Toastmasters Club 1523 Open House in the Green Room at the LIbrary: You Are Invited

Will you join us?

Club 1523. (Click to enlarge)  

This coming Thursday our Toastmasters Club 1523 is hosting an Open House in the Duluth Library. The public is invited. (This means you.)

I myself began attending Club 1523 in December and quickly discovered that Toastmasters is not just about becoming a better speaker, but also about becoming a better leader. It's an impressive program that was started in 1924 by a fellow named Ralph Smedley in Santa Ana, California. Ralph's aim was to help improve communication skills in a group of young men he was associated with. Today there are now 352, 000 members in nearly 16,000 clubs worldwide.

Our newest member, Jane Kim, addressing to the group.

The club meetings have a somewhat formal structure that makes meetings efficient without feeling rigid. There are usually two speeches each week and a Table Topics segment in which members have an opportunity to practice impromptu speaking. This is my favorite part of the meeting. A Table Topics Master selects the topic which you can't anticipate, forcing you to assemble in your mind a structured two-minute talk. It's a great skill to have because if you're ever in management or at a function as a company spokesperson, it's almost certain that at some point in your career you'll be called upon "to say a few words."

Whether for professional or personal development, you never know how far you can go as a speaker or leader until you move outside your comfort zone.

In addition to dealing with the basic issue of stage fright, you learn how to write a speech, engage an audience, how to deliver that speech with confidence and how to grow from each speaking experience via constructive feedback.

Whether you're comfortable or terrified as a public speaker, Toastmasters will help you improve. This Thursday's public meeting will give you a chance to see what they are all about.

Consider Yourself Invited 

OPEN HOUSE 

TIME: 6:00 p.m.

THURSDAY, March 11

PLACE: THE GREEN ROOM @ THE DULUTH PUBLIC LIBRARY 

Located on the Michigan Street level of the library, 

down one flight of stairs from the Checkout Desk. 

The Joy of Lifelong Learning

Eight to ten years ago I started listening to audio books during my morning commute. Our library has a rich selection to choose from.

At some point during that time, perhaps through a random catalog in the mail, I stumbled upon The Teaching Company. To paraphrase the company's founder... Do you ever wish that you could go back and hear some of your professor's lectures now that you have matured a little and or actually paid attention to what they were saying the first time? To go a step further, what if there was a way you could sit in on and listen to the greatest lecturers of our time as they shared their insights on the great themes of learning?

Well, that's the motivation behind this company. Whatever your pleasure, Business and Economics, Arts and Music, Literature, Philosophy, History, Social Sciences, Science or Mathematics, this company has done a bang up job of assembling some fantastic material for your personal listening pleasure and mental stimulation.

Currently I am listening to Masterpieces of Short Fiction, a series of 24 half hour lectures by Professor Michael Krasny. From Poe and Hawthorne to Updike and Carver, Krasny digs into the life and work of 24 literary masters of the short story oeuvre. Like much in literature, there is more to everything than initially meets the eye.

Rather than bore you with my own effusive praise for what this company has achieved, I will borrow a few testimonial quotes here from their website.

“When we find a master teacher… we should indeed, as the Teaching Company does, distribute the fruits of their labor widely and preserve them for posterity. This is the vision of the Teaching Company's ‘Great Courses’ series.”

—Chris Armstrong, Managing Editor
Christianity Today

"A dream come true for the lifelong learner, The Teaching Company's The Great Courses series features a semester's or more worth of lectures in hundreds of disciplines by some of the country's leading scholars."

—Video Librarian

"If you always wanted to attend Harvard, Yale or Princeton... The Teaching Company... offers Ivy League entry without the tedious application process, the astronomical fees, the undesired required courses or the pressure of final exams."

—The International Herald Tribune

"Whether they're commuting to work or hammering out miles on the treadmill, people have made these digital professors part of the fabric of their lives."

—Christian Science Monitor

We've purchased more of The Great Courses than we can probably afford, but consider each purchase an investment in our personal development. In the philosophy category I have enjoyed Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, a series on St. Augustine's Confessions, and No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life. We are also listening to a 48 lecture overview of the great ideas of philosophy as part of a Philosophy Club we started in our home three years ago.

Be enriched.