Charlie Erickson led us in the pledge
 
Inspiration was provided by Jamie who told us of a psychological experiment that revealed that by giving happiness we achieve happiness, and this is the true purpose of life, and we can definitely find inspiration in that for Rotary!
 

Visiting Rotarians:

Charlie Erickson
 

Guests of Rotarians:

Nikolette Rodman-Kelly, Karen Anderson, Felix Lee, Bob Boucher, Anjana
 
We started by celebrating November birthdays, and Don Mcleve played the piano for us. 
 
Our nominating committee for 2021 is Susan Boxer-Gasman, Marty Fishman, Lisa Cheskin, Andrew Stearns, and Doug Brent.
 
Dan and Avis talked about donating to the Rotary Foundation, and the importance of contributing to this so that we can further international efforts to advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through the improvement of health, support of education, and alleviation of poverty.  Andrew put the contributions into perspective saying $.60 is the cost of one polio vaccination.
 
First Thursday will be November 5th from 5:30-7:30 with a wine tasting on the patio at Los Gatos Roasting Company.
 
Patti talked about the work at second harvest food bank where they helped sort food.  Many Rotarians contributed!
Oak meadow park cleanup will be this weekend November 7th at 9am.  It’s a nice event to get out and help clean up our local community.
 
Tina spoke about all our Rotarians efforts at St. Luke’s.  Thank you to all our volunteers and their work there.
 
Marty spoke about a ShelterBox virtual event November 12 from 8-9pm. 
 

Next week’s avatar challenge is a picture of which animal best represents you.

 
Patti made an announcement from the We Care committee about our fellow Rotarian Jane Marashian who is undergoing lung cancer treatment, but is doing well and welcoming positive wishes.
 
 

Our speaker was Carl Guardino. 

He is the Executive Vice President of Bloom Energy.  He is focused on the theme of building our future together in broken times.  He began by urging us to be a positive proactive counterpoint to the increasing volatility that we experience in the world. 
 
Transportation: regional challenges deserve regional solutions.  He spoke about improvements to BART as well as Caltrain. 
 
Housing Affordability:  High housing costs were not always the norm.  The reason that housing costs have gone up so much is that we need roughly 200k new homes built each year, but we average only around 80k homes per year.  The housing trust of silicon valley has raised 350 million to invest in affordable housing ultimately leveraging 4 Billion for affordable housing.
 
Education & Workforce:  4 out of ten jobs in the silicon valley economy do not require a 4 year college degree.  It’s important to have a community college to career initiative (CC2C) for these positions.
 
Energy & Environment:  Carl joined Bloom Energy because he’s excited to help produce clean and affordable energy, and to help provide that world wide.  He shared several before and after photos that illustrated the improvement in air quality that we got post covid, which is very inspirational in terms of what is possible when we work together.