July 27, 2026: Weather radar image from MyRadar, showing red tornado warning box in southeast Wisconsin.
Another Week: Number 188
Power outages are common in Pleasant Prairie, where my 91-year-old mother lives, so it has become something of a family routine this year to track storms via group chat — exchanging radar images and links while we alternately duck and cover in our various basements and interior hallways.
On Sunday morning at 7 a.m., Milwaukee meteorological doyenne Lindsey Slater was already at her home battle station giving YouTube followers a heads-up.
Severe storms started rolling in Monday morning at 10:30. Tornado warnings followed at 10:45, and by 11:15 it looked like nighttime in my neighborhood. Baseball-sized hail was falling west of me in Burlington. After that round, more storms arrived at 3 p.m. and my backyard resembled the inside of a car wash.
One hundred and ten miles north, Menasha and Appleton were hit by a tornado. Five more tornadoes touched down 80 miles to my south in Illinois.
In trying to wrap my little mind around Jungian psychology, I’ve been making an effort to recall and record my dreams. Monday night I dreamt about tracking storms on my phone.
Tuesday was beautiful. Robins, cardinals, and a hummingbird enjoyed my yard. Thursday was warmer, and a gang of starlings took over. Then we got another 3 inches of rain Friday into Saturday.
Aside from weather, much of the rest of my time was spent interacting with screens. I migrated my website to Divi 5 on Monday. There are a several annoying bugs, but I guess that’s the price of progress.
On Thursday, I helped a friend move everything from her cracked iPhone into her late husband’s undamaged iPhone. That took some patience while progress bars chugged forward, but it was a complete success. Friday, I started work on a new website for an existing customer.
I walked 6.82 miles this week.
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A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
On Wednesday, I had both lunch and dinner at my mom’s, and that night we watched A Woman Under the Influence, which neither of us had seen — but had been mentioned several times recently, including Jodie Foster’s visit to the Criterion Closet. Gena Rowlands is a wonderful actress, and my mom loves Peter Falk as Columbo. The movie is in the National Film Registry, for crying out loud.
I didn’t love it. It’s one of those grainy, stressful, low-budget, early-1970s films of the type shown as Channel 7’s “3:30 Movie” when I was a youth. (Play Misty for Me and Diary of a Mad Housewife aired frequently.) Director John Cassavetes wrote it for Rowlands (his wife), and both of their mothers appear in the movie along with other non-professionals.
Rowlands’ character Mabel has a profound drinking problem, as well as some unspecified mental illness. She also has three children with her husband Nick (Falk), the foreman of a utility crew in Los Angeles. She needs to be handled with kid gloves. He needs a festive sense of normality — so he frequently brings a whole bunch of coworkers into the house for celebrations.
A lot of the action feels improvised, which enhances the repeatedly escalating tension. Rowlands gives a disturbing performance, Falk plays his one note at varying volumes, and Katherine Cassavetes is distractingly amateur as his mother.
At 2 hours and 26 minutes, this movie was way too long — and for all the raw domestic turmoil, there was no real point to it.
Romance on the High Seas (1948)
On Saturday night, we watched a Technicolor romantic comedy starring Doris Day: her movie debut, Romance on the High Seas.
The far-fetched plot involves an ocean cruise to Rio. Doris is pretty, and a little more kittenish than her eventual image.
My mom once met Jack Carson, who plays the private detective.
Oscar Levant is a sour version of Groucho Marx, playing frantic piano and delivering deadpan wisecracks. He famously later quipped, “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.”
And there are songs — including Day’s signature tune, “It's Magic.”
It’s a lighthearted hour and 39 minutes.
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