Today’s horoscope

Prepare to be … blutterbunged?

Are you not blutterbunged?

If Russell Crowe’s second-century gladiator character had uttered a 19th century equivalent of “Are you not entertained?” that fit the mood of today’s 21st century, that would be it.

Definitions first. Blutterbunged is an obscure regional dialect word from England that means everything from astonished to confounded to bemused or shocked into speechlessness. Its composition suggests something both more and less, namely blustering bloviation (that’s the more part) and empty words (that’s the empty part). These days we would more naturally punctuate our reaction to an event or statement with a profanity. But you get the drift.

Unearthed by lexicologist Susie Dent, it speaks volumes about our times that it fits now. That we need to reach back hundreds of years to find the right word to adequately capture a contemporary civic reaction to what the hell is going on in politics and the world today.

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.

‘There’s another Kamloops coming’: Here are some Canadian sites believed to hold more unmarked graves of Indigenous children

A network of more than 130 institutions would eventually spread across the country. The last shut its doors in the mid-1990s.

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.

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: Avoid shopping (except food and gas) and important decisions after 5 p.m. The moon is in Leo.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

An unusual idea or an unexpected event might take you into an entirely new headspace. You might entertain the notion of a new kind of future for yourself — something more romantic or more spiritual/touchy-feely (call it whatever you like) — than you had previously thought.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Housing-first initiative aims to offer city’s homeless dignity, understanding

Ken St. George has dedicated the last 20 years to taking care of people in the community-health sector. Now he will enact the Housing First model in Winnipeg for the first time.