Glenn Kubish

If I had a happiness and gratitude sonar, these would be the three pings from last week.   Three Things, episode 140:                               1. Experts   Before social media and the democratization of knowledge made everyone an expert, there was a class of people called, well, for lack of a better term, experts. Newspaper editors. Doctors. Politicians. University professors. Civil servants.   It wasn’t necessarily the best of times. Many other voices weren’t heard, lots of experience was somehow ruled to be of no value.   I worked in newspapers as the hierarchy of knowledge came crashing down on some bewildered gatekeepers who I can still see walking out through the debris of fallen pillars as the influencers sashayed in. Those technocrats are not the experts I want back, but I do miss some experts. Or, at least, one specific category of expert. I miss the disc jockey. I still pref...

My favourite line from the old Klaatu song Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft arrives about a minute in when, after a second or two of no voice, the singer, presumably making the case to aliens who might be tuned in, sings: We are your friends The song came out in 1976. Four years later, Carl Sagan delivered Cosmos, his popular apology for the search for extraterrestrial life. I loved the song, read and copied quotes from the book and actually spent many hours on my back in the yard looking up at the stars, trying to connect the dots. Looking back, it's little wonder that there was an audience for the song, the book. Those were Cold War days, and the chill fingered its way even into northeast Edmonton where I grew up. Mutual Assured Destruction, SALT, ICBMs, nuclear winter, armageddon, apocalypse—all these terms glimpsed on the pages of The Edmonton Journal. We are your friends Out of nowhere yesterday, the song was on the radio. Actually, not out of nowhere, but ...

If you simply saw me sitting listening to the radio in Shelagh's car in the IGA parking lot this afternoon, sitting there with a full propane tank on the front seat and an empty one in the back, shoppers coming and going, there would be no way into the story of that moment. I suppose that's why the modality of the visual doesn't get much at all. The previous hour had been small-stuff frustrating. It started as I waved the white flag in my battle against the University of Alberta's research approval website. I don't have the keenest online instincts and I tend to panic when counterintuitive obstacles arise, but that site is byzantine in its corridors and complexity. For a change of pace, I went to get some propane for a barbecue. Online man, pass the torch to caveman. I stopped to get money on the way and got to the Hughes on 178 St. just in time to realize I had left the propane tank at home. Perfect. Back home, back to Hughes only to be told "your tank ca...

If I could write a song, I would write it about driving Highway 2 between Edmonton and Calgary. It's got it all: changing landscapes, big sky, destination, home, going, returning, pavement, signs, weather, memory, longing. But I don't write songs. What I do enjoy doing, though, is making movies/on location. That keeps the cost down. What I see is the video, what I hear on the radio is the audio. I look for unexpected harmony as they combine. We drove back from Calgary yesterday afternoon. As I woke up from a quick nap and opened my eyes to the highway vista, I heard on CKUA a Woody Guthrie song sung and put to music by Jay Farrar. It's a beautiful song. Don't let anything knock your props out from under you/ Always keep your mind clear/ Let your plans come out of mistakes. The audio was added later, and I have to steady the shot, but it's a fun, little project that makes you appreciate art seen and heard. We miss so much that we see and hear the firs...