11/21 Meeting

Eagles,

Tonight’s meeting gave us a reason to be Thankful as we head into Thanksgiving. Sandra Centorino, our Toastmaster, led a round robin asking each Eagle to express what they were thankful for. It was great for us to take pause to express our gratitude to each other.

Ute Brinkmann, served as our Humorist, with a twist. She shared a lesson she learned from Ed Tate, the 2000 World Champion of Public Speaking. Allie Centorino, led a Thanksgiving themed Table Topic…..Chris Gaffney took on the challenging topic of what the Pilgrims and Native Americans discussed at the Thanksgiving table (the weather). Jaime Fischer and Paula Erardi took on a Table Topic as well……what I found remarkable was how they walked to the front of the lecturn and grabbed our attention!

Paula Erardi served as our Quote Master, and provided a poignant quote that acknowledged we have many blessings.

Yours Truly gave a speech about Jeremiah Denton, a Navy Rear Admiral that fought so we could maintain our way of life….an Election Day/Veteran’s Day theme. Tom Corrigan gave a speech about our shrinking attention span (we’re down to 8 seconds). Robin Corrigan gave a “colorful” speech with vivid props.

Special thanks to all of our functionaries not mentioned above…Richard Freeman (Timer), Amy Demas (Ah Counter), Kate Kelly (Grammarian/Evaluator), Chris Gaffney (Evaluator), Thom Knowlton (Evaluator), and Deb Haggett (General Evaluator).

We had two guests turn into members this evening! Jaime Fischer and Christie Groben! I am thankful for our new members!

Our next meeting will take place at the Joseph Oddie's abode on December 5^th at 7:15. Please bring a wrapped toy valued at $10….We will have a little fun with the wrapped gifts before we donate them to the Master’s Manna.

  

Have a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving Holiday! See you on December 5^th!

Tony Centorino

Eagle Secretary

11/7 Meeting

Eagles,

Tonight’s meeting was a special “Election Eve” edition.

Joseph Oddie, our Toastmaster, opened up with a humorous story from Winston Churchill. Maryanne Shirshac, quoted Abraham Lincoln. Yours Truly conducted a Table Topics with an Election Day theme where our Toastmasters and guests took on the challenging issues of our day.

In the great debate of Batman vs Superman, Maryanne provided a compelling case for Batman. Kate Kelly provided an equally compelling case for Superman. It is a tremendous testament to our club that our members can agree to disagree on the most contentious of issues!

Maryanne also gave her Icebreaker speech this evening…..a very impressive first speech where we all got to learn why she joined Toastmasters. Maryanne’s speech included a touching tribute to her Grandfather, who was a story teller. Maryanne showed all of us that it is now “her time” to be a story teller!

Richard Freeman gave a speech to convince us on how to address the chronic drought that we are increasingly experience across the US and in Connecticut. Richard convinced us to take action using facts and visual images.

Special thanks to all of our functionaries not mentioned above…..Deb Haggett, our Ah Counter, Ian Brooks, our Timer, Ute Brinkmann, our Grammarian, Kate Kelly, and our Evaluators – Sandra Centorino and Yours Truly!

Some housekeeping items…..

·         Amy Demas will be competing in the District Evaluation Contest Finals on 11/19 at UMass in Amherst Mass. This contest will take place in the morning….Please consider attending. I will send you some details in the near future.

·         Our next meeting is on November 21^st. Sandra Centorino will be our Toastmaster…..Please sign up for something at www.eagletoastmasters.com.

·         We will have a special meeting at the Joseph Oddie Compound on Monday 12/5….This will be our last meeting of 2016. More details to follow.

Finally, if you want to send an email to our entire club, you can use the email address members@eagletoastmasters.com from the email account that is registered in Eagle Toastmasters.

I look forward to seeing all of you on 11/19!

Tony Centorino

Eagle Secretary

October 17th Meeting

Eagles,

Tonight, we “Got Our Eagle On” with 22 members, 5 guests, and 3 very interesting speeches, with Yours Truly as the Toastmaster…..Please allow me to elucidate.

Tom Corrigan opened up the evening with a humorous story about a restaurant with “no atmosphere”. Robin Corrigan led a Table Topics, bearing gifts of pencils. Jaime Fisher, one of our guests, stole the show with her table topic about “knocking on wood”. She earned her pencil indeed! Steph Centorino, a member soon to be guest, also joined in the fun with a table topic about “going the extra mile”.

Kate Kelly, Speaker #1, encouraged us to “use the phone, when in doubt”. Sandy Centorino, Speaker #2, gave a motivational speech to “Show up, Step up and Speak up” as Eagles. Deb Haggett gave a persuasive speech about an online alternative to an expensive college education.

Special thanks to our functionaries……Robin Corrigan, Joseph Oddie, and Paula Erardi were our speech evaluators. Chris Gaffney our timer, Joseph Oddie our Grammarian, Val Hamilton as our Timer, and……Deb Haggett as our General Evaluator!

Special Programming Note: Amy Demas will be competing in the Division round in the evaluation contest. The contest will take place on 10/27 at Eversource at 107 Selden St, Berlin CT. Contest starts at 6:30. Please consider attending an entertaining evening and root for Amy!

Our next meeting is in 3 weeks (first Monday of November…..Election Day Eve) on November 7^th. Please log onto www.eagletoastmasters.com and sign up for something!

Tony Centorino

Eagle Secretary

October 3rd Meeting

Eagles,

October 3^rd was a lightly attended meeting with a heavy mix of our more seasoned Eagles, and two of our newer members. Our meeting showcased the strength of our club….We started the evening with two planned speakers (Tony and Chris) and ended up with four as Amy and Deb pulled speeches out of their hip pockets!

-          Chris gave a poignant speech about “The Most Important Person You’ll Never See”……he gave us a very unique perspective on 911 operators.

-          Deb gave a speech about how one can earn a college degree without the big expense.

-          Amy taught us about how to write a stellar resume.

-          Yours truly took another run at “The Book”

Ute led Table Topics about Fall/Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday). Paula served as our Grammarian and Ah Counter…..As usual, she was on her game and kept us on our toes. Ian served as General Evaluator, and evaluated Chris’s speech. Sandy, Amy, and I all served as evaluators. Deb provided our humor and Sandy our quote of the day.

A special shout out to the Newbies….Maryanne and Joe. Ian conducted a round robin evaluation of my speech, which gave them an opportunity to critique my speech. They provided the kind of fresh perspective rarely offered by our seasoned members.  

Please know that every Eagle is qualified to sign up as an evaluator. In many ways it’s easier than signing up for a speech…..you simply give a mini speech based on the evaluation criteria that you complete during the break. Please think about this as you sign up for the next meeting!

A couple of programming notes…..

The Area B 24 Contest will take place on Thursday October 11^th at the Lucy Robbins Library in Newington at 6:00 PM. Amy will be competing in the Evaluator Competition, and I will compete in the Humorous Speech Competition. Please consider attending and supporting our club. Contests are a lot of fun to watch!

Our next Eagle Meeting is on 10/17 at 7:15….Virtually every role is available, including Toastmaster. Please considering signing up for something!

Tony

Eagle Secretary

August 15th Meeting

Eagles,

Tonight’s meeting, hosted by our Toastmaster Robin Corrigan, featured 12 members, 2 guests, and 3 thought provoking speeches.

Joseph opened up with a humorous story about an interesting use of turpentine. Robin followed with Table Topics “straight from the headlines”. Our two guests, Tavit and Maryanne, also joined in the fun.

Speaker #1, Joseph, spoke from the Advanced Storytelling book. The theme of his speech was “you have options” that pondered the thought provoking question “when is it OK to quit”.

Tom Corrigan, our second speaker, gave an inspiring speech from the Competent Communicator manual. His speech, aptly titled “Reaching Your Goal Step by Step”, started as a great idea at a pub. Tom described how we resolved to climb Mount Washington using a several step plan that included going to the gym, practicing at a local hiking trail, and ultimately achieving his goal.

Speaker #3, Conrad, gave speech #2 from the Competent Communicator manual. His speech was titled “The Tradition Unlike Any Other”. Conrad used great imagery that allowed us to experience the Masters Golf Tournament using all five senses. His speech concluded with a serious and poignant message.

Special thanks to all of our functionaries…..Robin (Toastmaster, Evaluator, Table Topic Master), Tom Corrigan (Quote), Chris (Timer), and Ian (Grammarian and Ah Counter). Also a special thanks to Tom Piekarski for pinch hitting as Sergeant at Arms in Richard’s absence.

Note September will have two consecutive meetings….September 12^th (a typical Toastmaster Meeting) and September 19^th (Humorous Speech and Evaluator Contest).

Our club has many experienced contestants…..If you haven’t competed in a contest before, please consider doing so for September 19^th. More news to follow!

Have a great summer! See you all on September 12^th…..And don’t forget to sign up for something!

Tony Centorino

Eagle Secretary

August 1st 2016 Meeting

Eagles,

August 1^st featured 16 Eagles and 8 guests, 2 of which have turned into Eagles…..Welcome to Thom Knowlton and Josh Dummitt!

Amy, our President and Toastmaster of the evening, ran the proceedings with her usual aplomb (maybe we should have used that as our word of the day)!

Ian, our Table Topics Master, invited Paula to talk about her vacation and members and guests about the weather. Joseph’s quote that advised us not to fight with pigs in the mud led our Tom P, our VPE, to rush to the defense of pigs (OK….he didn’t rush, he waited until the end of the meeting). In any case, I learned a couple of lessons on the subject of people and pigs.

Kate Kelly kicked off the speech portion with a speech called “Know Your Audience” from the Better Speaker Series. Her speech was significant as it not only brought some excellent speaker tips to our attention, but it also completed her Advanced Communications Silver. Congratulations, Kate!

Your esteemed Secretary followed with a speech about Monkeys and Business, not to be confused with Monkey Business. I assure you that no animals were mistreated during the creation of my speech.

Special thanks to our functionaries…..Cecil (Grammarian), Richard Freeman (Timer), Allie (General Evaluator), and Evaluators Ian and Heather.

Our next meeting is on 8/15…..At the time of this summary, we still have a very light agenda and no Toastmaster. We really could use another speaker or two!

Please log onto www.eagletoastmasters.com and sign up for something!

See you on August 15^th!

Tony Centorino

Eagle Secretary

July 18th Eagle Toastmaster Meeting

Eagles,

Our 2016-17 year kicked off with a New Year’s style celebration, courtesy of Ute Brinkmann!

Tom Piekarski, our new VP Education, kicked off our meeting with and presented Kate, our past President, with a beautiful plaque. Yours Truly served as Eagle’s Toastmaster for the evening, and what an evening it was! Our meeting started with 16 members and 5 guests, and ended with 17 members and 4 guests!

Two of our guests were special. First, Val Hamilton became a “former guest” and “new member”. Welcome, Val!  Our second Guest was Kevin Broadbin, who took his championship speech for a test drive with Eagle. Our club, led by our General Evaluator Ian Brooks, provided Kevin a round robin evaluation. Good luck to Kevin as he heads to Washington DC for the championship.

Sandra Centorino led Table Topics, using Table Top items as a prompt. Joseph Oddie was our Humorist, and Allie provided our Quote of the day and Word of the Day.

Cecil Austin was Speaker #1, where he gave his Icebreaker titled “I shouldn’t be here”. Cecil did it without notes and without hesitation…..He’s off to a great start!

Speaker #2 was Curtis Reddick, who gave an Inspirational Speech to encourage us to accomplish our goals. His speech was inspirational and, in the words of Evaluator Kate Kelly, demonstrated good form in his pushups!

Joseph was Speaker #3 and gave an advanced manual speech from the Storytelling book about gossip. He captivated the club with some humorous anecdotes and taught us a valuable lesson at the same time.

We ended our meeting listening to and evaluating Kevin’s contest tune up.

Our next meeting is on August 1^st…….So far, we have only one individual signed up for a speech and no Toastmaster. Please log onto the Eagle site at www.eagletoastmasters.com and sign up for something!

See you all on August 1^st!

Tony

Eagle Club Secretary

Club President's Message - February 1 Meeting

Eagles,

The word of the day was engaged and that is the perfect word to describe this evening's meeting. There were 18 members in attendance and 4 guests.

Paula was first time Toastmaster and ran the meeting like a pro. She was well prepared making sure roles were filled, speech introductions were in place and the agenda was ready to go by the start of the meeting. There were three prepared speeches. Richard Freeman gave an acceptance speech on behalf of Judy Freeman for the Best Horse Show Mom award. Amy Demas delivered a Toastmaster TripTik guide using handouts and visual aides and finally Rachel Mele gave her last speech toward DTM. Rachel shared with us her High Performance Leadership project and how much she benefited from doing it. Congratulations Rachel on this great achievement and reaching your goal to be DTM!

JanJam has been rescheduled to Saturday, February 13th. It is a free event that you may want to check out - http://d53.toastmastersdistricts.org/

Our club spring contest is just around the corner. Tony Centorino has volunteered to be contest chair. The spring contest is Tall Tales and International. The club contest must be held no later than March 20th so start thinking about if you'd like to compete in either one or both of these contests or if you'd like to serve in one of the many contest roles.

I noticed that the speaking roles are filled for the next several meetings and now we will have one meeting in March devoted to the club contest. If any of you would like to give a speech and don't want to wait please let me know. We can always make one of the next meetings a speech-a-thon meeting where we open up additional slots for prepared speeches.

Tom Corrigan volunteered to be Toastmaster for the February 15th meeting. Please sign up for roles and speakers provide your introductions prior to the meeting so he can have everything organized in advance.

Thank you all for making our club outstanding!

All the best,

Kate Kelly

President, Eagle Toastmasters