Last night the Dallas chapter of the NSA held it’s February monthly meeting and here’s a quick recap of what happened.
This month we had many newcomers (welcome Blayke, Caroline, Jared, Vanessa and Aneesa!), some people coming back for their second meeting, and plenty of regulars. With 20 people in attendance it was one of our most attended meetings in recent months!
We started with introductions and our icebreaker question was who watched the Oscars, who didn’t, and what did you think about them. Some people, our movie buffs, were all about them and were very opinionated, while a few people were totally indifferent to them. In any case it was a great way to get people talking right away.
Next, we had a few announcements:
Stuttering Panels
Once again, the Dallas chapter has been invited to come talk to future SLPs at a couple universities and we need volunteers! If you already signed up (thank you very much) you will receive further details in the upcoming week, and if you haven’t but want to know more about them, here are the dates:
University of Texas at Dallas
Monday, March 11th, 3:00-4:45pm
University of North Texas Denton
Monday April 15th, 6:30-8:00pm
Both classes are HUGE, so we need as many people as possible. If you want to be part of this, please reply to this email stating which panel you want to be part of (can be both) and we’ll put you on the list. You can also read ADDITIONAL DETAILS HERE. The first one is coming up in a couple weeks so please sign up!
A Beautiful Voice Film
Our friend Greg Smith shared with us an update about his feature film “A beautiful voice.” He told us a few details about the plot, main characters, scene ideas, but more importantly, he shared with us his need for volunteers. If you want to be part of his project (as an actor, extra, volunteering a location, etc.) please contact him directly at greg8703@icloud.com. This could be huge for our community, so let’s show him all our support!
Finally, we moved to our main course for the evening. This month we didn’t have a specific theme, instead we opened the floor for suggestions and to see what was in our member’s minds, and that sparked a very animated and wide-ranging discussion.
First, we got a couple good documentary recommendations from Jacob:
The battered bastards of baseball. In 1973, Hollywood veteran Bing Russell created the only independent baseball team in America at the time, the legendary Portland Mavericks. The Battered Bastards of Baseball is as much about the independent spirit as it is about baseball and it’s available on Netflix.
They shall not grow old. Using state of the art technology to restore original archival footage which is more than a 100-years old, Jackson brings to life the people who can best tell this story: the men who were there. Jackson and his team have used cutting edge techniques to make the images of a hundred years ago appear as if they were shot yesterday. It’s on theaters right now and the reviews are HOT.
Moving on, we talked a little about job interviews, especially over the phone, and we heard about how some people find disclosing very relaxing while others consider it awkward. We learned from Ashley how expanding your vocabulary and listening to audiobooks has increased her confidence and fluency, while Nilabja talked about his experiences being a person who stutters in America in comparison with his native India.
That made for a very interesting discussion about cultural differences, acceptance, the importance of “not feeling alone in the world”, the feeling of being an extrovert trapped in an introvert, and finding people who GET IT.
All in all, we had a wonderful meeting, and if time wasn’t a constraint we would probably still be there!
As usual we closed our meeting taking a photo and the feeling that stuttering is not as bad is you are part of a community.