Glenn Kubish

Happy end of the week, happy end of the year, friends! Once a week I try to unwrap three things that made me happy or grateful, and then say them out loud. Three Things podcast, episode 51 . 1. Air drop When I was a boy, I had an Astronauts lunch kit. It was still the Cold War. Simpler times. Carrying that lunch kit to school as I balanced along windrows of snow left by the graders on 66th Street made me feel like I was on a top secret mission. The kit was metal, not plastic, and on each panel was a scene from the Apollo 11 story. The rocket blastoff…the lunar lander detaching from the service module…the touchdown on the moon…the splashdown with the red and white parachutes. The lunch kit came from Aladdin Industries Incorporated, Nashville, Tennessee. Inside the lid was a poem from the National Safety Council. One of the couplets: There's really no need to play in the streets Since playgrounds are better places to meet! I know the lunch box so well because I’m looking at it ri...

Russia has tugged at me for a long time. As a boy in a house with a Bible and an Edmonton Journal subscription, I followed the acts of a small number of characters in the bigger world: the Apostles, the NHL stars, and Russian and American politicians. My young imagination was peopled by, basically, St. Paul, Phil Esposito, Bobby Orr and Ken Dryden, with room for Nixon, Ford, Brehznev, Gromyko, Chernenko, and, later, Reagan, Andropov, and Gorby. Kharlamov The Canada-Russia hockey series in 1972 captivated us. We watched games in assembly in the school gym on giant TVs that sat on wheeled legs. After school, when a friend in net made a great save during a road hockey game on 67 St, someone would invariably yell "Tretiak!" It was the highest compliment. Indoors, we spent hours and hours playing Coleco table hockey. My friend across the lane, Brucey Straka, spray-painted red a squad of plastic players. We replayed the 1972 series until some time in late 1979. Valer...