Glenn Kubish

Trees give back. Including giving up the wood to build the boxes that protect the trees from construction sites composed of wood where people who photograph but do not photosynthesize and who find it unbearable to live without trees will live. Trees have also gifted me the pencil in my right hand and the paper notebook that first accepted the thoughts that branched from heart to hand.

Nothing is wrong here. The boy lying in the middle of Alberta Avenue is making a snow angel on the asphalt. Why wouldn't he? There is snow. He is a child. His parents are busy with the other little ones. There is no danger. He got back up the second time his father called. The avenue is closed for the Deep Freeze: A Byzantine Winter Festival. The celebration is the work of wonderful people in the community who work all year to program two days of winter spectacle for the rest of us. Including the young boy whose view of the Alberta Avenue sky must have been marvelous. The sight brought to mind the start of a paragraph from a book I have on the go. It's called The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate. It's written by Peter Wohlleben. The passage I am remembering deals with dead trees. Book taking root Here is the start of the paragraph that I wouldn't do a good enough job trying to paraphrase. The importance of trees for stream

Scarlatti's Sonata in C came through the quite beige wall of a downtown condo this afternoon. I stood and listened and read the words on the fire alarm on the wall. (I have cranked the audio. There is too much humming from the hallway machinery, but you can kinda make it out.): I knew it was Scarlatti's Sonata in C because the pianist alone in the room on the other side of the wall had played it for us up close minutes before. And explained how remarkable it was that isolated Scarlatti, court composer in Spain, had produced his brilliant music quite apart from the main currents and personalities of European classical music.  The pianist's name is Lillian. We had met her as she was walking to the piano room in the condo building. Shelagh said her hair, longer on one side, looked great. We laughed that it was a hairstyle last fashionable in the 80s—and now again in Lillian's 80s. Lillian was on her way to practise and was carrying scores by Mozart, Cho

I collect sentences. Here are four more from the forest of pages read. The trucks filed by against the background of the white church in a long string like the days of a man's life, and it seemed as though it would never end.  - Chekhov, A Misfortune The trucks filing by are rail cars moving across the Russian landscape while Ilyin begs Sofya to accept his love. Without a new sentence, Chekhov artfully links the words that describe the physical scene ( The trucks filed by against the background of the white church in a long string...)  to the words that describe the sweet, bewildering feeling of being there to watch a passing train pull a new emptiness into view ( ...the days of a man's life, and it seemed as though it would never end. ) , counting on a simple coupling word ( like ) to do its work, and hold. "It's as if the Venetian paintings were made to frighten us," said my Enishte later. "And it isn't enough that we be in awe of the

Brian Fallon has proven that everything can be done in about 25 seconds. Take this in: Or: Brian Fallon has proven everything can be done in 25 seconds as long as you had prepared for a long time. Or: Prepared truly. I will try to remember the lesson of these 25 seconds in 2018.