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

June 15th Meeting - Graduation Night

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”

-          Socrates

Eagles,

June 15^th, our last meeting of the 2014-2015 year, was another fun evening…..Too bad I missed it. However, I did make it to Jake’s!

When I arrived at Jake’s, I was immediately wowed by the fact that our club is truly a family….and that was before I saw my entire family at the far end of the table!

During our celebration, I learned that Meghan was “on top of her game” as the Toastmaster. I also learned that Rachel, my back up, was delayed due to traffic challenges on I-91…..No problem! Ute, “the back up to the back up” stepped up with the President’s message. As they say, “this is exactly how we drew it up in the playbook”!

The Eagles enjoyed a full night of four speeches…..Robin’s body spoke about miniature golf. Sandy gave her 11^th speech of the year about “doing less more meaningfully”. Joseph gave an interesting speech about General Patton. Last, but not least, Tom taught us that beer drinkers do not get cholera (at least that’s what Allie told me she learned!).

Susanne joined us for the last meeting of the year. Susanne was our president for the first half of 2014-15, but had to step down due to her demands at work. She enjoyed seeing how much the Eagle seedlings she met last year have grown. Susanne’s contributions were felt throughout the entire year!

The above quote describes one of my favorite lessons from the 2014-15 TM year……..I realize many of us are Eagles because we like to learn. However, I underestimated how invigorating it is! Many Monday nights I would have to drag myself to a TM meeting after a long day at work.  After our meeting, I would be so energized I would have difficulty going to sleep.

It has been a privilege being your president for the last six months. I was very moved by Joe’s presentation of my gift and am thankful for your expressions of appreciation……I am very excited about our 2015-16 year with Kate Kelly as our President. Kate is extremely committed - not only to our club, but as a helper to others.  

Our next meeting on July 6^th promises to be fun….We have three speakers lined up already but lots of roles still open….please log onto www.eagletoastmaters.com and sign up for something!

I look forward to seeing you on July 6^th!

Tony Centorino

Pets!

On Monday June 1^st, we had another fun meeting with Pets being the theme. The meeting lasted 2 ½ hours, which is 17 ½ dog hours! This is why we’ve had trouble attracting canine members. The lack of opposable thumbs that prevents them from being timers is another reason.

Joseph Oddie showed us his skills as our Toastmaster by keeping the meeting moving and providing interesting commentary between speakers.

Ruchi Pandey was our Quotemaster, kicking our meeting off with an inspiring quote. For those that have never done this before, it is a great opportunity to share your wisdom with others.

Sandy Centorino provided us a Values Moment about an organization that serves people, young an old, with pets. The organization is called Pet Partners -http://www.petpartners.org/

Sandy was also our Topics Master with pet related topics. Harry Thurow, our newest member, gave not one but two Table Topics……before his check even cleared! We also learned about Allie’s glass gold fish and Cassie’s uninvited pet turtles.

Jon Weinberger “broke the ice” and shared his interesting background with us. If Jon felt uncomfortable speaking in public, he certainly fooled us! It was an auspicious debut indeed! (Kate, do I get credit for using the word of the day?)

Robin Corrigan completed her 9^th speech, speaking about her dragon and her trip to Tibet.

Allie Centorino researched her topic for her second speech, inspiring us with her story about overcoming a personal challenge.

And then there was Elaine Piazza……..Elaine completed her Advanced Communication Silver with her 10 minute speech, providing pointers about public speaking.  Elaine had told us early this year that she was going to complete her ACS this year and she did it! She also pushed Eagle over the top…..We are now President’s Distinguished for the 14^th year in a row!

At the end of the meeting, Ian Brooks shared an opportunity to help another organization with a “Speechcraft” event. Ian is working with a Manufacturing Company in North Haven that is looking to improve their speaking skills. He is seeking volunteers at Eagle to provide a couple of hours of time on either a Wednesday or Thursday TBD.

As exciting as it is to grow at an Eagles meeting, I learned that helping others learn our craft is incredibly energizing! The bonus is that Eagle’s treasury will get a nice boost as this is a paid gig! Please reach out to Ian if you are interested and able to help. Several of us told Ian we can do it if provided enough notice. If you think you can find time to help (even if you’re not sure) just let Ian know. He will do his best to make it work.

I look forward to seeing you at our final meeting of the Toastmaster year on 6/15 (don’t worry, “next year” begins on 7/6). After our meeting, we will celebrate at Jake’s Tavern. I hope you will join us!

There are openings for our 6/15 meeting…..Please log onto http://www.eagletoastmasters.com/ and sign up for something!

Tony