Another Week: Number 136

Greetings from Dystopia.

When we were choked by Canadian wildfire smoke two years ago, it felt like a passing plague, a blip on our timeline that would soon fade into a hazy memory. We had recently been through a global pandemic, after all.

This year, the Canadian smoke has wafted in and out of our atmosphere all summer, and it’s becoming apparent that this is our new normal. Climate change is exacerbating the Canadian fires, the fires are insanely out of control, and the Trump administration is citing bullshit to justify scrapping fundamental climate protections.

Donald Trump always insists he’s delivering “the cleanest air,” while he completely ignores carbon. He ought to spend 20 minutes with his head in a plastic bag and breathe some of his own CO2.

This week started pretty warm and very muggy, but I did spend a few hours sitting in my yard in the afternoon shade and reading. The hummingbird has been visiting regularly.

Several days in a row, I used a broom to remove a spider web that had been woven over my kitchen sink window like an additional screen. Watching the spider swiftly reconstructing the web all over again at dusk, it dawned on me that the light over the sink is the one I keep lit most evenings, making it ideal for attracting flying insects. Smart spider!

Wednesday, as our “massive heat dome” finally moved east, we had waves of mild rain, totalling one inch by bedtime. Good deal. The WISN 12 weather people were giddy over the five days of paradise to follow.

But on Thursday morning, I woke to the smell of smoke and irritation in my throat and sinuses despite my closed windows and active air conditioning. The MyRadar app showed all of Wisconsin to be under a red, “Unhealthy” air quality blob.

The official air quality gradations are disturbingly sanguine. Orange denotes “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” — such as people who have respiratory conditions. I don’t have a respiratory condition that I know of, but I reckon I could develop one after breathing enough smoke.

The TV weather people recommend avoiding outdoor exercise and staying inside, but obviously, the smoke engulfing an entire state is going to make its way into my house too, and these alerts have now stretched over much of the summer, often getting extended over and over, 24 hours at a time.

Feeling cornered, I found my credit card and ordered a Coway Airmega AP-1512HH HEPA Air Purifier from Amazon at 6:30 a.m. I researched air purifiers last winter, and this seemed to be the one. Within five hours, a young woman named Maria had driven it from Pewaukee to my front door. Amazing.

The unit has been running continuously since then, and my indoor air is noticeably improved. I am beginning August in the orange-pink sunshine with my windows closed, trapped like a bug while others attend baseball games and the Wisconsin State Fair in the milky haze. But, many people still smoke cigarettes or vape.

Meanwhile in the news, the woman who lured girls into pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s web has been bargaining for a pardon from Donald Trump, and so far has succeeded in getting herself moved to a much more comfortable prison. Most of the news media have spent weeks learning all over again how to pronounce her two-syllable first name, with slow progress.

Thursday evening in Elkhorn, our rubber stamp of a congressman, Bryan Steil, was met by angry constituents at his town hall meeting. The Racine County Eye — which has dramatically improved this year as a local news source — later fact-checked many of Steil’s claims. They also covered Saturday’s anti-Trump protest in Racine.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly report of employment numbers, and the report showed that job creation over the last three months hit lows not seen since the pandemic. So, of course, Trump fired the commissioner of labor statistics.

And, as a result of the 22-month Gaza war, 60,785 Palestinians and 1,983 Israelis have been reported killed so far — not counting those starving to death under Israel’s siege. Yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says, “there is no starvation in Gaza.”

The Cubs lost two out of three in Milwaukee, and I walked zero miles this week.

Easy Living (1937)

Sunday night at my mom’s, we hit up her DVR cloud for a TCM oldie.

Easy Living features a Preston Sturges screenplay and plenty of fast-paced, screwball comedy after the richest banker in America (Edward Arnold) tosses his wife’s sable coat out of his New York City penthouse. It lands on a broke working girl (Jean Arthur), and changes her life — mostly as a result of assumptions that the two are seeing each other.

Arthur is quite good as she breezily rolls with the changes, and the movie is an hour and 28 minutes of well-choreographed, corny fun.

South Park: “Sermon on the ‘Mount” (2025)

We also viewed the Season 27 premiere of South Park, after several minutes of me preparing my mom for the show’s vulgarity.

She watched carefully and considerately, even as Jesus Christ Himself was cowering in the shadow of President Trump’s oppression. She squinted at the replay after I explained that the googly-eyes on Trump’s teeny-tiny talking penis qualified it as a character that could be shown unblurred.

For someone previously unfamiliar with South Park, it was a lot to take in.

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

On Saturday night, we bookended the week with another TCM oldie, The Lady Vanishes. It was director Alfred Hitchcock‘s last film before moving from England to Hollywood, and actor Michael Redgrave‘s movie debut.

My mom enjoyed it, but it felt worn to me. There are plenty of interesting touches for anyone studying Hitchcock’s development — but overall, it’s got too many rough edges, rusty joints, and weak comedy. The plot remains unclear until very late in the game, and the shootout scene near the end is laughably bad.