Glenn Kubish

Hello from Edmonton, where, once a week, I try to discern the tracks left behind after things that made me happy or thankful passed through. This week’s podcast is here for the hearing:                                 And for the reading: 1. The Tour The Tour de France has the architecture of a pilgrimage, its peloton a collection of the faithful moving together on the winding road to immortality in the Elysian fields of Paris. The gang is a motley group, at turns jovial and gloomy. Some are pure of heart and body. Some are polluted and penitent. Bowed down like supplicants, they move in their own congregations, recognizable by their various robes and badges. They hear voices in their heads. Together, this colourful ribbon flows through towns and villages, by churches and public houses, each pilgrim carrying water and a simple pouch of food. Chains shuttle like holy beads moving through expert fingers. Carri...

Bonjour tout le monde! Here are three things that made for some happiness and gratitude last week, not because there’s not a pile of other crap out there, but because there is.   Three Things podcast, episode 77:                          1. Pelicans   They are remarkable looking waterbirds, pelicans are. For the last two summers, every time I pedalled across, I made a point of glancing over the railing at the north end of the Quesnell Bridge to see if they were back. I first saw pelicans down there by the mouth of the storm sewer, where the fishin’ is good, in 2019. It was in June of that year that my binoculared friend Nicola pointed out 10 of them as they soared over the downtown farmers market.  That same summer was the first time I saw them at the outfall. I would stop and watch them from above on the bridge deck while eight lanes of traffic streamed by on Whitemud Drive. They were there the next day, an...

  It's the end of the week, a time to capture three things that made my happy or grateful over the past seven days, and, before they vaporize from memory, add them to the other side of the scales. Here is this week's Three Things podcast  (4 mins). Here's this week's list. 1. Tomatoes, 2020-2021   🍅 🍅 On the ant-grasshopper spectrum of how best to live life, toward industry or toward abandon,  it’s more fun to be the grasshopper. But it’s satisfying to be the ant. And tasty. Last fall we jarred tomatoes from our container garden. Some tomatoes, some Mason jars, some time in the basement. Last week, we opened a jar to juje up a dinner of pork and rice. Standing in the kitchen, unable just to be happy, I asked the jar of tomatoes why I felt happy. A voice replied.  "Why not?" said Auntie Shelagh. "We grew them. We preserved them. They taste great. They didn’t go to waste. It’s pretty cool to grow your own food. Or, maybe, it’s just because they taste good...

Bauke Mollema streaked to victory today in Tour de France stage 15 from Laissac-Severac l'Eglise to Le Puy-en-Velay. He made his move with about 30 km to go, after much of the field had cracked. He was only 100 m or so from the peak. Still, a group of pursuers were only a few hundred metres behind. "Mollema needs a buffer!" said the announcer. I tweeted my thanks immediately. Both announcers, Matthew Keenan and Robby McEwen, liked the tweet. That was fun. I could have a drink or three with those guys, I think. I have been told that the Greek word for clever, deinos , also connotes a sense of terrible. Perhaps that is why those who make puns are routinely greeted with the judgment "that was terrible!" To say that Mollema needed a buffer was accurate if, by it, the speaker simply meant a little extra time and distance from his chasers. But it's clever to choose the word buffer, which carries the extra meaning of being naked. It's doubly clever, ...

Alexis Vuillermoz is streaming down the side of the Col de la Biche this morning. He is at the head of the race. It is stage 9 of the Tour de France. His front wheel slips slightly in the rain on the road. He keeps his balance. Commentator Robbie McEwen explains the French rider's mountain bike resume has prepared him for the sliding and drifting that happen when courage mixes with a wet descent. "It's a huge advantage for him," McEwen says. "When you're used to things getting a little bit loose on you, and staying in control, because it's about staying calm, when it gets loose and you tense up or touch the brakes, that's when you go down. You gotta be able to flow [emphasis not added] with it." Nude Descending A Staircase, Duchamp The trickster Vuillermoz is riding a corridor of humor. The term is from French painter and sculptor and chess player Marcel Duchamp. "While Dada was a movement of negation and, by the very fac...

This morning I am in a happy place. It is an intersection. A listening post. The Tour de France is on TV, and that is a thrill itself. Getting up early on a long weekend Monday to watch the colours of the peloton's men and machines stream and curve through the countryside is time in front of the monitor well spent. I enjoy parades, and bicycles, and TV in the sun. With a mug of coffee, and a book and a sharpened pencil as the broadcast flows in. This morning, the book is Trickster Makes The World by Lewis Hyde. The open pages resemble a gravesite I saw embedded into the earth at the Hillcrest cemetery. The shaft of sunlight stares across the printed words. They are worth standing in front of and staring at. Structures always arise from exclusion. Think, for example, of how one might go about designing a flag. This world has endless color; the palette of greens in field and forest is boundless, as is that of water under changing skies. To make a flag, we select only t...

Saturday morning coffee is a mug's game. Behind only, Do I get out of bed? and How did they possibly insert that old guy in the mirror?, the foggy question, Which coffee mug do I use? is the most important question of the grizzled day. I have a few favourites to hold onto. Picasso The Picasso cup reminds me of the day Shelagh told me about the flower in the Guernica painting. Was it, too, a casualty of the war, or was it the first sign of regeneration? Lincoln  This is a true mug mug. It comes from the Lincoln Memorial. Speaking of civil war. #coffeeoutside  I use this mug on Friday mornings when the Coffee Outside bicycle riding gang gets together to drink coffee outside and talk about bicycle riding. There is a certain circularity to our time together. The Sprocket Podcast sticker gives it some Portland charm. Wait, Wait! We were already out of the Chase Bank building in downtown Chicago after watching a live recording of the wonderful Wait, ...