Glenn Kubish

My boss doesn't read my blog, so I can comfortably reveal that I am never in a hurry to get to work. Okay, that's not quite true. Not the part about not reading my blog, because I don't think she does. And that's okay. I mean the part about not being in rush to get to work. I ride a bicycle. So, it's definitionally difficult to rush to work. If I really put my legs and lungs to the task and get lucky with the traffic lights and nothing strange like a cement truck happens to me, then, maybe, I can shave a couple of minutes off my commute time, tops. That's what I mean by not being in a rush to get to work. I do leave early to compensate, though. (That's in case she reads this one.) All of this is to say that instead of ringing my bell and requesting-forcing passage by the dog-walking couple in front of me this morning on the MacKinnon Ravine bridge, I hung back, pedalled slowly, looked east to the downtown skyline, west up the spruce-lined valley, ...

We mistake what for why—and how! And it's almost certainly easier to see that fact when the who doing the mistaking is you and not me. What am I talking about? I've been thinking about this little episode since it happened last Friday after work: "Can I still get out this door?" I asked the security guard. "Just quick?" Cordon blue It was just after 6 pm and that meant the security guard was installing a cordon to prevent people from using that side door to get out of the building. I was tired, I was carrying loaded bicycle panniers, I was questioning how I overlooked a potential danger at work, and all that emotional chop mean I didn't really want to walk around the building to get to the bike cage, which was just on the other side of the barred door. "Sorry, no," he said with a kind of slow-motion, toothless smile. I knew that was coming. I turned around, but then turned back and asked: "Why not? Why can't I just quick...

Bowie died yesterday. I, I wish I could swim like the dolphins can swim. I thought it peculiar that Bowie somehow had an actual age. David Bowie, 69, the news said. That struck me as very earthy. And wrong in a way that can't be fixed as far as we know. And then as quite understandable given Bowie's mediated and ageless presence. My friend David Blatt gets it right with this memory of growing up in Edmonton and learning about David Bowie. And trying to get a glimpse of yourself in the mirror after learning about David Bowie. Of all the automatic bleat written about Bowie's legacy, Blatt verbs the truth. Bowie thrilled and confused and slightly frightened us. Thanks, David. "Are you sad that Bowie died?" a friend at work asked "I am," I said. "Bowie news makes me sad,"  I wrote another friend on Twitter. "But want to live." Not sure where that "but want to live" came from. It wasn't there when I started wri...

 The NFL's AFC wildcard game last night was a yard sale. It deserves a limerick.                                                   The linebacker we know as Vontaze Sealed the win by intercepting the pass                                                             But then ran out the back                                                         Clutching a complete lack                                                   ...

There is a thing that happens, and it needs a word, and that nameless thing is what happens when two pieces of media intersect perfectly in an instant in the same person. Like this morning at 9:19 am. On my phone I was reading LeBron's explanation for why he hasn't spoken out about the Tamir Rice case. Rice is (I paused for a second over that "is" given that he is dead and so should the verb be "was?" But the record of people stay with us longer and in intriguingly real ways these days, so "is" it is ) the forever 12-year-old boy killed by Cleveland police who had thought his gun, a toy replica without the orange safety tip, was real. Earlier this week, a grand jury declined to indict the white police officer who pulled the trigger on the black youngster. The ESPN article explained that LeBron did make a public stand in the deaths of Treyvon Martin and Michael Brown. And in the case of Eric Garner, killed in a confrontation with New York pol...

Desire line in action The story of the humble desire line is well documented. First, it is written by people. Then others read it and write about it in a kind of text on text. The desire line, or desire path, is typically the easiest way to get where you are going. In the picture above, the desire line through the grass on the left of the city sidewalk makes itself seen as person after person chooses not to navigate the metal barrier bars installed by the municipal authority for reasons that person after person visibly defy into the erosion that is a desire line.  People are drawn to the rich concept of desire lines for many reasons. They purportedly reveal the folly of blind bureaucracy. They underline the supposed wisdom of the crowd. People who say design is everything like to write about desire lines. People who celebrate individual creativity like to talk about desire lines. And so do people who are drawn to figurative language. Indeed, desire lines are like those...

**** No spoilers. Youth preserved nicely. **** A long time ago I was in the seventh grade, and the talk in the school hallways of my corner of the galaxy was about a new movie, Star Wars. Looking back to those now far, far away days, I realize it was my first encounter with binge viewing. It wasn't good enough to go to Star Wars. You had to go to Star Wars 80 times, like Danny McGee. A long time ago This was because Star Wars was something completely different. It didn't matter that it was the oldest storyline in the universe. It was brand new for us. And it wasn't just better than Charlotte's Web and The Apple Dumpling Gang and The Wonderful World of Disney and whatever else we were watching. It obliterated them. There was no way back. And there was no way of knowing how many years until The Empire Strikes Back would arrive to blow our minds. The only option was to keep coaxing money out of our parents to keep watching Star Wars, keep depositing ourselves i...