I confirm my role for tomorrow.
On Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 3:47 PM Jeff Stoll <jeffstoll4@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Things are shaping up. I need a couple of more confirmations and we're
set! Eddie and Bill, will you be able perform your assigned roles this week?
Our theme will be: Summer of 1927. This is based on a book, One Summer:
America 1927 by Bill Bryson<
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17262366-one-summer#:~:text=The%20summer%20of%201927%20began%20with%20one%20of,and%20when%20he%20landed%20in%20Le%20Bourget%20ai>,
that I'm reading about how that summer transformed the U.S. into a world
power. I'll share some of my favorite historical highlights. Here's a
description of the book to give you a taste of what might be in store.
The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth
century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross
the Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed in Le Bourget airfield
near Paris, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly
became the most famous person on the planet. Meanwhile, the titanically
talented Babe Ruth was beginning his assault on the home run record, which
would culminate on September 30 with his sixtieth blast, one of the most
resonant and durable records in sports history. In between those dates a
Queens housewife named Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted
her husband, leading to a murder trial that became a huge tabloid
sensation. Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly sat atop a flagpole in Newark, New
Jersey, for twelve days-a new record. The American South was clobbered by
unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi basin, a great human
disaster, the relief efforts for which were guided by the uncannily able
and insufferably pompous Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge interrupted an
already leisurely presidency for an even more relaxing three-month vacation
in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The gangster Al Capone tightened his
grip on the illegal booze business through a gaudy and murderous reign of
terror and municipal corruption. The first true "talking picture," Al
Jolson's The Jazz Singer, was filmed and forever changed the motion picture
industry. The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret
session on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually
guaranteed a future crash and depression.
All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of
1927, and Bill Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events,
and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for
telling detail, and delicious humor. In that year America stepped out onto
the world stage as the main event, and One Summer transforms it all into
narrative nonfiction of the highest order.
Toastmaster - jeff
Table topics - minjun
GE - andy
1st speaker - jonathan
2nd speaker - revathy
1st evaluator - katelynn
2nd evaluator - Juan
Grammarian/WOD - bill
Timer/Joker - Robin
Inspiration - eddie
Ah counter - Abirame
Quizmaster - luis
