I'm mostly over whatever I had (I *think* probably food poisoning from something that went "off," given that the last time I was close to a person was Friday, and it didn't show up in force until Tuesday or Wednesday.)
I was also able to get out today to the Green Spray (which is about five blocks from me - in good weather, and before I wrecked up my knee, I'd definitely walk it, but given how icy the sidewalks still were, it seemed inadvisable). It was hard getting my car out of the drive but worse getting it back in (the drive slopes down to the street). In the end I had to grab a couple rubber mats I had saved from my OLD car and kept in the garage to get some traction, but then it just kept spinning its wheels right outside the garage. It's front-wheel drive, so I used my shovel to break enough of the compacted slush away from the apron of the garage, and finally, with some rocking back and forth (forward then reverse then back forward), I got purchase on the concrete apron and was able to get the car away. I'm not going out tomorrow; it's supposed to not get over freezing. This gets very tiresome.
***
Anyway, for some relaxation tonight, I found a movie to watch.
I find TCM best for this (Or PBS, when they show movies, or the longer British detective shows) because of the absence of ads, which tends to fracture my concentration.
Tonight's movie was "Good Morning, Miss Dove" which I KNOW I had seen before - at least parts of it were familiar. Yes, it's kind of a sentimental movie, but it has a couple things that people like I need in a movie some times:
a. Characters (at least some/most of them) who are actually decent and good people (the titular Miss Dove, though I might find her....difficult....given how prim and unyielding she is, is clearly someone with her students' best interests at heart, and there is kindness there)
b. An ending that isn't grim or depressing (the main conflict of the movie: Miss Dove needs an operation that's implied she might not survive, but she does, and it's implied she will be fine to go on to many more years of teaching).
It's told in a series of flashbacks as she's in the hospital, undergoing tests and waiting for her operation. Almost everyone in the current generation of adults (the cop, the minister, a nurse, her doctor....) were people she had as students (and a few more - a guy "paying his debt to society" who apparently does a runner from his work gang to see her, and a famous playwright who started out as a Jewish refugee child from Poland).
And we gradually see that in addition to her rigidity and uncompromising standards (I admit it: she's the kind of teacher who likely would have made me cry more than once in primary school), there's kindness and devotion to her students. And also maybe a slightly subversive ingenuity - there's a scene where she "saves" the local bank from going bust during a bank run* by insisting on making a deposit right before closing, but takes her sweet time about it (pretending her pen won't write, then the pen loaned by the bank employee won't....) and, it's implied, saves the town.
(*I presume this was at the start of the Depression; there are some things about banking then that I'm not familiar with but apparently once 3 pm was hit, no more business could be transacted for the day? and that was why she used the delaying tactics)
She DOES come off as a little imperious - she orders people around, she doesn't say please, which surprises me (maybe I was just raised differently?) and she sails up to the front of the bank line and just assumes they will let her do her "short transaction" before others make withdrawals....
And yet, people love and respect her, and that's one of the big central conceits of the movie - everyone in Liberty Hill is waiting with bated breath for news of how she fared during her operation, and there's rejoicing when they learn she'll be OK.
And it is interesting to see the comment made - the dispatcher makes it to the cop, who had been one of her dearest pupils (a boy from the "wrong side of the tracks" that she looked out for, and who became a Marine, and then went to college to learn criminal justice). The dispatcher notes "she didn't have much of a life, did she - no husband, no children, never went more than a couple hundred miles from here" and the cop responds angrily that she did have quite a life after all. And that brings up an idea that I think sometimes is in danger of being lost - that sometimes being "useful" in an obscure job that you're good at and that brings you happiness, is better and brings more joy than being rich or important or powerful.
It's also .... interesting... that Miss Dove (played by Jennifer Jones) is supposed to be in her mid fifties in the time of the movie (they have grey streaks in her hair and more severe makeup and I think she may change her posture and gait slightly?). And I looked at her and thought "I don't seem that old, do I?"
I mean, yes: people age slower now (better dentistry, better nutrition, less smoking though I suspect Miss Dove never did), and I am a bit immature but....well, maybe teachers always look old to their students.
It is a somewhat sentimental movie but I liked it. It does have a number of well-known actors - Jones, of course, but also Robert Stack as her doctor (a former student) and Richard Deacon (who was in the Dick Van Dyke show) as another teacher, and I think a couple of the kids were in Leave it to Beaver.
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