Glenn Kubish

The many formulations for what makes for a compelling story all, by routes straight or serpentine, boil down to something this: "Man starts power tool on first try" is just not as good as "Man struggles  to start power tool." Here, in video from my bicycle commute to work, is why I'm thinking about power tools and stories tonight. So, a few provisional conclusions: 1. Lindi Ortega can sing in my head on the way to work anytime. 2. If that first pull of the cord, or even the second, had brought the machine to life, who cares? I wouldn't have been late to work hanging around wondering what would happen next if it was simply a case of "thing works as it's supposed to." 3. The incongruity of "man pulls cord to start machine, machine responds with nothing" suggests all kinds of  next scenes, including the possibility of violence, and that unknownness, that cloak around what will happens next makes it difficult bordering on i...

Tonight in Aurora, Colorado, U.S. President Barack Obama decided that what the community, the country, the campaign most need right now is a story. And I think that the reason stories like this have such an impact on us is because we can all understand what it would be to have somebody that we love taken from us in this fashion. Some of the stories are remarkable. There's one particular story I want to tell because this was the last visit that I had and I think it's representative of everything that I saw and heard today. And I don't think this story has been heard -- at least I hadn't read it yet -- but I wanted to share it with you.  The U.S. Commander-Of-Attention-In-Chief went on to tell the story of two friends, Allie, who was shot while trying to draw the attention of others in the theatre to the gunman's canisters, and Stephanie,  who stayed with her friend, applied pressure to her neck wound with one hand while calling 911 on her cellphone w...