March 19th Speech-a-thon

Eagles President Ute Brinkmann opened the meeting by reminding us of several important dates. Dues ae due at world headquarters by March 31, so members are encouraged to get their payment to Maryanne Shirshac immediately if they haven’t done so already. Also – Monday, March 26^th is the Area 23 Contest, which is being hosted by Eagle. We need people to sign up for roles and food contributions.

Kate Kelly was Toastmaster for the night. The meeting room was cozy, with 21 members and 3 guests.

Our humorist, Tom Corrigan, told a handful of Soviet Union themed jokes. The quote of the day was from Stephen Hawking, given by Markus Schumacher, as a tribute to Hawking, who died recently.

There were no table topics for the evening, in order to make room for more speeches.

Speaker #1, Brad Leete, powerfully persuaded us all to go vegan!

Speaker #2, Jamie Fisher, convinced us to visit Yosemite, but to be sure to plan ahead and bring water, snacks and appropriate clothing!

Speaker #3, Kate Kelly, gave us a summary of her High Performance Leadership project, where she went into a corporate setting and delivered a speaker training course to help prepare speakers for an upcoming event.

Speaker #4, Tony Centorino, read and then spoke about a poem from 1934 called The Man in the Glass.

Speaker #5, Maryanne Shirshac, had some technical difficulties which prevented her from giving the speech she had planned for the evening, so instead she delivered an impromptu speech about how constraint creates creativity.

Speaker #6, Steve McGirr, gave a presentation on Service and Leadership, based on his own experiences in the workplace.

Robin Corrigan served as General Evaluator for the evening, and Tom Corrigan, Robin Corrigan, Celina Dorn, Marcus Schumacher, Heather McKelvie, and Ian Brooks all evaluated the speakers in the order given.

We were pressed for time at the end of the meeting, so skipped the Ah-Counter’s report, and the Grammarian’s report, and only took a moment for the Timer (Chris Gaffney) to report on speech lengths.