I took this photo of Maria’s boots in an elevator at the Williams College Museum in Williamstown, Mass. today, where we went to also see a new photographic exhibit before going to see the new movie “Harriet,” about the remarkable and life of Harriett Tubman.

The photos in the exhibit inspired me to take this photo. Sometimes the most interesting pictures are the ones right in front of you.

Maria’s boots are Maria, in some particular way. They speak to her as an artist and an individual. Women comment on her boots all the time, but I don’t think too many would wear them. They are just her, and she is never afraid to be herself.

I’m not writing a full review of “Harriet,” but I did want to sum up what I thought of it. It is a compelling story; I can’t imagine why I didn’t know more about Tubman and her brave and selfless life. I can’t wait to read about her life.

Her story is breathtaking; the movie begins with her life as a slave in Maryland before she became the almost mythical liberator known to slaves and their masters as “Moses.” I can’t imagine how anyone could have the courage to go back to the cruel plantation she fled to bring her mother, father, sisters, and brothers and scores of other slaves safely to freedom.

She helped 70 slaves to freedom without losing one, she served the Union Army as a spy, and then commanded a famous Union Army raid that freed 750 slaves in South Carolina.  She was the first woman, left alone an African-American woman, to command a combat unit in the Army.

She was an abolitionist who helped John Brown in his ill-fated raid on Harper’s Ferry and became a suffragette fighting for the right of women to vote.

She died peacefully at 91 in her home in upstate New York.

For me, the movie was fascinating. Hers is truly a remarkable life that meets and surpasses the hype around it. It is worthy of a grand film.

I’ve heard a lot about Harriet Tubman – her admirers are still unsuccessfully lobbying the Trump administration to issue a stamp honoring her – but I didn’t quite grasp the depth of her fierce courage and determination.

She claimed God gave her instruction and that she knew she was safe listening to them.

The movie. nominated for two Oscars,  is suspenseful and powerful, the violence restrained. It focuses on  Tubman’s repeated and very dangerous trips to get her family and friends to freedom in a bitterly divided nation.

I wished for the film to explore her life more broadly, the movie did get repetitious and cold at times.

“Harriet” doesn’t do much to explain how Tubman got to be so brave and resourceful. The film went long but not deep.

I liked the movie and recommend it, yet it left me somewhat disappointed. I thought the film was not as great as its subject. Cynthia Erivo was on screen for almost every minute of the two-hour film, that’s a lot of weight for any actor to carry, but she sometimes seemed one-dimension to me, impassioned but almost robotic.

Director  Kassi Lemmons seemed determined to avoid the horror captured so vividly in Steve McQueen’s Twelve Years A Slave or Toni Morrison’s Beloved or Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad.

It was a good movie without a lot of sweep or punch. It was more like a historical figure biography intended for the young. Schools will love it. But I felt there was something missing. I wanted and expected to feel more than I did.

One review I read said the movie was a bit “class-room” bound, and that was a good description.

It was accessible, honest, and simplified, too much for my taste. We learned a lot about Tubman’s courage, but not too much about what made her a genuine American hero. She went from slave to superhero so quickly that Lemmons almost forget to show us how

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This week is pulling me into it. Tuesday, I go to Bishop Maginn High School to meet the Cheer Squad and hopefully will get to support a new Amazon Wish List in support of the team.

The Cheer Squad has become an important symbol to me. I’m committing to helping them launch with a few exercise mats and some funky pom-poms.

I also hope to start buying some nursing scrubs for the Mansion aides.

And Thursday is Maria’s birthday. I’m taking her out to dinner and to a live concert by Ladysmith Black Mambazo

My granddaughter Robin is reported to be anxious about dragons, so I sent her a big one this afternoon, also some “Elsa” dresses as seen in Frozen 2. I think children are a bit like new dogs sometimes, they love treats and the people who offer them.

I am still fending off a determined but steadily improving throat infection, I have no fever and am feeling stronger by the day. My doctor says I am not contagious and can go anywhere I want. So I will.