May 1st Meeting - May Day! May Day!

Eagles,

Our May 1st meeting, with Yours Truly, serving as Toastmaster, featured an Ice Breaker, a Labor Day Lesson, and a History Tour Double Feature!

Fred Swiderski served as our Humorist, telling us a story about where the parrot found the Frenchman. He was followed by Brad Leete, who provided us a quote from the Curious Case of Benjamin Button.....Brad broke the Eagle Toastmaster record for longest memorized quote from a movie!

Ian Brooks served as our Table Topic Master where he called 6 Toastmasters to the lectern. For those of you that could use a "Red Book Project", and did not absquatulate when called up, seek out an Eagle that saw you give your TT for Project 1 credit.

Bernard Bostic gave his Ice Breaker where he offered several life lessons such as "you're either growing or going backwards". Bernard took a big step forward by giving a well organized story of his life, while stumping Ah Counter, Steve McGirr with 0.0 ah's and ums!

Tom Corrigan took us for a tour at the Museum of the American Revolution. bought us lunch, and then gave an after lunch speech where he finished the tour. A vivid way of sharing his love of American history and teaching us a few things!

In between Tom's speeches, Ute Brinkmann, shared a fascinating account of how Labor Day came to be in her speech "Just Another Day".

A word of thanks to the functionaries not mentioned above.....Heather McKelvie (Grammarian), Richard Freeman (Timer), and Kate Kelly (General Evaluator). Our Speech Evaluators included Joseph Oddie, Brad Leete, Fred Swiderski, and Sandra Centorino.

Other News

We are heading into the home stretch of our 2016-17 TM year (it ends on June 30th). Amy Demas led a discussion on what Eagle's officers do and Ute Brinkmann provided descriptions of each role in the news letter. 

If you are interested in increasing your participation in Toastmasters, please consider any of the 7 officer roles. Feel free to reach out Amy (abcdemas@gmail.com) or any of the officers to learn more. 

Note that each year, several officers change so if you are at all interested, please reach out! Also know that the President has a 1 year term limit, so that office is definitely open!

Also....Congratulations to Sandra Centorino. Sandra has been selected to be an educational speaker at the upcoming District 53 Conference in Bloomfield CT on May 20th. Sandra presented a trial run of "Heroes don't look like they used to"......Thanks to the inputs from our club, she is in the process of adapting her speech to a 40 minute version!

Our next meeting is on May 15th, with Joseph Oddie serving as our Toastmaster.....Please sign up for something! 

And bring your Red Book so you can check off another project!

Tony Centorino

Eagle Secretary

4/17 Meeting

Eagles,

Tonight’s meeting featured 15 members and 7 guests. Welcome to Eagle, Stephen McGirr….and to Fred Swiderski, welcome back!

As tonight’s Toastmaster, Deb Haggett, led a very lively proceeding. Ian Brooks opened up with one of the shortest jokes in recent Eagle memory. Jamie Fisher provided the evening’s quote of the day.

Our members and guests demonstrated their speaking acumen throughout our meeting. Ute Brinkmann egged on our members and guests with an Easter version of Table Topics. Many of us learned that “thriller, filler, and spillers” is a gardening term. Stephen was asked to talk about taxes….Allie Centorino decided to talk about taxes instead of gardening!

Sandra Centorino took on the ambitious goal of giving a Keynote address as part of her Advanced Communications manual. Sandra gave an inspirational speech to urge us to take the “Alternate Route”, encouraging us to incorporate simple heroic deeds into our life and into the lives of others. Amy Demas served as Sandra’s evaluator.

Joseph Oddie, gave a humorous speech about his family’s experience at the Lion King. We learned that “hakuna matata” is an old African term for “don’t take the train from Fairfield to Grand Central if you want a seat”! Joseph’s speech offered a very entertaining and poignant story through the eyes of his grandchildren. Jaime Fisher evaluated Joseph’s speech.

Many thanks to our functionaries not mentioned above…..Chris Gaffney as the Ah Counter, Amy Demas as the Timer, and Yours Truly as the Grammarian and General Evaluator.

As tonight’s grammarian, I noticed the use of the word “anyways” and mentioned that the correct term is “anyway”. The omission of the letter “s” is explained in the following link for those of you that are interested.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/is-anyways-a-word/

Finally, it is a real pleasure and privilege for each of us to enjoy the members and guests that attended this evening’s meeting. We look forward to seeing all of you at our next meeting on 5/1! By the way, I will be the Toastmaster……please sign up for something!

Tony Centorino

Eagle Secretary

3/20 Meeting - Area Speech Contest!

Eagles,

Last night, Eagle hosted the Area Speech Contest.....Once again, we showcased why we are the premier club in our area, providing an enthusiastic audience, a couple of contestants, and plenty of food and refreshments!

Congratulations to the Eagle participants! Chris Gaffney moves on to the next round in the International contest.....His speech "Dumpster Full of Memories" is helping him build his "Trophy Case of Memories"! Jaime Fischer was the Table Topic runner up......not bad for a Toastmaster Rookie! Jaime not only advanced her craft as a speaker, but maybe she'll be able to talk her way out of a speeding ticket!

Thanks to all of you that participated! At the risk of missing some names, I would like to recognize some of our participants. Thom Knowlton served as our Contest Master, Richard Freeman as our SAA, and Jacqueline Fuller served as our Refreshment Master, becoming a budding photographer in the process!

So many of you contributed to our contest in multiple roles....Serving as a functionary, providing food and refreshments, and being an audience member. They say 90% of life is just showing up. Being an audience member is a huge way of making our contest a vibrant celebration of Toastmasters!

The next contest round is the Division contest taking place at Eversource on 4/13.....Please consider coming to the contest and rooting for Chris! 

Tony Centorino

Eagle Secretary

3/6 Meeting - It's a Speech Contest!

Eagles,

Last night, Eagle Toastmasters held our club Table Topic and Speech competition. This is the time of year where each and every Toastmaster Club around the world has a special “contest agenda” for Table Topics and the International Speech.

As usual, Eagle did not disappoint…..We had 20 Toastmasters, 2 Guests, and 1 Area Director participate in our contest as Speakers, Functionaries, Bringers of food/refreshments, and Audience Members. “Contest Season” is a celebration of Toastmasters aimed at bringing out the best in everybody!

Let’s get to it……For Table Topics, congratulations to Joseph Oddie, who earned 1^st place. Runner up is Jaime Fischer, and Second Runner up was Peter Penev. Jamie and Peter are two of our newest members who jumped into the pool with both feet putting forth their best efforts! All three Table Topic participants had to give advice to their 10 year old selves and their advice was unique as the talents they put forth!

As for the International Speech, congratulations to Chris Gaffney, who earned 1^st place. Runner up was Tony Centorino. Chris gave a captivating speech about a “Dumpster Full of Treasures”. Chris put his speaking talents on full display and showed that speeches can literally come from anywhere! Yours Truly gave a speech about the “Character Scrapbook”, channeling Hal Holbrook in the process!

Chris and Joseph will advance to our Area Contest which will be held at our next meeting on 3/20 at a special time of 6:30! Please arrive a little early to ensure our contest starts on time!

More congratulations and thank yous are in order…..Deb Haggett and Paula Erardi served as our contest chairs. They did an outstanding job of organizing this year’s event, earning a major Red Book Credit! Tom Corrigan, Robin Corrigan, and Amy Demas served as our Judges…..Congratulations! Heather McKelvie served as our Ballot  Counter, Richard Freeman as our Sergeant at Arms, Kate Kelly and Jacqueline Fuller as Timers. Congratulations and Thank You for stepping up and taking on a role!

Finally, to those of you not mentioned above, Thank You! By being an audience member and bringing a food/refreshment item, you helped make our meeting a success! Last night brought out all of the best of Eagle!

Our next meeting is on Monday March 20^th at the Special Time of 6:30! This is the area contest, hosted by Eagle. Thom Knowlton is our Contest Chair and he needs our help! We have an agenda to sign up for refreshments. If you are looking to participate in a functionary role, please reach out to Thom at Oldthom52@gmail.com. Thom needs our help to ensure another successful contest!

See you on March 20^th!

Tony Centorino

Eagle Secretary

2/20/17 Meeting

Eagles,

Tonight’s meeting, led by Toastmaster Tom Corrigan, showcased the greatness of our club and our members!

Many clubs have told us that they are challenged to find one or two speakers for their meetings while their members take on multiple functionary roles. At tonight’s meeting, Eagle Toastmasters filled the agenda on very short notice thanks to the depth and experience of our membership.

Two of our more experienced Eagles stepped up. Kate Kelly and Joseph Oddie. Joseph notified us of a last minute conflict which provided others the opportunity to sign up….and sign up they did! Sandra Centorino and Deb Haggett stepped up and signed up! Tonight’s meeting blossomed into an educational/multi-media experience!

Speaker #1, Kate Kelly, gave us an overview of Microsoft One Note via computer and overhead projector. She showed us several interesting applications of the often overlooked Microsoft icon that is on our computer. (Hint: it looks like a notebook). Congratulations to Kate as tonight’s speech completed her Competent Communicator’s milestone.

Speaker #2, Sandra Centorino, gave a Facebook Live demo using her iPad tethered to her cell phone. If you are Sandy’s Facebook friend, you can see what she did by looking at her feed. If you’re not a friend of Sandy, well……send her a request!

Speaker #3, Deb Haggett, used a prerecorded video on a video monitor. Ironically, “video Deb” was the only speaker that observed the timer cards hoisted by our Timer, Jaime Fisher.

Thanks to our other functionaries not mentioned above……Paula Erardi - our Grammarian, Robin Corrigan – Quote of the Day and General Evaluator, Brad Leete – our Jokemaster that told us about the talking, lying dog, and Peter Penev – Ah Counter. Yours truly served as the Topic Master and Evaluator. Allie Centorino and Jaime Fisher served as Evaluators as well…….It is always refreshing when our newer members serve as Evaluators as they offer fresh insights.

Our next meeting will be the Speech and Table Topic Contest on March 6^th…….We have a signup sheet for the contest (we have open roles and would love to see more contestants) as well as a food signup sheet (note that the club will provide pizza as our main dish).

Please be on the lookout for more messages on the speech contest!

Tony Centorino

Eagle Secretary

2/6/17 Meeting

Eagles,

Tonight’s Super Meeting was our third in four weeks with 22 members, 2 of which joined this evening! Paula Erardi, tonight’s Toastmaster, presided over an action packed meeting.

Welcome to Jeannette Bronsord and Peter Penev, our newest members!

Tom Corrigan, our Topics Master encouraged all members, newbies and seasoned members alike, to create new sports using combinations of equipment that ranged from pool cues, playing cards, and boxing gloves among other things. The goal was to replace the Super Bowl with a new sporting event…….Or maybe Tom was just trying to empty his garage of sporting goods collected over the years. Let me just say that the Super Bowl is safe – for now!

Robin Corrigan was our Humorist for the evening, and Joseph Oddie served as our Quotemaster.

Kate Kelly, Speaker #1, overcame her fear of needles to give blood. Her speech persuaded us to do the same. Joseph Oddie, Speaker #2, told us the parable of the Frog and the Scorpion, teaching us a life lesson along the way.

With only two schedule speeches, we had an opportunity to add a couple of items to the agenda. Sandra Centorino requested help on some speech ideas for a Keynote Speaker Project that she is considering. True to our Eagle Values, Sandra received a lot of Super advice.

Thom Knowlton, generously shared his DVD with the time remaining to show us a speech from World Champion Mohammed Qahtani…..Thank you, Thom!

Special thanks to the functionaries not mentioned above….Robin Corrigan as Evaluator #1 and Tony Centorino as Evaluator #2 and Grammarian. Heather McKelvie served as our Ah Counter, Deb Haggett, our Timer, and Amy Demas as our General Evaluator.

Some Housekeeping…..

Our Club Speech Contest will take place on March 6^th. Please sign onto the Eagle Website if you are interested in competing in Table Topics and/or International. If you are not competing, please consider signing up for a functionary role, which is also available for the taking!

Our next meeting is on February 20^th. Tom Corrigan will be our Toastmaster. Please go onto www.EagleToastmaster.com and sign up for something!

Tony Centorino

Eagle Secretary

1/30/17 Meeting

Eagles,

Last night was a special “off week” meeting. As Tom Corrigan, our General Evaluator said, “This was a typical meeting. We all learned something and had a lot of fun, which we do on cold winter nights and warm summer evenings”.

We had 18 members, including our two newest members, Brad Leete and Jacqueline Fuller. Welcome, Brad and Jacqueline! We also had a guest, Peter Penev, who participated at the suggestion of his fiancé. We also had cameo appearances from Sam Scale, Teddy Treadmill, and Ash “call me Ashley” Smokerson.

Kate Kelly served as our Toastmaster for the evening, which featured a full agenda.

Sandra Centorino led a Table Topics “Let’s Make a Deal Style”……She allowed the contestants, I mean members, to choose between the topic in hand or select the topic behind door #2. Our newest member, writer Brad Leete, participated as well.

Speaker #1 was Your Truly, who gave a speech about New Year’s resolutions and keeping the media honest. Speaker #2, President Amy Demas, completed her Competent Communicator with a warm speech that showcased the different types of Toastmasters we have at Eagle.  Speaker #3, Heather McKelvie, gave a speech out of the Story Teller’s advance manual. She told us a folk tale called “The Blue Light”.

Last but not least, was Speaker #4, Joseph Oddie, who gave an advanced manual speech on how to inform. He informed us on how to evaluate speeches using the PET method.

Special thanks to our functionaries……Humorist - Ute Brinkmann, Grammarian – Allie Centorino,  Ah Counter – Robin Corrigan, Timer – Richard Freeman, and our evaluators, Joseph Oddie, Thom Knowlton, Robin Corrigan, and Deb Haggett.

Our next meeting is next week, February  6. Please log into www.EagleToastmasters.com and sign up for something!

Have a great week!

Tony

Eagle Secretary