Little things to make June joyous

We can all agree that everything feels dire right now. The Earth is on fire. Warmongers are in charge. AI slop is replacing art. The second season of Heated Rivalry isn’t due until 2027.

So how do you find happiness? What combination of yoga, meditation, high protein, low stress, weight-bearing exercise, moisturizing and scented candles will be the magic bullet?

The answer is perhaps not so complicated: It’s the little things.

In this monthly feature, the Free Press collects some small actions that can have big results. Some of them will be hyper-specific — a song, a meme, a movie, a meal — while others are general nudges toward mindful behaviour that can bear rewards.

These suggestions aren’t intended to be a panacea. But we hope you find an idea or two that helps you chill out, gives you the giggles or distracts you from destruction.

Put the windows down

Last week, I was driving to work with my car windows wide open, singing Olivia Rodrigo’s Drop Dead (very badly) at the top of my lungs, when I thought, “Oh, god, everyone can hear how awful I sound.” And then I realized no, no one would hear a thing, because I was the only person on the road not in a hermetically sealed vehicle with the AC on full blast. (I did an unscientific survey over the next week and only witnessed two other cars, total, with open windows on my commute.)

It’s summertime, people. We wait all year for the heat and then do everything in our power to remove ourselves from it. I concede to air-conditioning in the home/workplace when it’s 30 C, but the warm breeze on your face and the sun on your arms is a balm, and the rush of air is a reminder that you’re moving forward.

It’s even better when you’re on the highway. Crank up the tunes, roll down the window: it’s one of life’s greatest little joys.

— Jill Wilson

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Strawberry season

June brings so many little pleasures: this year, a late lilac season (I have a rule that I must stop and sniff every bloom I come upon; instant dopamine hit) and strawberry season. While the local U-pick season will start later this month, this time of the year is when you can actually buy good strawberries at the grocery store. Unlike off-season strawbs (entirely white inside, too firm, flavourless), June strawbs are plump, ruby red and juicy.

I like making as many strawberry-forward recipes as I can in June — overnight oats, salads — but there’s a singular pleasure from eating them as it is, tearing the flesh from the leafy cap with your teeth, and tasting summer. Best enjoyed outdoors, maybe under a lilac bush?

— Jen Zoratti

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Searching for an answer in the AI age

When I opened one billionaire’s app for information about another billionaire’s website this week, I was repeatedly reminded that the search engine as we know it is sputtering. As my ever-patient mechanic reminds us all — I hope you’re reading this, Ron — it’s probably time for an oil change.

With Google’s search bar mostly mediated by artificial intelligence, and with predictive text robbing our emotionally starved keyboards of finger-print pressure, now is the time to revert to a different lifeline: it’s time to ask a friend.

During Wednesday night’s loss at home by the Montreal Canadiens, after flipping through a stack of hockey cards from 2007, I was stumped trying to think of a Russian-born defenceman who was drafted in 2001, played for Columbus and the New York Rangers.

I texted a best friend to participate in the sports fan’s pointless, time- honoured tradition of “remembering some guys.”

“Not Skrastinš,” Drew said, correctly. That iron-age blueliner was from Latvia.

When both of us failed to answer the question, I eluded AI by typing in the URL for hockeydb — an extensive database containing statistics for everyone from Jack Eichel to Robert Reichel, and all the Ulfs from Dahlen through Samuelsson.

As I scrolled, I thought back to the hockey card collection I inherited from my late uncle, a skilled bowler, plus-size model, video store owner, jockey’s agent and proto-fantasy sports columnist named Harry Leszcz. That collection — which my grandfather gave to me between 2005 and 2011, delivering cards every Shabbos dinner — was early fuel for some of my most enduring friendships.

Clicking on a mid-2000s New York roster, I found the answer and texted Drew back: Fedor Tyutin.

By even considering options aside from resorting to AI, I used the research approaches so tidily available to any contestant of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?: process of elimination, phone a friend, or ask the audience.

As my colleague Jen Zoratti noted last week, now is the time to push back against the narrative that AI’s era is inevitable.

“Don’t misunderstand, I am not anti-technology. I’m anti-Big Tech forcing AI down our throats in order to better surveil us and take away our jobs while destroying the environment,” wrote Zoratti, who publishes weekly insights in her Free Press newsletter, Next.

When confronted by an AI tool in the real world, you can and should take a pause and consider the better options already at your disposal. Could an artificial intelligence service have spat out Fedor Tyutin faster? Probably.

But I’d prefer three days later to remember the answer to trivial questions than to have a machine rob me of the human joy of delayed informational recall.

A few weeks ago, while working on a piece of creative writing, I wanted to pick the right vehicle for a fictional character to drive. I was tempted to Google “1972 third-rate convertible.”

But instead I saw a man about my dad’s age sitting nearby. I struck up a conversation about the hockey game he was watching and then asked him about his first car: a Pinto, his friend recalled with a laugh, and they started reminding one another about the tires they’d worn out in an earlier season of life.

That happy character drives a Pinto now. He knows we don’t need to reinvent the wheel when the old ones spin just fine.

— Ben Waldman

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Hal Dancing Daily

I don’t know how this Instagram account first crossed my path, but I’m so glad it did, because it has given me endless joy. Hal Dancing Daily (@haldancingdaily) is a clip of Bryan Cranston as Hal Wilkerson on 2000s sitcom Malcolm in the Middle doing an extremely elaborate Dance Dance Revolution-style routine in a purple sequinned top and leather pants.

Every day the account admin changes the background music, quite often to glorious, synched-up effect. It’s the first thing I see when I open Instagram in the morning and it never fails to make me smile.

— JW

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Make an Instagram meal

I have a folder full of hundreds of fun-looking recipes I’ve saved from Instagram and TikTok, but when it comes time to cook something (and isn’t life just one endless cycle of deciding what to eat?), I never think of opening it. However, this viral breakfast for chili oil mozzarella eggs kept popping up on my feed over and over, and the serendipitous purchase of both hot honey and shredded mozzarella for other dishes inspired me to try it out.

Just drizzle a bit of hot honey (you can make your own, but commercial versions are readily available in the condiment aisle) in a pan heated over low-medium. When it’s melted, sprinkle a handful of shredded mozzarella cheese over it (1/4 cup, 1/2 cup, whatever) and then crack an egg or two into the cheese nest and drizzle with chili crisp or sriracha. Cover and cook for about 2 minutes or until egg is set to your liking. Flip over the bottom like an omelet and cover with chopped green onions.

Simple. Speedy. Delicious. And it makes you feel like all that scrolling/saving was worth it.

— JW

Have a path to happiness you’d like to suggest? Email arts@freepress.mb.ca with the subject line ‘Little Things’ and we’ll run it in a future edition. Please include your full name.

arts@freepress.mb.ca

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