Ken Kaisch opened the meeting with a welcome and a thoughtful discussion on pessimism. We see it in the election rhetoric and we often adopt that pessimistic view in much of our lives. When we do so we are often forgetting the wonderful aspects of our lives and how much our world and our country has improved over the last 50 or 100 years in safety, health, food sources, and prospects of peace. Some important aspects of this improvement in life has come from volunteer groups such as Rotary. We can be proud to be part of Rotary which has done so much good in the world, to include leading the world organizations in the assault and control of polio. A pessimistic person would have asserted that that would have been impossible, but no, it is possible and was done by volunteers, with the leadership of an optimistic Rotary organization. We can be proud that we are part of such an organization.

Our Patriotic Moment: was led by Baily Kline

Our Invocation was led by Mike Cochran

Club News: We received sad news this week. One of our longtime members, Bob Engemann, passed away in July. He would have turned 100 a couple of days ago. He was a great family man, and one of our WWII heroes.

Announcements:

Next week: Tyler Furek, who is a relationship manger with Capital Group, home of the American Funds, will be talking about elections and stock market behavior.

Ken also announced that Bob Muschek will be moving to Colorado Springs and leaving the club. That announcement was premature. Bob is now not leaving, at least any time soon.

Susan Ouweleen is exploring the possibility of a Halloween social.

Zoot is offering a Zoom get-together this coming Monday, and he will be teaching us how to cook a lovely looking shrimp dish. We each buy the ingredients and Zoot will show us how to put them together. This is a great opportunity to introduce new people to Rotary, and it is open to anyone. So sign up with Zoot and bring your friends.

Daniel Steward served as our Recognition Master: He acknowledged Birthdays for Joe Arnold, Judy Atwell, and Rick Crane; spousal birthday for Dean Heiser; and wedding anniversaries for Karen Xi and Howard Minkley

Howard Minkley introduced our speaker for the day. David Grantham, senior civil engineer for the city of Fullerton. David was born in England and moved to Fullerton as a youth. He attended Troy high school and graduated with an engineering degree from Cal Poly Pomona. David worked in industry for about 10 years before joining the Fullerton Engineering staff about four years ago. David gave a very clear and important presentation on the state of our Fullerton streets, the currently planned improvements with his limited funds, and the fact that current city budget challenges provide no promise of improvement in those streets without the additional money. This is a sobering message for all of us who wish we did not have to increase our taxes. (Editor’s note: without passage of Proposition S on 3 November, the streets will continue to deteriorate.)

Ken Kaisch’s closing quotes for today focused on his pessimism theme for the day:

William James: ‘Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power’.

George Bernard Shaw: ‘A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.’

Winston Churchill: ‘A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty’.

With that, my friends, “Go out and be good people and great Rotarians!”

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10/28/2020 * MARKET BEHAVIOR IN ELECTION YEARS
Tyler Furek / Capital Group