Tuesday evening things

 * I'm working on the "A Cardigan for John" again; I am finally to the point in the raglan decreases where it moves along reasonably fast and is also less difficult to wrangle. Once this part is done, I have to knit on the button bands, make the pocket, and then do the little bit of finishing. Doubtful I will get this done before leaving but if I get to a point where I can reasonably estimate how much yarn I need to drag along for the finishing bits, I might do that. It would take up a lot of space in one of my bags, though.

* I also started the "Gingerbread" socks (using the West Yorkshire Spinners yarn in that colorway) for when I am tired enough that I don't want to work on the sweater. These I'll definitely carry along with me to work on.

* I had been reading one of the Discworld novels ("The Light Fantastic") but temporarily put that aside in favor of an older novel set at Christmas - Dan Wickenden's "The Running of the Deer" which is about two families on Long Island in the late 1930s. (The main one, at least, is reasonably prosperous, despite the Depression - the mother's family apparently had money; the father is an editor at a New Yorker-like magazine). I know I read this years and years ago after buying it at an antique shop but I have largely forgotten it other than the family theme and the Christmas setting and that I enjoyed it. It's fairly well-written, at least in the sense of being evocative - I can imagine the family home, and what the family members look like (It's told in shifting perspectives, first Mel's (the younger son - Herman Melville Thrace) and then the father's and then the mother's and Aunt Ada's (Aunt Ada is the mother - Ella's - sister, a spinster (but younger than I am - 42)). It's the sort of novel you don't see a lot of any more, sort of a simple family novel that proceeds slowly. I remember when I read it before feeling surprised it didn't exist as a movie - I think I dropped a lot of bits of memories of movies from the late 30s/early 40s I had seen to get ideas of what the interiors would have been like (for example: back then a lot more houses had books out on display; books were more of an entertainment before television and there were often nice glass-fronted cabinets to hold them). I still think it would have made a good movie.

There are several similar-named novels out there - and of this one, there's almost nothing available online. I guess Wickenden was a fairly well-thought-of author but he's almost forgotten now. 

* Still plugging away on the systematic botany lectures in between grading. I posted that link earlier to University of Wisconsin that had digitized images that I could use. 

* I've been trying to catch the old Christmas movies as they come on; this weekend I saw part of "The Man who Came to Dinner" again (yes, some of the characters still come across as a little abrasive, but I didn't find it as disheartening to watch as I did in 2020 or so). And "Christmas in Connecticut" which is somewhat dated but still entertaining and I always enjoy seeing SZ Sakall in things. 

And then, finally, "Remember the Night," which I think I saw at my mother's last year (I know I had seen it before). That was another Barbara Stanwyck movie, this time with Fred MacMurray as the male lead and he's enjoyable in it, too. (And Beulah Bondi as his mother, and Elizabeth Patterson as yet another maiden aunt - I guess they were commoner, back then?). Fundamentally it's the story of a young criminal who gets caught (though it's suggested her theft was done as a way for her to get money to live). Through some complex machination, the assistant DA (MacMurray) winds up driving her with him to Indiana (she is going to see her mother - who turns out to want nothing to do with her, basically having written her off as a bad seed). So MacMurray's character then takes her to HIS family  home - there being nowhere else to go, and his widowed mother having a big farmhouse with plenty guest rooms. And gradually, she winds up being accepted into the family, and gets to take part in all the wholesome and slightly-corny but pleasant sort of entertainments that a farm family in the 30s would - playing the piano and singing, stringing freshly popped popcorn for the tree. They even manage to figure out gifts for her (the mother taking the bottle of perfume that MacMurray's character had given her, and "regifting" it to the girl, so she won't feel left out). And the underlying theme is that she's gradually reformed and changed, through the love and fundamental wholesomeness of this family. Oh, at the end she pleads guilty - even after MacMurray (the assistant DA, remember) gives her a chance to run while they are crossing through Canada, and even after he contemplates losing the case so he could later marry her - she realized she can't wreck his career for her own desires, so she agrees to go "up the river" (presumably for only a few years) and the implication is that they could marry after she got out...

It's interesting in that it doesn't have a purely happy ending (I suppose that would require Lee - the girl - not actually having stolen the bracelet, that it was somehow a mistaken identity thing, because the Hayes Code of the day wouldn't have allowed a criminal to prosper), and yet, it is a fundamentally happy movie - especially the scenes at the family farm, where there's a loving family (the mother, her sister, and a cousin of MacMurray's character, played by Sterling Holloway, and I can't tell if he's supposed to be slightly dim or just very countrified).

But yes, I do enjoy these kinds of movies. (I've already seen Elf - a couple times, in fact, at least in bits and pieces, and I want to get to see Home Alone again, and hopefully The Bishop's Wife). Yes, I've seen all of them multiple times before but sometimes what is familiar is good, and it's nice to be able to remember the good old times while watching a movie (or reading a book, or listening to music) that you did in past happy days. 

* One of these evenings I need to sit down and write out my cards. I have the address one ITFF friend e-mailed me, and I found the addresses of people I've mailed to before; I just need to sit down and do it. I have sent one; there was one going to the UK and I never know how long those will take, and I wanted to get it out EARLY. But the rest might go out Friday....tomorrow night I do have to make meatballs for the AAUW dinner (which is Thursday) but maybe by Saturday I can have them done. Even though I work pretty hard on the systematics stuff by day, in the evening I need to come home and do something that is not-work in order to decompress before bed.