April 10, 2026: 1993 Chevrolet Caprice Classic station wagon parked on Virginia St. in Racine, Wisconsin.
Another Week: Number 172
The news early on Easter Sunday was that the airman injured and missing in Iran had been rescued — a huge relief.
In the ensuing news conference, our religious fanatic Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth equated this deliverance with Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead: ““Shot down on a Friday, Good Friday, hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday and rescued on Sunday,” he said. “Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn.”
But if that sounded like mimosas talking, our president with the “alcoholic’s personality” seemed hideously hung over in his Easter message to Iran: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
Between the bunny, the eggs, the plastic grass, the bonnets, the parades, and the kielbasa, Easter was already confusing enough to me. I stopped at Woodman’s to buy some chocolate and gasoline and headed out to my sister Colette’s house in Camp Lake to spend a pleasant afternoon with her family.
Offering some respite from our insane president and his nasty war, TV news paid extended attention this week to Artemis II as it circled the moon and returned home. There was lots of talk about the mission bringing humanity together and so on, but I remember Michael Collins orbiting the moon all alone 30 times when I was nine years old, so this Artemis trip didn’t feel like a huge breakthrough. Still, the image quality was breathtaking.
On Monday at Woodman’s, a man buying soup for his father recognized me as his former co-worker from the factory. I have never worked at a factory nor seen him before. Nevertheless, we had a friendly talk.
Tuesday — Spring Election Day — was sunny and very cold. My daffodil blooms were drooping in the chill. I voted, and both candidates won.
On Friday evening, CNN broke news that a former staffer was accusing Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of rape — and that three other women also alleged sexual misconduct by the California gubernatorial candidate. Meanwhile, MS NOW didn’t seem to mention the story at all when I tuned in.
On Saturday, in a sort of “Three Stooges Go to Pakistan” reboot, Vice President JD Vance travelled with Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law and his golfing buddy to negotiate an end to Trump’s war with Iran. After 21 hours, they gave up and Vance headed home.
I walked 9.74 miles this week.
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Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir, by Lucinda Williams
I first saw Lucinda Williams preforming “Right in Time” on The Late Show with David Letterman back in June of 1998 and she struck a chord deep inside me. I was working my way out of a painful stretch, and the unvarnished, everyday wistfulness of her voice and lyrics were the perfect soundtrack for my slog. I bought Car Wheels on a Gravel Road right away, and have added six or seven albums since. I’ve been to her shows in Chicago and Milwaukee.
Last Saturday, I found a book in my Kindle library that I apparently purchased almost three years ago — but then Amy’s decline and death wiped it from my awareness.
In this memoir — Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You — Williams recounts her whole life up to 2022. Her family includes a variety of complicated figures, and her trail winds through a number of Southern states, plus Chile, Mexico City, California, and New York. Through her poet father Miller Williams, she is exposed to artists and parties. There are lovers. There are deaths. There are coyotes wandering around a baseball field. Her music begins with busking the blues and evolves into a flavor of rock and roll that’s uniquely hers. She offers background details for many of her songs.
The book reads entirely in Lucinda’s voice. It’s like sitting around with her as she pages through a scrapbook and recalls 69 years of significant moments. Her straightforwardness remains comforting.
The Big Country (1958)
On Saturday night, my mom and I watched one of her selections: The Big Country, an epic Western from 1958 starring Gregory Peck that currently streams for free with ads on a number of services. As Mom proudly pointed out, it scored 100% on the Tomatometer.
As The Big Country begins, the gentlemanly Peck arrives in some unnamed Western landscape to join his fiancée (Carroll Baker), whose father owns a huge cattle ranch — and covets additional land for its access to the river. So do his rivals, a family including Chuck Connors, and a loud and burly Burl Ives.
The locals, Charlton Heston among them, are all gun-shooting macho guys who view Peck as unmanly — but Peck, a former sea captain, is merely considerate, judicious, and handsome. His dignity is soon noticed by his fiancée’s schoolteacher friend (Jean Simmons). She has inherited the coveted land, “The Big Muddy.”
You can see where this is all headed from miles away, but there are so many picturesque shots of the vast, dry, and mountainous landscape — and so many random plot meanderings — that it takes two hours and 46 minutes to get there. Through it all, Gregory Peck is gallant and charming.
My mom felt the fiancée’s strongman father (Charles Bickford) shared some similarities to Donald Trump, and I agreed.
Afterwards, I read at Wikipedia about the movie’s production and understood better why it was overly long.
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