Glenn Kubish

Happy end of the week, friends! Here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude. Three Things podcast, episode 129: 1. Double play I pedalled across the LRT tracks north of the ruins of the Coliseum and found a baseball diamond where I didn’t know one existed. I was on one of those lazy rides where I hope to see something new. The diamond was that. A real game of uniformed players was happening on it. I stopped and watched from a picnic table beyond the left field fence. A line drive was caught, but bobbled, and then dropped by the third baseman. I scored it an error—E-5. The base runner then moved to second on a single. My infield position in my corporate slo-pitch years was first base.That’s where I was safe. I preferred playing third, but our manager didn’t. Prefer me playing third base. I was okay fielding the ball on the hot corner, even the balls hit hard right at me, but throwing the ball on target to first base in real time, ...

Happy end of the week, y’all! Here are three things from that past week that for now have left behind some tracks of happiness and gratitude.                                         1. Big smiles   We filled up on beers and bar food at Towers, and, then, Shelagh and I brought down the average age at the MacEwan University pub by paying our tab and leaving. We walked up a few blocks, took the bridge over 109 Street to Allard Hall and got seats at a fundraising concert for Ukraine. It felt quite downtown-y and undergraduate-y. The pianist John Stetch was the draw. He banged out variations on J.S. Bach, F. Chopin, N. Diamond, T. Swift and S. Twain during the concert, which also featured a jazz take on Beer Barrel Polka, I think.  Stetch, who grew up in these parts, used the word “tentacles” to describe the connections re-experienced being back in his Edmonton roots. My tentacle to ...

Here, once a week about this time, and because the week's ending is also a kind of beginning, I try to notice what I noticed from my little life that made me happy or grateful and, from the noticing, make the Three Things podcast . 1. Minding the gap 📡 👼 For the most part, I’m good with working remotely. It’s curious, though, how we use the two words “connected” and “remote” to describe distance communication in the pandemic. “Connected” and “remote,” are more opposites than alikes. Connected means “with” and remote means “apart,” kinda, right?  That pair of states of being does capture nicely a piece of the human condition. We are at the same time apart and with. I am indicted every time Auntie Shelagh says something like, okay, did you hear anything that I just said? which is not frequent but frequent enough. The truth about us is probably that we connect because we are remote. We are forced to communicate not just to get our ideas across but because, not being angels, we can...

Happy end of the week, friends! In review, three things that I noticed I noticed made me happy or grateful this week. Here's this week's podcast: 1. Tree of life I knew in my cranks that I was going to turn around and go back. I knew this even as I kept pedalling by the tree. I was tired and hungry, the clouds were spitting rain and there was one beer from Arcadia still in the fridge at home, off to the left on the second shelf. But back the handlebars turned because that tree could not be ignored. I rolled up, stopped, stood over my top bar and listened to the tree—to the birds in the tree. Fifty happy children on a newly waxed indoor basketball court with squeaky sneakers, that’s what that tree off the bike lane on 102 Avenue sounded like. It took me a few seconds to see into the lattice of the leaves. Wow, all the little birds with their little feet hopping from branch to branch, their heads a-tilt, the branches bobbing under the weight of their little bodies that power...

  Happy end of the week! Here are three things from my little life that made me happy or grateful (or gratefully bewildered) this week. The podcast . The transcript: 1. Trumpeter Sean My brother-in-law Sean is a jazz musician of some note. He fronted the Edmonton Jazz Ensemble back in the day. He teaches at a college in New Jersey. We got to chatting in email about a new song by Bleachers, which turned into a kind of treatise on how musicians perform together. They can do so at a high level only if they’re as good at listening as they are at making their own noise. Here’s Sean from that email last week. To play in an ensemble, I have to listen to myself through focusing on your playing. Fortunately it is not difficult to hear myself since I am the closest to my instrument, but since I’m closest to the instrument and the sound that it’s creating, I hear it and it’s yet harder for me to hear the other players, which is why I must focus on them. I have spent my life honing listening s...

This picture captured me this morning. The elements came together. Rainbow, shining birds, stormy and clear sky, light, dark, river, bicycle, the University of Alberta, a man with orange hat, arms crossed, standing in witness. In the bottom right corner a kind of shadow signature. I thought: How lovely it is to know how to ride a bicycle so that you can easily stop riding a bicycle and stand and watch a rainbow when your heart tells you to stop and watch a rainbow. I took the picture and then took a chance. "Hello," I said to the man with the orange hat.  He took an earbud out of his right ear.  "Hi. I took a pic and you might like it and if you do, here, take my phone and email it to yourself." He looked at the picture and smiled and said wow or that's cool and he took the offered device and entered his email address. While this was was happening, my friend Maryanne recorded the scene of two men, two rainbows, one phone. The man in the orange...