The “It was a dark and stormy night…” theme set the perfect
atmosphere for our Halloween Dinner Meeting, which actually took
place this year on Halloween night!!
Neville Cohen, festive in his “Cat in the Hat” hat, had done
some interesting research on the history of Halloween for his
comments as the Chair. His conclusion was that rather than
focusing on the quite depressing roots of the occasion, he much
prefers the more modern concept of describing Halloween as “A
happy time of witches and goblins; an excuse for people to dress
up, let off a little steam, and have a bit of fun.”
Always inspired by the benefits she has gained from her years in
our club, former member, Heather Woolstone (wearing a dazzleing
tiara!) used this opportunity to inspire the rest of us to learn
as much as we can from our experiences in Toastmasters. The
greatest personal advantage she has realized has been her
new-found confidence to accept speaking and leadership
engagements that she never before would have even considered. We
were very happy to have you with us on this occasion, Heather.
Thank you for sharing your insights
The ‘dark and stormy night’ could have been absolutely “ghastly”
but it wasn’t. Quite the opposite. However, that did not deter
speakers from using this Word of the Evening in some positive
and some humorous ways! Thank you Marlene Finlayson. Thank you,
too, for once again bridging and effortlessly performing the
Wordsmith with the Wizard of Ahs. In reporting on our
performances, she “dealt with the ghastly news first” – our
excessive use of ahs and ums. It was ghastly news. She could
have been an accountant for all the nickels she was adding up
But that was followed by “the delightful task” of quoting the
many interesting words and vivid pictures that she found “stood
out and added to the information from the Speakers”. There
definitely was balance in her observations, even though it was
nice to see the positives tipping the scale.
Once again the Joke was an Open Mike, and because it was a
Dinner Meeting, we were entertained with two jokes, instead of
just the more usual one. Dave Stewart took advantage of the
theme for his opening line because it fit so beautifully. He
then proceeded to tell us about a horse that (for those ‘older
folks’ out there who might remember) could have been related to
Mr. Ed. Don Ekroth’s joke also could have opened with the theme
line simply because it was very very ‘Halloween ghoulish’. It’s
a good thing the ‘star’ of his joke did not end up wearing the
Tacky Tourist outfit Don had adorned!
The intriguing scenarios Don set us up with for our Table Topics
were a treat – easy to speak to and most required creativity and
imagination. The Speakers lived up to his expressed expectations
and altogether made it a very fun session. Marlene was first out
of the gate with a topic. The very visual description of her
new, deluxe witches’ broom won another Best Table Topic Ribbon
to add to her growing collection.
Winner of the Best Evaluator went to a ‘bewitched’ Ruth Sol, who
began by evaluating the Table Topic Speakers, while later in the
evening she also evaluated Omar’s speech! Ruth is always a
gracious evaluator, even when giving suggestions. Her
evaluations are most helpful because those she addresses in this
way want to hear her opinions. The General Evaluator summed up
the Table Topic evaluations with: “Ruth gave each speaker a
unique and individual evaluation”. Then later, her evaluation of
Omar’s speech was in itself a well constructed mini-speech –
very easy to follow, with well defined suggestions.
Dave Stewart’s ‘Toast with a twist’ gleaned some very
interesting information about the opening line “It was a dark
and stormy night…” . He discovered that there had once been a
competition to find an opening line that could possibly be worse
than that one. There was a winner! If you ask him, Dave would be
happy to quote it.
Ruth says “It is always a pleasure to evaluate Omar Hung. … One
of his strongest strengths is that he projects sincerity.” He
often draws from personal experiences or his personal philosophy
for speeches, and he did again this time. He told us how he
turned a poor memory in his youth into a life-long habit of note
taking. His personal reasons, and practical advice made
compelling arguments for us to adopt his suggestions.
What would Halloween be without a ghost story? Jill McCormick,
dressed as one of the seaman in this story, animatedly described
the mystery of ‘a seaman falling from the sky onto a boat deck’
and the antics that ensued. It was one of those stories that
left the audience to draw its’ own conclusions …
Stuart Manning concluded that ‘it wouldn’t have been Halloween
without a ghost story’, and his comments and suggestions for
Jill were thoughtful and most appreciated.
You have already read some of Li-Ying Kao’s thoughts on our
performances this night. She opened her General Evaluation of
the meeting by praising Neville for his foresight in bringing
everything we needed to ensure a successful meeting. Then she
spoke for all of us when she praised the restaurant staff for
the delicious meal, and their smooth, efficient, unobtrusive
service. She takes the teaching role of General Evaluator
seriously and had a number of good suggestions for us to take to
heart. Here are two of her suggestions we should try to be more
vigilant about: She stressed the importance of the Timing Lights
to keep speakers on track. She empathetically understood that
this is sometimes more difficult in a dinner meeting but it
still must be done. We practice our speech roles until the
timing is right, but when the lights don’t go on when we expect
them then we wonder what we are doing wrong – we might perhaps
wonder “Am I speaking too quickly?” or “Did I leave something
out?” The use of all of the lights is very important. She also
reminded us that when the members who are giving manual speech
projects are introduced, it is above all most important to
prepare the people in the audience for the Speaker by ‘setting
them up’ so that they are curious and interested in what they
are going to hear. This means that unless the theme for the
evening is directly related to what the Speaker is going to be
talking about, it isn’t appropriate to mention it at all in
these particular introductions. Good reminders, Li Ying, thank
you.
Great costumes and a change of venue contributed to a convivial
evening. Warm laughter and good feelings lit us up inside and
kept “the dark and stormy night” at bay.
Next Monday we will be back in our regular meeting room in West
Vancouver. Some of the members of Logos Toastmasters will be
joining us, and we hope that you will all be there, too. We
always have a lively time when the two clubs get together and
Guests are always welcome to share in the fun.
Club 1085
