June 28th, 2016

Post date: Jul 3, 2016 4:54:54 PM

Hi folks!

We had a good NSA meeting at Dysart's last night .... good food and good talk.  Five of us showed up: Shaleen, Claustin, Chris, Chris's wife Susan, and myself.  It was first time Shaleen and Claustin were at the same meeting together!  Our checking-in time led to discussions that mostly, I think, centered around all the various factors that influence our speech, at any given moment.  It highlighted very much the fact that stuttering is so much more than "the surface speech behaviors".  That is - our thoughts, emotions, beliefs, fears all play into a given situation and affect our speech neuromotor mechanisms.  As Claustin so well put the frustration of it all...."when I'm all by myself, I speak perfectly and fluently and nothing is broken".  (And research, though, is showing that even when we think we are "speaking fluently"...it is still "different" on a motor/processing level than non-stutterer's fluent speech)  As it happened...I had even brought to the meeting a handout about John Harrison's Stuttering Hexagon as possible topic of discussion (https://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster/Infostuttering/Harrison/john.htm )... but we were already all over this topic anyway!!  So it was a good meeting and we all got a chance to share our views...Susan included!

We also talked about our upcoming Adult Stuttering Workshop!!!  It's really going to happen folks!  Chris, Nancy and I have been busy this past month coordinating the day with Tammy Flores (NSA Exec. Director) and Sarah Onofri (NSA board member who lives in Boston).  It will be a full day of good topic presentations/discussions, a showing of the Academy Awarding winning short documentary " Stutterer" and will end with an open mic!  This fantastic day is being  planned for Portland on Sept. 17th.  We are awaiting the outcomes of Nancy's work to , hopefully, find us a good "free space" on USM campus.  When that piece is in place, we will move forward full tilt with advertising (etc.) all over New England.  Shaleen suggested sending it out to Canada...to the Canadian counterpart of NSA...which is a great idea as the Maritime folks love to come to Maine to shop!