Glenn Kubish

  The little Three Things podcast  is where each week I try to notice three things that I noticed that made me happy or grateful. Not the biggest things in the world, just things like: 1.  Frazil Ice 🧊 🥘 In the days before the North Saskatchewan River freezes, it blooms with floating ice pads. These are those short days, and the mosaic pieces of ice are called frazil pans.  Frazil, F-R-A-Z-I-L, what a great word, the F-R of freeze and frigid and fragile, the shard of the Z, and the way the L lingers and trails off like in the words gentle and beautiful and peaceful. My hydrologist friend Steffen can explain how frazil ice forms at northern latitudes when the atmospheric conditions and heat exchanges are conducive to its making. I phoned Steffen at his ice-free retirement home and we talked ice. I asked him if he missed frazil ice.  “I definitely miss them,” he said from Ladysmith, BC. “I loved going onto the Terwillegar footbridge and just watching them go by....

Here’s one thing about riding a bicycle that’s worth being honest about: it takes work. Yes, riding a bicycle is all those other oft-celebrated things, too. It’s relaxing, fun, healthy, it’s sustainable and eco-friendly, nostalgic, convenient and social. Riding a bicycle is economical and efficient and therapeutic. Pedalling a bicycle makes a connection between city and rider not possible in an automobile. Riding a bicycle is exhilarating. Riding a bicycle is freedom. It's also work. The work of riding a bicycle can be hidden under the poetry of riding a bicycle. I will always remember the day a friend at work texted me, after having renewed a lagged friendship with her bike, a message that was music to my ears: I knew immediately what Laurie meant. I felt it in my old bones. A green Mustang two-speed was my first declaration of independence growing on the streets and alleys of northeast Edmonton. That precious bike took me out of the orbit of domestic su...