About Brinker Toastmasters

Brinker Toastmasters is a member of Toastmasters International, the world’s largest nonprofit educational organization dedicated to helping men and women become more effective listeners, leaders, and speakers. We have been active in Vienna, Virginia, since 1998. Please keep reading to learn about our schedule and to contact us.

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Advice for the graduates…and speakers

Commencement season is upon us, though the news from campuses may not be what we expect this year. In their weekly conversation at The New York Times, Bret Stephens and Gail Collins take on what they’d say if called upon to give a commencement speech this year. Bret’s thoughts seem suited to speakers as well as to graduates.

If you were giving a graduation address, what would you say?

Bret: I’d urge them to do everything they can to cultivate an inner life, especially since social media is always trying to suck it out of them. Commit great poems to heart, starting with those by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Recite them aloud on solitary walks. Compose dirty limericks in your head. Read more for pleasure, less for purpose. Read, immediately, Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian.” Imitate the writers or artists you most admire; you’ll find your own voice and style in all the ways your imitation falls short. Don’t post self-indulgent glam shots of yourself on Instagram, and please stop photographing your damn meals.

Also: Think of TikTok as your generation’s cocaine and get off it. Work hard on keeping a few good friendships, not gaining thousands of followers. Eschew envy, cynicism and virtue signaling. Ponder the meaning of the word “hineni.” Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much. Preserve an independence of mind and spirit, and nurture a contrarian opinion or two, especially if it goes against your own political side.

Reserve the right to change your mind — and really do it from time to time. Never join a cause if you aren’t fully familiar with the argument against it. Heed the words of Rabbi Hillel: “Where there are no men, be thou a man.” Or woman. Don’t equate success with fame or fame with happiness. Find your core satisfaction in a soul mate, not a career. Laugh more, mostly at yourself.



More grammar humor than I thought possible

  • An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
  • A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
  • A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
  • An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
  • Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
  • A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
  • Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
  • A question mark walks into a bar?
  • A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
  • Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”
  • A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
  • A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
  • Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
  • A synonym strolls into a tavern.
  • At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
  • A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
  • Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
  • A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
  • An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
  • The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
  • A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
  • The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
  • A dyslexic walks into a bra.
  • A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
  • A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
  • A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
  • A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.

Release Day for the Tortured Poets

Believe it or not, Toastmasters can find a connection to the new Taylor Swift album—

Punctuated Equilibrium: “I’d like to think of the tortured poets collectively hanging out together in a department of their own, a space to feel their feelings and write about them in a supportive environment.” NYT (Gift Article): Tortured Poets’ or Poets? Taylor Swift Meets the Apostrophe Police. (Via Dave Pell)

I was even more taken by this somewhat close reading of the music and the links to the poetry it mentions—

7 Songs that Reference Tortured Poets

Playlists on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube are linked.

Division C Contest

Division C Director Mariama Souare has sent a reminder that the Division C Contest is coming up this week:

I hope you had a lovely Easter weekend!

Please share this with your club members. We look forward to seeing you all there!

You are cordially invited to the Division C Evaluation and International Speech contest on April 4th at 6:30pm!

Here is the Zoom link to join us: us02web.zoom.us/j/86957879630?pwd=ejR1YzZXOWU4ckpBc1BZY0ljbTlZZ

There might be some pretty good speaking at the Division level.

(Just wondering. Does anyone remember when Area Directors and Division Directors promoted their contests and tried to generate interest in activities?)

Candidates for District Office announced

The candidates for District 29 officers for the term beginning in July 2024 have been announced. The announcement at the District web contains a photograph and a biography for each candidate. Note that the election for Club Growth Director is contested once again, and one of the candidates is Lee Proctor, who did a terrific job as our Area Director a few years ago. Our club will have two votes in the election at the Annual Business Meeting. Should you wish to advocate for any of the candidates, just tell President Laura Meyer ahead of time.

The District Conference is set for May 3 and 4 at the Capital One Building in McClean. Watch the District web site for more details.

Supplemental Materials, March Board of Directors Meeting

The Board of Directors Briefing that you should all have received by now contains the disappointing news that the date for the implementation of the new learning management system for Pathways is slipping. The reports no longer say the new system is coming in the first half of 2024. They say instead that the new system is coming later in the year.

A number of other items are noted in the briefing but not linked. Here’s where you can find