Glenn Kubish

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...

Happy end of the week, y’all! Here are three things that made for a little, okay, more than a little, happiness and gratitude.                            1. Hope and feathers   Stockboys at   IGA glanced over at him as he stood there near the eggs, feathers still fluttering free from the gash in the right sleeve of his winter jacket. A little girl pushing one of those little shopping carts pointed at him and was gently hushed by her mother who would likely explain later in the car that it’s not polite to stare at strangers. The object of this attention was my friend Darren, the intensive care physician. He had set out for the grocery store on his bike and had taken a wooded, downhill route, misjudged his position or his speed or his age and smashed into a bristling spruce tree. Like an opponent’s spear levelled in a joust, the branch knocked Darren off his mount, slashing his puffy armour and lacerating the ...

  The little Three Things podcast  is where each week I try to notice three things that I noticed that made me happy or grateful. Not the biggest things in the world, just things like: 1.  Frazil Ice 🧊 🥘 In the days before the North Saskatchewan River freezes, it blooms with floating ice pads. These are those short days, and the mosaic pieces of ice are called frazil pans.  Frazil, F-R-A-Z-I-L, what a great word, the F-R of freeze and frigid and fragile, the shard of the Z, and the way the L lingers and trails off like in the words gentle and beautiful and peaceful. My hydrologist friend Steffen can explain how frazil ice forms at northern latitudes when the atmospheric conditions and heat exchanges are conducive to its making. I phoned Steffen at his ice-free retirement home and we talked ice. I asked him if he missed frazil ice.  “I definitely miss them,” he said from Ladysmith, BC. “I loved going onto the Terwillegar footbridge and just watching them go by....