{"id":300,"date":"2017-04-03T12:36:15","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T17:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/?p=300"},"modified":"2017-04-03T12:36:15","modified_gmt":"2017-04-03T17:36:15","slug":"pollyanna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/2017\/04\/03\/pollyanna\/","title":{"rendered":"Pollyanna"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, my wife Carol\u00a0got me to watch a movie I had somehow missed in my childhood. I watched almost all of the Disney canon, from Old Yeller<\/span> to Darbie O’Gill & the Little People<\/span> (w\/ Sean Connery!), from The Shaggy Dog<\/span> to The Parent Trap<\/span>. Swiss Family Robinson<\/span>, Treasure Island<\/span>, The Love Bug<\/span>… not to mention all the classic animated films.<\/p>\n

But I had never seen Pollyanna<\/span>.<\/p>\n

And having missed it as a child, as young teen and adult, I had already dismissed it as, well, Pollyannish, and the notion never again crossed my mind. Which was my loss.<\/p>\n

It is easy to dismiss so much of the Disney vault as pure syrup. And as the years went by, I think perhaps that the studio indeed fell into formula. But there can be no question that so many of those early films, crafted elegantly and masterfully, had a tremendous impact on the morals and ultimately the\u00a0hopeful outlook of an entire generation (mine, the Boomers). There was ALWAYS an essence of goodness, and it was\u00a0juxtaposed against self-centered meanness, with an element of danger (and fear). Good had to be more than merely “good”, it had to have the power to overcome<\/em> adversity.<\/p>\n

The movie Pollyanna<\/span> was the quintessence of that combination of elements. I confess to being moved and touched. The film spoke past my adult cynicism and reached back to resonate with the child I hope we all keep safely stored away, ready to rise strong.<\/p>\n

The Glad Game, on the face of it, does seem hopelessly “Pollyannaesque”. But in its essence it holds a great truth, one that we should all wake up to every morning: If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.<\/p>\n

Pollyanna and Anne Frank both believed something that is very, very hard to see: people are good at heart.<\/p>\n

There are of course, some beings that look like people but probably are not. But let’s not discuss politics this today.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

\u00a9 2017 Chuck Puckett<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, my wife Carol\u00a0got me to watch a movie I had somehow missed in my childhood. I watched almost all of the Disney canon, from Old Yeller to Darbie O’Gill & the Little People (w\/ Sean Connery!), from The Shaggy Dog to The Parent Trap. Swiss Family Robinson, Treasure Island, The Love Bug… not … Continue reading “Pollyanna”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304,"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/puckettpublishing.com\/yearsofbeing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}