If anyone is looking for a sweet, seasonal movie, I just got back from seeing Pieces of April and it fits the bill.

This movie stars Katie Holmes in her pre-Tom Cruise-scary-body-takeover days and she is excellent as the misfit, ne’er-do-well daughter looking to give her family a Thanksgiving they won’t forget. The problem? The family has already had too many moments with April they don’t want to remember. Especially Mom (played by Patricia Clarkson, who has been in any number of movies I’ve meant to see but haven’t yet), who is seriously ill and who seems like she might have been a real grump even before she got sick.

The movie splits its time between April (as she battles the standard and extraordinary of what can go wrong when you’re trying to make your first fancy meal for a group of people who don’t really want to come see you) and her family driving up to New York City from their home in New Jersey or Pennsylvania.

The characters in the film are well-rounded, the dialogue believable, and the plot predictable — and sweet without being sentimental.

I recommend it as a video rental — particularly if you’re hosting the family this year.

When I express surprise that Thursdays roll around with such speed it’s not because I have difficulty coming up with Three Beautiful Things. It’s just that this and the farmers’ market may be the only concrete reminder I have of what day of the week it is.

From this week:

1) On Saturday, I was in a store when I chanced to glance outside and see a pink tint to the sky. I hurried out to discover the most gorgeous sunset. It stretched from a dark blue in the east through the spectrum of purples, pinks, reds, and oranges to a pale sunny blue in the west. Layers of clouds created intricate designs. And one group of clouds had arranged itself in such a way as to look like a Greek god blowing the rest of the clouds across the sky. It was tremendous.

2) One of the houses near me pulled out all the stops for Halloween. They had purple sparkly streamers and giant spiders and pumpkins. It was very festive in a neighborhood that can be a little staid.

3) Rudi and I went up to Connecticut to get rid of some more of the stuff we had stored in my folks’ basement this past weekend. We are both packrats, so there’s a lot of stuff up there still and it can be traumatic to give it away. But this time it felt good. Three huge bags of clothes went to a thrift shop, two bags of papers and such went into the garbage pile, and five boxes of household goods are waiting to go to the thrift shop at Thanksgiving. It allowed us to find things that meant something to us (Rudi’s ski team photos and my letters from college) and to pass on things that have served us well but would better suit someone else now. We still have a number of boxes to go through, but it feels good to have made such a solid start.

I was saddened to learn last night that Gladys Tantaquidgeon has died.

Of course the old medicine woman was 106, so it’s not like it was surprising or anything.

I met Gladys only once, through a grad class I took on Native Americans. She came to talk to us about how difficult it is to get tribal recognition because the ways tribes and the federal government keep records differ so drastically. What might have been considered a legitimate document by a tribe was dismissed by the government as unofficial. And so Gladys, as a trained anthropologist, was really an anomaly– and a blessing to her tribe — in her ability to work through fragments and documents and other ephemera.

You see, it was her boxes of names and dates and family trees that enabled the Mohegan tribe to be recognized by the U.S. government.

No matter your take on casinos, it is not unreasonable to expect that your ethnic heritage be honored. And very few people have to do more than make a statement saying, “I’m Irish,” for people to believe they are, in fact, Irish. In fact, a number of people had their racial background thrust upon them in the South where the terms octoroon and quadroon long outlasted slavery. But people who wanted to be federally recognized as a member of a tribe had to somehow prove their authenticity.

Gladys Tantaquidgeon made it possible for many Mohegans who had spread out over New England to reclaim their identity. She believed in the integrity of her people and her culture long before anyone thought to involve gambling with it. She moved back to the western Connecticut area to help remember the good parts of growing up Mohegan and to create a family museum celebrating all that came with that heritage.

So, Gladys, may your spirit live comfortably in the afterlife, knowing that your work — and your tribe — will carry on.

Just heard back from our landlord and we’ve been cleared to put our living room back together after all the flood-related construction. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am.