Glenn Kubish

And that’s a wrap on another week, friends! Here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude... Three Things, Episode 123:                              1. Classics   From a table at the back of the Starbucks on Bellerose Drive in St. Albert, I wrote an email to a perfect stranger last week. Richard F. Thomas is a classics professor in the green pastures of Harvard University. I was reading his book Why Bob Dylan Matters. He mentioned a Dylan concert in Taormina, Sicily, in 2001. In my note, I hazarded my theory that Mark Knopfler, in his song Lights of Taormina, is singing about Dylan.  Dylan is the unidentified “he” in the song. Knopfler sings “he” wants to know if anyone has seen her. I hear, if you see her, say hello. Knopfler sings seems like another lifetime when “he” rambled across the shore, and I hear ‘twas in another lifetime and circled by the circus sands.   Knopf...

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...

  Happy end of the week, amigos!   Here, after internal review, are three things that made for some happiness or gratitude this week. Three Things, episode 69:                                             1. Away  🇪🇸 My friend Richie posted a vacation video of himself doing what he does a lot of in his spare time when he’s not on vacation, which is the point of vacations, I think. True, the video of him cycling is from the hills of Spain, not the hills of Gatineau, but pedalling a bicycle for joy is pedalling a bicycle for joy. Richie’s video is joyful and beautiful and, with the twisting highway, dramatic rock face and blue sky, elemental. For a bit of hometown Toronto, he added audio of a Skydiggers song, the lyric from Slow  Burning Fire where Andy Maize sings   But lately I’ve caught you   Staring at me   With a new kind of look on your fa...