February 16, 2026: Houses along Hayes Avenue in Racine, Wisconsin.
Another Week: Number 165
Our annoying winter weather subsided this week. We had temperatures in the 50s for several days, and I happily went out in a light jacket and sneakers, with Led Zeppelin in my AirPods.
Among the things I learned this week is that getting a wristwatch battery replaced is not as easy as I thought. In the past, a nearby jewelry shop handled that chore for just a few bucks — but now that place is gone, and I suspect they might have been the reason my beloved diver’s watch stopped working a few years ago.
Waterproof watches require gaskets and testing, and the services online that do this can be fairly expensive once shipping and gaskets and testing are totaled up. My current watch is a Swiss Army quartz model worth roughly $100. Do I really want to spend $55 for a new battery? I may drive to Milwaukee or Burlington someday soon instead.
Meanwhile, the news marches on at a brisk pace:
- Robert Duvall died on Sunday. I loved his work in so many movies.
- The Rev. Jesse Jackson died on Tuesday. I saw him speak at a rally outside Kenosha’s Chrysler plant in February of 1988 and voted for him in the primary that spring.
- On Monday night, Stephen Colbert accused CBS of suppressing his interview with James Talarico, a Texas Democrat running for a U.S. Senate seat.
- The Nancy Guthrie kidnapping mystery dragged on. Investigators retreived DNA from the glove they found last week, so now CNN personalities speak endlessly of authorities turning to “genetic genealogy” to reveal the culprit — as if there is some other type of genealogy.
- On Wednesday, there was a report that Sleepy Donald Trump’s administration is adding the Department of Homeland Security to its crackdown on voting.
- On Thursday, the Andrew formerly known as Prince was arrested at his temporary residence at Wood Farm and questioned about sharing confidential information with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
- On Friday, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s capricious and illegal tariffs because they are illegal. He responded by calling them “fools” and announced a new 10 percent global tariff — which he capriciously raised on Saturday to 15 percent.
- All week, tension built regarding a possible U.S. strike on Iran. It’s such a nonsensical situation, with the U.S. negotiating all over again in the wake of Trump voiding the previous nuclear agreement, then “completely and totally” obliterating their nuclear program eight months ago — so the news media is baffled about what, exactly, Trump is seeking now. Personally, I expect it’s yet another shakedown for some sort of tribute in gold bullion.
I walked 16.45 miles this week. As I said, it was nice out.
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“A Whiter Shade of Pale” (1967)
I’m currently reading a book about classical Greece and Rome and, as it turned to Rome on Thursday evening, the Vestal Virgins were mentioned. They were six in number, not sixteen as in the lyrics to “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”
That tidbit detoured me to YouTube, where I watched an excellent performance of that song twenty years ago in Denmark — and also one of those weird, semi-generated “documentaries” you often find there, collecting views from glommed-together images and text. It was a peculiar but compelling examination of the song — and its mention of “The Miller’s Tale” bounced me back to Wikipedia.
Eventually, I felt sleepy and went up to bed.
About a Boy (2002)
On Saturday, browsing around for movies to watch with my mom, I asked Google for a recommendation. Google suggested About a Boy, the 2002 dramedy starring Hugh Grant as a bachelor in London living off the royalties from his dad’s hit Christmas song.
The story jumps off from the famous John Donne quote, “”No man is an island.” Grant’s character aims to live a completely unattached life — but his pursuit of sex nevertheless brings him into contact with women, one of whom is minding a boy (an 11-year-old Nicholas Hoult), and that boy’s mom (Toni Collette) suffers from profound depression.
As you already can see, little by little, the footloose bachelor becomes emotionally involved.
The movie’s pace is erratic. Its comedy often doesn’t work. But its message is touching and the performances are good enough. As a now-isolated man myself, it made me think.
The British dialect strained my mom’s attention a bit — and I had to tell her what “shagging” means.
Alysa Liu wins Olympic gold
I didn’t watch much of the Winter Olympics. Neither my mom nor I are big fans of bobsledding or curling — but she does love dance, so after the movie, I queued up Thursday’s figure skating coverage, knowing that American Alysa Liu had won the gold medal.
As joyous as Liu’s performance was, I got even more of a kick seeing how thrilled my mom was by the whole thing.
There was the pre-routine profile explaining how Liu retired for a time, burnt out by her sport’s strict demands — then came back to compete on her own terms.
“I like her,” Mom declared.
Then came the four-minute routine. Mom was transfixed, gasping a little — then thoroughly delighted by the skater’s smiles, and hugs, and tongue-flashing.
She wanted to see exactly how Liu’s name is spelled, and know how old she is. I pulled up her Wikipedia entry, and read about her father, a former Chinese dissident who went into exile after the Tiananmen Square Protests, worked as a busboy at a Chinese restaurant, then earned an M.B.A. and a law degree.
Now Arthur Liu has a gold-medal-winning daughter.
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