Glenn Kubish

Once a week I try to remember three things that made me feel happy or grateful, record them and then put them back out there on their own. Three Things, episode 84:                         1. Cutlery  The anniversary gift for 30 years is pearl. For 35, it’s coral. For 33 years together, Shelagh and I stayed with the ocean theme and treated ourselves to a seafood dinner at Sabor on 103 Street downtown. Mussels, clams, halibut, Arctic char and lobster risotto—it was a very good meal. As often happens when we’re dining out, Shelagh shares stories about growing up in the west end.  Food is evocative. For some people, one meal is connected to another and another before that. Shelagh is one of those people. There are many cupboards in her mother's bungalow. She remembers food like she remembers what she was wearing in her elementary school photos. And for the same reason.  Home-made stuff lasts. Even home-made sou...

  Happy end of the week, y’al! I collect sentences. There, I admitted it. Here are three really good ones that came into or back into my life this week as reading summer rolls on. Three Things, episode 83:                            1. Dylan   Here’s the line:   Something there is about you that strikes a match in me. It’s the opening line from "Something There Is About You," which is song #5 on Side 1 of Dylan’s Planet Waves album. (Parenthetically, it’s the album that features as the last song on Side 1 and the first song on Side 2 the same song, "Forever Young," as if to make clear to the listener back in 1974 that Dylan would himself stay young by re-birthing different versions of his songs.) (Again, parenthetically, the same song with the line that I’ll get right back to contains a lovely, autobiographical reference to the rainy days a young Robert Zimmerman spent tramping around the hills of old ...

Happy end of the week, y’all. This week’s list of three little things from my life that I noticed I noticed made me happy or grateful starts, as they say in TV news, right now.                               1. Sounding familiar   The sounds I heard proved that the Edmonton Folk Music Festival was back. The Folk Fest is about the musicians, but it’s not just their sounds I’m thinking about. There were other notes. Like the question at the top of the hill, "Any glass or alcohol in your bags?" It was actually pretty good to hear that question again and everyone replying no, no, and the good natured volunteers believing them and wishing them a good day on the hill. And the now, where the %^# is my tarp? question. It was good to hear befuddled people standing on the quilted Gallagher Park hill and again asking out loud that fundamental question of place.  What can I get for you? at the beer pavilion was a tr...

Happy end of the week and happy Folk Fest is back (more about that next week), friends. Here are three little things from my life that I noticed I noticed made me feel happy or thankful. Three Things, episode 81:                                  1. Flowers   There are days, like last Monday, when my angle on things is obtuse enough to let me make believe that I am underwater, that all of this is underwater, that the sky, as I ride my bike, isn’t as much the sky as the top skin of the ocean stared up at from its asphalt floor. The illusion is enhanced by the flow of automobile traffic that carries along the leviathans of the road, the delivery trucks. Pickups emit inky exhaust. Motorcycles dart in and out of their lanes, rapidly. Boulevard trees sway like seagrass.  Sea anemone, downtown Edmonton At the front of a yard in Glenora, a bee floats through the thin stems and the tiny bell-shaped flo...