Glenn Kubish

The man lay on the ground, face up, eyes closed, rib cage lifting and lowering slowly beneath a t-shirt worn inside out, the letters D-E-T-I-N-U running backward across the shirt, nothing between him and the oblivion of sky. His right arm was pointed straight down along his side, his left bent at the elbow and pointed up. His legs, slightly parted. He had been wearing blue and orange flip flops. They were at his side. The man, a section of his abdomen exposed to the air, presented the aspect of a crime-scene body before detectives trace with tape its shape on the ground. "I'm going to call the cops," I said to a young man walking across the alley toward me. In one hand he carried a 26 of Absolut vodka, blue letters on the bottle, the bottle half-empty. In his other, hand a black smartphone. "Good idea," the man said, placing the bottle and the phone on the ground next to the man lying prone. "These are his." "What happened?" I ask...

I didn't see much of it at the time I pedalled by. I didn't have enough time to see much of it. It was all too small, too fast, too big to take in with however many frames per second my impoverished eyesight limits my experience of the world to the first time through.   I mean the two girls making bubbles visible through an escaped floating planet of a bubble, its poles two soapy, iridescent continental caps—I saw all of it only later. Through my computer.  The scene unfolded in Hawrelak née Mayfair Park yesterday afternoon as I pedalled past two boys playing on the gravel path with a basketball, one trying a dribble between his legs while the other watched. I said hello, then headed for the footbridge, and that's when I saw the bubbles in the air. I had enough time to check that the Go Pro on the handlebars was still rolling, and then pedalled toward the biggest bubble. Go to the story. Go directly to the story. I took aim, and then swerved back ...

In March, when it is dark outside in the early evening in Edmonton, Shelagh (child 9/9 in her McAnally family) sat with her brother Sean (8/9) at a table with Al Jacobson at his house in Bonnie Doon. Thirty years ago, Sean (trumpet) and Al (trombone) were turks in the Edmonton Jazz Ensemble (EdJE). They won the Alcan Jazz Prize. They played all the jazz festivals in Canada. They were nominated for a Juno. They toured Europe. They were big deals. For me back then, new to the McAnally family and its circle of characters, Sean and his bandmates (Al, Jim Pinchin, Wayne Feschuk, Marek Semeniuk, Tom Foster) were exotic. I was from the north end. I listened to Nazareth. They knew about Miles Davis. The way they moved was in a foreign time signature. That night in Bonnie Doon, Sean, back in his old city from his home in New Jersey, and Al were talking about what is now only a little over a week away: the 30th anniversary EdJe reunion concert at the Yardbird Suite. "I told [Edm...

The University of Alberta President, David Turpin, stood on stage at convocation ceremonies and asked the graduates seated before him to look back. "Your parents, your siblings, your grandparents, your spouses, your children, your friends, let's turn around and say thank you," Turpin said. Under Turpin's baton, a couple hundred gowned students rose in a wave from their floor seats in the Jubilee Auditorium, their mortarboards bobbing, their academic hoods, red for Law, white for Arts, shining. They cheered and clapped and received back hoots and hollers and hellos from the balconies. It was something to behold from our seats in row C of the first balcony. It is something again to behold from the stage. For a couple of years I sat on Alumni Council. Among the thanks for the early morning meetings on campus was the chance to represent alumni on stage during convocation.  It wasn't much of a chance, actually. It was a privilege to sit gowned up with th...

A remarkable and a quite remarkable and a truly remarkable thing happened at the farmers market this afternoon. In exquisite formation, 10 American white pelicans soared overhead. I stood dumbfounded, at first thinking they were airplanes. I do this. I mean, I transpose nature into artifice, as if somehow birds resembled aircraft and not the other way around. For a few heartbeats, the creatures flew out of sight behind the old GWG Building. I ran, and they reappeared over the new museum, banking to the north, then looping back and around high over the law courts, the undersides of their wings shining as they wheeled. It was remarkable aerial performance for a groundlooker like me. Shelagh had seen the birds first. "Oh, look," she said, pointing up as we stood beside the Blindman Brewing stall. We had been talking with Nicola. "They're pelicans," Nicola said immediately. And then, after a second or two of considering the things above, she said: ...

In the history of kisses recorded during a forest fire, this was, perhaps, the smokiest. I had just crossed the High Level Bridge and was pedalling up the hill to meet Shelagh at the Sugar Bowl when, all of a sudden, there they were, two strangers on their bikes, smooching like there was no tomorrow, while a thick, brown-grey shroud of wildfire smoke embraced them. That's a great shot, I thought, and checked to make sure my handlebar Go Pro was rolling. I decided to make a line for them. How close could I get? As it turned out, I could have stopped and started singing Jason Isbell and they wouldn't have noticed me. I tried to keep the handlebars steady, and smiled as I slipped by. Somebody whistled. At the Sugar Bowl, Shelagh and her bicycle-riding friends from MacEwan had the patio to themselves. I ate a lamb burger and drank Delirium Tremens from an elephant-trunk-shaped goblet. There was no conversation from the next tables. Nobody was at the next tables. It...