toastmasters in the past and that training really came through. She convinced Texas Stars Toastmasters that she is an up and coming force to be reckoned with!

Table Topics were conducted by ACB/ALB D. Kirkland and even though we had three speeches, we were able to have a few Table Topics.

Evaluators for the evening were: Bob Daigneault for Lynn Johnson, Tim Manson for Frank Jaworski and Anna Jaworski for Lita Daniel.

The Toastmaster for the evening was DTM Tim Manson. Here is Tim handing out the awards for the evening:

Best Table Topic Speaker: Katie