Roughing it (less): Handy items for novice campers to make the great outdoors tolerable

I hate camping.

I loathe the very idea of leaving the comfort and safety of home to sleep in a random field, where not only will I be exposed to the elements, but will also be at the mercy of all manner of creatures, from ursine to canine to insectan.

I do not want to hike up a hill just to share one outdoor tap with 12 others, standing alongside them as I brush my teeth.

I do not want to queue for 15 minutes, then part with a $2 coin to wedge myself into a shower stall just to stand under a piddly stream of lukewarm water while trying my best to swiftly soap up and sponge off lest I irk the rapidly growing line of campers outside.

Manitoba-shot Netflix series sets beloved Ingalls clan in the actual Prairies

Perhaps it should not have been a significant surprise that Manitoba was chosen as the location for a new iteration of the much-beloved TV series Little House on the Prairie.

Much of the southern part of the province is, after all, authentic Prairie, visually unspoiled by power lines and paved roads.

And there is enough of it to portray a frontier wilderness that matches the source material: a series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, set in and around Independence, Kan., in the 1860s. (Manitoba also famously doubled for Kansas in the movie Capote, the Oscar-winning story of Truman Capote’s investigation of a 1959 quadruple homicide on a Kansas farm, culminating in the publication of his book In Cold Blood.)

Perhaps it was more of a surprise that the material would inspire a new interpretation landing on the streaming service Netflix.

Whitemouth guest house’s weekly ’za nights prove popular

WHITEMOUTH — It’s a sunny Friday afternoon and Michel Dupas is busy stoking the fire inside Rusty’s glowing red maw. The outdoor pizza oven — named for its intentionally rustic construction — takes hours to reach the ideal internal temperature and customers could be arriving soon. Emphasis on could.

“You never really know who’s going to come,” shrugs Michel, who runs Moon Gate Guest House and its weekly pizza nights with his wife Jenny Dupas.

Moon Gate is a charming riverside bed and breakfast located off a gravel road 100 kilometres east of Winnipeg in the RM of Whitemouth.

When the couple purchased the property in 2009, it was home to little more than an aging farmhouse and an abandoned egg sorting facility. But the land had potential — and 400-amp electrical service.

Influential editor leaving Border Crossings after 33 years at the helm

They say that a picture tells a thousand words, but also not to judge a book by its cover.

Meeka Walsh isn’t much one for platitudes. Surveying three decades of Border Crossings’ covers, the back stories she gives — relaying what the pictures may only hint at — are peppered with qualities one recognizes from her writing as the magazine’s flagship editor: the ironic asides, the sculpted turns of phrase and the innocent name-dropping.

Walsh says she remembers every cover, too — though some are judged more warmly than others, even in an exalted light.

Currently, she’s eying the great Swiss-American photographer Robert Frank’s Watching the Crows on issue no. 152 from February 2020. Frank’s best known for his landmark The Americans — a sad, funny, rambling road chronicle of postwar America, a little like On the Road in pictures, that also electrified Jack Kerouac.

Bland casting keeps rock opera from reaching divine heights

In the ballad I Don’t Know How to Love Him from the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, Mary Magdalene sings about Jesus, “I don’t see why he moves me.”

She tries to tell herself, “He’s just a man,” but she’s thrown off by the deep mystery and magnetism of his presence — a man and yet not a man; familiar and yet unreachable.

In great productions of the landmark 1970 work by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice, and in the unforgettable 1973 movie version, the troubled Jesus has the same effect on the audience as he does on Mary.

He has a spiritual aura, radiates otherworldly charisma and seems all-knowing. But as he endures the final week of his life, he’s also movingly human — increasingly frustrated with his followers and doubting his own strength to finish what God has started.

Hip-hop heavyweights share top billing at sold-out show

Ne-Yo and Ako delivered a setlist packed with 2000s club hits celebrating the height of bottle popping and booty shaking.

Dauphin festival continues to grow beyond its core

Rock has rolled into the spotlight at Dauphin’s Countryfest in recent years.

The annual country music festival opens tomorrow with a rock ’n’ roll-centric lineup featuring Kingston, Ont., singer JJ Wilde (who will also perform at the Rockin’ Thunder concert at Princess Auto Stadium on July 4), alongside local outfits Lëddwyn and the Haileys.

This is the second year the event, which takes place at the Selo Ukraina grounds 300 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, has kicked off with a showcase that expands on its core genre.

“We introduced it last year and it went over really well so we kept the tradition moving along into this year, and likely will continue it for next year too,” says Countryfest marketing co-ordinator Kamryn Winters via email.

Never mind playing catch — there was plenty of bonding to do with dad at the cinema

My dad didn’t teach me how to hammer a nail, change the oil in a car, or tie a knot that wouldn’t slip. But afternoons shared with him in a dark cinema shaped who I am in ways I was slow to fully appreciate.

WAG-Qaumajuq exhibition offers fresh perspective on history of Indigenous representation in art

A new exhibition at WAG-Qaumajuq invites viewers to grapple with two simultaneous histories of Indigenous presence in art.

Reframed, which opened Wednesday, takes settler art of Indigenous people shaped by colonial perspectives of the time and contrasts it with modern-day contemporary work from Indigenous artists who challenge those perspectives.

Many historical paintings create a vague representation of Indigenous people by homogenizing the culture and erasing historical presence, says Marie-Anne Redhead, assistant curator of Indigenous and contemporary art.

“I wanted to highlight Indigenous perspectives on these artworks to really see these people as people,” she said.

Odd pairing of Kraft Dinner and cheesecake a hit for city bakery

It’s the food mashup that appears, at first glance, to be a match made in culinary purgatory.

Featuring a Canadian childhood staple baked into a New York-style cheesecake, the star of the show is the ubiquitous blue-and-yellow box lurking in nearly every pantry across the country.

It’s the ultimate time-saving saviour — firmly lodged in memories as a comforting dinner rapidly whipped up and just as swiftly snarfed down between after-school activities and homework.

But now Kraft Dinner is stepping boldly — some might even say wildly — out of its lane.

Love, music and the return of a weird noir

There really is no excuse for staying indoors, except for streaming these five viewing suggestions.

Manitoba’s removal of PST from some groceries doesn’t amount to much

Government officials predict the July 1 removal of the seven per cent PST from more grocery items will save Manitoba families about $100 per year — a few bucks here, a few there.

Mahler ruminates on life, loss and music in beautifully bleak historical fiction The Last Movement

Robert Seethaler’s The Last Movement is a work of fiction about real-life composer and conductor Gustav Mahler, who was born in Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic) in 1860 and died in Vienna in 1911. Mahler’s symphonies are sometimes said to be the culmination of the Romantic movement in music and of the Austro-German symphonic form itself.

The Vienna-born Seethaler has written eight novels — his book A Whole Life, translated from German to English by Charlotte Colllins (who also translated The Last Movement) was a finalist for the 2016 Man Booker Prize. He currently lives in Berlin, where he also works as an actor.

Having independent knowledge of Mahler’s life and work is not necessary to understand The Last Movement, but would be helpful in grasping the full significance of events recounted, or in looking below the surface of the text.

The book’s title refers not to one of Mahler’s symphonies, but to the final trip he takes by steamship from New York back to Vienna, where he will shortly die at age 50. Seethaler’s slim novel is a meditation on mortality, and is also a rather bleak look at Mahler’s life.

Shakespeare in the Ruins’ As You Like It its most pleasurable production in a while

One likes to imagine the title of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It signalled some capitulation on the part of the Bard, to keep the pastoral comedy extra light.

What’s up: Brian Goldman, Stephanie Ballard, WUFF, Pride, MayWorks book launch

Dr. Brian Goldman book launchMcNally Robinson Booksellers, 1120 Grant Ave.Tuesday, 7 p.m.Free admissionFifteen years after writing The Night Shift: Real Life in the Heart of the E.R., his account of working overnight in the emergency room (ER) at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, Dr. Brian Goldman is back with a chronicle of what the medical landscape is like today.

Goldman is a bestselling author, ER doctor and host of CBC Radio’s White Coat, Black Art. His new book The Casino Shift: Stories from an ER on the Edge, published in February, goes hour by hour through the shorter overnight shifts (the “casino shifts” of the book’s title), detailing the types of situations faced by ER doctors and patients. He also sums up the advances in technology that have helped patients, as well as the increasing complexity of patient cases.

McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location will host Goldman on Tuesday at 7 p.m. for the launch of The Casino Shift, where he’ll be joined in conversation by Winnipeg doctor, educator and bestselling author Dr. Jillian Horton (We Are All Perfectly Fine). The event, co-presented by the Alan Klass Health Humanities program at the UM Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, is free to attend and will also be available on McNally Robinson’s YouTube page.

— Ben Sigurdson