April 13, 2026: Case-Harmon Park in Racine, Wisconsin.
Another Week: Number 173
This was a week in limbo. Weather-wise, we spent a day or two in summer. On Monday, everyone was out in their yards and puttering around or just talking on the phone and stretching.
Then we snapped back into severe weather season. In the two o’clock hour of Tuesday morning, I was in out in the street picking up garbage after the wind knocked over my trash bins. Tuesday itself was nice again. I talked to a woman planting a juniper and waved to my hair stylist. Tuesday night, there were tornado warnings in the area.
Friday, the sky was greenish and churning, and another tornado warning sent me down to my basement. Saturday evening was 42 degrees and someone nearby got fireworks season started.
The Donald J. Trump chaos keeps spinning like a Tilt-a-Whirl. His war with Iran has stalemated. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, so he blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, then called it the “Strait of Iran.”
I use the term “pork chop” for any distraction that Trump throws out for the news media to chase like hungry guard dogs. This week, he tossed the mother of all pork chops — first attacking the Pope for being “weak on crime,” then posting an image of himself dressed as Jesus and miraculously healing a man resembling Jon Stewart.
The media gnawed on these pork chops all week long. For his part, recent Catholic convert JD Vance warned the Pope to “be careful” when talking about theology. Our prudent vice-president, you may recall, is currently the disdained sidekick of the man he once contemplated as “America’s Hitler.”
Eric Swalwell, the congressman who had been a fixture on MSNBC and was running for governor in California, suspended his campaign and resigned from Congress following last Friday’s rape allegations.
The Chicago Cubs won two of three games in Philadelphia, then beat the Mets a couple of times at Wrigley as they seem to be shaking off their early slump.
I walked 13.47 miles this week.
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The Testament of Ann Lee (2025)
I have enjoyed Amanda Seyfried in a few movies and loved her January 13 appearance on Colbert. Also, I’m a sucker for the quirks of religion and history. So I put The Testament of Ann Lee on my list of movies to watch and waited for it on Hulu. Screening it with my mom took two recent sessions — it’s 2 hours and 17 minutes long, and Hulu added commercials.
The story begins in Manchester, England in the mid-1700s. Ann Lee is one of eight children in a hard-pressed family, and their cramped sleeping quarters allow her to witness her parents having sex, which makes sex permanently repulsive to her. In her early twenties, she joins a religious sect similar to the Quakers — but which also seeks purification through chanting and dancing, hence, “The Shakers.”
It soon emerges that Ann Lee herself is the second coming of Jesus Christ, this time as a female.
Quirky religious sects often find themselves unwelcome. These Shakers take a rickety ship to New England and miraculously survive the journey, to begin building their new home precisely as the United States is being born.
Amanda Seyfried is fantastic. She brings the fervor up from her toes. She sings, she dances, she suffers tremendously.
The rest of the production, however, is lacking. The religious craziness isn’t treated seriously enough for drama, nor comically enough to be funny. Events just tick through the timeline, pausing regularly for elaborately choreographed dancing and cult-like chanting — much the way a movie musical would, but without any memorable tunes, not even “Simple Gifts.”
Some exquisitely-designed Shaker wooden items are briefly shown.
My mom and I both found this saga a bit of a slog.
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