Glenn Kubish

Here is my weekly survey of three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude. Listen here to Three Things, episode 121:                              1. Old film   It’s not easy playing hockey in Vegas. I used to be part of a travelling team called the Emperors. Not a travelling team I had to try out for as a promising minor hockey player, more travelling in the sense of wouldn’t it be a blast if I said yes to my buddy Mitch’s invitation to join an oldtimers outfit he had put together and play some games and drink some beers in a tournament in the desert.  Those trips were something. One year there was a case of mistaken identity when I walked out a back stairwell at the Monte Carlo and into a surveillance operation staffed by security officers trying to apprehend a pornography distribution suspect. Another year, I ate a warm beet parfait at a pre-game lunch and ended up locked in a fenced...

I sometimes but not often enough and not deeply enough think about what to do next when bad and strange and heartbreaking things happen. This is the residue of a work life spent in newsrooms monetized in part by bad and strange and heartbreaking things happening. In a newsroom, you have to know what to do, and quickly, when disaster reveals its face. I am thinking now about the recent massacre in Las Vegas where a sniper transformed a tower from an illuminated landmark into a bristling gun nest. He killed 59 people on the Strip below. They had been listening to music. In a TV newsroom there is no time to stare and wonder. Facts have to be chased, rumours abandoned, tweets tweeted, video reviewed for suitability, anchors called in, production lineups built, stories debated, angles checked off. Find a way to localize the story, bring it home. Were there any Canadians there? Albertans? Edmontonians? Among the dead, the same questions. Think about breaking into regular programmi...

Now that Edmonton winter 2012 is losing its grip on us, it's time to get a handle on it. #$&#!*$ Because this year, I tried something different. I had to. All but one of my 48 winters have been spent in Edmonton, and that means I know in my bones what that season can deliver. Endless blue skies and jewelled nights, sure, but also cold and snow and dark and wind. And wind and dark and snow and cold. The moaning around the frozen water cooler. Winter in Edmonton can dent the spirit. Paree When the world was the street where I lived, it was different. I just accepted that for a few months, I wouldn't be able to see the pavement of that street—and, so, we played street hockey on the ice and snow. But then I grew up and put away the childish things and realized that the pools of Las Vegas are really only three hours away. As the imaginary world grows more vivid (and, in some ways, more reachable thanks to seat sales, marketing and Westjet), the real world of snow o...