The meeting took place during lunch from 11:30 AM to 1 PM on Wednesday February 21, 2007 for a group of 20 middle aged business men that are members of The National Exchange Club. This group sponsors and helped start SCAN- Stop Child Abuse Now- in Winston-Salem, NC. A co-worker is a member and invited me to speak to her group. They meet for lunch each Wednesday at The Piedmont Club which is a member’s only dinning club described as:
ClubCorp Business Clubs provide a network of comfortable and inviting venues for Members to meet and entertain clients and associates; skillfully integrating personalized service and technology within a business-conducive environment; orchestrated to support and leverage the business objectives of the membership.
The Piedmont Club could be described as the hob-knob place for the movers and shakers of Winston-Salem. My tennis partner’s husband is the United Way director for Forsyth County and he dines there with the CEO’s of his major contributors: Wachovia Bank, RJ Reynolds, Sara Lee, Hanes, etc.
I set up the slide show as per Al Gore’s show which he used on the Oprah Show since I only had 30 minutes to speak. I set up my projector, computer, screen and materials at 7 AM that morning before going to work which is only a couple of blocks away. I placed my Climate Project calling card and a “Call to Action” sticker at each place setting.
Things were going great until I started getting heckling with statements like “This is garbage science”, “But I read in the papers that Antarctic ice is increasing”, “We’re never getting those ugly wind machines up on our mountains”. I ignored him and stayed on track until I got to the Three-Misconceptions-Slide. By then my blood pressure was as high as the decibel level of my voice. I added sound effects- “Isn’t there disagreement among scientists about whether the problem is real or not?” like the sound made during a TV game show- “nnnnnnnngh WRONG! There are ZERO REAL scientists that disagree!!!!,” and I punctuated it with the shape of a big “O” with my fist pointing at my heckler. I was so angry because he would not shut up. But I pressed on to a standing ovation. I think his club mates were embarrassed for him. Afterward, people were looking at the books I brought – US Climate Change studies and other literature I had bought. I handed out the surveys.
And that was it. The best thing that happened out of all of it is I made connections at the Piedmont Club. I had lunch with the membership committee chair on Friday and joined the club to use as my place to make my future presentations. We are organizing an event for the Professional Women’s Forum which meets at the club for me to speak to them in the fall as a joint event with the Wine Club since my husband and I are winegrape growers. She hopes it will be well attended. But in the mean time, I can use the lovely meeting facilities to host any other talks. I tentatively have a meeting with the Sierra Club’s cool cities group to make a joint presentation to the City of Winston-Salem. This would be an ideal location to host that event.
