Glenn Kubish

From Tulsa, Oklahoma, happy end of the week, friends. Each week, whether at home or on the road, I try to notice what I notice, remember what I notice and record what I notice that makes me feel happy or grateful, little things from my little life. This is Three Things, episode 72:                                              1.  Maintenance  Maintenance is not a topic that attracts much attention. Keats did not write an ode to maintenance. We are attracted more by the beginnings of things (the grand openings, debuts, groundbreakings, inaugurations and births) and by the endings of things (wind ups, deaths, crashes, obituaries, final chapters) than we are by the upkeep of life that happens in between. This week Auntie Shelagh and I have been visiting our friends David and Patty in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As happens on holidays, we have heard and seen some new and excitin...

For days lately, I have resembled nothing out in the world more closely than Los Angeles Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick lying face down after McDavid tore through his defence and tested positive for greatness in Game 7. Covid has brought me down.   Here is Three Things podcast, episode 70, a triptych tribute to that goal.                                              1. The pass   When Shell built a filling station in the field behind our house in the northeast end in the 1970s they also put up a big wooden fence to keep us alley kids from cutting through a grassy patch on our way north to Londonderry Mall and the wilds of Dickensfield. That fence was our introduction to the attempted corporate control of our free movements. We resisted. For years we knocked one plank out of the fence every time it was nailed back into formation.          ...

  Here are three things this week that delivered some happiness and gratitude this week:                                      1. Airshow   The dying tree looked fuller than usual. It had stuff in it this time. I glance at the old spruce whenever I pedal home across the bridge on 142 Street. That day it looked like its top branches were lined with cones. As I crossed the street for a closer look, the top of the tree exploded into pieces that twisted up and blew away like a dirt devil—a giant, wavy ribbon that flashed with light when the sun caught the underside of the birds’ wings. What I thought were seed cones were scores of birds flocking off together. I said wow out loud, and waited to see if the birds returned. They did. One by one, they re-attached themselves to the branches. Behind me, cars streamed by.   With little puffs of energy, the birds changed positions, like an or...

  In the event I want to or have to one day or 20 minutes from now retrace my steps back to happiness and gratitude, I make a record of the three things each week that helped produce those goods. Here is episode 67 of the Three Things podcast.                                               1. Jazz Like olives, tomatoes, scotch whisky and basketball, jazz is one of the good things of life that take getting used to. Jazz strikes me as the kind of music most aware of its being built and rebuilt. When I listen to jazz I feel like I have wandered into a workshop where notes are being split and sounds are being hammered out in new ways on the spot by craftspeople. The trumpet, sax, drums and bass are instruments (as in tools) used to make pieces of music. To the brass, ivory, mahogany, maple, birch, polyester, ebony and steel of those implements, musicians add their bre...

  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 ...