Glenn Kubish

Once a week I put out a podcast episode chronicling three things that left behind marks of happiness and gratitude. In part to keep the noticing equipment from rusting over completely. If you listen, you are guaranteed to smile. I mean, if you’re not smiling after thing 2, you qualify for a full refund, operators are standing by.                               1. Remains   I have a passing acquaintance with debris and litter. As I pedal through the city I make and then instantly erase a visual catalogue of things blown away or tossed away or lost: pine cones, branches, cigarette butts, lotsa them, busted coffee lids, plastic wrappers, cash register receipts, soiled tissue, dirty string, candy bar wrappers, ketchup packets, feathers, straws, bus transfers, tape, cardboard, napkins, shoes, hats, pants, fragments of shingles, shattered ballpoint pen barrels, balloons, old election candidate signs. I see and then...

In the words of Darlingside , you can't live in the past, but the only way to go is to go back.   This week's Three Things goes back to the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Three Things, episode 135:                            1. Tarps   It’s Saturday morning, we are in a line of festival goers that snakes down the multi-use path on Connors Road next to the dormant LRT tracks. We are waiting for the gates at the top of the hill to open. The wail of bagpipes means it won’t be long. The pipes are leading tarp holders who had been in the pen since whatever o’clock AM to their preferred seating locations at the base of Gallagher Park—where it’s flat, where you’re not fighting a slow but relentless rearguard action against gravity. The rest of us, those who preferred a decent night’s sleep, will scurry to a patch of earth on the slope of the amphitheatre, throw our tarps down and stake our claim when the gates open....

Here are three things from the week that was that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude.  Three Things podcast, episode 134:                            1. Baseball   The pitch, the hit, the ground ball. The runner hoofs it to first base. The shortstop scoops up the ball and telegraphs it to first base—bang, bang, one out! With the ump’s signal, the crowd gets another proof that the thrown baseball eradicates space quicker than the running player. In miniature, the play at the Riverhawks game on Sunday was an episode from the history of communications technology. It was also a routine out. For the mathematical ones scoring the game, the play is symbolized universally and beautifully as 6-3: 6 for the shortstop’s position, 3 for the first baseman’s position. Not their uniform numbers or their names, but their slots numbered 1-9 in baseball’s defensive array. Not that I was scoring the game, and not tha...

Here is where this time every week,   I play back three things that made marks of happiness and gratitude on my timeline.   Three Things, episode 133:                                 1. Oppenheimer   Tatlock: I don’t want anything from you. Oppenheimer: You say that and then you call. Tatlock: Well, don’t answer. <brief silence> Oppenheimer: I’ll always answer. That little back-and-forth between the Jean Tatlock and J. Robert Oppenheimer characters near the start of the biopic works on many levels. I’ll always answer is his pledge to a lover. I’ll always answer is his approach to his Star Chamber interrogators. I’ll always answer is his action before the riddles of nature. I’ll always answer is a prophecy: he will forever be required to provide a defence of his actions and their reactions. As a man, as a citizen, as a scientist and as an American god—private, public, professional, P...