Meeting, Thursday, December 3, 2009 - Luther Ridge, 628 Congdon Street, Middletown, CT Middlesex Toastmasters Club #8340



Our meeting last night was held at Luther Ridge in Middletown; all were warmly greeted and welcomed by the staff. A hearty thank you to Tom Alvord for making this arrangement possible for our club!

Members in attendance: Ana Bowman, Ron Brunelle, Charnaie Gordon, Kay Jeyaplan, John Keppler, Cheryl Mason (Area B2 Governor), Pam Mulready, Deb Nason, Dianne Olsen, Ramesh Padavala, Murali Pemmaraju, Pete Plotica, Kim Price, Rob Schaff (Area 5 Governor), and Arun Sodani. Guests: Paul Randolph (C2 Area Governor and member of the Air Line Club in Colchester), and Paul Rice (a friend of member Ann-Marie Cannata).

President Cheryl Mason began our meeting with the introduction of “Drew” the traveling gavel, which was recaptured Wednesday at the Stag Club Meeting in downtown Hartford by Charnaie, Cheryl, Michael O'Brien, and Arun.

Other announcements by Cheryl:
· Saturday, December 12th will be the Officers’ Training in Manchester
· Take a look at our Middlesex club website, freetoasthost sites have had new formatting changes.
· Take a look at the District 53 website; there have been changes made in the format giving it a new look and feel

Vice President of Education, Charnaie Gordon also mentioned some upcoming announcements:
· Our Club is holding a Speech-A-Thon in conjunction with the Cromwell Club on Thursday, January 7th from 7-9 pm. We currently have 5 speakers from our club signed up. Pizza will be served (a small donation will be asked).
· The Club Speech Contest (International and Tall Tales Contest) will be held March 11th. Speakers, evaluators, judges, etc. will be needed
· Club Open House Event will be Thursday, March 25th at Middlesex Community College. Keynote Speaker will be Jerry Aiyathurai, winner of the District 53 Fall Conference.

Meeting
Kay Jeyaplan was the Toastmaster; her theme was “Unleash Your Potential.” She inspired us with readings and quotes taken from the book, Good to Great, by Jim Collins.

TableTopics Master, Charnaie, led us with the theme, “Maximize Your Potential.” Mini speeches were given by Kim, Arun, Ana, Pam, John and Ramesh. In addition, both of our guests, Paul Randolph and Paul Rice also participated.

Speakers
It was wonderful to listen to the speeches and see the development of all the speakers.
Rob Schaff did an unusual “off the cuff” speech in which he submitted a list of 5 possible speeches he could do and his evaluator randomly chose one of them at the beginning of the meeting. He did one entitled, “Time Management.”
Deborah Nason spoke on “A Day Trip to France”, with a descriptive speech that made you feel like you were there.
Ron Brunelle spoke with authority on “Our Economic System, does it work?”
Cheryl Mason let her body speak out with her speech “Tuesday Afternoon.”

Evaluators
General Evaluator, Arun Sodani
Speech evaluators were as follows:
Dianne Olsen for Rob (her first evaluation)
Cheryl Mason for Deb
John Keppler for Ron
Ana Bowman for Cheryl (her first evaluation)

Arun Sodani gave an exceptional overall evaluation of the meeting. John commented that it was the “most complete general evaluation” ever done at our Club.

Other Roles
Invocator: Charnaie
Humorist: Murali
Word of the Day: Pam, “MNEMONIC”
Grammarian: Pam
Ah Counter: Deb
Timer: Pete

Toastmaster, Kay, made a final comment on an article that was in the December Cromwell/Middletown Chronicle about Cheryl receiving the Triple Crown at the District 53 Conference! If you get a chance, read it!

President Cheryl closed by asking our two guests to give us their impressions of the meeting, and they provided very positive feedback. We hope to see them again! The meeting was closed on time.