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...

To keep the feeble noticing equipment from completely seizing up, I try each week to think about three things that left behind tracks of happiness or gratitude. The snow is good for tracks. Episode 95:                      1. Fables   I was lyin’ on the living room couch in, if not quite, pain, then, at least, unease, as Shelagh, bent over over under the lamp, sterilized needle in hand, face set in determination, pricked the sole of my right foot. For days, I had limped around with a sliver in the ball of my foot. I had to modify my walk down the stairs to footfall on the heel. Pedalling was a pain. Shelagh is a sliversmith, though. And, after a minute of “come on, alreadys,” she got it.   This sliver that had come close to incapacitating me, was, as I looked at it, thinner than the 1/8th inch notch on a tape measure. Undone by so tiny an intruder, I felt slightly mortified. But Shelagh made the reasonable point that log, ...

In the parlance of big-time hockey, "getting the call" is a rich term. A player gets the call up to the big team. It is the public reward for years of hard, quiet work. It's the call up to the big league, the big time. A player can "get the call" to represent his or her country in international play. Or a player "gets the call" to the hall of fame. Invariably, a young player or a rehabilitated player or an unorthodox talent is pictured "still waiting for the call." Getting the call means a player goes from the many on the outside to the few on the inside.  Mitch and James rinkside today But getting the call can happen for the rest of us hockey players, too. "Guys, thanks for thinking of me and giving me a call," said Rick, as we sat over lunch today at Campus Earl's, the Oilers-Wings game on the monitors above us, Saturday's first of three games in the University of Alberta's pond hockey tournament b...