Glenn Kubish

In the words of Darlingside , you can't live in the past, but the only way to go is to go back.   This week's Three Things goes back to the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Three Things, episode 135:                            1. Tarps   It’s Saturday morning, we are in a line of festival goers that snakes down the multi-use path on Connors Road next to the dormant LRT tracks. We are waiting for the gates at the top of the hill to open. The wail of bagpipes means it won’t be long. The pipes are leading tarp holders who had been in the pen since whatever o’clock AM to their preferred seating locations at the base of Gallagher Park—where it’s flat, where you’re not fighting a slow but relentless rearguard action against gravity. The rest of us, those who preferred a decent night’s sleep, will scurry to a patch of earth on the slope of the amphitheatre, throw our tarps down and stake our claim when the gates open....

Here’s my unsolicited list of three little things from my little corner of the world that left behind some happiness and gratitude.                                             1. Crisis communications   Babysitting. What a misnomer. There’s a baby, alright, but there’s not much sitting. Instead, there’s a lot of swaying, rocking, bouncing, strolling, pacing, hoisting, pointing, lunging, bending, kneeling, climbing, carrying and dancing—lots of dancing. Shelagh and I pulled a long weekend shift caring for Little Buddy while his parents were away. It was a remarkable and moving 60 hours on the front lines of grandson care. I had forgotten many things. Forgotten how satisfying it is to have a four-month-old chew my finger with all his might, and no teeth. How to unlock from its base a car seat in which a back-facing, belted-in child sat outside OTTO on 95 Street, forgot t...

Happy end of the week, y’all. This week’s list of three little things from my life that I noticed I noticed made me happy or grateful starts, as they say in TV news, right now.                               1. Sounding familiar   The sounds I heard proved that the Edmonton Folk Music Festival was back. The Folk Fest is about the musicians, but it’s not just their sounds I’m thinking about. There were other notes. Like the question at the top of the hill, "Any glass or alcohol in your bags?" It was actually pretty good to hear that question again and everyone replying no, no, and the good natured volunteers believing them and wishing them a good day on the hill. And the now, where the %^# is my tarp? question. It was good to hear befuddled people standing on the quilted Gallagher Park hill and again asking out loud that fundamental question of place.  What can I get for you? at the beer pavilion was a tr...

Here, for the week of noticing things that made me feel happy or grateful ending February 4, 2022, is the Three Things podcast . 1. Sign of summer 🌻 I love winter in Edmonton, especially when there’s new snow. It’s like a fresh comforter out of the wash. But there are cold days—I’m looking at you last Monday—when the north wind casts snow across the roads so the roads themselves appear to be in motion. The strands of white look like strips of cirrus clouds skimming at fast forward speed over the asphalt. The snow works itself into swervy shapes that bury the work of sidewalk shovellers. On those days, you open the front door to see four inches of snow lining the threshold. There are signs this geometry of winter is not eternal. In fact, I saw one of those signs last week. It was in the middle of a field in the Rossdale Flats. The sign read: "See you on the hill 2022." This means the Edmonton Folk Music Festival intends to be back on Gallagher Hill this August. This is music ...

It's the Sunday morning after the August long weekend in Edmonton, and that means Gallagher Hill, the home bowl of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, beckons. I've got the program open on the dining room table. I think I'll start the day at the Stage 5 workshop. It's called Ancient Cultures, featuring the Mairtin O'Connor Band, Sidi Toure, Joanne Shenandoah, and the Masters of Hawaiian Music. I've never heard any of them before. And that's part of the point about the Folk Fest. Maybe it's the point. How do you find new music these days? It's still by word of mouth, for sure, but there is more and more of a role played by recommended picks. It's an algorithmic world. Buy a book on Amazon, and a computer program will send you five other books you might like, typically in the same genre or field of interest. Get a movie, get the same kind of pick. Or download some music, and iTunes will download into your thought process a few more suggestion...