Glenn Kubish

Happy end of the week, happy end of the year, friends! Once a week I try to unwrap three things that made me happy or grateful, and then say them out loud. Three Things podcast, episode 51 . 1. Air drop When I was a boy, I had an Astronauts lunch kit. It was still the Cold War. Simpler times. Carrying that lunch kit to school as I balanced along windrows of snow left by the graders on 66th Street made me feel like I was on a top secret mission. The kit was metal, not plastic, and on each panel was a scene from the Apollo 11 story. The rocket blastoff…the lunar lander detaching from the service module…the touchdown on the moon…the splashdown with the red and white parachutes. The lunch kit came from Aladdin Industries Incorporated, Nashville, Tennessee. Inside the lid was a poem from the National Safety Council. One of the couplets: There's really no need to play in the streets Since playgrounds are better places to meet! I know the lunch box so well because I’m looking at it ri...

This week's Three Things podcast is episode 50 . This week's three things that made me happy or grateful are:  1. Sardines This year for Christmas, our eldest son, Alex, is getting sardines. I found them with the other candy at the checkout till at the Italian Centre Shop on 170th Street. They are milk chocolate sardines. Before he died, my grandfather, for whom Alex is named, put down an account of his life in 10 pages of handwritten, blue ink. The story starts in October 1914 in a village in the partitioned territory of eastern Europe. My grandfather recalls how, as a six-and-a-half year old boy, he overheard the men talking as their ordinary lives were being pulverized by the machinery of war. He writes: “We were ordered by government to prepare to leave our homes, bake bread and other food, be ready when order comes to go. Men talking between themselves. What to do?  Leave and go, but where? Born here, grown up, that is our home.”  This is a terrifying scene. I admire...

  Happy end of the week, friends! Once a week here I try to notice three things that made me feel happy or grateful, things I noticed I noticed, so, the shabby noticing equipment doesn’t completely rust over. This week's Three Things podcast is episode 49 . 1. Take a bough 🌲 In Edmonton, the snow is with us again, or least, it’s pushed over to the side and next to us again. The snow falls and the work to remove it happens next. Remove it from sidewalks, streets, driveways, windshields, highways, bike lanes, staircases, remove it from rooftop, from bridge decks and skating rinks, alleys and driveways and bus stops and boots. Remove it from playing fields, too, so, in the case of the snow on the pitch at Commonwealth Stadium, the men’s soccer team could jump into it after scoring that winning goal against Mexico. Okay, it was last month, but ‘tis the season for reminiscing… Where are we again? Right, here. We use brooms, shovels, scrapers, brushes, snowblowers, salt, plows, blades,...

Happy end of the week, friends! I remember the Humanities Building on the University of Alberta campus and what Professor Bishop told us there in English 309 on those mornings long ago: go out and notice things and write them down. This week the three things I noticed that made me happy or grateful were more one thing in three stanzas, kinda. Three Things, episode 48 . 1. A quiet house Suddenly, I am awake, and there is no going back. I am in bed, it’s dark. Is it a work day? Or weekend? What time is it? I fish for my phone in the waves of covers and use the twisted earbuds cord to reel it in. I touch the face to get the time. The battery is dead. No music to get back to sleep, either. I am on my own. I brace myself for the usual goblin parade of my mistakes, doubts, regrets and fears to come through the walls. A poem, yes, I will recite a poem to keep the shrieking down! This is when it’s confirmed that, while I love poems, I don’t know them by heart. They’re in books or they’ve been ...

                             Happy end of the week, friends! This is where, once a week, I try to notice three things from my life that made me feel happy or grateful. So the outrage algorithm gets a day off. Here's Three Things podcast, Episode 47 . 1. Tail lights From Auntie Shelagh I have new, battery-operated winter gloves with three temperature settings indicated by tiny LED bars that glow red-orange. Those little dashes of light are specks of memory, too. I recall the hours that one night driving through the Rockies, aiming for Vancouver and a first job away from home, with two consolations for company: A cassette tape of Jennifer Warnes singing Leonard Cohen songs, and two tail lights ahead on the only other vehicle on the road. My little motorized auditorium, a red Nissan Micra, rolled through the dark, as I sang with all my might, my eyes trained on those holes burned through the curtain of black that...