Glenn Kubish

Ciao, ecco tre cose della mia piccola vita che questa settimana hanno lasciato tracce di felicità e gratitudine, or something like that. Here's Three Things from Edmonton, episode 141:                                   1. Italy      Shelagh is off to Italy soon for a couple of weeks. It will be a belated milestone birthday vacation celebration with her friend Sheryl. I’m staying home to keep an eye on the tomatoes. If it frosts, someone has to cover the plants. Italy as a holiday destination makes deep sense for Shelagh. She took night-class Italian lessons a decade ago at Ainlay. Her accent is a-pretty good. She studied the literature and the architecture of the country as an undergrad. She spoke real Latin, actually. She made me watch Don’t Look Now with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. She shops at Spinelli’s in Little Italy. She knows Moonstruck by heart. A favourite exchang...

Three Things from Edmonton podcast, episode 120, is here for the listening. It is composed of three things I noticed I noticed made me feel happy and grateful. Give it a listen: Or give it a read, starting with: 1. Teamwork There was a play late in the Oilers series-winning game against the Los Angeles Kings that didn’t get enough attention from the professional sports pundits. It wasn’t a goal or pass or a hit or a forecheck or a fight. It wasn’t even a hockey-specific play. This is what happened. In front of his own net, Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner gave the puck away to the Kings’ Phillip Danault in a jaw-dropping piece of live, televised misfortune. Skinner’s stick had snapped. Danault scored. It was, as Harnarayan Singh on Hockey Night in Canada said: “Unbelievable!” The arena in Los Angeles was bonkers. Hockey fans knew that momentum had switched. Skinner, on one knee in his crease, looked as broken as his composite stick. What the cameras caught next ...

On December 30, 1981, Wayne Gretzky scored five goals against the Philadelphia Flyers, setting a record for the fewest games (39) needed to reach the 50-goal mark in the NHL. It is a record that will stand longer than the Northlands Coliseum that played host to the historic night in Edmonton. It's easy to re-live the game highlights. Search Google. In 0.37 seconds 1,140,000 results are returned, including video of the four goals Gretzky scored against Flyers goalie Pete Peeters, making him look more like a masked mannequin between the pipes than an elite netminder of the time. And then the fifth goal as Gretzky carries the puck up the ice, cuts to his left just before the opposing blue line and toys with defender Bill Barber for an extra second, making the Flyers star dive in futility to stop the empty net goal. Peeters on the bench, Barber on his face, fans on their feet, Gretzky in the record book. It's all easy to find and re-live. After the game, Gretzky sat...

This morning I took this photo of Gretzky (in happier times :) -- I mean I physically took the photo -- and, adjusting for a few decades, re-placed it in its original location. It's an archeology, of sorts, that consists of literally laying the past over the present to obtain an effect of the passage of time or, what is probably more accurate, the jumble of time. Now, I didn't get it right, or as right as the artists behind sites like FILMography, which can be unearthed and marvelled over here . But there is a common fascination with memory, the intersection of time, the dance between visible and invisible and other themes that drop in and vanish just as quickly. It's also a fascination with the photograph as an artifact. A photograph preserves a memory and it is then itself preserved in an album or a shoebox, inside a frame, behind glass, in a wallet, locket, purse, or between the pages of a book. But when that photograph itself is freed and is taken back to the ...

Things are pretty ugly out there. The Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister, John Baird, has just severed diplomatic relations with Iran, the timing of the move leading many to wonder if Canada has inside information about an imminent US-backed Israeli attack on Tehran. The United Nation's nuclear agency has overwhelmingly rebuked Iran for failing to act to diminish fears it is developing a military nuclear option. Greece is an economic basket case, Spain is in trouble and the European Union is considering a banking union to solve its monetary woes. For 23 years, police in the U.K. lied to the world and its own citizens about what happened at the Hillsborough Stadium disaster. The U.S. ambassador to Libya was assassinated. Anti-American protests are sweeping across the Arab and Muslim world. The interest rate is, like, nothing, and manufacturing productivity has returned, but the U.S. economy is not adding jobs. It looks like the NHL season will be shortened or scrubbed ...