Glenn Kubish

Once a week I put out a podcast episode chronicling three things that left behind marks of happiness and gratitude. In part to keep the noticing equipment from rusting over completely. If you listen, you are guaranteed to smile. I mean, if you’re not smiling after thing 2, you qualify for a full refund, operators are standing by.                               1. Remains   I have a passing acquaintance with debris and litter. As I pedal through the city I make and then instantly erase a visual catalogue of things blown away or tossed away or lost: pine cones, branches, cigarette butts, lotsa them, busted coffee lids, plastic wrappers, cash register receipts, soiled tissue, dirty string, candy bar wrappers, ketchup packets, feathers, straws, bus transfers, tape, cardboard, napkins, shoes, hats, pants, fragments of shingles, shattered ballpoint pen barrels, balloons, old election candidate signs. I see and then...

Here are three things that left behind tracks of gratitude and happiness last week.   Let’s start at the end. 1. Cemeteries   Lyle Lovett and his Large Band played the Jube last week.   There were notes of mortality in the auditorium. Lovett talked about becoming a father of twins at age 59 and then doing the math and then realizing it’s best if he doesn’t do the math. He told the story of the family cemetery in Texas. The graveyard is in a “pretty little clearing at the edge of Sam Houston National Forest next to a little tributary of the main creek the old folks call the branch,” he said. Family graves there go back to the 1870s. “It’s the cemetery, really, that kinda keeps our family together, keeps us all associated,” he said. Lovely Lovett ambiguity, there. Is the family kept together in death? Or does the family stay associated in life by tending to the dead? Or both? Or something else again? He let the possibilities hang there before clearing it up, sorta. “We’ve a...

Three Things from Edmonton podcast, episode 120, is here for the listening. It is composed of three things I noticed I noticed made me feel happy and grateful. Give it a listen: Or give it a read, starting with: 1. Teamwork There was a play late in the Oilers series-winning game against the Los Angeles Kings that didn’t get enough attention from the professional sports pundits. It wasn’t a goal or pass or a hit or a forecheck or a fight. It wasn’t even a hockey-specific play. This is what happened. In front of his own net, Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner gave the puck away to the Kings’ Phillip Danault in a jaw-dropping piece of live, televised misfortune. Skinner’s stick had snapped. Danault scored. It was, as Harnarayan Singh on Hockey Night in Canada said: “Unbelievable!” The arena in Los Angeles was bonkers. Hockey fans knew that momentum had switched. Skinner, on one knee in his crease, looked as broken as his composite stick. What the cameras caught next ...

Happy end of the week, y’all! Here are a few things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude this week.                   1. Well, well, well   I don’t need to know if there actually is a term for the accumulations of snow and ice that build up inside the wheel wells of automobiles. If you live in a wide-open winter city where occasional driving is a fact, you know what I’m talking about: those dinosaur-tooth-shaped accretions that are so strangely satisfying to kick loose.   [insert that sound here] Evidently, I am not the only one who enjoys this. Take a look at surface parking lots these days. They’re dotted with these mashes of potatoes. There’s a routine. Car comes to a stop, ignition is turned off, and, then, before the driver heads for the mall, it’s kick-kick-kick with the heel, leaving behind, when the car again moves away, four mounds of snowy slop—four cairns of winter.   Whatever they’re called, there is s...

The University of Alberta President, David Turpin, stood on stage at convocation ceremonies and asked the graduates seated before him to look back. "Your parents, your siblings, your grandparents, your spouses, your children, your friends, let's turn around and say thank you," Turpin said. Under Turpin's baton, a couple hundred gowned students rose in a wave from their floor seats in the Jubilee Auditorium, their mortarboards bobbing, their academic hoods, red for Law, white for Arts, shining. They cheered and clapped and received back hoots and hollers and hellos from the balconies. It was something to behold from our seats in row C of the first balcony. It is something again to behold from the stage. For a couple of years I sat on Alumni Council. Among the thanks for the early morning meetings on campus was the chance to represent alumni on stage during convocation.  It wasn't much of a chance, actually. It was a privilege to sit gowned up with th...