Glenn Kubish

Back to school is in the air. Hope you all have your duo-tangs, hole reinforcements for binders and your inky-pink erasers, or have helped others get the same. Here are three other things from the past (week) that left behind traces of happiness and gratitude.   Three Things, episode 138:                                 1. Microscopes I remember the moment so vividly still because it was pickled in the brine of junior high school fear and doubt. Grade 7 science class. Mr. Litwin was our teacher. He wore colourful silk scarves around his neck to hide, he said, the marks of the stitches left behind when his head was completely severed and sewn back on after a plane crash in the war. He would tell that story and gauge our reactions and smile. We were studying cellular structure one week. There were illustrations in our biology textbook showing the differences between plant cells and animal cells. It was ou...

  Here are three little things that found their way back in, leaving behind either some happiness or gratitude. Three Things from Edmonton, episode 66: 1. Bubbles Bubbles…it’s a fun word to say, bubbles…bubbles stop me as they go by. Trains, too, I will stop to watch a freight train pass in any season. Geese overhead this time of year, they will carry my attention away. And polite children firing bubbles at me on a cold spring day, they stop me, and take me back—and aback. Jasper out of Place The pair, a sister and her older brother, I guessed, stood, parka hoods over their heads, next to each on their family’s front lawn last week. At his side the boy held a plastic toy bubble gun, a delightful version of a Gatling gun. As I walked by he cranked the handle a couple of turns, looked at the barrel when nothing emerged, shook the weapon to agitate the dish soap in the chamber, earnestly fired again, and, this time, watched bubbles spit out of the ...

Here are three things that delivered some happiness and gratitude this week, which is saying something. Podcast, episode 60 . 1. Evolution I’ve been doing a lot of walking. This is not an earth-shattering observation, but it is worth reminding myself that when it comes to walking outside at this time of year in Edmonton, as winter melts into spring, when it behooves all pedestrians to beware the ice of March, I am able to adapt and slow down and stay upright. None of this is to say that it doesn’t matter if people shovel their walks or not. It does. They should. Keeping public sidewalks free of ice in the winter isn’t about winter. It’s about kindness to others. Shovelling snow and chipping ice isn’t about the state of the concrete, it’s about the state of our hearts. And none of this is to say that I am not aware that I am able. I am. I am not as lithe as I once was, but am not yet deterred from heading out in any conditions, unlike many. But I had a breakthrough last week. Out walkin...

That was as close to a sublime rainbow as I have ever witnessed. I almost missed it. I was pedalling east down the MacKinnon Ravine. I had just said hello to the stand of spruce trees I greet going by.  It's curious to hear your own voice talking to trees. I have done this for years. After the trees, the trail curves to the right and then swoops to the left and, ahead, a woman stood off to the side of the trail. She was pointing to the sky behind me. I stopped. A rain drop hit the top of my hand. "Look," she said. "Look" does not give a person much of a clue about what is about to be seen. I turned around. I saw a ribbon of lights arced across the western sky. And before I had the instant needed to apply to it the concept of rainbow, I saw it as a colossal faucet turned on full bore, emptying a torrent of coloured water into the sink of the North Saskatchewan River. In another instant, it stopped being a spout of light, and became, again, properl...