Glenn Kubish

It’s been cold here.  Cold is a preserving agent.   Here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude during a bike ride home through that cold.                               1. Cold comfort   I was breakfasted up, helmeted up, goggled up and ready to head into the dark December morning. First, though, a quick reality check with Siri from Cupertino. This is the actual convo: Me: Siri, what’s the temperature outside? Siri: It’s negative 26 degrees outside. Me: Well, that’s a rather negative comment. Siri: I’m sorry. Me: No, that’s what we say up here! Siri: Is there something else I can help with? Me: Well, if you can help with the temperature? Siri: It’s negative 27 degrees outside. Before another degree went south, I resolved up, opened the back door and walked outside into an atmospheric cloud of dryer exhaust, got on my fatbike and pedalled for downtown. Thirty seconds of ...

Happy end of the week, y’all! Here are a few things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude this week.                   1. Well, well, well   I don’t need to know if there actually is a term for the accumulations of snow and ice that build up inside the wheel wells of automobiles. If you live in a wide-open winter city where occasional driving is a fact, you know what I’m talking about: those dinosaur-tooth-shaped accretions that are so strangely satisfying to kick loose.   [insert that sound here] Evidently, I am not the only one who enjoys this. Take a look at surface parking lots these days. They’re dotted with these mashes of potatoes. There’s a routine. Car comes to a stop, ignition is turned off, and, then, before the driver heads for the mall, it’s kick-kick-kick with the heel, leaving behind, when the car again moves away, four mounds of snowy slop—four cairns of winter.   Whatever they’re called, there is s...

  Happy end of the week, friends! Once a week here I try to notice three things that made me feel happy or grateful, things I noticed I noticed, so, the shabby noticing equipment doesn’t completely rust over. This week's Three Things podcast is episode 49 . 1. Take a bough 🌲 In Edmonton, the snow is with us again, or least, it’s pushed over to the side and next to us again. The snow falls and the work to remove it happens next. Remove it from sidewalks, streets, driveways, windshields, highways, bike lanes, staircases, remove it from rooftop, from bridge decks and skating rinks, alleys and driveways and bus stops and boots. Remove it from playing fields, too, so, in the case of the snow on the pitch at Commonwealth Stadium, the men’s soccer team could jump into it after scoring that winning goal against Mexico. Okay, it was last month, but ‘tis the season for reminiscing… Where are we again? Right, here. We use brooms, shovels, scrapers, brushes, snowblowers, salt, plows, blades,...

Almost 2,100 years ago, the Lucretius wrote a book called On the Nature of Things. The scientist-poet muses on the soul, matter, physics, history, happiness, sailing, corn, existential dread, wine, the weather, the theatre, mud, the allure of tyrants in times of ordeal, love, the senses, death, compounds, dreams, fire, fallacy, flatulence, why evil happens to good people, images, the afterlife and other breezy topics of interest to Rome back in the day. And volcanoes. He writes about volcanoes, too. And fabric.  The tract is a song of praise to Epicurus, the Greek philosopher who "was the first that dared to raise mortal eyes" against superstitious religion. It's a slow, timely read.  The book ends unexpectedly during an account of the plague that devastated Greece at the time of the Peloponnesian War. Some scholars suggest Lucretius died before being able to weave together the cosmos into a complete account. I kinda like how it ends. I also like the way The Sopranos ends...

My friends Isla and Sue are among the functioning hearts and brains behind Snow & Tell - The Winter City podcast. They asked me for a love story about winter. I'd been thinking lately about public benches and bridges, and the work they do. You can put it like this: "I saw the moon from the bridge." But that's unsatisfactory. Because it's also true that the moon is there because of the bridge. "I saw the moon because of the bridge." Of course, the moon is there even if the bridge isn't. But not for me on that day in November on that bike ride home. Anyways, I wrote a kind of unstructured ode to the moon, trying, too, to account for what's owed to the bridge. Here's the podcast. Here's my part. I fall in love with winter in Edmonton like the coyotes in the MacKenzie Ravine do. It's the moon. You see, I ride my bicycle year round, through the long-light days of summer and, just the same, through the dark days of Nov...

My winter bicycle is a lot of things. It's my primary mode of transportation. It's how I get exercise for cheap. It's how I have learned not to drive an automobile everywhere. My winter bike is way to save money and stress. It's a conversation starter. It's nostalgia. A way to notice things. A reliable way to feel alive. My bike is also the needle on a turntable. The way the bicycle moves along groves of ice or lanes of snow, and the way it makes a crackly sound when the tires cut into the snow and ice. That precious, scratchy sound sounds like a needle moving across a vinyl record turning around and around. My bike is a radio dial, too. I’m thinking now of the nights as a boy in the basement of the dark house when I would go from station to station and watch the glowing dial move across the grid on the face of the set. This is what I remember as my bike glides across the shadows of the elm trees on 102 Ave. When I sing a bit. ...