Glenn Kubish

And that’s a wrap on another week, friends! Here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude... Three Things, Episode 123:                              1. Classics   From a table at the back of the Starbucks on Bellerose Drive in St. Albert, I wrote an email to a perfect stranger last week. Richard F. Thomas is a classics professor in the green pastures of Harvard University. I was reading his book Why Bob Dylan Matters. He mentioned a Dylan concert in Taormina, Sicily, in 2001. In my note, I hazarded my theory that Mark Knopfler, in his song Lights of Taormina, is singing about Dylan.  Dylan is the unidentified “he” in the song. Knopfler sings “he” wants to know if anyone has seen her. I hear, if you see her, say hello. Knopfler sings seems like another lifetime when “he” rambled across the shore, and I hear ‘twas in another lifetime and circled by the circus sands.   Knopf...

Blink! It’s the end of the week as we knew it—gone! But, first, three things from all over the map that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude.  Listen to the Three Things podcast, episode 122:                         1. Tulips   Before I could fire up my simile machine by asking what those tulips reminded me of, those tulips reminded me of Audrey Hepburn. The tulips were planted by a homeowner on a piece of public boulevard that I pedal by most mornings in Crestwood. They’re lovely. The elegant shape and layering of the petals are matched only by the sophisticated chiffon turbans Givenchy crowned Hepburn with.   I was still pedalling and thinking about the tulips and Hepburn and how Shelagh likes tulips and looks like Hepburn when I got to the 142 Street service road, where there is a house not long for this world. A new owner has bought it. Its long-ago Arbor Day trees in the front yard have been razored...

Here is my weekly survey of three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude. Listen here to Three Things, episode 121:                              1. Old film   It’s not easy playing hockey in Vegas. I used to be part of a travelling team called the Emperors. Not a travelling team I had to try out for as a promising minor hockey player, more travelling in the sense of wouldn’t it be a blast if I said yes to my buddy Mitch’s invitation to join an oldtimers outfit he had put together and play some games and drink some beers in a tournament in the desert.  Those trips were something. One year there was a case of mistaken identity when I walked out a back stairwell at the Monte Carlo and into a surveillance operation staffed by security officers trying to apprehend a pornography distribution suspect. Another year, I ate a warm beet parfait at a pre-game lunch and ended up locked in a fenced...