Glenn Kubish

It’s approximately the end of the week as we knew it, friends. Here are three things from my daily life that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude. I’m confident that two of them actually happened as described. Episode 142:                            1. Wedding  The musician Craig Cardiff from Ottawa was on stage right in front of us at Aimée and Steve’s wedding reception upstairs at Kaffa in Garneau. When musicians get married, things are cranked up a few notches. The equipment itself, the cables and the speakers, are high calibre. There is a sound board at the back of the room. There is a sound technician running levels so that not once is there any feedback. And there is live performance. Cardiff sang four or five tunes, including a cover of the Dawes song, A Little Bit of Everything.   I couldn’t believe it. It’s one of our faves. We saw Dawes in 2014 at the Starlite Room downtown by the old Chic...

Ciao, ecco tre cose della mia piccola vita che questa settimana hanno lasciato tracce di felicità e gratitudine, or something like that. Here's Three Things from Edmonton, episode 141:                                   1. Italy      Shelagh is off to Italy soon for a couple of weeks. It will be a belated milestone birthday vacation celebration with her friend Sheryl. I’m staying home to keep an eye on the tomatoes. If it frosts, someone has to cover the plants. Italy as a holiday destination makes deep sense for Shelagh. She took night-class Italian lessons a decade ago at Ainlay. Her accent is a-pretty good. She studied the literature and the architecture of the country as an undergrad. She spoke real Latin, actually. She made me watch Don’t Look Now with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. She shops at Spinelli’s in Little Italy. She knows Moonstruck by heart. A favourite exchang...

If I had a happiness and gratitude sonar, these would be the three pings from last week.   Three Things, episode 140:                               1. Experts   Before social media and the democratization of knowledge made everyone an expert, there was a class of people called, well, for lack of a better term, experts. Newspaper editors. Doctors. Politicians. University professors. Civil servants.   It wasn’t necessarily the best of times. Many other voices weren’t heard, lots of experience was somehow ruled to be of no value.   I worked in newspapers as the hierarchy of knowledge came crashing down on some bewildered gatekeepers who I can still see walking out through the debris of fallen pillars as the influencers sashayed in. Those technocrats are not the experts I want back, but I do miss some experts. Or, at least, one specific category of expert. I miss the disc jockey. I still pref...

Here are three things that moved the needle of happiness and gratitude in the week that was. Three Things from Edmonton, episode 139:                               1. Sounds of summer   When the snow comes and the land in this part of the country sounds its long steady note of winter, other sounds will drift out of range for a time. That’s why I ignored the voice inside me that said get up and go do something productive, and, instead, stayed where I was, sitting in a chair in the backyard, listening to rain falling down onto the gazebo roof overhead.   When the snow comes and the side streets and back roads are shined up like glass, access to other sounds will lie buried for a time. To prepare, I looked down and listened to my bike tires bite into a gravel road at the University Farm as I pedalled to pick up a dozen fresh eggs. Not a bite as much as a sizzle, to hear it. When the snow forces bare feet b...