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 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....

Cam Tait leaned into me after I introduced myself. "So...do...yoooouu...know...Gorrrrd?" Each word was a small battle up to the air from the back of his throat. Cam, then a sports reporter at The Edmonton Journal, was in a wheelchair. He was born with cerebral palsy and at birth couldn't sit up or speak. His limbs didn't work. His parents and family friends did. They employed a new kind of physiotherapy around the clock, and young Cam slowly learned to move a wheelchair and he learned to talk. And now here we were together upstairs at The Journal building downtown and Cam wanted to know if I knew his friend Gord Steinke, the main anchor at ITV, where I worked as assignment editor. "Yes, I know Gord, Mr. Tait. Yes, I work with him at ITV. Is there something you want me to tell him? A message you want me to give him?" I leaned a bit closer to make sure I didn't misunderstand a word of what he was about to say. I wanted to get it right for Cam an...

Edmonton Journal reporter Elise Stolte has asked her readers to share their favourite memories of the North Saskatchewan River. Or a favourite picture or hidden beach or a cool spot on the river that is so big and quiet we always miss it. My favourite memory of the North Saskatchewan River hasn't happened yet. I mean, I know what it would be, but it just hasn't occurred. Maybe it's not possible. Maybe it's not cold enough. But I do have a favourite photo, so far. Here it is: This is the view this morning from the 16th floor of ATB Place in downtown Edmonton where I work. It shows two rivers, two flows, one of traffic on 99th St., one of water. There are many days when the water is moving faster! I love the shot because it won't let me stand still. Am I in the present, the tense ruled by the automobile, or am I in the past, when the now-forgotten waterway was the channel of transportation and commerce? It's the water that brings a fragment of a pas...

Things are pretty ugly out there. The Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister, John Baird, has just severed diplomatic relations with Iran, the timing of the move leading many to wonder if Canada has inside information about an imminent US-backed Israeli attack on Tehran. The United Nation's nuclear agency has overwhelmingly rebuked Iran for failing to act to diminish fears it is developing a military nuclear option. Greece is an economic basket case, Spain is in trouble and the European Union is considering a banking union to solve its monetary woes. For 23 years, police in the U.K. lied to the world and its own citizens about what happened at the Hillsborough Stadium disaster. The U.S. ambassador to Libya was assassinated. Anti-American protests are sweeping across the Arab and Muslim world. The interest rate is, like, nothing, and manufacturing productivity has returned, but the U.S. economy is not adding jobs. It looks like the NHL season will be shortened or scrubbed ...

Neil Armstrong has died. The news was sitting, waiting for me on my iPhone in a message from my buddy, Dan, who has had to suffer hearing many times what the story of the first man on the moon means to me. Dan was there at work the day my $100 lunch kit from Amazon arrived. But first things first. Rewind to the late 1960s and picture yourself in the kitchen of a new bungalow in a new neighbourhood at the edge of north Edmonton. Mom, aproned, yellow-rubber-gloved, is working over a nifty, new double sink, cleaning dishes, rinsing dishes, and piling them on the counter in a left-to-right, two-armed assembly line. Now, look down just to her left at the closed door of the utility cupboard And listen. Because you might be able to hear the young, imaginary astronaut inside. He's about a 6 or 7 years old and he's sitting on a pile of old Edmonton Journal newspapers that serve as his cockpit seat. In front of him is a kitchen plumbing pipe re-imagined into an oxygen supply sys...