Glenn Kubish

Three Things from Edmonton podcast, episode 120, is here for the listening. It is composed of three things I noticed I noticed made me feel happy and grateful. Give it a listen: Or give it a read, starting with: 1. Teamwork There was a play late in the Oilers series-winning game against the Los Angeles Kings that didn’t get enough attention from the professional sports pundits. It wasn’t a goal or pass or a hit or a forecheck or a fight. It wasn’t even a hockey-specific play. This is what happened. In front of his own net, Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner gave the puck away to the Kings’ Phillip Danault in a jaw-dropping piece of live, televised misfortune. Skinner’s stick had snapped. Danault scored. It was, as Harnarayan Singh on Hockey Night in Canada said: “Unbelievable!” The arena in Los Angeles was bonkers. Hockey fans knew that momentum had switched. Skinner, on one knee in his crease, looked as broken as his composite stick. What the cameras caught next ...

It’s the end of week as we knew it, amicis.    Here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude.   Listen to the Three Things podcast, episode 119:                                1. The Stoics   “But, you ask, if a wise man receives a blow, what shall he do?” the Stoic philosopher Seneca asked in an essay written almost 2,000 years ago. He answered himself: “What Cato did when he was struck in the face. He did not flare up, he did not avenge the wrong, he did not even forgive it, but he said that no wrong had been done.”* The “struck in the face” part feels very 2023. It’s a big part of the first round of the NHL playoffs, striking in the face is. I’m picturing the padded punches to the kisser in scrums after the whistle that the cameras love, the face washes as they are euphemistically called. This is where Stoicism has something to teach the players—and to teach ...

And that's a wrap on the week, friends!   Here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude. Three Things podcast, episode 118*:                         I bought a pizza from a vending machine last week. No, don’t report me to Sonia   Piano. It was for science. I wanted to know if the pizza was as good as, say, Tony’s on 111 Avenue. It was not. The crust, the sauce, the cheese, the haphazard pepperoni placement, the pepperoni, the fact I couldn’t get into the machine to watch the pizza being made—all of this made the encounter with the food machine unnerving. It was the sound, though, the lack of human sound that really got through. The machine pizza itself was disgorged like a tired bus passenger.   At Tony’s there was a hum. The servers wore black, the cooking staff wore white, together, as they moved back and forth at the kitchen counter, never colliding, they struck me as a kind of...

  Here are three things that left behind still discernible tracks of happiness and gratitude in the week that was.  Three Things, episode 117, for the listening and sharing.                               1. Scrabble   My friend Rob is the craftiest Scrabble player I have ever tiled against. A man of letters, he is. A player with supreme control of his vowels. A champion of the game who will soften you up with a flurry of two-letter, three-way jabs before putting you to the canvas with a seven-letter bingo, or two. I had never beaten him. That’s not quite true. Years ago, I did prevail. Alas, that was the game, we were soon after to learn, that was played with a missing tile. So the triumph remained asterisked. Rob is the kind of Scrabbler who would play ISKED onto ASTER,   with the K on a triple letter. You get the picture of what it’s like to face him. We met for lunch and a game at Buca...