Glenn Kubish

It's the end of another week of staggering carnage in the greater world and of small happinesses and gratitudes in my little one. Here's the Three Things podcast, episode 63 . 1. Eyes and ears March madness is on bloody and terrifying display in Ukraine. In that arena are two colleagues, doing work for good. I admire them both. Tim, who is a videographer, is on professional assignment for the national news. Jerry, who was a reporter, is on a personal mission. Both are doing what journalists do, which is to use the least private of the human senses—sight and sound—to convey something that is out there, an objective world. “This is such an important story to tell,” Tim said in a message. “So important to hear the voices from the people here. It’s heartbreaking.” For his part, Jerry booked three weeks off work and headed 8,000 km for the Ukraine border. “I’m really here just to grow and learn as a person in no official capacity,” he said, adding that that has meant “carrying lugga...

  It's the end of the week as we know it, friends. Here is this week's Three Things podcast. 1. Jars Apparently, I am also from Chortkiv in western Ukraine, and not just Delwood in northeast Edmonton. Thanks to my mother’s record-keeping, I can trace my family back four generations on her side to the small city of 30,000 people, which is where my great-great grandparents Maria and Dmytro lived and where their son Yosyp was born. It’s close, 100 kilometres or so, from a recent Russian missile strike. I don’t know if I still have relatives there. I have never visited or done an ancestry search. For me, the old country is St. Basil’s Ukrainian Cultural Centre on 109th Street. The siege on Ukraine has brought back flashes from my youth. Ukrainian dancing ribbons for my sisters’ hair. Perogies and cabbage rolls pronounced “pedaheh” and “holopchi.” Borscht made deluxe with spare ribs. The sweet smell of hot wax for Easter pysanky. A blue-covered book on conversational Ukrainian by Y...

  It’s probably the truth that there’s something wrong with you if there’s nothing wrong with you these days. Making note of three things that made me happy or grateful means only that, as Craig Finn has said, there’s some comfort in the ritual. Here is this week's Three Things podcast . 1. A proposal The wind blew and door chimes jingled madly. The wind blew and snow came unfastened in sheets from the street. The giant elm trees in the wind were just giant elm trees in the wind, but they were also, for a second or two, ancient pens, their top branches lashing back and forth like quills chasing turbulent thoughts. All around was wind. A siren rose in the dark. We were in the elements, Auntie Shelagh and I, as we walked down the aisles of snow on 148th Street. It was cold, this wind with teeth from the north. From the sidewalk, I saw people inside their living rooms. A man with the back of his bald head to the front window sat bathed in the blue pulses of his television. At a din...

Here are three things that delivered some happiness and gratitude this week, which is saying something. Podcast, episode 60 . 1. Evolution I’ve been doing a lot of walking. This is not an earth-shattering observation, but it is worth reminding myself that when it comes to walking outside at this time of year in Edmonton, as winter melts into spring, when it behooves all pedestrians to beware the ice of March, I am able to adapt and slow down and stay upright. None of this is to say that it doesn’t matter if people shovel their walks or not. It does. They should. Keeping public sidewalks free of ice in the winter isn’t about winter. It’s about kindness to others. Shovelling snow and chipping ice isn’t about the state of the concrete, it’s about the state of our hearts. And none of this is to say that I am not aware that I am able. I am. I am not as lithe as I once was, but am not yet deterred from heading out in any conditions, unlike many. But I had a breakthrough last week. Out walkin...