Glenn Kubish

In the event that Oilers captain Connor McDavid scores five points in a victory at home against [insert opponent team name here], I offer this verse, with apologies to L. Cohen, to capture the scene as high-spirited fans wearing #97 sweaters stream out of the rink, high-fiving each other, on the way to the Edmonton night. And to get this out of my head. Well, they looked up at the big scoreboard That McDavid made and it pleased the horde Because winning is quite therapeutic for ya He got four points and then a fifth The [insert opponent team name here] he did away with Leaving dazzled fans approaching Ford Hallelujah... This will happen. I want to be ready. I am still trying to figure out how best to combine in verse  McDavid scored  with Taylor Hallelujah. That will have to wait for another day.                                               ...

There must be imperceptible valleys of isolation between us. Email has revealed this communication gap. You email me. I see it drop onto the top of the ladder of messages on my smartphone. I am content for now to know that your message has come in. I do not respond. You may feel slight anxiety with my delayed response to your call. I respond later. This is called asynchronous communication. But it is all asynchronous communication, isn't it? The email version is just easy to see. Like the interval of white space between communication  in the previous paragraph and It is at the start of this paragraph is easy to see. After I had hit the enter/return button. Yesterday, Coffee Outside was marvellous. Most Fridays for almost three years now, summer or winter, for 10 minutes or two hours, a group of us bicycle riders in Edmonton have met in Faraone Park to drink and brew coffee and talk about the weather, the city, our travels, the media, bicycle components, issues of the d...

It is now after midnight in Montréal. Leonard Cohen has been dead for one year. Is it ever November 7. Tomorrow, I am off to Calgary for an evening bicycle ride with friends I haven't yet met to mark the first anniversary of the poet's death This may seem a strange thing to do.  But I remember driving alone in the rain through the Rockies. It was night. I was on my way to Vancouver to start a new job. Taillights ahead comforted me. And Jennifer Warnes sang Joan of Arc from the cassette player. Into the smear of red and black I sang so loud.  I remember running down Clinton Street with Shelagh on the way to see a play and I remember how we stayed in a restaurant afterward and ate fried chicken and drank and listened to music.  There should be a plaque at the Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton. Something to the effect of: From this bar Leonard Cohen was kicked out one winter night after making too much noise and without this expulsion he never would hav...

"Are those AVOCADO earrings?!" the server asked Shelagh. "Yes, they are," she replied with a bit of a head tilt to the right. We were sitting for lunch at the Local Omnivore. I was a quarter way through a double burger so good I later walked up to the guys in the kitchen to say thank you. The main wall at the restaurant is for writing on. I took a fat felt marker from the next-door table and, with squeaky ups and downs and crosses and loops, printed this: The poet's head is in the clouds. To which Victor Hugo replied: So is the thunder! I read that in the McLuhan biography I am close to finishing. Our server smiled when she read the words. She told us she plays violin. There is a Victor Hugo quotation in her studio at the University of Alberta. She read Hunchback of Notre Dame as a girl. Her father helped her.                                          ...