Forcing Forsythia + Clubhouse + Fraser

Apr 4, 2021

May I recommend

Forcing Forsythias

Do you love the crisp white cold of the winter, but maybe by mid-March you’re starting to get a bit bummed out by by the never ending darkness, frozen slush and relentless grind of putting one foot in front of the other with no relief in sight?

Have no fear! There is a solution, and it’s not “buy a SAD lamp” or “make better life choices.”

What you need to do is force some forsythias.

My friend Johanna introduced me to this practice many years ago and it is, literally, miraculous. There you are in mid-March, bumbling around in the continuous snow, befuddled by the return to daylight-savings, worried about whether you have all of your tax documents in order, and then you notice the date and remember that you have an honest to God mission: track down the forsythia bush you noticed last year and steal some branches.

Now, this obviously requires planning, because you have to have noticed last spring where the big, glowing bushes of yellow forsythia are, and then, (and this is the trickiest part) you have to REMEMBER where they are. This is super challenging because forsythia bushes without forsythia flowers just look like garbagy shrubs you don’t care about. Case in point:

Fear not, however! This tangle of uninteresting brown is secretly storing up cheerful bursts of golden blossoms. They are gurgling away in those dead brown stalks, just the way your own unreached potential is stewing away in your holy leggings and flaky scalp.

Here they are only a day or two after I cut them… Already the burgeoning buds have pushed through the dead sticks. The thrum of vitality forcing itself through the woody resistance… A sign of life and possibility .

Then, BLAMO! We’ve got ever-loving full blooms.

We are celebrating god-damn spring! We are remembering hope! We are digging out our fancy dandruff shampoo and finally tackling those flakes! We are emerging from our chrysalis as beautiful butterflies, rested and restored by our winter of quiet, connected to our inner power and ready to face the world.

… once we get through this one *final* lockdown. #GetItTogetherOntario #DougFordIsIncompetent

How is everyone coping? Leave a comment below.

Latest social media platform: Clubhouse

Clubhouse feels like a party, but is it a good one?

Weirdly, I’m a member of Clubhouse - the newest, buzziest social media platform, that at the moment is invitation-only. I don’t 100% know what to do in there, but I do have some invitations, so if you’re interested in joining, let me know, and I’ll send you an invite.

On Clubhouse, anyone can create public or private rooms, and highly active users can start “clubs”—interest groups, essentially—of their own. Clubs are like ongoing conversation series, and the offerings vary: “Van Life and Tiny Homes” (eight thousand participants), “Therapy for Black Girls” (seventy thousand participants), “Quran Recitations” (twenty-three thousand members), “Olympic Weightlifting” (two hundred participants), “The Dacha” (a hundred thousand participants), and “Parent Confessions” (thirteen thousand participants). Wellness-oriented clubs abound: “Divine Feminine Awakening,” with a hundred and ten thousand participants, is a “safe space for us to reflect on, re-imagine, and redefine the awakening of feminine energy”; “Meditation Room,” with a hundred and five thousand participants, hosts a daily, scheduled meditation session.

Getting to the bottom of Fraser’s salary

How Did Fraser Afford His Apartment

I love the kind of article that really digs in to something really stupid.

This winter, with more time indoors and on my hands than usual, I learned a new language, finally landed Crow Pose, finished my screenplay, and perfected my sourdough loa—no! I watched all 264 episodes of Frasier.

I can’t even pull on button-up pants…

This woman, 82, dresses to the nines each Sunday for virtual church. Her selfies have become legendary

I spent a few summers waitressing at a private golf club and every Friday at lunch we had two regular groups: The Veterans, a group of elderly men, using canes and walkers, who took over a corner of the dining room, called me “Ginger”, needed extra pillows to prop them up because they were shrinking and needed help cutting their sandwiches because of their palsy. At the opposite end of the dining room were their wives, called the Ladies. They rolled in, dressed to the nines, walking with purpose, full faces of flawless, every hair-sprayed lock of hair firmly in place… They knew exactly who I was, precisely how their salad should be served and their gossip was comprehensive, sharp and snappy. This lady (at least in her immaculate dress sense) reminds me of them.