Glenn Kubish

Many Edmontonians complain about the meanness of our city, because we are convinced that we are born for a brief span of summer, and because that spell of the fair season that has been given to us rushes by so swiftly and rapidly that with very few exceptions it ceases for many of us just when we are getting ready for it. Seneca Okay, yes, that's more Seneca from  On The Shortness of Life re-keyed for life in Edmonton around this time of year than it is me, but when (your imagination is) in Rome, blog as the Romans do. Seneca is good to read at this time of year. Actually, Seneca should be required reading at this time of year, this dripping time of year. September in Edmonton drips leaves and it drips regret. In small talk we drip things like: "Do you remember how it used to stay light until 11 and now it's so dark now? Kinda depressing." And: "It is so cold in the morning these days. I mean, it was two degrees when I got up! Brutal." And...

Here are three new words now ready to be sent into the world! improvidence  noun          The sense of the protective care of God, nature, or alcohol as a spiritual power during a live comedy performance in which the technique of making up the scene and dialogue on the spot is employed. In this pic from the Sherwood Park News, comedians Donovan Workun, Mark Meer,  and Graham Neil  surrender to the embrace of improvidence litternature  noun         Written works, especially those of stylized nature and of superior and enduring artistic merit, or not, describing the fast-food detritus thrown from passing vehicles in national parks by idiots willing to leave crap in their bodies but not the crap it comes in in their cars and trucks. This tweet is an example of litternature replyrony  noun           The expression of one's stated meaning in exhorting colleagues to ...

There are a host of fragile things in this world of dirt and danger, and one of them is a pink balloon in a puddle. I was quite taken by this balloon. And then it by me.

The many formulations for what makes for a compelling story all, by routes straight or serpentine, boil down to something this: "Man starts power tool on first try" is just not as good as "Man struggles  to start power tool." Here, in video from my bicycle commute to work, is why I'm thinking about power tools and stories tonight. So, a few provisional conclusions: 1. Lindi Ortega can sing in my head on the way to work anytime. 2. If that first pull of the cord, or even the second, had brought the machine to life, who cares? I wouldn't have been late to work hanging around wondering what would happen next if it was simply a case of "thing works as it's supposed to." 3. The incongruity of "man pulls cord to start machine, machine responds with nothing" suggests all kinds of  next scenes, including the possibility of violence, and that unknownness, that cloak around what will happens next makes it difficult bordering on i...

"Nice jacket!" grey-bearded, hard-hatted Construction Worker Elder hooted into the wake of air left by the woman who had just about finished flowing by on Rice Howard Way. His verbal spasm was delivered with the stress on jacket,  and was aimed not as much at the woman (she was pretty much out of hearing range) as at sunglassed, hard-hatted Construction Worker Younger,  who was standing next to him in line at the Fat Franks gourmet hotdog cart. Heavy lifting His remark was in reply to Younger's question. "What do you say now?" he had asked his wizened workmate. "We can't even say much anymore!" By this curious lament (his stresses were on now and anymore) Younger was presumably testifying to the uncomfortable presence inside him of some kind of cultural governor, some piece of internal argument that inhibited what came naturally to a construction worker set a-sizzle by the presence of downtown beauty. Things like, and worse than…well...

The rabbi had requested that the clump of mourners stretch out from the graveside and form two parallel lines, and they did, and they faced each other, this somber, believing band. Inside the framed path moved the dead woman's family, her brother, husband, her sons and daughters-in-law, the grandchildren, and they were looking down and up and in. Behind them was a mound of fresh earth that emitted a kind of gasp with each gouge of the spade. This was the scene at the Jewish Cemetery, and it was elemental and overpowering. It was the scene that rose up two days later as I pedalled my bicycle up and down the highway pavement, alongside golden fields west of the city, alone. I stopped and the silence was everywhere, and I looked at the wheat, and looked, and thought that the path mowed through it had left a stubble of grief. Near Calmar

Stamped on me When I was young, being no stranger to feeling comfortable alone, I collected stamps. Before I first crawled through the wardrobe behind the Pevensie children, my windows into worlds beyond and ages ago were stamps. Philately, it was called. What language was that? For whatever reason, my imagination was fired by U.S. Civil War postage. And Lincoln. And Whitman. And civil rights themes. And authors. My childhood stamp album has survived the waves of decluttering that routinely roll through our bungalow and break into the dump, and it sits in a box in the garage, preserved, protected, waiting.  I still pause to look at new stamps when I'm at the post office, but an Edmonton Eskimos stamp or an Edmonton Oilers stamp doesn't quite carry the thrill of 4-cent Lincoln words. I hope there are still kids who collect stamps and dream of cold camps in Antietam (without yet knowing how to pronounce Antietam) when rain falls outside. But, for me, these are post-postage ...