Glenn Kubish

 Today, after work... ...we drove down Stony Plain Rd to get the car washed. You forget how much you see... ... and what you look like when you are seeing things.... .... if you don't stop and smell the hoses... ... every now and then.

For whatever reason, an act that I have thoughtlessly performed tens of thousands of times in my life struck me in a new, startling way earlier today. That act is the simple one of putting on a seatbelt before firing the ignition of the car. Until now, that click meant I agreed with all the safety advocates who have for years argued that my chances of surviving a crash were much better if I was belted in. For whatever reason, though, this time what struck me with that click was that I had, albeit in a symbolic way, become one with the vehicle. Literally, I was tied to it. Over the years of driving, I have had fleeting thoughts about the deeper meaning of automobilia. There really is a lot to think about. Stopped at a red light, I have had intimations of my mortality. I have wondered about the personality that we graft onto vehicles due to the look of the grilles. Traffic circles or traffic lights, what are the assumptions about human nature behind each? Why do we assume we can...

Back on 11.27.10 I started taking the time to put down my thoughts and questions about my final MACT project. My first entry, titled "Duckett Thoughts," was a simple question: Is there something about the abrasiveness of D's response that doesn't fit the TV medium? Between now and then, and in times of many thoughts and in times of few, I have kept at it, and, more importantly, not been afraid to come back to it after a few weeks (or months?) off. It has turned into a road map of my thinking journey, with the different authors and profs serving as the places I've stayed for awhile. For instance, it shows the route from Gow to Jenkins to Jenkins in person (in Vegas) to the Jenkins email to Duncombe to Lippmann to Patterson. (It's been a good time for amazon.com!) The premier said, I think everyone in Alberta watched and saw the offensive comments. I'll just leave it at that. But he didn't leave it and that, and no one else did either. On YouTube...

Starbucks, St. Albert        8:04 am, March 23, 2012 One of the fascinating social aspects of photography is the invisibility of the photographer. Look through a typical family's typical photo album from the 60s or 70s or 80s and you see birthday parties and camping trips and school concerts, weddings  and funerals, Christmas mornings and the rest of life's visual feast. You feel the presence of the photographer, that person who has enough of the storytelling sensibility to stop time and gather everyone together for a photo. You see that person's work, and maybe you can still hear his or her version of, "Okay, everyone together. Move in a little closer. Not that silly face, come on! Okay, say, cheese!  But you don't see that person. And it would be nice to see exactly what Mom or Dad or sister, brother, uncle, aunt, neighbour, friend looked like when the photo was taken.    I'd like to develop that app, and call it flippho...

If I could write a song, I would write it about driving Highway 2 between Edmonton and Calgary. It's got it all: changing landscapes, big sky, destination, home, going, returning, pavement, signs, weather, memory, longing. But I don't write songs. What I do enjoy doing, though, is making movies/on location. That keeps the cost down. What I see is the video, what I hear on the radio is the audio. I look for unexpected harmony as they combine. We drove back from Calgary yesterday afternoon. As I woke up from a quick nap and opened my eyes to the highway vista, I heard on CKUA a Woody Guthrie song sung and put to music by Jay Farrar. It's a beautiful song. Don't let anything knock your props out from under you/ Always keep your mind clear/ Let your plans come out of mistakes. The audio was added later, and I have to steady the shot, but it's a fun, little project that makes you appreciate art seen and heard. We miss so much that we see and hear the firs...

For the record, here is the blog post from February 29, 2012 . C Is For Convergence: How the Cookie Monster Reformed Canadian Health Care A few weeks ago, Glenn Kubish, an Alberta-based reader of this blog, wrote to me to share a remarkable story about the power of grassroots media and participatory culture. Like a typical U.S. yokel, I had no idea what had happened up in Canada, but was blown away by the story he told and asked him to share it with the other readers of this blog. Kubish is currently working on a thesis which explores more fully the implications of these events, and would be happy to receive insights or suggestions from you fine folks. With this in mind, I've included his contact information in the bio which follows this piece. For now, sit back, grab some cookies and milk, and read what happened. C Is For Convergence! by Glenn Kurbish It's fairly widely known that Canadians are passionate about health care and the state of hospitals, so what happened to the...