How Are We Doing? Measuring Growth

We use measures of Gross National Product, Employment Rate, graduation rate, test scores and a myriad of other parameters to characterize how our country is doing. Political leaders rely on their past history of performance indicators to support their claims of excellent leadership and reasons to be reelected. Recently Prime Minister David Cameron in the UK initiated a program to begin measuring happiness. There has been much debate questioning why should we measure happiness when there are so many practical things to do and complete. Roger Cohen in today's New York TImes article ( here ) discusses the addition of the happiness quotient, 'Happinomics' to go along with the traditional mechanical measurements of economic performance..

As Cohen puts it, the founding fathers of the US guaranteed freedom in the constitution and allowed individuals to embrace 'the pursuit of happiness'.  Polling these harder to measure topics such as happiness and wellbeing can help policy makers awareness of what's going on in people's lives.

'Tell Them About the Dream, Martin'

Clarence B. Jones was interviewed by Tavis Smiley last week. Clarence is an attorney and was an advisor and a speechwriter for Martin Luther King. In this interview Jones talks about the March on Washington and the experience of being there during the famous speech on August 28, 1963. The Dream was not part of King's original speech. Mahalia Jackson, King's favorite gospel singer, called out to Martin that day, "Tell them about the dream, Martin" and he laid out the Dream for that audience of 250,000.  It was not the first time he had spoken about the dream but as Jones says in the Smiley interview, King had the ability adlib and cut and paste pieces of speeches together at the most appropriate time and he did that so well. Kings speeches (printed,  audio and some video) speeches are here.

We all have a dream that lives within us. It is our potential energy waiting to be unleashed into movement, action and kinetic energy.

The interview is 16 minutes. The main section about the dream is 0:45 to 7:00. You can find it on YouTube - search on "TAVIS SMILEY Clarence B. Jones PBS1142"

A New Pledge on this Independence Day

Dr David Ault is an musician and minister at the Conscious Mile Center for Spiritual Living in Mobile, Alabama. He prepared this 7 minute inspirational segment titled 'A New Pledge'. Watch and listen or simply listen in the background.