17 January News and Notes
Kalen received his new member packet from Betty today.
Courage had surgery on his shoulder but has come through the surgery well.
We were all asked to consider “Dreams” for Martin Luther King’s birthday. Particularly, David asked us to define the “American Dream.” Being Americans, we were all asked about whether we were happy, since the Declaration of Independence specifically mentions life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Happiness is not being offered, only the right to pursue it. Martin Luther King’s dream was, in part, to eradicate the effects of poverty in America. When he died, he was helping out the sanitation workers.
This idea of the American dream is harder to figure out than it used to be. Once it could have simply been that every American has the opportunity to move up in the world without regard to previous social status. It was also tied to the hope and dream that one’s children had the opportunity to achieve a better life than you yourself had achieved. This was certainly true in the 19th century when there was plenty of land to homestead and cities were growing up where there had only been grass and trees just a scant few years back. Today, the American dream has changed into something different than it was.