{"id":771,"date":"2015-08-16T16:55:09","date_gmt":"2015-08-16T21:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=771"},"modified":"2015-12-21T05:47:50","modified_gmt":"2015-12-21T10:47:50","slug":"heroes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=771","title":{"rendered":"My second Toastmasters speech: Heroes"},"content":{"rendered":"<hr \/>\n<p><em>Below is my second Toastmasters speech, built on the requirement that I had to organize my speech properly; with a clear beginning, middle, and end. This is still in the form of the notes I spoke to during the speech. I&#8217;m planning to re-write it to fill in the blanks, similar to how I delivered it during the meeting. I got feedback after my speech that the portion where I talked about everyday heroes could use some expansion, and my transitions between ideas could use some smoothing out, so I&#8217;ll probably buff up the full-text version a bit.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Intro<\/h2>\n<p>Green skin! Stretchy arms! Invulnerability to bullets! They can fly! Woohoo!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In movies and comic books, this is how heroes are presented. But this isn\u2019t a new thing.<\/li>\n<li>Hero stories are some of the oldest stories we have.<\/li>\n<li>The story of Gilgamesh, the King of Sumer, was first written down about 4,000 years ago.<\/li>\n<li>Achilles was a hero of the Greek story of the battle of Troy<\/li>\n<li>Bellerophon was the hero who captured the winged horse, Pegasus<\/li>\n<li>In fact, if you look at their abilities, the heroes of ancient myth look a lot like our modern comic-book superheroes, or maybe the other way around, who knows\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Body<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>When I was a child, I was fascinated by heroes.<\/li>\n<li>I watched <em>The Amazing Spiderman<\/em> every Saturday morning; I knew about Sampson, and David &amp; Goliath<\/li>\n<li>I wasn\u2019t much of a comics reader, but boy did I love Aragorn and Faramir in <em>The Lord of the Rings<\/em><\/li>\n<li>When I was a little older, I devoured the stories in the <em> Reader\u2019s Digest <\/em>magazines my mom got. There was a column called \u201cDrama in Real Life,\u201d filled with heart-wrenching stories of people saving their families, co-workers, and complete strangers.<\/li>\n<li>I still love stories like that! We have featured some of them on <a href=\"http:\/\/stories.wellsfargobank.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Wells Fargo Stories<\/a>, such as the one about the mortgage consultant who <a href=\"http:\/\/stories.wellsfargobank.com\/everyday-heroes-quick-action-saves-two-lives\/\" target=\"_blank\">rescued two people from their car<\/a>, stuck on a train track.<\/li>\n<li>When I was growing up, I wanted to be one of those heroes. I had daydreams of saving people, but growing up in the suburbs doesn\u2019t give you many opportunities like that.<\/li>\n<li>As I got older, I started to collect heroes of my own, such as the surgeon who diagnosed my cancer and saved my life.<\/li>\n<li>There are some pretty clear trends here.\n<ul>\n<li>In the ancient stories, the heroes are mostly demigods or the children of demigods,<\/li>\n<li>In the comic books, most heroes have had some extreme thing happen that changed them from being \u201cmerely human\u201d to being a superman.<\/li>\n<li>Even my surgeon has a bit of the superhuman about him\u2026 years of training, decades of experience<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Over time, I started to recognize another kind of hero\n<ul>\n<li>People with no superhuman skills; people who aren\u2019t descended from gods, who haven\u2019t been bitten by radioactive spiders, and who haven\u2019t even had years of training to be surgeons, firemen, or rescue helicopter pilots.<\/li>\n<li>People like my night nurse when I was recovering from my surgery. Whenever I woke up, there she was, with the most amazing patience and kindness.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>I started realizing that I had known many heroic people,\n<ul>\n<li>Like my mom, who raised five kids at home with another in college; she woke up at 4 every morning to get the day started for her family; she worked part-time jobs to make ends meet.<\/li>\n<li>Like my dad, who worked 50-60 hours a week, and when he came home grew food for us in a large garden next to the house.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>These heroic people are not superhuman, they\u2019re not flawless, and they don\u2019t have extraordinary gifts.<\/li>\n<li>What they do have is grit. They get up, show up, do what\u2019s in front of them, and care deeply about the people in their lives.<\/li>\n<li>They\u2019re not only the unsung heroes, they\u2019re often totally invisible to most everyone around them<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Conclusion<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>I still love heroes, and will always love hearing the stories of the heroes of newspaper stories, who rush into burning buildings to save children or jump into rivers to save drowning people.<\/li>\n<li>I certainly don\u2019t mean to take anything away from people who do these things, but I want to suggest to you that, while not everyone is a hero, there are more heroes around us than we may be used to thinking of.<\/li>\n<li>There are probably heroes right here in this room.<\/li>\n<li>The person in the next chair might be a hero.<\/li>\n<li>The person in <strong>your<\/strong> chair might be a hero.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Mr. Toastmaster\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Below is my second Toastmasters speech, built on the requirement that I had to organize my speech properly; with a clear beginning, middle, and end. This is still in the form of the notes I spoke to during the speech. I&#8217;m planning to re-write it to fill in the blanks, similar to how I delivered &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=771\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;My second Toastmasters speech: Heroes&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62],"tags":[63],"class_list":["post-771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-toastmasters","tag-speech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sgY3e-heroes","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":752,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=752","url_meta":{"origin":771,"position":0},"title":"My first Toastmasters speech: The Icebreaker","author":"Jorah","date":"August 2, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Note: when making a speech to a Toastmasters club, you have to open and close the speech in prescribed fashion. The \"icebreaker\" speech is the standard first speech in the Toastmasters program, designed to get you talking in front of an audience. I procrastinated writing this speech until 10:45 on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Toastmasters&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Toastmasters","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=62"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":794,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=794","url_meta":{"origin":771,"position":1},"title":"My fifth Toastmasters speech: Getting physical","author":"Jorah","date":"November 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The assignment for this, my fifth Toastmasters speech and with the project name \"Your Body Speaks\" was to express myself physically as I gave the speech, so I walked when I described walking, bowed when I described myself bowing, etc. My uniform is a simple pair of trousers, the legs\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Toastmasters&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Toastmasters","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=62"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":769,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=769","url_meta":{"origin":771,"position":2},"title":"My third Toastmasters speech: A moonlit highway long ago","author":"Jorah","date":"August 30, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Below is my third Toastmasters speech, given as my entry in a humor contest on August 28. I was made ineligible for the contest because I went over the time limit of seven minutes, but I count it as a success because people did laugh, and I did manage to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Toastmasters&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Toastmasters","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=62"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":781,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=781","url_meta":{"origin":771,"position":3},"title":"The good things&#8230;","author":"Jorah","date":"September 4, 2015","format":"status","excerpt":"I complain. Okay, I complain a lot. But I\u2019m not in a bad mood all the time. Today I thought I\u2019d list a few things I\u2019m happy about this week. It\u2019s been a stressful week, so it\u2019s good to look at some good things, too. First: my arms actually aren't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Philosophizing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Philosophizing","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=59"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":81,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=81","url_meta":{"origin":771,"position":4},"title":"Jabber","author":"Jorah","date":"August 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"What is Jabber: Jabber 1. Rapid and indistinct speech 2. To talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner 3. A streaming XML technology mainly used for instant messaging Jabber is a set of streaming XML protocols and technologies that enable any two entities on the Internet to exchange messages,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Post&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":161,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=161","url_meta":{"origin":771,"position":5},"title":"MercuryNews.com &#8211; 07\/15\/2005 &#8211; Text entry software spells relief for weary BlackBerry thumbs","author":"Jorah","date":"July 16, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The problem is how to comfortably enter text onto the screens of pocket-size devices. Anyone who uses a cell phone to laboriously tap out text messages, or a BlackBerry to respond to e-mail, knows what I'm talking about - - those tiny keypads cause thumb strain. At the same time,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Post&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=30"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":798,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}