Glenn Kubish

Here's this week's Three Things podcast on Apple. Also, in words and pics: 1. Fish 🐠 There’s an aquarium at the Lois Hole Library in west Edmonton, and if you happened to be there last Sunday afternoon close to closing time, that was me standing in front of it, staring like someone who had never seen fish in a tank, which is pretty much what it felt like. I was mesmerized. The little fish twitch and flash and appear quite nonplussed about hanging suspended in gallons of water held in shape by a thin skin of glass on the other side of which is, well, death for them. Earlier that day, Auntie Shelagh and I had spent a couple of hours on Whyte Avenue. We took the steps down to the Tokyo Noodle Shop for ramen. We darted into Blackbyrd for some new vinyl. We drifted over to Sugared & Spiced for brownies and to talk to Jeff about Thomas Hobbes. If you think this dropping, darting and drifting means I now see all of us as kinds of giant upright fish flowing past each other insi...

  This week we travel by pod to various places, including Bing’s corner store in 1971, Beale Street in Memphis last week, the 1980s, the Jasper Place Library and the intersection of 170 St. and 95 Ave. in Edmonton. Here’s Three Things, episode 55 , baby! 1. Pop music They Don’t Know is irresistible. The melody, the lyrics, the bridge and the hook and Kirsty MacColl’s voice and Tracy Ullmann who made it a hit back in a special place called the 1980s. The song shone then and it still shines. A bit of shine helps the heart in the fifth wave of the pandemic in the freeze-thaw that is this January in the grey-brown that is this Edmonton. Even if you don’t know the song, you know the song. Against all advice from the chorus of them who don’t know, the girl defends her boyfriend, who is a very down-to-earth version of her ideal love. A star in the night sky is the star as it was light years ago. Same thing with a song. When They Don’t Know came into the musical universe, it wasn’t with a ...