Glenn Kubish

If I had a happiness and gratitude sonar, these would be the three pings from last week.   Three Things, episode 140:                               1. Experts   Before social media and the democratization of knowledge made everyone an expert, there was a class of people called, well, for lack of a better term, experts. Newspaper editors. Doctors. Politicians. University professors. Civil servants.   It wasn’t necessarily the best of times. Many other voices weren’t heard, lots of experience was somehow ruled to be of no value.   I worked in newspapers as the hierarchy of knowledge came crashing down on some bewildered gatekeepers who I can still see walking out through the debris of fallen pillars as the influencers sashayed in. Those technocrats are not the experts I want back, but I do miss some experts. Or, at least, one specific category of expert. I miss the disc jockey. I still pref...

Happy end of the week! In a few days, the sun will rise before 8 am for the first time since October 13 last year. Here are three other things from my little life in the retreating dark that left behind tracks of gratitude and happiness. Three Things, episode 108:                             1. Waves   There is a quaint practice that clings to life in Edmonton, a vestige of the happy days of motoring. I speak of the courtesy wave from the car driver ahead back to the car driver behind after the latter allows the former into the flow of traffic. Close to where we live, the stage is set for the wave when bumper-to-bumper afternoon traffic pointing south on 142 Street blocks the way out of the Andy’s IGA parking lot for the drivers of other vehicles. Same thing at the zipper merge where 102 Avenue now goes down from two lanes to one around 137 Street due to LRT construction in year one of X. I received the quick cou...