Glenn Kubish

My friends Isla and Sue are among the functioning hearts and brains behind Snow & Tell - The Winter City podcast. They asked me for a love story about winter. I'd been thinking lately about public benches and bridges, and the work they do. You can put it like this: "I saw the moon from the bridge." But that's unsatisfactory. Because it's also true that the moon is there because of the bridge. "I saw the moon because of the bridge." Of course, the moon is there even if the bridge isn't. But not for me on that day in November on that bike ride home. Anyways, I wrote a kind of unstructured ode to the moon, trying, too, to account for what's owed to the bridge. Here's the podcast. Here's my part. I fall in love with winter in Edmonton like the coyotes in the MacKenzie Ravine do. It's the moon. You see, I ride my bicycle year round, through the long-light days of summer and, just the same, through the dark days of Nov...

I am beginning to see that in the figure-ground divide, I've long had a soft spot for the ground. For the piece of paper and not just the word printed on it. For the road and not just the bicycle or car or bus. The sky, not just the fireworks. The soil and stake, not just the tomato plant. The rink, not just the hockey players. The background and not just the figure. Paul Simon has a line in a song on the Graceland album. In early memory Mission music  Was 'ringing around  My nursery door.  The words depict a literal image in the listener's mind. This is the what of the verse, or the figure. There is also a how . The figure itself is figured. The how that works on me is in the alliteration of m and r sounds, and the way those consonants, repeated, produce a kind of gentle murmur somewhere in the background of my receiving equipment. As a child I struggled with two speech impediments. I couldn't say my r's. And I suffered with a stutter. Speech the...

Speller explains that Hank started as a film camera news shooter. Hank shot on a CP-16 with a supply of film that lasted 10 minutes. Back in those days, most camera guys were frugal with the footage. Shooting more than 10 minutes of film meant you would have to load up a new magazine using the black bag procedure, and that was a pain in the ass. Economy was a way of being, as Fitz says. I got to know Hank in 1995 when I started working in the ITV newsroom. I was the assignment editor. My job was to match all of the incoming stimuli—news tips, scanner chatter, stories that Speller thought were important, reports of stuck trucks in underpasses—with available camera resources. I assigned the shooters. Korbs, 10-6 at 137 Ave and 66 St, go.  Hamish, can you get six shots at the cake cutting, please. Rudzy, golf highlights at the Belvedere. I once sent Chuck to a house fire in northwest Edmonton. It was actually a forest fire in Chisholm. He got back three days later. I think...

Sick with a cold, tired from the non-stop and just a bit weary from the sick and tired, I drove home down 104 Ave this afternoon in a rush hour that felt like a funeral procession. And hungry. Right, no lunch. Add hunger to the list. No doubt, I was suffering. I'm not aware of anyone who suffers quite like I do. Shelagh, sitting next to me in the car, would likely agree. And not on my bike. Let me keep counting the woes. We turned off at 122 Street, parked the car and headed for Blue Plate. I ordered an Old Fashioned. A stabilizer, as my friend Al would say. I sipped it. Contemplated the maraschino cherry pinned between the glass and the ice cube die. Remembered how my parents said mar-a-SHEE-no, but Bogart said mar-a-SKEE-no. We talked about music. Shelagh remembered parties where she first heard Dire Straits and Talking Heads. We've been telling each other stories for 35 years. I hadn't heard that one before. That was nice. I looked out the window at a fi...