March 10, 2026: Flooded Webster Street in Racine, Wisconsin.
Another Week: Number 168
I’m just trying to stay in my seat during the turbulence.
This was our first week on Daylight Saving Time, which is simultaneously encouraging and disorienting.
On Sunday our temperature hit the 60s, and I spotted the first Brown Thrasher of the season kicking leaves under my neighbor’s Cotoneasters — as well as the first American Robin splashing around my birdbath like he owns the place.
On Sunday night, driving home on the dark stretch of Highway 31 along Petrifying Springs Park, I noticed something flapping around in the center lane that looked like debris at first. As I passed in the left lane, I saw its face in my headlights. It was a White-Tailed Deer that had already been injured. I reported it to Waze with my heart pounding and a sick feeling.
Monday was beautiful — sunny and 60s. Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz suddenly appeared on the Trump Administration’s radar after being a well-known Mideast pain point since I was in middle school. Ten days into his war on Iran, Donald J. Trump was now calling the war an “excursion,” and the news media were engaging in absurd debates over whether the war is a war — while noting, at every mention of the Strait, that 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through the waterway.
Stock markets started plummeting, so Trump held an impromptu press conference before the close to announce that his war was “very complete, pretty much,” and stock and oil prices obediently recovered for the night. This impromptu war is costing over a billion dollars a day, and so far the whole thing feels totally under-the-table. Trump — an arrogantly ignorant thug — is simply winging it. There’s no justification or plan, just a lot of vague and contradictory mumbling.
On Tuesday night, severe thunderstorms moved through here, dropping 2.18 inches of rain, some brief hail, and a half inch of snow. My street flooded, with small waves rolling from east to west.
Wednesday in Puerto Rico — in an almost empty El Choli — Senegal lost to a USA Women’s National Team that includes Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese, Kiki Iriafen, Chelsea Gray, and Kelsey Plum. It was more like a practice, but still heartening to see.
Friday the 13th was crazy windy. All of southeast Wisconsin’s winter litter went airborne. My yard was pelted by roofing shingles and birch branches. Then, just before it set, the sun came out.
Also on Friday, Donald Trump said his war against Iran will end “when I feel it, feel it in my bones.” He freely admits he’s winging it.
On Saturday, in an indication of how Trump’s war is being received, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to revoke broadcast licenses for their unenthusiastic news coverage of it.
I walked 3.03 miles this week.
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Let Them All Talk (2020)
Sunday night at my mom’s, I selected a Steven Soderbergh film from 2020 that was streaming on HBO Max and seemed promising.
Let Them All Talk stars Meryl Streep as Alice Hughes, a somewhat reclusive author who had a bestseller a while back. Now Karen, the young, new rep from her literary agency (Gemma Chan), has been delegated to draw her out and hopefully confirm a sequel.
Also, a major literary award is being presented in the United Kingdom — but Hughes will not fly, so they settle on the Queen Mary 2, and Hughes decides to invite two old college friends — Candice Bergen and Dianne Wiest — as well as her nephew (Lucas Hedges).
Karen joins the voyage on the sly and uses the nephew as a window into her client. Meanwhile, Alice’s two old friends compare notes and catch up — often without the preoccupied writer.
There is a lot going on here. Alice Hughes provides oblique glimpses into the creative mystery, and a frank veneration of love. One of the old friends is hung up and bitter about the author’s success, the other rolls with life’s twists. The nephew — as my mom pointed out a couple of times — has a unique opportunity to learn about women.
This was a well-spent hour and 53 minutes.
A Room with a View (1985)
Saturday night, after a few unsuccessful rounds of movie roulette, this 40-year-old (!) Oscar-winner streaming on Tubi clicked for me and my mom. I don’t think I have actually seen it before — just a lot of clips.
A Room with a View is, of course, a Merchant Ivory period piece adapted from E.M. Forster’s 1908 novel. It’s set first in Florence, Italy, where young Helena Bonham Carter and her older cousin/chaperone Maggie Smith arrive in 1907. Disappointment is expressed about their room’s view.
Their fellow tourists include Judi Dench, Simon Callow, and Denholm Elliott with his son Julian Sands, a romantic “free-thinker.”
Later, returning home to England, we meet Daniel Day-Lewis, a wealthy, pompous pedant and snob.
The plot is quaint and obvious. The performances are excellent, toeing the line between knowing humor and cartoon. The dreamy scenery and the costumes are impeccable.
The coincidence that gave me a little shiver was that both this movie and Let Them All Talk featured an element of real lives used in a work of fiction. What am I supposed to make of that?
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