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FROM THE DESK

“Seasons” Greetings

by Donna Stark, DTM—Program Quality Director

One of the things I like about living where growth. I remember distinctly my dry mouth
we do is that we experience seasons. Summer, and my knees shaking uncontrollably. I thought
Winter, Spring, Fall, and my favorite—Football I was going to fall down! And I survived. And
Season—all have their own unique gifts. It seems grew. And you will, too!
like this Winter is the gift that keeps on giving. No matter the season, find the gift and make
So far I’ve received the gift of two cancelled the most of it!
Toastmasters meetings, a missed Open House,
and a postponed TLI.
Leanna keeps reminding me, “We’re
Toastmasters. We’re flexible!” In that spirit, I
offer that the weather provides abundant oppor-
tunities for speech material. Share those stories,
adventures, and lessons learned with your fellow
Toastmasters.
Officer Training season continues through
February 28th. We’ll get details of the resched-
uled TLI out as soon as we nail them down. You
won’t want to miss it! It’s mid-year training
season for your Trio, too. We’ll be gathering
with Trios from other districts for two days of
training on January 20th and 21st. It’s a great
opportunity for us to hear first-hand from TI
leaders and staff, and to learn from and network
with leaders from other districts.
We’re also moving into Contest Season.
Club level International Speech and Speech
Evaluation contests should be completed no
later than March 10th. Area contests will be
scheduled between March 11th and March 31st,
with Division contests to be held between April
1st and April 22nd. Winners of the Division
contests will compete at the District contest at
the Spring Conference on May 6th.
I encourage you to give contests a try. I
remember my first speech contest. As the
president of our fairly new club, I challenged
the members with an “I will if you will” propo-
sition. I really didn’t expect anyone to take me
up on it, but five of us accepted the challenge.
You know what they say about comfort zones and

12 VOLUME 3 ISSUE 7 JANUARY, 2017