I decided to start writing this blog to record all the happy and amazing things in this world that there are to be glad about. In college I would often start feeling down when reading the news, but I could always turn to the science section (metaphorically speaking—even then I was reading the paper online) to regain my positive perspective. Every article was optimistic. Even when there was some awful problem being detailed, it wasn’t so much a problem as a challenge with a potential solution. Even when it seemed hopeless, there was always an unabated faith that science would eventually find a solution.
Then along came global warming and took my news refuge away from me. I’m not sure when exactly it happened, but somehow the crisis started eating up more and more of the news and suddenly the faith in science to find a solution was gone. There’s still plenty of amazing news out there, I just have to look a little harder for it, and I decided to slowly collect it all here. I’ve done this before, writing down the interesting tidbits I read in a journal, or emailing the stories to myself to save them, but never really consistently. I don’t expect this blog to be different, but I want to practice my writing and I can’t think of anything else to write about. Karla was the one who suggested I write a blog if I’m interested in writing, and it’s taken a while since she made the suggestion (sometime in the second week of March 2008—it is now the second week of May 2008).
A major inspiration for this blog is the “glad game” from the book and film Pollyana (book by Eleanor Porter: http://www.literaturepage.com/read/pollyanna.html). Basically, you try and find things in life to be glad about, even in the worst situations. In the film, Pollyana quotes Abraham Lincoln, “If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.” This quote has always stuck with me, and so in this blog I’m taking it further and looking for the good in the world.