Glenn Kubish

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...

Happy end of the week, y’all. Auntie Shelagh and I are back from a short holiday to Oklahoma. The things from a good vacation come back with you. I remain grateful for the chance to have passed through the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa. And, so, this week, it’s Bob Week:                           1.  Making an entrance I walked in the door of the Bob Dylan Center and was met by a giant, wall-mounted photo of the artist as a young man that stands next to a 16-foot, floor-to-ceiling metal gate welded by Dylan an old man. I was greeted by a security guard. I was aware of being at a border. It was worth lingering there. Borders are where gates open and close and where officers stand and scan. Borders are in-between places where traffic flows back and forth. Besides guards, borders have long attracted other characters. The cultural critic Lewis Hyde calls them tricksters. Tricksters, Hyde says, love to hang around doorways. It...