Speech #6: Soaring

[Toastmaster Competent Communicator Project #6, Vocal Variety.  Objectives: Use volume, pitch, rate and quality to make your points.]

Mr. Toastmaster,

I told you before that I am a sailor. Today I would like to talk about a sport that is closely related to sailing. --- Soaring. I''ll tell you about what soaring is and how it works. Hopefully, that will enable you to understand better when I try to paint a picture of my best soaring day. I'll finish by telling you how you might experience it yourself.

---

Soaring is nothing but a fancy word for flying gliders. A glider is an airplane with no engine and no noise. Especially no noise.

The main principle of flying gliders is very simple. I'll explain it right now. Wind does not always blow horizontally. Sometimes it blows up, sometimes down. To a glider pilot, up is good and down is bad. Remember that up-good, down-bad.

So, soaring means just flying around in the sky, here and there, looking for good air. If you feel the air blowing you down, that's --- bad. When that happens you push the stick forward, point the nose down and fly just as fast as you can to get away from that bad air. When you find the air going up you pull back on the stick to fly as slow as possible, then start turning in circles to remain in that up air because up is --- good.  In Florida, you often see a dozen or more turkey vultures circling the sky.  That does not mean a dead thing is below.  It means they found up air and they are soaring.

One more time up? Down?

That was your final exam. You all passed and now, you are all certified glider pilots.

–

Today, I want to tell the story of my best day ever soaring. There is something called a mountain wave. I'll have to explain that. Did you ever see a swift river where the water flows over a submerged rock. The water goes up over the rock, then down the back side. Then, downstream it goes up and down again. The same thing happens when the atmosphere flows over a mountain. The wind blows up one side, then down the other, then up again in a mountain wave. An invisible, but powerful wave.

It was a cold crisp day in the fall. The fall colors in Vermont were near peak. The trees were red and orange and yellow and crimson and gold. The air was crystal clear. I flew into a mountain wave. Up I went, faster and faster. One more time, up is ??? good. It became very smooth and very quiet, like riding in an elevator. I could have played muzac. Tall and tan and young and lovely.

The higher I went the faster the wind blew against me. The wind tries to push you back while the glider tries to fly forward. Eventually, I rose so high that the wind speed matched the air speed and I became stationary relative to the ground. I went no higher.

There I sat, 14000 feet up in the sky. No motion, no sound. I was able to let go of the controls with my hands and my feet and look around in all directions. I could see across the mountain. Across all of New York state. Across Lake Ontario. There was Toronto Canada. In the other direction, I could see across the mountains of Vermont to the mountains of New Hampshire. There sat Mount Washington. Spectacular.

--

Then I saw something even better. The mountain wave had sucked in some white clouds. That made the mountain wave became visible. It looked like Niagara Falls with the white water falling, except that this waterfall was falling up. It was the scale that was most magnificent. From where I sat, it appeared to be 20000 feet high, and 60 miles long. I flew over to the waterfall and I was able to put the tip of my wing only one or two feet away. There was just enough lift to maintain my altitude. So I was able to fly along the world's biggest upside down waterfall, following it left and right as it meandered across the state.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the most amazing sight I have ever seen.

Perhaps you would like to experience soaring yourself. It is not terribly difficult, nor ruinously expensive.\

The easiest way to get started is to buy a ride at soaring centers where they offer them. I recommend Google maps as a good way to find anything local. Expect to pay about $100 for a 20-30 minute ride.

Obviously, it will be more fun to do it where there are big hills or mountains. Not Florida.

Mr Toastmaster, the floor is yours.

Speech #5, Fireman's Stories

[Toastmaster Competent Communicator Project #5, Your Body Speaks.  Objectives: Use body language, gestures, stance and so on.  Unfortunately, this blog is not video.]

Mr. Toastmaster, friends and guests.

All across America, the institution of Volunteer Fire Departments is dying. They are being replaced by paid professionals. Before they disappear from the landscape, and from my memory, I want to share a few stories.

--1

On my very first house fire, I was assigned to take a hose out to the back yard and to fight the fire from there. What I didn't know was that another crew in the front yard was setting up a powerful water cannon. When they turned that baby on the stream of water was so powerful, that it blew a hole in the front wall of the house, crossed the interior, blew another hole in the back wall, and hit the chimney.

Out back, holding my hose I looked up to see the chimney falling directly towards me. There was no time to get out of the way. CRASH. The chimney landed right beside me. Oh My God.

--2

One day I was hanging out at the firehouse with a bunch of fellow firefighters. We were standing in a circle in the parking lot, spitting on the tarmac and talking about manly things. Hunting. Tractors. Pickup trucks. Then, along came Maggie. Maggie was our only female member. Maggie elbowed her way into the circle. Conversation stopped. The pregnant pause got longer and longer. Maggie looked to her left. She looked to her right. Then with both hands she reached down to her crotch and adjusted her package.

Well, let me tell you. It took more than 5 minutes for the laughter to die out. Thereafter, Maggie was just one of the guys.

–3

On a different occasion, I was searching a house after the fire was out, but while it was still full of smoke. I found three dead puppies in the bedroom. I picked them up and cradled them in my arms, the way one carries an infant. When I emerged from the house, I looked up. Across the street were the children that owned the puppies. The expressions on their faces broke my heart.

–4

Every little boy dreams of driving a fire truck. Well, for big boys age 60 find it just as much fun as they dreamed of at age 6. The truck is big, and red. You sit way up in the air. You have red lights and siren. The horn was so loud it could knock that bull in the field off of his feet. I drove right up the middle of the road straddling the yellow lines. It was magic to see the oncoming traffic just melt away as I approached.

–5

I got promoted to captain. I went to an Incident Command course. The instructor challenged me. “Dick. An airliner just crashed in your district. It was a jumbo jet, with hundreds of people. You are the only officer available for miles around. You are in command. What do you do?” I just wanted to fold myself into the fetal position and disappear.

–6

On my last house fire, I arrived at the scene late. The chief said, “Go in there and see if those guys need help. So in I went. The smoke was so dense that even if you hold your hand one inch in front of your face, you can't see it. The only way to navigate was to get down on my hands and knees, and to feel the fire hose with my hands. I followed the hose across floors and over furniture, until I came to the place where the flames were. One of the guys there handed me something heavy. “Get this out of here,” he said. So I dragged that heavy thing back, on my hands and knees following the hose. When I got outside, I looked down to see what it was. It was a 5 gallon plastic jug of gasoline, partially melted.

–7

On a training exercise, I was told to go to the third floor to rescue someone wearing all my gear and air tanks. The someone was a 200 pound dummy called Buster. I was supposed to throw Buster over my shoulder in the Fireman's Carry and carry him down the stairs. No way. I wasn't strong enough to to that. So I grabbed Buster by the heels and dragged him down the stairs. Thump, thump, thumpity thump thump. But in my training records, that counted as a successful rescue.

–8

Remember Maggie? One night we were about to leave the firehouse. Maggie held the door open to let people out. The people in front of me were Maggies family. As they went out the door, each gave Maggie a kiss. One. Two. Three. Four. Then me. I grabbed Maggie and gave her a really good kiss. Then I kept walking. I got 20 feet away before I heard Maggie's voice in back of me say, “HEY!”

[This speech resulted in the most negative reviews of any so far.  It had little intro, zero conclusion, and it packed 8 stories in where there should have been only 3.   I realized that I (and Libby) had committed the sin of telling stories that we like to tell, and ignored the audience.  Speaker-oriented versus audience-oriented.  I'll remind myself to remember that in the future.]

Speech #4: The Internet of Things

[Toastmaster Project 4: How to Say It.  Objectives: Select good words.  Use rhetorical devices.  Eliminate jargon and unnecessary words.]

Mr Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters, esteemed guests.

Do you recognize this thing in my hand?. Its an ordinary light bulb, right? Maybe. But it might also be an Internet enabled light bulb with wifi. Smart bulbs convenient and cheap. I can use this device call out “ Alexa turn on the light in the bedroom.” The bulb costs only a few dollars. I can have an Alexa voice device in every room, on my phone and in my car and in my office. What's not to like about that?

Suppose I told you about a web site that lists 80000 video cameras that people put in their homes but never set a password. Burglars can spy on them 24x7. They watch you dress. They know where you hide your jewelry. They know when you're not home. OK, there's a few things not to like.

The Internet of Things IOT: Light bulbs, speakers, a child's doll, thermostats, video cameras, refrigerators, fitbit bracelets, insulin pumps, our cars and countless more. The IOT threatens our privacy and security.

Guess who uses them against us. Big corporations, big crooks, and big government.

Big corporations. Suppose I am in the bathroom and that I just opened the last roll of toilet paper. It is super convenient for me to be able to say “ALEXA reorder toilet paper” Amazon knows what brand of paper I like, how to get paid from my account, and how to ship it to me. No law prevents Amazon from selling all that data to other big companies.

Big crooks recently hijacked more than 100000 DVRs digital video recorders, and video cameras in peoples homes. and turned them into weapons to attack our country's infrastructure. Somebody go tell Donald Trump.

Big government. Texas subpoenaed Alexa sound recordings from the home of a drug dealer. The cops reasoned that while the dealer's wife is reordering toilet paper, there might also be other conversations heard in the background where the drug guys incriminate themselves. The government doesn't need search warrants any more, we have bugged our own homes.

Ladies, lets see if this story creeps you out. Joe Blow walks down the street wearing Google glasses 2.0. He sees a pretty woman. The glasses tell him, “Her name is Susan Smith. She lives in the building behind you in apartment 3C. She is not wearing a bra. She loves Margaritas. Would you like to send her a text?” All of that is possible and inexpensive using today's technology.

Whose responsibility is it to clean up this mess? Think of the hijacked DVR case. The DVR manufacturer doesn't care; he has been paid, there is no more warranty, he is not the victim. The DVR owner doesn't care, his DVR still works. He is not the victim. Retailers don't care, they are no longer selling those old DVR models anyhow. Government may care, but these DVRs come from all over the world, outside the reach of our government. We cant send jack booted thugs to break down our doors and confiscate these IOT things. How about me? Have I set the password for this bulb and updated it to the newest software release? Hell no, don't bother me with that crap.

So, who's responsible? No one.

Some people say that better security is the answer. Wrong. We could use fingerprints instead of passwords. Suppose all your devices and your accounts are secured with your fingerprint? Pretty cool huh? But that makes it attractive for a crook to cut off your finger. He gets access to all your stuff, while you are locked out because you don't have the finger any more. Security is not the answer.

We have a problem. The people and the congress are weak on preventative actions. We tend to wait until things get very bad, then we react.

What can we do when we finally do react? I'm afraid that privacy is hopelessly dead forever. The best we can hope for is transparency. We need laws to subject Big corporations, Big crooks, and Big Government to our own surveillance. We need to see what they are up to and so that we can make a stink when what they do makes us angry.

Speech #3: Living Wills

[Toastmaster Project 3. Get To The Point.  Objectives: Have specific purposes.  Project sincerity and conviction.]

Mr Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters, esteemed guests. Good evening.

Wills, living wills, DNR orders, proxies, surrogates, end of life. Yuck. Those are subjects that we mostly like to postpone till another day. The fact is that only 25% of Americans have living wills.

My purpose today is to inform you about living wills and perhaps persuade you to make one if you haven't done so already. I'll talk about that what, why and how of living wills, about one enhancement, and even the nefarious side of the system. I'll mention do not resuscitate orders DNRs, but not regular wills.

Let's begin with the what.

Your treatment by the health care system is determined one in four ways. I'll list them in order, best case to worst case.

1. If you are awake and alert, you can tell the doctors your wishes directly.
2. If you aren't awake or alert, your wishes are documented in advance in a living will. They might also be expressed by a loved one that you have instructed in advance as to what your wishes are.
3. You can be treated by the legal default protocols in your state whatever that means.
4. Worst of all, decisions can be forced upon a loved one who has to guess as to what you would have wanted.

The Why of living wills should be obvious.

On one hand, health care workers need it to cover their behinds legally to deviate from the default protocol.

On the other hand, a loved one might be forced to decide for you. He or she could be saddled with guilt and doubt for the rest of their life if they are not certain that that their decision was what you really wanted. You love them. You should never risk them being put in that bind.

You may think of living wills as something for old people. Wrong. Accidents, can snatch away your future and bring you to near death in an instant, Every adult should have one.

The how is pretty simple.

The paper I am holding up is called “Five Wishes” it is simple and straightforward. (I'll explain in a minute why I can't give yo a copy.) This document satisfies the legal requirements in Florida and 41 other states. It takes only 15 minutes to read, one hour to fill out and sign and to leave a copy with your doctor. I vigorously recommend that you take the opportunity to brief any loved one who might be called upon as a future surrogate.

The document mentions DNR, but a living will is not a DNR order. DNRs cover much narrower circumstances. The legal intricacies of DNRs in Florida are pretty bizzare. The only way you can get a DNR is to ask your doctor.

Now, what if something bad happens when you are traveling? It could take a long time to track down your doctors, your living will and your loved ones, and while waiting on that tracking you fall into the legal default protocols for wherever you are. A neat and modern enhancement is to have your living will registered on the Internet.

My state, Vermont provides a free living will registry for its residents. I sent them a copy of my living will. They send me a sticker to put on my insurance card with contact info and an ID code that health care workers can use to get instant access to the content of my living will. Not matter what else happens, you can rest assured that the first procedure the hospital will perform is a walletectomy. Believe me, they will find your insurance card. Florida, unfortunately does not have a free registry, but they do recommend a private registry. You have the link on that paper.

There are nefarious aspects of the system.

The laws of the 50 states are not uniform, nor are they user friendly, nor do they make even sense to a normal person. Misunderstandings abound even among the health care professionals in the hospital. So there is no guarantee that you wishes will be honored no matter what you do.

There are greedy people who try to make money from you. Lawyers charge a fortune for writing a custom living will. The living will registry recommend by Florida costs $59. Agingwithdignity.com forbids you to make copies of Five Wishes. They sell copies for $1 each, minimum order 1000 and the fine for illegal copies is a quarter million per copy. I got this illegal copy from my doctor, but he's rich.

But here's the point. No matter how flawed the system, no matter what your opinions, you are better off having a living will than being silent.

That brings me to you.

No matter what your age or your circumstances, you should have a living will.

You can use the link I provided, or you can get a copy of Five Wishes from your doctor.

Don't delay, do it today.

Mr. Toastmaster, thank you.

https://www.agingwithdignity.org/five-wishes/about-five-wishes

Mr Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters, esteemed guests. Good evening.

Wills, living wills, DNR orders, proxies, surrogates, end of life. Yuck. Those are subjects that we mostly like to postpone till another day. The fact is that only 25% of Americans have living wills.

My purpose today is to inform you about living wills and perhaps persuade you to make one if you haven't done so already. I'll talk about that what, why and how of living wills, about one enhancement, and even the dark side of the system. I'll mention do not resuscitate orders DNRs, but not regular wills.

Let's begin with the what.

Your treatment by the health care system is determined one in four ways. I'll list them in order, best case to worst case.

1. If you are awake and alert, you can tell the doctors your wishes directly.
2. If you aren't awake or alert, your wishes are documented in advance in a living will. They might also be expressed by a loved one that you have instructed in advance as to what your wishes are.
3. You can be treated by the legal default protocols in your state whatever that means.
4. Worst of all, decisions can be forced upon a loved one who has to guess as to what you would have wanted.

The Why of living wills should be obvious.

On one hand, health care workers need it to cover their behinds legally to deviate from the default protocol.

On the other hand, a loved one might be forced to decide for you. He or she could be saddled with guilt and doubt for the rest of their life if they are not certain that that their decision was what you really wanted. You love them. You should never risk them being put in that bind.

You may think of living wills as something for old people. Wrong. Accidents, can snatch away your future and bring you to near death in an instant, Every adult should have one.

The how is pretty simple.

The paper I am holding up is called “Five Wishes” it is simple and straightforward. (I'll explain in a minute why I can't give yo a copy.) This document satisfies the legal requirements in Florida and 41 other states. It takes only 15 minutes to read, one hour to fill out and sign and to leave a copy with your doctor. I vigorously recommend that you take the opportunity to brief any loved one who might be called upon as a future surrogate.

The document mentions DNR, but a living will is not a DNR order. DNRs cover much narrower circumstances. The legal intricacies of DNRs in Florida are pretty bizzare. The only way you can get a DNR is to ask your doctor.

Now, what if something bad happens when you are traveling? It could take a long time to track down your doctors, your living will and your loved ones, and while waiting on that tracking you fall into the legal default protocols for wherever you are. A neat and modern enhancement is to have your living will registered on the Internet.

My state, Vermont provides a free living will registry for its residents. I sent them a copy of my living will. They send me a sticker to put on my insurance card with contact info and an ID code that health care workers can use to get instant access to the content of my living will. Not matter what else happens, you can rest assured that the first procedure the hospital will perform is a walletectomy. Believe me, they will find your insurance card. Florida, unfortunately does not have a free registry, but they do recommend a private registry. You have the link on that paper.

There are dark sides to the system.

The laws of the 50 states are not uniform, nor are they user friendly, nor do they make even sense to a normal person. Misunderstandings abound even among the health care professionals in the hospital. So there is no guarantee that you wishes will be honored no matter what you do.

There are greedy people who try to make money from you. Lawyers charge a fortune for writing a custom living will. The living will registry recommend by Florida costs $59. Agingwithdignity.com forbids you to make copies of Five Wishes. They sell copies for $1 each, minimum order 1000 and the fine for illegal copies is a quarter million per copy. I got this illegal copy from my doctor, but he's rich.

But here's the point. No matter how flawed the system, no matter what your opinions, you are better off having a living will than being silent.

That brings me to you.

No matter what your age or your circumstances, you should have a living will.

You can use the link I provided, or you can get a copy of Five Wishes from your doctor.

Don't delay, do it today.

Mr. Toastmaster, thank you.

https://www.agingwithdignity.org/five-wishes/about-five-wishes

https://www.uslivingwillregistry.com/

Help Please. Urgent! Redux

[April fools day comes but once a year.   A great April fools hoax works only once.  The one below from 4/1/2014 was my most successful hoax ever.   Within minutes of posting it, I began getting emails and phone calls from alarmed readers offering advice.

However, those providing written comments had more time to think about it and they weren't fooled.  Especially the part about me writing a blog post while all this was going on.   

Enjoy]


Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida   4/1/2014 10:58 AM

Things have been chaotic around here this morning. We don't know what to do next. Here's the story.

Around 7:30 this morning we heard a noise and looked outside. There was a baby manatee in our dinghy? What the heck? I called Libby up on deck. As we were looking, the reason for this unprecedented occurrence became clear. A big hungry alligator, maybe 12 feet long, was circling around and trying to grab the baby. We think the baby jumped into the boat to escape. There's also blood in the dinghy.

OMG!!! We had to think quick. What to do? We thought about trying to lift the baby up onto Tarwathie. Nah. Too heavy. Even a baby manatee weighs several hundred pounds. We could hoist it up with a block and tackle, but without a proper harness we would injure the baby.

As we watched, the baby seemed to become more distressed. It made crying noises. We theorized that it was drying out in the sun and maybe dying. Quick, we grabbed our buckets and started pouring bucket after bucket of water into the dinghy. Soon we had it swamped. The dinghy's gunwales were under water, so fresh salt water could circulate and keep the baby healthy. The dingy didn't capsize because we had it tied up. That way it formed a protective cage, keeping the gator away from the baby, but the gator could easily tip it over.

But we still have no real solution to the problem. We called animal rescue at FWC, the Florida Wildlife Commission. Their answering machine said 8-5 Monday-Friday. No help. We called the US Coast Guard. They won't help either unless it is a person in danger.

The alligator hadn't gone away. It swam around and every once in a while it poked the dinghy with its nose. He must be desperately hungry. The alligator also gave its throaty roaring sound, perhaps to frighten the baby manatee. The baby's mother was nowhere in sight.

Now, we have more help. We got on the VHF radio and announced the predicament to the whole Boot Key Harbor. Soon a half dozen others came in their dinghies to help. Right now they are circling Tarwathie and slapping their oars on the surface, trying to keep the gator away. I'm worried about the boaters in the inflatable dinghies. One gator bite and they sink, dumping the people in the water.

As captain of this vessel, I decided that the best thing for me to do is to go below to write a blog post. If you have a constructive suggestion, please post it as a comment immediately. We may not have time to reply, but we'll read the comments in real time as they come.

Comments

1. Anonymous4/01/2014 12:39 PM

   Hello Dick! At the risk of sounding heartless, I wish you a Happy April Fools Day! As the compassionate man I've come to know you as via your blog, I doubt you'd be in your salon typing away while such drama afloat orbits Tarwathie, bleeding baby manatee, other boaters in inflatables showing that 12' gator who's boss, etc. I love your blog and continue to read every installment. I wish you, Libby, the baby manatee and all in the inflatables a beautiful day in FL. Raining here in Portland, OR.. Chuck Holmes ps please gawd tell me this was an April Fools joke..ch

   ReplyDelete
2. 
   Anonymous4/01/2014 1:16 PM

   Easy peasy. Find the fellow you dislike the most in the harbor. Throw him in and tell him to swim away. Two problems solved! I like efficiency of actions.

   ReplyDelete
3. 
   John Mills4/01/2014 5:48 PM

   Now if you wrote a story about changing the oil and not making a mess I would have maaaayybe believed it....for a minute anyway.

   ReplyDelete
4. 
   Don Mattice4/02/2014 12:00 PM

   You're interfering with the laws of nature. Alligators have to eat too.!!