Glenn Kubish

It’s the end of week as we knew it, amicis.    Here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude.   Listen to the Three Things podcast, episode 119:                                1. The Stoics   “But, you ask, if a wise man receives a blow, what shall he do?” the Stoic philosopher Seneca asked in an essay written almost 2,000 years ago. He answered himself: “What Cato did when he was struck in the face. He did not flare up, he did not avenge the wrong, he did not even forgive it, but he said that no wrong had been done.”* The “struck in the face” part feels very 2023. It’s a big part of the first round of the NHL playoffs, striking in the face is. I’m picturing the padded punches to the kisser in scrums after the whistle that the cameras love, the face washes as they are euphemistically called. This is where Stoicism has something to teach the players—and to teach ...

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...

Tonight, I was one of nine Pecha Kucha presenters at the Winter Cycling Congress in Montréal. We gathered at a restaurant in Parc-La Fontaine to share our takes on riding a bicycle in this beautiful season. I talked about Leonard Cohen.   I’m Glenn from Edmonton. It’s so cool to be here. In winter. On the streets of Montreal. Dis-moi ce qui se passe dans les rues de Montréal, the great Leonard Cohen asks us.  Tell me what’s happening on the streets of Montreal. Well, Monsieur Cohen, we are riding our bicycles on the streets of Montreal. Just like you. Montreal is Leonard Cohen’s city. This is the poet when he was four, riding his tricycle on Belmont Avenue.  It’s all there already, isn’t it?  The passion. The fashion. The commitment to rhythm. When you pedal down-up, down-up, down-up enough times, that rhythm gets inside. That picture is from summer... ..but let’s claim Leonard Cohen as the poet laureate for winter bicycle riders, shall we...