At a town meeting in Aurora, Ill., a young man stood up and said he was tired of reading so many negative things about what is happening in our nation. "Isn't there something positive happening that should make us feel good about our country?"

His point is well taken.

Bad news makes the news. Good news ordinarily does not.

If Tony Perry of Kankakee, Ill., killed someone, it would have made at least a minor news item throughout the Chicago area.

But instead of shooting someone, Tony Perry learned about severe housing problems some of the disabled and elderly have in the Kankakee area. He is in the real estate business, so he got his fellow realtors together and they created a "Christmas in April" plan.

Their idea: they would take some houses owned by either the disabled or elderly that are badly in need of repair, but whose occupants could not afford to fix them and improve them.

They got a business to sponsor each house for building supplies. Then they asked for volunteers for one Saturday, to pound nails, to put up wallboard and do other things.

The unions led in volunteering.

That first year, three homes were fixed. This past April they fixed 54 homes. The hundreds of workers who turned out feel good about themselves and their community. And neighborhoods that were starting to go downhill suddenly started to improve.

I visited two of the homes. What a marvelous experience. And how proud Tony Perry and the people of the Kankakee area should be about what they have done!

Is anything good happening in America? You bet!

Or let me give you another illustration.

Can you believe promises presidential candidates make during a campaign? I know your answer: of course not.

But four studies recently have been completed on seven presidents -- not including the current one -- and they found that, to an amazing degree, the presidents kept the promises they made as candidates. We all know George Bush's "read my lips" pledge that he broke. But how many of us know that he kept virtually every other pledge that he made? And the same is true of six other presidents studied of both parties.

If you want to learn more about this, read the book, Out of Order, by Thomas Patterson.

We hear the bad news so much that we believe that it is reality.

It is part of reality.

Fortunately, there is much more to reality, and so much that is good.

Paul Simon, a Democrat, is the senior U.S. senator from Illinois.