Glenn Kubish

And that's a wrap on the week, friends!   Here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude. Three Things podcast, episode 118*:                         I bought a pizza from a vending machine last week. No, don’t report me to Sonia   Piano. It was for science. I wanted to know if the pizza was as good as, say, Tony’s on 111 Avenue. It was not. The crust, the sauce, the cheese, the haphazard pepperoni placement, the pepperoni, the fact I couldn’t get into the machine to watch the pizza being made—all of this made the encounter with the food machine unnerving. It was the sound, though, the lack of human sound that really got through. The machine pizza itself was disgorged like a tired bus passenger.   At Tony’s there was a hum. The servers wore black, the cooking staff wore white, together, as they moved back and forth at the kitchen counter, never colliding, they struck me as a kind of...

Here’s my unsolicited list of three little things from my little corner of the world that left behind some happiness and gratitude.                                             1. Crisis communications   Babysitting. What a misnomer. There’s a baby, alright, but there’s not much sitting. Instead, there’s a lot of swaying, rocking, bouncing, strolling, pacing, hoisting, pointing, lunging, bending, kneeling, climbing, carrying and dancing—lots of dancing. Shelagh and I pulled a long weekend shift caring for Little Buddy while his parents were away. It was a remarkable and moving 60 hours on the front lines of grandson care. I had forgotten many things. Forgotten how satisfying it is to have a four-month-old chew my finger with all his might, and no teeth. How to unlock from its base a car seat in which a back-facing, belted-in child sat outside OTTO on 95 Street, forgot t...

Three Things, episode 54 , has a bit of Auntie Shelagh solving a Wordle (and me solving, tentatively, an old question between wives and husbands), some Mozart, some Boston (from the first album) and some notes about being summoned to the boss's office.  1.  Word up It recently came to pass that Auntie Shelagh and I didn’t agree on something. What it was doesn’t matter. Okay, it was whether Wordle will give you more information than you have a right to after guessing one correct letter in the wrong spot. Like, if you guess, say, V as in Victor, and it’s in the wrong spot, but there are two Vs in the answer, will Wordle give you not just one but two yellow indicators? Auntie Shelagh said yes, or, at least, it should. I said no. When we’re at an impasse like this, we usually make a friendly wager. Whoever is right gets the book of her or his choice. We marshalled our arguments. I felt my competitive juices start to simmer. And then I remembered, of all things, graduate school, an...

My inbox immunity is low. Still, the message from the Winspear Centre hit home. Soon after Alberta Health Services recommended on Thursday that large gatherings of more than 250 people be cancelled, the Winspear scratched its March concerts. Helping to flatten the curve means instruments down. "The health and well-being of our patrons, staff and musicians are of the utmost importance," the email said. So, for now, the music dies. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that live orchestral music should be maintained in a pandemic. I'm just saying I remember what C.S. Lewis wrote in 1948 in a piece called On Living in an Atomic Age. This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let the bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our fr...

I woke up with sore chest muscles. I have no chest muscles, so this was a different feeling. It was the kind of discomfort that made me go back and conduct a mental inventory of anything done different the day before to have pulled things out of shape. I did go for a good bike ride in the snow yesterday. Nothing out of the ordinary there. At one point I did get off my bike and lie on the ground  to compose a low-angle pic of three miniature cycling figurines in Faraone Park. Kinda different, a bit chilly, but, really, nothing to have stretched my chest. I again didn't do any pushups on a day when I again didn't get to the gym. Nothing strange there either. So, what happened? I remembered. Sibelius happened. My chest this morning still registered the effect last night of my jumping out of seat C-138 in the upper level of the Winspear Centre, walking to the balcony rail and clapping, hands over head, and clapping harder, hands higher over head, while, below, Alex Prior ...

Under the right influence, pedalling along the grid of Edmonton streets can make the bicycle rider feel more than a bit like a musical note. And the right influence was in the air last night as we joined an Edmonton Bicycle Commuters ride to the Winspear Centre for a night of Gershwin music. It's an annual event, but the first time riding with Shelagh that I felt part of a dotted (helmeted) half note. The women on the tandem were two joined eighth notes. The dude on the folding bike? A definite sixteenth note. Together, we rolled adagio along the measured blocks of the city, resting at lights, talking to each other, read by folks on the sidewalk as time took us by. I added a few lyrics: Kickin the clouds away with a nicely composed group, including George and Ira! Chris Chan composed the ride to the Winspear Centre in the key of B icycle. We headed home happy in Edmonton as a way to say thank you to the musical folks on the ride I moved along with. When we rode h...