Glenn Kubish

A couple of Toronto Star reporters are doing something cool online. Maybe they've been doing it for awhile. Maybe it's more than just the two of them doing it. Thank you. That's what they're doing. Saying thank you.  A couple of days ago I was following a thread from Brian Bradley that outlined the financial dire straits that restaurants in Toronto's Danforth find themselves in.  At the end of the tweets was this:  Then, today, I caught up on the horrifying story of the automobile violence that had transformed and, now, has erased the life of a woman named Jill Le Clair. From transportation reporter Ben Spurr, this, too, on Twitter:  If the messages of gratitude are coincidental, it's a happy coincidence. If it's a plan, it's a good plan.  For much of my working life I toiled in newsrooms in Edmonton. Sometimes reporters, yes, were very grateful to those who agreed to be interviewed. Just as often, especially at the broadsheet, they expected the thanks t...

This photo arrived from the void the other day.  Shelagh's friends Wendy and John have been going through pics and reclaimed this one from oblivion for us. It shows their two boys and our two boys at the piano. Or, at least, their two boys (who both grew up to be musicians) and one of our two boys at the piano. Michael is the odd boy out in this pic. Characteristically, he makes his feelings known. It's a gift to receive a photo that you never knew existed. What notes is Eamon playing? Look at how B. is looking at his brother's form. Alex is so happy. Michael is so not. And the candles like descending eighth notes. I find myself scouring a new old photo for whatever data it preserves from the burn of time. Their teeth. Their haircuts. Is Mikey holding some kind of stuffed animal? The photo arrives with another insight. We carry each other's beings. Growing older and losing friends to death is devastating. At 56, I am beginning to glimpse that ghastly truth. When friends...

It's the end of October, it's 3 degrees Celsius, it's raining, it's dark, the wind hits my wet face at about 15 km/h. A great night for riding a bicycle in Edmonton.  Let me explain myself.  Which is the point, actually. What I'm searching for is myself. For me, a bicycle has just been the most reliable interrogation device I have ever found. I keep running my questions through it.  I am just back from a 50-minute pedal from the north side. My tan Levi's went from pencil points of rain to splotches to tiny islands of dry fabric. The new asphalt shone oily. The green and red traffic lights projected lightsabers. Car tires sloshed. My nose leaked. I wasn't exactly warm. I felt alive.  Hannah Arendt wasn't talking about riding a bicycle, I get it. But, still:  Vitality and liveliness can be conserved only to the extent that men are willing to take the burden, the toil and trouble of life, upon themselves, Arendt wrote in The Human Condition.  The unexpecte...

Knowing the mountains that were ahead of me, I brought Dylan along that summer in the Rockies. Empire Burlesque was out, with a song that, for me, is still in my top 10 Dylans: Tight Connection To My Heart.  It's a question song. The singer repeatedly and insistently and hopelessly asks a question. The question mark is Dylan's punctuation mark. How does it feel to be on your own? How many roads must a man walk down? But with truth so far off, what good would it do? Can you tell me where we're headin', Lincoln County Road or Armageddon? You can't look at much, can you man? Where are you tonight, Sweet Marie? Can you please crawl out your window? O, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Wait a minute boys, you know who I am? To that list, the singer in Tight Connection asks: Has anybody seen my love? When Dylan asks a question, I'm in. Tight Connection has more than that vital question, though. It's got great lyrics, echoes of Bogart and Gary Cooper and Hoagy...

Here's Hannah Arendt finding words for my experience of riding a bicycle. Arendt is talking about air travel, but the insight transfers nicely enough:  "[A]ny decrease of terrestrial distance can be won only at the price of putting a decisive distance between man and earth, of alienating man from his immediate earthly surroundings." I tried an Arendtian experiment this afternoon, recording my trip, first on bike, then in car, along our front street and down 91 Avenue toward Andy's IGA. It's a windy day today. The wind brings back Heidegger's insight that wind is always wind-in-the-trees, which, as far as it has been given to me to understand, means that existence is mediated for human beings. We don't get it pure. It's a quick jump from Heidegger to John Prine who knows about the wind, too. For Prine, it's not just the wind, either. Many years later I found myself talking to this girl Who was standing there with her back turned to Lake Marie The w...

Fitz is a fan of the obits, and, so, it was Fitz who pointed out the death notice of the Saskatoon woman named Cathy Watts (née Drabble), September 3, 1948 - September 8, 2020, that was written by the deceased woman herself. If you are reading this, it began, I'm no longer here. Fantastic was a good word for Fitz to use. It captured the eerie sense of being reached from another dimension. For an instant, Cathy Watts's first-person obit felt like an electrically charged communication with someone beyond.  In her auto-bit, Cathy Watts remembered very physical things about her life left behind. The water and rocks of lakes in northern Saskatchewan. The feeling of writing in a notebook. Eating a donut. Quilting. Singing. And other bodily stuff, too. Hugging grandchildren. Swimming nude. Voting. Riding a bicycle.  Riding a bicycle was the joy of joys for Cathy Watts.  "Most of all I was passionately in love with cycling," she wrote. "The very first time I got on a bik...

A few things hit home today. The first four were sculptures by Slavo Cech.  Today was Slavo's #ArtHuntYEG. At 10:00 am, 12 noon, 2:00 pm and 4:00 pm, the artist placed a sculpture in a public place, shared a pic on social media with a written clue and waited while fans tried to figure out where it was.  The first one to get there got the artwork. The first sculpture—they're worth about $500 each, btw—was at the old End of the World lookout down from Saskatchewan Drive. It's now called Keillor Point. Much safer sounding. Still a killer view. Slavo dropped the next one at  ᐄᓃᐤ (ÎNÎW) River Lot 11∞ Indigenous Art Park. I remember being at the park the day it opened. Speeches were made. A ribbon was cut. It snowed. Umbrellas popped open.  Slavo placed the third on the site of the former Provincial Museum in Glenora.  And the fourth showed up at a statue at the University of Alberta. Putting it mildly, the sculpture winners were overjoyed to take a piece of Slavo hom...