Glenn Kubish

Back to school is in the air. Hope you all have your duo-tangs, hole reinforcements for binders and your inky-pink erasers, or have helped others get the same. Here are three other things from the past (week) that left behind traces of happiness and gratitude.   Three Things, episode 138:                                 1. Microscopes I remember the moment so vividly still because it was pickled in the brine of junior high school fear and doubt. Grade 7 science class. Mr. Litwin was our teacher. He wore colourful silk scarves around his neck to hide, he said, the marks of the stitches left behind when his head was completely severed and sewn back on after a plane crash in the war. He would tell that story and gauge our reactions and smile. We were studying cellular structure one week. There were illustrations in our biology textbook showing the differences between plant cells and animal cells. It was ou...

It’s the end of week as we knew it, amicis.    Here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude.   Listen to the Three Things podcast, episode 119:                                1. The Stoics   “But, you ask, if a wise man receives a blow, what shall he do?” the Stoic philosopher Seneca asked in an essay written almost 2,000 years ago. He answered himself: “What Cato did when he was struck in the face. He did not flare up, he did not avenge the wrong, he did not even forgive it, but he said that no wrong had been done.”* The “struck in the face” part feels very 2023. It’s a big part of the first round of the NHL playoffs, striking in the face is. I’m picturing the padded punches to the kisser in scrums after the whistle that the cameras love, the face washes as they are euphemistically called. This is where Stoicism has something to teach the players—and to teach ...

Happy end of the week, y’all. Besides the return of winter-weary crunchy ice, here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude this week.                     1. Resources   Somehow, I’m finishing up teaching a strategic communications planning course at MacEwan University. I enjoy hanging out in the academy where inquiry is still a thing. In school, I’m still a fish hooked by the question mark. The students are clever, and I’ve had a strong supporting cast for this one-of-a-kind experience. The doc came by to talk about diagnosing things properly, either medical situations or communications challenges. Rely on your heuristics, your shortcuts, as you assess the nature of a problem, he said, but don’t let them become prejudices. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, but keep zebras in mind, he said.   J-P reminded the students there is no such thing as the general public. Be specific, she said. Son shared...