Glenn Kubish

And that’s a wrap on another week, friends! Here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude... Three Things, Episode 123:                              1. Classics   From a table at the back of the Starbucks on Bellerose Drive in St. Albert, I wrote an email to a perfect stranger last week. Richard F. Thomas is a classics professor in the green pastures of Harvard University. I was reading his book Why Bob Dylan Matters. He mentioned a Dylan concert in Taormina, Sicily, in 2001. In my note, I hazarded my theory that Mark Knopfler, in his song Lights of Taormina, is singing about Dylan.  Dylan is the unidentified “he” in the song. Knopfler sings “he” wants to know if anyone has seen her. I hear, if you see her, say hello. Knopfler sings seems like another lifetime when “he” rambled across the shore, and I hear ‘twas in another lifetime and circled by the circus sands.   Knopf...

Here’s my unsolicited list of three little things from my little corner of the world that left behind some happiness and gratitude.                                             1. Crisis communications   Babysitting. What a misnomer. There’s a baby, alright, but there’s not much sitting. Instead, there’s a lot of swaying, rocking, bouncing, strolling, pacing, hoisting, pointing, lunging, bending, kneeling, climbing, carrying and dancing—lots of dancing. Shelagh and I pulled a long weekend shift caring for Little Buddy while his parents were away. It was a remarkable and moving 60 hours on the front lines of grandson care. I had forgotten many things. Forgotten how satisfying it is to have a four-month-old chew my finger with all his might, and no teeth. How to unlock from its base a car seat in which a back-facing, belted-in child sat outside OTTO on 95 Street, forgot t...

  “Andrew said to me, ‘Mom, have you played Wordle?’ and I said, no, don’t talk to me about Wordle! Every morning I get up and it’s just <bing, bing, bing, bing, bing> on my phone because all of my siblings have started to play, and they all share their results and then they all like everybody sharing their results, so I said, no, I’m not doing Wordle…” That was my sister-in-law Kathy recounting the story of her son making the case for Wordle, which she brushed off, but, then, changed her mind about. Good thing. Five-lettered Kathy is a natural at the game. A couple of weeks ago, she solved the puzzle in one try. Last week, she followed that up with what for her must have been a demoralizing, two-guess triumph, which she’s done a few times. “The day I got it in one guess, I put my word in, it was green, green, green, green, green. Oh, this is a good game, I like this. It’s like winning the lottery," Kathy said. H-A-P-P-Y end of the week...

Here's this week's Three Things podcast on Apple. Also, in words and pics: 1. Fish 🐠 There’s an aquarium at the Lois Hole Library in west Edmonton, and if you happened to be there last Sunday afternoon close to closing time, that was me standing in front of it, staring like someone who had never seen fish in a tank, which is pretty much what it felt like. I was mesmerized. The little fish twitch and flash and appear quite nonplussed about hanging suspended in gallons of water held in shape by a thin skin of glass on the other side of which is, well, death for them. Earlier that day, Auntie Shelagh and I had spent a couple of hours on Whyte Avenue. We took the steps down to the Tokyo Noodle Shop for ramen. We darted into Blackbyrd for some new vinyl. We drifted over to Sugared & Spiced for brownies and to talk to Jeff about Thomas Hobbes. If you think this dropping, darting and drifting means I now see all of us as kinds of giant upright fish flowing past each other insi...