The Duluth Minnesota Chapter of the National Stuttering Association met for two hours on Wednesday, April 20th. We were joined by two new members of the community that had seen a flyer for our group in a coffee shop – it was very exciting to see that our advertising was working!
We started off the meeting by introducing our group, it’s history and purpose, and the personal benefits that we’ve experienced from attending.
We then watched and discussed the recent Oscar winning short film “Stutterer.” This led into discussions about other films that have included a character who stutters and how we thought stuttering was portrayed in them.
We also watched a short segment from C-c-cut, a documentary of an Emmy Award winning director/editor Allan Holzman, a person who stutters. During our discussion of the segment, we examined possible causes and factors that affect our fluency.
We ended the meeting by talking about how the singing voice is different than the talking voice. Several well known signers were identified as PWS, such as Carly Simon, Mel Tillis, Harrison Craig, and even Cold Play front man Chris Martin. Co-leader Derrick then broke out his guitar and had a little group sing-along.