Glenn Kubish

  From the maelstrom, here are three things that notched some gratitude and happiness this past week. Three Things, episode 112:                         1. Medium/message   The day I realized that all the places I would like to travel to I won’t travel to because as I get older it will be harder to travel to, and that I might have <knock on world> another decade and a half to make tracks, get back to Tulsa, get back to Ottawa and Montréal, see the Maritimes, that day was an eye-opening, bucket-list-editing day. The quantity of time isn’t the same thing as the quality of time. Well, huh, didn’t quite grasp that at 25. Same thing with all the things I would like to understand. It might be a smarter strategy to concentrate my dwindling resources on a few key teachings and then knuckle down and try to get a hold of them. For me, McLuhan’s maxim that the medium is the message is one of those elusive things. It h...

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...

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...