Glenn Kubish

Happy end of the week, y'all! From Edmonton, where August’s average high of 26.5 degrees C, call it 80 degrees Fahrenheit, was the second warmest since 1880 (thanks, Chris), here are three things that made for some happiness or gratitude this week.                           1. This time of year   There’s a lot going on. Young people are going back to school. Canadas are in test flight mode. Tomatoes and cucumbers are coming off the vines as gardens descend into ruin. The sun sets before midnight. It is a letting-go time. It’s a tuning-in time. Every pitch and every swing matter in baseball. U.S. Open tennis is on its two-week off-Broadway run under the lights. (I would cancel my sports cable channels if it wasn’t for live sports. That’s not quite true. When Ken and Ivanka on Sportsnet are on their game, they are worth extra bucks a month. But the big voices from the big desks, the swirling music and the hit-me-in-the-...

Happy end of the week, y’all. Here is this week’s list of three things I noticed I noticed that made me happy or grateful.                               1. Debt 55     I have a long list of unpaid debts that I am working on. One was entered the day in 1980 my Grade 10 physics teacher, Mr. Nowak, cornered me in the upstairs hallway at O’Leary High School. He had done the math. I was going to fail Physics 10 unless some force stronger than the gravitational pull on my mark appeared to pull it north of the Yellowhead. He offered me a deal. I would get a 55 if I promised not to enroll in Physics 20. He knew I wanted to go to university and that a failing grade wouldn’t help. I took the deal. Deus ex machina really happens. Why was I so lousy at physics? Kinematics couldn’t really have been more opaque than the Faulkner we read in English. But velocity and acceleration were difficult for me. I couldn’t see h...

My father was a locomotive engineer. He hauled things for a living. We lived in the northeast end of Edmonton. From my bedroom I could hear the sound of trains at night. In my blood, I know the long-long-short-long of the crossing whistle. As a boy, I had trouble falling asleep.  My mom got some advice somewhere that it was okay if I listened to the radio and let the music pull me into slumber.  It was a thrill beyond words when Arlo Guthrie sang City Of New Orleans from the radio with the clicking numbers. It took me a long time to figure out City of New Orleans was the name of the train. And longer to realize that it could communicate. All along the southbound odyssey/The train pulls out at Kankakee/ And rolls along past houses, farms and fields I loved the rhythm of that song. And the exotic words, like Illinois and Kankakee and New Orleans. The three of the houses, farms and fields was delicious. And this thought that a junkyard w...