Glenn Kubish

I try, no matter what is happening in the world, which is a mess, or in my bronchial tubes, which are, too, to notice what I noticed made me happy or grateful.  Three Things, episode 143:                               1. Weather map   I saw the weather map in a new way last week.   The visual grammar of the TV weather is familiar to all of us of a certain vintage. A personality with effervescence and expertise stands in front of a map printed with the names of local communities—Edmonton, St. Albert, Leduc, Sherwood Park, Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, and all the smaller places, too, like Veg and Whitecourt, Smoky and Westlock—and this expert, like the great Josh Classen, or the great Bill Matheson before him, narrates a story of how the meteorological forces, the high pressure systems, the low pressure systems, are vying above to make their presence felt in our little lives below. It’s mythical stuff....

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...

Aaron Brown wasn't sure who was in his ear. "We have, um, one of our producers on the phone, and I didn't get the name, so, why don't we just go ahead," said Brown as he anchored live coverage of the World Trade Center attacks. "Are you there?" Brown's ear had in it what in the television news game is called an IFB. IFB stands for interruptible foldback. It's a kind of earpiece that delivers a one-way audio feed into the head of the TV reporter. It is a medium used to deliver cues and information to the reporter from the TV control room. If you've ever seen a live reporter touch or motion to her or his ear to get a better handle on the incoming information, you have seen an IFB at work. That second, Brown, as one of the Twin Towers still stood behind him like giant chimney emitting smoke from hell, was in silent contact via IFB with the CNN control room. Someone, the director, a producer, maybe, was telling him that another produ...

Wow, things got ugly, and fast, when Piers Morgan interviewed Larry Pratt, the Gun Owners of America executive director, on CNN tonight. The general topic was where Newtown should point American society on the question of gun control. It turned into a yelling match, with Morgan calling Pratt a stupid man, a dangerous man, an idiot, and Pratt openly suggesting that Morgan shared responsibility for the Newtown murders. Those viewers who had clung to the belief that discussion in the electronic public square should be fuelled by opinion intelligently rendered, and respectfully clashed with, came loose and hit the ground during the segment. But, on a few fronts, it was, nonetheless, interesting and insightful. There is an anti-European animus, barely disguised, in Pratt's attack. In his first answer, he cites mass murders in Europe, where the violent crime rate is allegedly higher. Soon after, he mentions murder rates in Europe. Pratt then refers to Morgan's interrupt...

Charlton Heston knew the power of the image. He made his name and his fortune off that knowledge. Long after his marquee days were over, he was still trading on the power of the image. As top gunman in the NRA, he would famously punctuate speeches with the five words – from my cold, dead hands – that became his calling card. But calling card isn't the right term. It comes from the printed word world. Here, Heston is dealing at the more primitive level of the picture. At the end of his infamous 2000 speech to an NRA convention in South Carolina, he stepped back from the podium and was handed a replica Sharps rifle. We know the image. Heston named presidential candidate Al Gore as the enemy of freedom, delivered those five words and held the weapon up to spirited applause. As images go, it was crazy good. Of course, the image was nicely constructed. The weapon, an icon of the American Old West, smelled of nostalgia and freedom. We can ask how much different the image wou...