Dear Liza,
This past Saturday was the 71st anniversary of the world-famous comic strip, Peanuts. We love Peanuts around here.
Snoopy’s pure joy, Charlie Brown’s stoic determination, and Linus’s loving faith touch our hearts. Auntie Bridgett admires Charles Schulz, the cartoonist who created the strip, for his ability to sum up the human condition so perfectly in just a few strokes of a pen.
To celebrate the day, we drank coffee from a Charlie Brown mug at breakfast and had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. After a busy day, we toasted Snoopy’s World War One flying ace with root beer in big fat mugs.
Later, we tried to watch the feature length film, “A Boy Named Charlie Brown”, which was made in 1971. I say we tried to watch it, and we made it about halfway through. But unlike the earlier Halloween and Christmas specials, this film couldn’t seem to find any joy for our hero. The characters harped on his failures, creating abusive scenes that seemed to go on forever and were painful to watch.
And when Charlie Brown did have some success, he was allowed to enjoy it for a scant minute on screen and was then back to the pit of despair. It was too much. We turned it off.
Still, we can’t let one movie spoil our joy of Peanuts. It was a good day and we will love Peanuts forever.
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 