Glenn Kubish

Aaron Brown wasn't sure who was in his ear. "We have, um, one of our producers on the phone, and I didn't get the name, so, why don't we just go ahead," said Brown as he anchored live coverage of the World Trade Center attacks. "Are you there?" Brown's ear had in it what in the television news game is called an IFB. IFB stands for interruptible foldback. It's a kind of earpiece that delivers a one-way audio feed into the head of the TV reporter. It is a medium used to deliver cues and information to the reporter from the TV control room. If you've ever seen a live reporter touch or motion to her or his ear to get a better handle on the incoming information, you have seen an IFB at work. That second, Brown, as one of the Twin Towers still stood behind him like giant chimney emitting smoke from hell, was in silent contact via IFB with the CNN control room. Someone, the director, a producer, maybe, was telling him that another produ...

I am thinking more about pylons these days. I knew the word first as slang, a demeaning term applied to someone without natural athletic ability on skates. Used this way on the typical hockey bench: "Did you see him blow past the defenceman? What a $%&# pylon that guy is! Hahhahaha, moron. Throw me the water." Like that. If someone calls you a pylon, they are not complimenting you on your strength or solidity or reliability of character. They are not likening you to a bridge pylon or to an electricity line pylon or to any other huge piece of technology that can be counted on to just stand there and mutely do its work of support. No, if you're called a pylon, it's because someone has decided that you exhibit the dumb part of the pylon's being. Like the way Lemieux reduced Chambers to a piece of material in 1991. Nobody wants to be the pylon. Except, as John Milton said in a different context, those who only stand and wait also serve. Mil...

On December 30, 1981, Wayne Gretzky scored five goals against the Philadelphia Flyers, setting a record for the fewest games (39) needed to reach the 50-goal mark in the NHL. It is a record that will stand longer than the Northlands Coliseum that played host to the historic night in Edmonton. It's easy to re-live the game highlights. Search Google. In 0.37 seconds 1,140,000 results are returned, including video of the four goals Gretzky scored against Flyers goalie Pete Peeters, making him look more like a masked mannequin between the pipes than an elite netminder of the time. And then the fifth goal as Gretzky carries the puck up the ice, cuts to his left just before the opposing blue line and toys with defender Bill Barber for an extra second, making the Flyers star dive in futility to stop the empty net goal. Peeters on the bench, Barber on his face, fans on their feet, Gretzky in the record book. It's all easy to find and re-live. After the game, Gretzky sat...

Here are some shards left behind after listening to Murder Most Foul. It's written in couplets. Like Chaucer, Pope, Wordsworth and other epic poets who wrote to be spoken out loud and remembered. Stack up the bricks, pour the cement Don't say Dallas don't love you, Mr. President  Another fave: Air Force One comin' in through the gate Johnson sworn in at 2:38 And so on and on across 82 couplets in a 17-minute meditation on assassination, art and America. The rhythm is monotonous. Like the ocean delivering its mystery in waves from the deep is monotonous. The effect is not just to return the listener to Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, but also to remove the Kennedy assassination from the grip of the Boomers and bequeath it to the ages. Maybe the song is a conversation between Dylan and Shakespeare, and we get to listen in on it? The song title is from Hamlet. The king killed in line 17 of the song reminds the listener of Claudius. The play...

Hello, doctor, our best friend You've come to talk with us again To share your mission for our safekeeping In an Internet public health meeting Your prescription that gets planted in our brains Must remain To confound the COVID virus We clean our hands, we scrub our phones In it together, though alone Every afternoon at 3:30 We watch you show us coolly and calmly A way ahead that's lit by the flash of scientific light Facts in black and white To confound the COVID virus  In a happy dream I saw Groups of 15, but no more People walking while they're distancing People hearing 'cause they're home working People walking dogs, people jogging up the stairs Sixfeetapart, and aware Of how best to disturb the COVID virus The fools are those who will not know Who bellow "up is down" and "yes is no" The schools are now closed but we learn from you How logic can still be our best guide through How reasoned words have the powe...

It's 3:03 a.m. Just like that, sleep has thrown me up on the shore. My legs are planks. My eyes feel stretched over my temples. The curtains let in slivers of streetlight. With the earbuds cord in my right hand, I fish for the iPhone in the comforter depths. There it is. And now the blur. I hit the eighth note icon and find the song. Music fills my empty concert hall skull. The song is As The Moon Starts To Rise by The Milk Carton Kids. It's been the song of the pandemic for me. It has all the gifts a beautiful song bestows. Consoling harmonies. The shining sound of guitar strings. Snapshots of happy days past shared by, I think, a parent and a child. The sad passage of time. The moon. The stars. A telescope. Parting. Love. Death. Connection. An unanswered question. A twist ending. And place names that are thrilling in the way place names are thrilling when, as a tourist in a car below, you see them in gigantic font on highway signs above, when everything, even a highw...

My inbox immunity is low. Still, the message from the Winspear Centre hit home. Soon after Alberta Health Services recommended on Thursday that large gatherings of more than 250 people be cancelled, the Winspear scratched its March concerts. Helping to flatten the curve means instruments down. "The health and well-being of our patrons, staff and musicians are of the utmost importance," the email said. So, for now, the music dies. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that live orchestral music should be maintained in a pandemic. I'm just saying I remember what C.S. Lewis wrote in 1948 in a piece called On Living in an Atomic Age. This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let the bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our fr...