Glenn Kubish

It's a lottery win to get through crosswalks safely in Edmonton. Today's life-and-death game features a lit pedestrian walk light and two automobile drivers who have to figure out what a red light means in real time.  Date : Edmonton, August 22, 2016 Encounter:  I have pushed the crosswalk light on 135 St that stops traffic east and west along 102 Ave. The little lit man tells me I have the right of way. But a big man behind a revving engine tells me I should think twice about stepping out.  Your VisionZero question : Which automobile driver in the picture above obeys the traffic laws?  As always, no wagering please. Here is your answer: One more VisionZero question : Which insurance company has enough risk appetite to cover that driver?  Okay, one more : How do VisionZero ads on the back of buses stop this driver? Thanks for playing along.

The crosswalk on 103 Ave at 124 St is aptly named. Cross yourself. Then walk.  It can be a religious experience to get to the other side. Date : Edmonton, August 17, 2016 Encounter:  I have pushed the crosswalk light, looked up to confirm the overhead lights are indeed flashing, and then started across the street, having played the VisionZero Quiz here many times before, tentatively.  Your VisionZero question:  How many motorists moving north to south (right to left in the video frame) proceed obliviously through the crosswalk?  As always, no wagering please. Here is your answer: Thanks, as always, for playing along. Today's adventure has suggested a simple, foolproof nine-step process to get across this weird intersection safely. The steps, in the pic below, are: 1. Push crosswalk button 2. Wait, look both ways 3. Proceed cautiously 4. Stop to allow vehicle through 5. Proceed cautiously 6. Stop for another vehicle 7. Proceed cautiously 8. Give t...

Road open! ←  What's with this sign?! What story does it tell? What story does it smuggle in? Trump and his fellow travellers in communication would say there can be no other interpretation. The sign means what it means, that cars and trucks are not allowed on the road. A motorist knows not to proceed. A pedestrian knows it's safe to proceed. End of story. This morning, I saw it different. The suddenly-curious sign sits at the entrance to the Fringe Festival on 83 Ave and 104 St. Edmonton's Fringe is a wild proof of creative life in the margin. Not content to cede the theatre to self-appointed gatekeepers of high culture, Fringe fans celebrate plays and music that grow out of the ground in these parts. For ten days every August, Old Strathcona and its schools, churches, telephone museum, theatres, jazz joints, community halls, studios and streets host the drama and comedy and improv of real-life theatre.  Make a plan to go and walk around until you find a gem. ...

While city leaders invite bicycle riders to sedate themselves by being part of the conversation about a safer future, basic laws that protect citizens on bicycles are routinely ignored. Please excuse me if I am more worried about pedalling on 102 Ave right now, with motorists right now, than imagining what autopia might look like. During afternoon rush hour, motorists in the curb lane of 102 Ave must turn onto 105 St, leaving the lane ahead safely free for other citizens, including those on bicycles. Please enforce the laws on 102 Ave. That is the minimum that Vision Zero should mean.

I was in deep trouble as a political philosophy undergrad when Book VII of The Republic hit me, and that was all she wrote. The allegory of the cave happens in Book VII. That's Socrates's treatment of the eternal human condition. It's a sad story. Only the elite whose souls somehow emerge into the light of reality see things as they are. The rest of us are kept below in the theatre, our necks chained, a fire burning behind, our vision trained ahead to a wall on which dances shadow puppets we mistake for real objects.  Some in our Thursday night Plato seminar used the allegory to free themselves and climb into careers as political science professors. Me, I loved the sentences. They are in it from childhood with their legs and necks in bonds so that they are fixed, seeing only in front of them, unable because of the bond to turn their heads all the way around. Their light is from a fire burning far above and behind them. Between the fire and the prisoners there is...

We've all seen this video. It shows a young Portuguese fan consoling a grown French fan after Les Bleus lost the Euro 2016 championship, leaving their followers weeping and alone. The boy is young enough to still react with a touch to suffering the moment he comes across it. The man is old enough to gently receive this gift, calculating his own pain to be suddenly less real than the imagined pain of a boy left bewildered had his side lost. On one hand there is the gift of a gesture; on the other, the effacing gentleness of a gift received. And in the hand of the person holding the video camera is the touch of one who notices from slightly above a scene worth saving, holding it apart from the criss-cross flow below of losers going one way and winners going another.

I almost missed everything again. This happens to me at airports. I expelled myself inch by inch down the aisle of the small plane and emerged onto its railed stairway to see a tarmac worker below waving two wands. In baton semaphore, he ordered the string of passengers to walk along a path marked by thick white paint and into a covered passageway. This is what everyone did. This is what outlines do. Under the canopy, I was moved up a ramp, compelled to follow the flow of shuffling feet and bumping suitcase wheels ahead. We all turned switchback-style up toward the next turn. And then the thunder of an airplane gathering its power and departing the earth shook the enclosure. Through a crack in the wall I saw the Southwest Airlines jet as it pointed into the sky. Blue and red and yellow. I almost missed that I was someplace else.