Glenn Kubish

As we wait for the mosquitos' reaction to all the rain of late, here are three things left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude this week. Three Things, episode 127:                          1. Meow!   It’s August 1997. We are at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. From inside a portapotty near the children’s stage, I hear John Prine singing Hello In There. I am in the hot, polyurethane plastic confessional supervising one of our young sons who, I know, will, when we’re done, insist on going not to the stage Prine is at but back to the children’s area. In the battle of Gallagher Hill, it is Fred Penner triumphs.   Dr. Fred Penner was back on stage at the Jubilee Auditorium last week. It was spring convocation at the University of Alberta. The chancellor, Peggy Garritty, had just made him an honorary Doctor of Letters. Penner told the grads about his younger sister, Susie. She was born with Down Syndrome. He remembered how they shared the joy of music. Her favourite LP record was

Here are three things in a tough week that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude. Three Things, episode 126:                                    1. Strong ads   I enjoy a good ad. I think I get this from my Edmonton grandmother. She would watch TV commercials as if they were part of the show we were actually watching. And she would laugh out loud at a clever line or a twist ending to a commercial. She never got tired of the client’s surprise when Madge the manicurist told her she was soaking in it. Over the years, I’ve looked under the hood of advertisements to try to figure out what makes commercials tick. Tony Schwartz has been a reliable mechanic. Schwartz was the brains behind one of the most memorable political ads in U.S. history, the infamous Daisy spot that targeted Barry Goldwater without ever mentioning him.   Decades ago, Schwartz used the term “resonance,” still so popular these days, to distinguish between ads that ring a belief or a feeling or a judgment already in

  Back from Vancouver with three things that left tracks of happiness and gratitude in the sands of time. Three Things, episode 125:                                 1. Bridge lights   We got to Vancouver, got up to our hotel room, opened the curtains—and saw Dave Mowat standing there. Not the Dave Mowat, late of ATB Financial, but a way of seeing things like Dave Mowat sees things was out there over the Burrard Inlet to be clearly seen. The Lions Gate Bridge stood in the dark, its lights hanging like a garland of starlight. Or pearls. Memorably, Dave once likened the festooned lights on the First Narrows Bridge to pearls. He was doing a Pecha Kucha at the Horowitz Theatre at the U of A, pitching the idea of lighting the High Level Bridge in Edmonton. For the crowd, he pictured the Lions Gate at night.   "There's a sense of dance of light, a dance with a bejewelled partner," he said, noting the bridge lights were nicknamed Gracie's Pearls. Twenty months and a community

  Into the books goes another week. But in case I want to read that part of the book again, here are three things from that week that left behind lines of happiness and gratitude. Three Things podcast, episode 124:                                  1. Soft rain   The news lately has been as old as it gets. Even older than crime, the want ads, the obits and the sports scores. The news here these days is elementally old. The themes in the media are the old media themselves: earth, wind, water and fire.   Forest fire season arrived early. People have fled their homes. Properties are cindered. The questions are the questions of the firefighter: Which way is the wind blowing? When will it rain? Will it ever rain?  People are jittery. I know I am on edge. A black fly outside lands on the dining room window while I am peering out and up at the brown sky and, for an instant, I feel it knows it could take over. I see a red-winged blackbird perched on top of a bull rush. A giant matchstick, I thi