Glenn Kubish

If you simply saw me sitting listening to the radio in Shelagh's car in the IGA parking lot this afternoon, sitting there with a full propane tank on the front seat and an empty one in the back, shoppers coming and going, there would be no way into the story of that moment. I suppose that's why the modality of the visual doesn't get much at all. The previous hour had been small-stuff frustrating. It started as I waved the white flag in my battle against the University of Alberta's research approval website. I don't have the keenest online instincts and I tend to panic when counterintuitive obstacles arise, but that site is byzantine in its corridors and complexity. For a change of pace, I went to get some propane for a barbecue. Online man, pass the torch to caveman. I stopped to get money on the way and got to the Hughes on 178 St. just in time to realize I had left the propane tank at home. Perfect. Back home, back to Hughes only to be told "your tank ca...

Shelagh Rogers had just finished interviewing Alistair MacLeod. Their conversation, which (false :) ranged from his driving an N.A.D.P. milk wagon in young Edmonton, through his thoughts about a chandelier's point of view and on to his sense of the vanished in our interior and exterior landscapes, kicked off the Words In 3D Conference happening this weekend at MacEwan. Alistair MacLeod It was an enjoyable chat to listen in on. Two people who know about words written (MacLeod) and breathed (Rogers) talking about the literary sensibility, the changed perspectives that time delivers, the mystery of metaphor. And then it was time for the punctuation mark on the evening: questions from the audience. The questions, as Rogers graciously acknowledged, promising them a home in an upcoming CBC The Next Chapter podcast, were good. Was MacLeod a writer who teaches or a teacher who writes? What did he learn from his students? Can creative writing be taught? A question about the horse...

My bicycle handlebar video will never make the wild and extreme Go Pro video of the week. It's not shot down the side of a volcano or beside a coral reef. And it will never rise to the level of the Russian Dashboard Masters whose fixed cameras cams routinely capture meteors and crashing planes. The scenes I am interested in recording are more mundane. The sun in the east as I roll up to 124 Street, for one. But the more I record my rides the more I have developed an almost actuarial sense of the dangers out there. Or the dangers in there. Like the scene that presented itself in slo-motion this morning as a young girl intent on getting to her school bus on time got to her school bus on time. She is alive tonight because the car driver hit the brakes. What didn't become a news story starts at about the seven-second mark as she runs out from the left part of the frame. That was too close. And then the morning went on.

Here is what Mayor Stephen Mandel has taught me about political leadership: arrive in your own vehicle.  Here is what I mean.  A few years ago, when I was still working at CTV, our newsroom had a travelling slo-pitch team. The idea was we would get a side together and travel out to your community diamond, bring a news camera along, shoot some "highlights" (usually Dan Kobe making a good play) and plug your neighbourhood or agency initiative in the process. It was a lot of fun. But that's not the item. One evening we were playing the good people at the Mustard Seed Church on the inner-city ball field in Boyle Street. Shopping cart poverty pushed past. There was some despair sitting in a small circle in right field. I removed a couple of hypodermic needles from the base path between first and second base. We had invited the mayor to join us and, with the warmup under way, he roared into the parking lot in his late-model Mercedes Benz and jumped out.  That...

Yesterday as I was cycling to work east down 102 Ave. a motorist in the lane to my left slowed down, rolled down his passenger-side window and yelled out: "Hey, is that a video camera on your bike?" "Yeah," I said. "It's my Go Pro." "Wow, that's pretty cool. So, like, you're getting video when you ride? "I am," I said. "Not all the time, but it kinda keeps me safer." "Right on. Ride safe, man." "See ya!" The rolling encounter reinforced my feeling that, yes, inside that engineering marvel is a cyborg and inside that cyborg is just another guy, in this case a guy who cares either about cyclists or video, or both. But it also made me realize again that that route to safety via video is a convoluted path. Does it really make me safer? Not in that moment, I admit. But studying the video afterwards does help prepare me to notice patterns and anticipate dangers. And being able to share what ...

There is a lot you can say about the couple, Will and Monifa Sims, shown in this video. And there is a lot the couple in this video can show us about ourselves. Things like what makes us smile and share and maybe wish we could be like more often. I love the fact that this video is set in that most ambiguous of locations: the gas station. Because it's there that we are alternatively reminded of the freedom that waits down the road, and the price of that four-wheeled, fuel-injected liberty. There we contemplate, even as the dollars-and-cents numbers contort their way up in an abracadabra-like cardinal value march, how, simultaneously, we are drawing down both our disposable income and our stores of the non-renewable resource in that very same act of  filling up.  And, so, to witness joy and song and love in a setting that is the natural backdrop for none of those renewable resources is incongruity at its surprising best. I love how rock star Will transforms the nozzle ...

Today, Hockey Alberta's science, or its marketing instincts, finally caught up to common sense as the organization announced, come fall, bodychecking will be illegal in peewee hockey. A comprehensive study of concussion rates conducted by the University of Calgary was highlighted and celebrated as the impetus for the policy change. So, congratulations and thank you to the academics involved. But you also get the sense this wasn't just a triumph for post-secondary research. It was also driven by the need to retain young athletes in the sport and the need to keep lawsuits away. But whatever the real motivation, it's a good move. It's good to remove hitting in an age group characterized by wild discrepancies in skill and body size and ability to hurt a fellow hockey player. And it's a good move because it runs counter to the cruel streak in some hockey parents. (Trust me, you don't know who you are!) They'll counter today's move by saying things li...