Familiarity with new flame could ease daughters’ fear

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: Avoid shopping (except food and gas) and important decisions from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m. today. After that, the moon moves from Pisces into Aries.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

The day is a mixed bag. There are still fun opportunities to play and enjoy socializing with others. However, you might be sandbagged by someone who is critical or negative. Be careful with whom you choose to associate, because they might irk you. Focus on home repairs.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Weekends don't get any bigger than this one for Winnipeg Folk Festival artistic director Chris Frayer

Weekends don't get any bigger than this one for Winnipeg Folk Festival artistic director Chris Frayer

Weather aside, Goldeyes warmed by potential of new season at training camp

It may feel more like hockey weather than baseball season around here, but that hasn’t stopped the Winnipeg Goldeyes from getting into the swing of things.

Sure, these Fish might be frozen during spring training, but optimism is already heating up about what these boys of summer could accomplish by early fall.

“I think we’ve got a really good team. I think we’re going to make a run at it,” veteran slugger Max Murphy told the Free Press on Wednesday at Blue Cross Park.

He’s talking about an American Association championship, which the Goldeyes last accomplished in 2017. They came close to winning it all in 2024 — the first year under skipper Logan Watkins — but ultimately lost in the final. Last year represented a step back, with a 48-51 record which led to missing the playoffs entirely.

Long journey to home ownership for Eritrean couple

Solomon Ghebru and his family have been building a life together in Winnipeg for the past three years after years of living apart in various countries. Now, they are working toward a new goal: owning a home.

Their story is the focus of this year’s Habitat for Humanity Manitoba Cycle of Hope fundraising ride, a seven-day cycling event through southern Manitoba that begins Monday. The ride aims to raise $150,000 to support Ghebru, his wife, Mehret Awate, and their two daughters as they work toward affordable homeownership.

The couple’s journey to Canada started in Eritrea, where they grew up and attended the same church together. They left Eritrea separately, hoping to build a better life together out of the country. Ghebru travelled through Sudan and Libya before reaching Malta, while Awate travelled to Sudan and then Uganda.

After he found work in Malta, he tried to have his family join him, but government policies prevented them from reuniting. The couple married in Uganda in 2016, and their first daughter, Peniel, was born there the following year.

Helping families break bread

One turkey, five pounds of potatoes, a box of stuffing mix, two packages gravy mix, one baked pie, one bag frozen mixed vegetables, and of course, cranberry sauce.

As Thanksgiving approached, volunteers at the new food bank in Thompson, which is run by Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, were busy packing food boxes for families in the north.

It marked their first major holiday since opening; after a long period of research, searching for space and digging up funding, MKO launched the food bank on Sept. 24. By that time, there was a long list of applicants.

“Our mandate above and beyond anything is that we’re going to try to feed people and help them out during these trying times, especially in recovery after the pandemic,” said Shyanna Lynxleg, urban initiatives manager at MKO.

Netflix comedy set will make you think

The title of Hannah Gadsby’s new 70-minute comedy set (currently available on Netflix) has absolutely nothing to do with the material. The 40-year-old Aussie standup makes that clear right away: Nanette is someone she met in a café, a possibly interesting woman who turned out not to be, and that is the last we hear of her.

Instead, this wonderfully misleading title signals that whatever we are expecting will not be what we get. And that is the whole point of this show, a funny, powerful bait-and-switch ploy that uses comedy to deconstruct comedy.

Gadsby keeps the paradoxes coming in this farewell-to-comedy tour that has actually launched her international career. She tells jokes — lightly, casually, almost shyly — and then circles around and comes back to them, forcing us to confront the pain that was hiding in plain sight.

Like one of those thrillers where a twist ending reveals everything that has come before in a new and blinding light, Nanette forces a tough and timely re-evaluation of humour and its tricky relations with power, trauma and misogyny. Watching Nanette in the #MeToo era of comedy, you’ll laugh. You’ll cry. Most of all, you’ll think.