Glenn Kubish

The Three Things podcast is an attempt at this time every week to stop, take a breath and make note of what I noticed that I noticed, with no help from the algorithm, no code from politicians, no prompt from the advertisers.  And then say it out loud. Here's Three Things podcast, episode 38:  Here are the three things:  1. A disappearing act A couple of blocks from home is my favorite no-name park. It’s not big enough to have a name. There’s no list of donors, no lines of verse inscribed anywhere. There’s no plaque. But somebody with the knowledge and command of autumn colours was behind that park. This is the time of year that that unknown planner or planter should receive a bouquet of thanks. Now, the little park is not a postcard view of Edmonton, and I’ve yet to see fine arts students there painting it, but, still, it is a kind of magic. It’s a slow-moving magic act, as the green leaf trees we’ve had our eyes on for a couple of months, and gotten used to, are transfor...

Almost 2,100 years ago, the Lucretius wrote a book called On the Nature of Things. The scientist-poet muses on the soul, matter, physics, history, happiness, sailing, corn, existential dread, wine, the weather, the theatre, mud, the allure of tyrants in times of ordeal, love, the senses, death, compounds, dreams, fire, fallacy, flatulence, why evil happens to good people, images, the afterlife and other breezy topics of interest to Rome back in the day. And volcanoes. He writes about volcanoes, too. And fabric.  The tract is a song of praise to Epicurus, the Greek philosopher who "was the first that dared to raise mortal eyes" against superstitious religion. It's a slow, timely read.  The book ends unexpectedly during an account of the plague that devastated Greece at the time of the Peloponnesian War. Some scholars suggest Lucretius died before being able to weave together the cosmos into a complete account. I kinda like how it ends. I also like the way The Sopranos ends...

Here is Steinbeck: It occurs to me that, just as the Carthaginians hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them, we Americans bring in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat. These words are sown 50 pages into Travels with Charley in Search of America, the author's account of his drive across the United States in 1960 in his GMC camper truck, Rocinante, and with his poodle, Charley. It remains a thrill to have a good book on the go. And by book I mean a physical, in-your-hand text that can be bent, its pages dog-eared, written on, marked up, lived with. The confident print just stands there, letter upon letter, word after word, unmoving, brought to life by the scanning eye that sees that it is good. We are a family of booked words. Here is the column of Alex's classics books on the dining room table tonight: Okay, we...