“The room was alive with the sound of music…” Really! In keeping
with the “These are a few of my favorite things” theme, the
Jokemaster duo of Dave and Carol Stewart lustily led us in a
hilarious parody of this very song.
To add to the celebratory feeling, we had the pleasure of
inducting yet another new member, Ruth Morse, into the club.
Li Ying Kao remarked that our other newest member, Parvaneh
Bahrami, is already in contention with her for the reputation as
one of the most efficient Ah Counters.
Li Ying was our General Evaluator. Many of the comments you will
read about the members are hers. She was very ‘up’ in every way.
Making sure that we were ‘up’ as well, she had the entire
audience cheerleading for the good jobs performed by all of the
participants
She did an excellent job in this award winning role.
Gerhard Rentsch’s Inspiration was meant to be taken to heart by
all of us. He got our attention with a perfect-for-the-occasion
dose of humour which led into a meaningful inspiration
specifically designed for our group.
Veronica Marshall, always well versed before her roles,
synchronized watches with the other key players and then led us
through the meeting without a hitch. Dinner meetings are often
more difficult to time, but Veronica had everything timed to a
T.
Jill McCormick’s Table Topics were a hit! Based on the “Favorite
Things” theme, they were easy for all of the Speakers to have
fun with. It was especially fun to have a large number of our
guests accept the offer to speak. Many of them were former
members of our club, or returning spouses who had chosen to take
on Table Topics at previous dinners. Jill set everyone up for
success, encouraging speakers to come up; then bridging between
them with praise for their efforts. The highest praise of all
went to Csaba Hajdu, who touched our hearts and won the Best
Speaker Ribbon.
Stuart Manning was the lucky person who rose to the challenge of
evaluating an unusually long list of Table Topic Speakers. He
used a fast pace, but was easy to understand, as he sandwiched
very thorough critics.
We were surprised to learn that Andrea Clarke had never before
performed the role of Toastmaster. She had a strong presence,
warm and friendly with just the right touch of professionalism.
The body of her Toast had touching humour, culminating in good
wishes “To family and friends”. She made sure everyone
understood the Communication Program before leading us into
great anticipation about our evening’s Speaker. Congratulations
on performing such a major role so well.
The Speaker Andrea introduced was an accomplished reader of
stories, Don Ekroth, doing a Read Out Loud project that had us
spellbound. It began innocuously enough, but took a breathtaking
turn of events that led to a completely unsuspecting surprise
ending. “Back for Christmas” was definitely not your
heart-warming little Christmas story. Check it out. You will be
glad you did!
Any form of interpretive reading can be difficult to evaluate,
but Ruth Sol was up to it. She began by noting that his story
suited this particular audience, and that Don really was the
perfect person to tell it. “He made it come alive for us”. He
was even dressed in foreshadowing black for the part (although
none of us picked up on that when he first began to read). Ruth
did a very good job of explaining all of the elements she was to
evaluate, and how impressed she was with Don’s performance.
The evening as a whole was an excellent performance of our
members going out of their way to be sure it was a success. Many
thanks to all of the ‘old’ friends and family who helped make
our time together so memorable.
Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday Season.
We are looking forward to seeing you and many guests who would
like to come at our first meeting of the New 2006 Year on Monday
January 9th.
Club 1085
She did an excellent job in this award winning role.
