Glenn Kubish

I don't mind the wind where I live. The wind reminds me I am outdoors. Air conditioning aside, the interior life in buildings, malls and automobiles is windless. The advantages of this arrangement are numberless—better looking hair among them. Outside on my bicycle working the pedals on my Rocky Mountain into a gusting from the northwest at 50 kilometres an hour, I am in another kind of place. It is a landscape of action and reaction, give and take. I feel very much a small element in a larger equation where the wind is strong enough to make demands. I make concessions. The wind hits me in the face, and I add seven teeth, switching to an easier gear to keep my legs turning at a comfortable speed. This is what gears do, of course. They help bicycle riders like me speak back to the conditions, and keep going. Keeping going is the job. Keeping going in the little picture means shifting to an easier gear to get to the right turn onto 91 Ave without grinding to a stop. Ke...

It merits another airing: the great good of riding a bicycle in the city is the unroofedness of it all, the way, from a saddle, you can share a few words, a laugh or a smile with people, strangers or not, who, too, are moving at the speed of life, but not faster. Today's ride home was more proof. As if we needed more proof. Here's Max on the 102 Ave sidewalk pointing me to Shelagh, waiting a couple of blocks west at the crossroads in Railtown. Here's Shelagh, off her bike, talking to Professor Legris about Auden. Ring, ring. The bell from behind means a fellow Oliverbahn commuter is coming by. As she does, she smiles a thanks. A few blocks up the Oliverbahn, Shelagh points to a tree illuminated by the autumn sun. Hello, Troy! Hello, woman whose name we don't know, but is very friendly. On Ravine Drive, a woman whose red hair appears to be on fire says hello to us at the same time we say hello to her. At...

I am back in the grip of the New York Times crossword. I can't see if this will end happily. Seeing is my challenge, actually. Take 31 down in today's puzzle, which I started last night,  Kitchen drawers?  Six letters. I immediately pictured the drawers in our kitchen and saw spoons, ladles, cheese graters and the rest of the silver mix of implements Shelagh uses to concoct the most delicious dishes, lately from cookbooks by Ottolenghi and Molly Yeh. I was off track. And stumped. What is another name for a drawer? Compartment, container, something that slides in and out, furniture, chest. Nothing fit. Then I looked closer at the clue. "Kitchen drawers?" The question mark suggested some wordplay was afoot. Words can act like planks on a theatre stage, seemingly strong and solid enough to stand on, but also trap doors through which certainty disappears with a whoosh. Where you come down on this magic of words, the way they move and molt and mock, separates tho...