Glenn Kubish

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...

Happy end of the week, y’all. This week’s list of three little things from my life that I noticed I noticed made me happy or grateful starts, as they say in TV news, right now.                               1. Sounding familiar   The sounds I heard proved that the Edmonton Folk Music Festival was back. The Folk Fest is about the musicians, but it’s not just their sounds I’m thinking about. There were other notes. Like the question at the top of the hill, "Any glass or alcohol in your bags?" It was actually pretty good to hear that question again and everyone replying no, no, and the good natured volunteers believing them and wishing them a good day on the hill. And the now, where the %^# is my tarp? question. It was good to hear befuddled people standing on the quilted Gallagher Park hill and again asking out loud that fundamental question of place.  What can I get for you? at the beer pavilion was a tr...

Here, for the week of noticing things that made me feel happy or grateful ending February 4, 2022, is the Three Things podcast . 1. Sign of summer 🌻 I love winter in Edmonton, especially when there’s new snow. It’s like a fresh comforter out of the wash. But there are cold days—I’m looking at you last Monday—when the north wind casts snow across the roads so the roads themselves appear to be in motion. The strands of white look like strips of cirrus clouds skimming at fast forward speed over the asphalt. The snow works itself into swervy shapes that bury the work of sidewalk shovellers. On those days, you open the front door to see four inches of snow lining the threshold. There are signs this geometry of winter is not eternal. In fact, I saw one of those signs last week. It was in the middle of a field in the Rossdale Flats. The sign read: "See you on the hill 2022." This means the Edmonton Folk Music Festival intends to be back on Gallagher Hill this August. This is music ...

  This is where, despite it all, or because of it all, I try to notice three things from my ordinary life that made me happy or grateful, and unpack them, so I keep an idea of the kind of stuff I am carrying around with me. Here is Three Things, episode 52 . 1. Cemeteries On New Year’s Day, I go for a walk in a cemetery. I’ve done it for years now. This year it was the St. Anthony/Mount Pleasant graveyards on 106th Street. I like the feeling of being in a graveyard, the feeling of knowing that I am in a graveyard and, especially, the feeling of walking out of a graveyard. I go to graveyards so I can still leave. My number isn’t up yet. In a graveyard, I’m nobody’s number. I mean, there are no neon or flashing signs or eye-catching vide there. I’m not being sold anything. No logos or brands. Just granite and upper case fonts, a lot of Times New Roman, if I’m not mistaken. It’s dramatic to be in the Mount Pleasant cemetery, standing on the hill, to the left a slope of snow-covered to...

Happy end of the week, happy end of the year, friends! Once a week I try to unwrap three things that made me happy or grateful, and then say them out loud. Three Things podcast, episode 51 . 1. Air drop When I was a boy, I had an Astronauts lunch kit. It was still the Cold War. Simpler times. Carrying that lunch kit to school as I balanced along windrows of snow left by the graders on 66th Street made me feel like I was on a top secret mission. The kit was metal, not plastic, and on each panel was a scene from the Apollo 11 story. The rocket blastoff…the lunar lander detaching from the service module…the touchdown on the moon…the splashdown with the red and white parachutes. The lunch kit came from Aladdin Industries Incorporated, Nashville, Tennessee. Inside the lid was a poem from the National Safety Council. One of the couplets: There's really no need to play in the streets Since playgrounds are better places to meet! I know the lunch box so well because I’m looking at it ri...

Fitz is a fan of the obits, and, so, it was Fitz who pointed out the death notice of the Saskatoon woman named Cathy Watts (née Drabble), September 3, 1948 - September 8, 2020, that was written by the deceased woman herself. If you are reading this, it began, I'm no longer here. Fantastic was a good word for Fitz to use. It captured the eerie sense of being reached from another dimension. For an instant, Cathy Watts's first-person obit felt like an electrically charged communication with someone beyond.  In her auto-bit, Cathy Watts remembered very physical things about her life left behind. The water and rocks of lakes in northern Saskatchewan. The feeling of writing in a notebook. Eating a donut. Quilting. Singing. And other bodily stuff, too. Hugging grandchildren. Swimming nude. Voting. Riding a bicycle.  Riding a bicycle was the joy of joys for Cathy Watts.  "Most of all I was passionately in love with cycling," she wrote. "The very first time I got on a bik...