Glenn Kubish

Focus. The weekend is in sight. Here are three things that left tracks of happiness and gratitude this past week. Three Things from Edmonton, episode 144:                        1.   The universe and the fundamental attribution error   Chocolate almonds are a weakness. From way back. From the days back behind the Esso station on 66 Street in Steele Heights where we’d put our bikes down next to a telephone pole in the alley and eat the chocolate almonds instead of trying to sell them door to door to support the school fundraising campaign. I was never meant to be a salesperson. I took a no, thanks, or a door closed in my face, or a dog barking a goodbye way too personally.   Andy’s IGA   is a much better chocolate hawker. The shelf stockers there simply pile up plastic tubs of chocolate almonds and, without a word, wait for me to come apart and buy one, which, last week, I did and then did.   I walked up...

Here are three things that left behind tracks of gratitude and happiness in the maelstrom. Three Things, episode 111:                               1. Socks   I was reading Dylan’s Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech from, wow, what is already, could it really be, six years ago now? Near the end, he takes us to the underworld, calling up the specter of the wandering Odysseus, who has made a never-ending tour stop in Hades to meet the Greek hero Achilles.  Dylan reminds us that Achilles said if he could, he would choose to go back   “...and be a lowly slave to a tenant farmer on Earth rather than be what he is,   king in the land of the dead, hat whatever his struggles of life were, they were preferable to being here in this dead place.” I heard the echo of Maya Angelou’s grandmother. She warns her granddaughter about complaining like the customers, Sister Murphy and Brother Thomps...

  It’s the end of the week as we know it! Here are three things that left behind tracks of gratitude and happiness. Three Things, episode 110:                                                             1. Timing   There’s a difference between saying the right thing and saying the right thing at the right time. Both take skill. They are different skills. Shelagh needed grated ginger for a ginger cake, and I was in the produce section at Andy’s IGA where I quickly located everything she didn’t need for the cake—garlic, shallots, chives, bok choy.   It was like looking for a word in the dictionary not knowing how to spell. I walked over to the produce clerk who was unloading oranges and with mock weariness asked him, “How close am I to a knob of ginger?” He nodded, smiled, removed his hat to make sure I didn’t miss the fa...

Happy end of the week, y’all. Here is my weekly offering of some of the gifts that came my way last week, things that made for some happiness and gratitude. Three Things, episode 106:                              1. Comma  For a year or so I worked editing copy at the Edmonton Journal. It was my job to lay out pages, size and crop the photos, check spelling and grammar and punctuation, write headlines, that kind of pre-automation stuff. The day that a Jamie Hall column ran without a headline, that was me who forgot to write a headline and then pressed send. I did write one good headline. It was the night in January 2006 the Columbus Blue Jackets hosted the Pittsburgh Penguins in a clash of  phenoms. Rick Nash got a goal and two assists, Sidney Crosby was held pointless in a 6-1 Columbus victory. Nash stills young Crosby . It was good enough to get Bill Sass to walk over from Business to say good job....