Toastmasters Barbecue. Kids being kids. A panel discussion

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Eddie and his friend Artem are playing with Zoriana and Marianna on the lawn. They are chasing each other and throwing cherry plums.

It is the kind of game children love. When we were kids, it was eucalyptus buds.  We were also throwing "smoke bombs". That's a handful of grass with the turf still attached. California had the right grass and dirt for it – Kyiv does not.

As always in the human comedy, the adults are telling them not to. When we were kids, it was Castro school principal Buford H Shreeve. Here it is grandmother. I am delighted to say that the kids absolutely ignore her. They ignore her with regard to just about everything. Because she screams about almost everything.  She never tires of being ineffective.

Today's weather is 90°. Nonetheless, grandmother made sure that two-year-old Marianna was wearing a T-shirt so she wouldn't get cold. She earlier had a cow when she came back from church and found that I was letting the kids run almost naked through the sprinklers on the lawn. She was upset that I couldn't tell her precisely what the kids had eaten for lunch. The refrigerator is full, and the children are pretty adept at manipulating its door. I told her I don't worry about their starving. That's not an adequate answer.

We all have our own approaches toward blowing off grandmother. The kids mostly ignore her but fight when she tries to force them to eat what she has decided is good for them or put on clothes that they don't want to wear.

My defense is easier.  I don't understand what she is saying much of the time. She uses words very economically, one or two to convey a thought that would be better expressed in a complete sentence. Particularly to a partially deaf foreigner who doesn't speak the language well and doesn't understand when she mixes Ukrainian and Russian. To be honest I'm not encouraging her to learn how to express herself any more clearly. I understand her tone of voice and it doesn't bother me at all not to know what the words mean.

Eddie is supposed to be taking it easy recovering from his appendectomy. I don't think he is doing anything to hurt himself, but certainly running and throwing the cherry plums is inconsistent with the strict doctor's orders not to lift anything more than 2 kg for two months or so while the incision heals. He is a smart kid. I am not going to give him a hard time.

We had a Toastmasters barbecue last night – Saturday. The one we had in June was enjoyable, but we only had about 14 people. This time I got the club management, notably our president Ludmila, behind it and we had it turned out of about 25. It included Vittorio, whom I have mentioned, and other very well-informed people whom I had hoped to talk to at greater length. Unfortunately, I could not spend as much time as I would've liked talking them.

Which suggests another course of action. We should invite people over for dinner parties of 6 to 10 people. Barbecue is a natural, but so is lasagna. Grandma is making an absolute ton of tomato sauce with the excess tomatoes she is growing.  Let's use it!

Four of the women from the jumping photos from 2016 and 2017 were in attendance.  They suggested that we do it again.  Here it is, adding Luda on the left and new member Christina on the right and, for the first time, Zoriana and Oksana.

I still, after four years, find the Toastmasters Pathways program unhelpful and nonsensical. However, if the club is going to get recognition, we have to play by Toastmasters International rules. President Ludmila twisted my arm to sign up for yet another path. Since I gave more than 15 speeches last year, I could've had it in the bag. However, she is suggesting that I put together a speech to meet one of the new requirements, a panel discussion.

Looking for a topic for the discussion, I have tentatively decided that it would be worth selecting three panelists to talk about the remarkable correlation among beliefs on topics that would previously have seemed unrelated and dissimilar. These include global warming (excuse me, climate change – they change the language), public health, childhood vaccines, Covid countermeasures, gender and sex choices and roles, racial differences, freedom of speech, hate speech, gun control, the economy, economic freedom, central bank digital currencies, medical freedom, bodily autonomy, immigration, education, artificial intelligence, government "nudge" units, private public partnerships, world governance… the list goes on and on.  Why is there such a consistent "woke" point of view to challenge traditional thinking on every topic?

My positions on these topics have not changed much. What I find interesting is the migration of leftists such as Naomi Wolf, Alex Berenson, Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying, Bill Maher, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Alan Dershowitz and others to my point of view. Once they start to defend freedom in any realm, they find themselves forced to defend freedom of speech. I think that it leads them to defending a whole suite of freedoms, to the point that whatever their beliefs might have been previously they get called right wingers or alt right.

My role would be to chair the panel discussion, to prepare and present the questions rather than participate. I am sure I can find some articulate people who will support the positions that I would take. The challenge will be to find somebody who can articulately support the other side. I think I have a couple from the gathering yesterday. Let's see if I can pull it together.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong man feels virtuous, having done most of the cleanup from the party, mowed and watered the grass, and done 30 minutes on the exercycle in today's 93°F weather.  The weatherman just snuck two more such days into the forecast.  Gotta get to the beach!

Graham