June 22, 2026: Upside-down American flag displayed with Jack Sparrow’s Jolly Roger on Olive St. in Racine, Wisconsin.
Another Week: Number 183
Sunday was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, so we’re already tipping downhill on our annual rollercoaster ride. It was a gloomy, muggy and rainy afternoon. We got .91 inches, followed by another 1.52 inches on Wednesday, so our grass is green for now. I got some weeding done on Tuesday.
When I have turned the news on, a lot of it has been focussed on Donald Trump’s current harebrained obsession: painting the “filthy” Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool “American Flag blue,” which he claimed in April would be completed “long before July 4.”
Well, $14.6 million later, the pool was refilled with “clean, beautiful water” — then promptly developed green algae again within a few days, because that’s what clean, beautiful water does when it sits in the hot sun enhanced by a dark background.
But Trump blamed the mess on “damage” that vandals “did to our Country’s now beautiful Reflecting Pool,” and had six people arrested.
It’s like Daffy Duck has been running the United States of America for the past 17 months, while we all just grimace and try to ignore him.
I walked 13.7 miles this week.
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Josh Johnson: Symphony (2026)
While mowing my lawn Saturday, I listened to a recent Fresh Air segment featuring comic Josh Johnson. Later, at my mom’s, we watched his new hour of stand-up, Josh Johnson: Symphony, on HBO Max.
It was an easygoing selection of anecdotal material, divided by very short musical interludes. Johnson shared his perspective on a variety of offbeat situations, and the effect was much more subtle and human and deep than a typical stand-up performance. They was no hostility, and no swearing. The most sexually suggestive story was his uncle catcalling food on his dinner plate.
I enjoyed it thoroughly, and my 91-year-old mom did too. Comedy specials often make her wince and gasp, but she laughed and smiled during this one, and said she found Johnson “very calm.”
Ghostlight (2024)
Also on Saturday night, we watched the best movie I have seen all year.
Ghostlight, currently streaming on Hulu, is a film by Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson. I was not familiar with them, nor with any of the actors in this movie, which was shot in northern Chicagoland in October 2023.
Keith Kupferer plays a construction worker. He and his wife (Tara Mallen) and daughter (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) have been through a devastating family trauma and their emotions are raw. One day, after seeing him lash out on the job, an adorable little woman (Dolly de Leon) leads him through a doorway and past a curtain into a community theatre table read (filmed at Three Brothers Theatre in Waukegan).
This movie is hooked up right in so many ways. The story unfolds like a miracle of nature, with deep pathos and comic absurdity side by side. The cast is outstanding and perfectly ordinary. The examples they present — of mutual respect, and trust, and compassion — are vital medicine. There’s some Shakespeare and, for my mom, a little Oklahoma!
Beautiful work.
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