Author: Andy Smallman

Football fans worldwide may have thought the World Cup ended in July. Not true, I found out today. Strolling through Nantes this afternoon I came across the actual final match, and it wasn’t country vs country. It was boys vs girls. Reviewing this picture you may realize that the boys were outnumbered and, well, technically you’d be correct. But I graciously stepped in to play and then partnered with my teammate to, as members of the Shaw family back in Seattle know so well, kick some girl backsides.

I really don’t know what the two girls in the center of the photo have to smile about, other than the fact the match was over and within minutes they knew they’d be cooling off in a nearby pool. I think the expressions on the faces of the players on either end, who just happen to be siblings, better reflect the outcome of the game.

It may interest you to know that this match took place on a field in the infield of the Nantes racetrack. Your ace photographer was able to snap the official match photo with the racetrack grandstand in the background. Clearly, the large crowd that had turned out to witness this match had made a quick exit. Given the hurt the boys put on the girls, I have a hunch many spectators had exited early.

I went on this very long walk by myself this afternoon. I started at home and walked to the big grocery store at the end of our local tram line, stopping along the way to do some reading and thought-gathering. I picked up a few things at the store and then decided to walk back a different route, one I hadn’t tried before. I got a little bit lost but never to the point of not knowing which direction I needed to go. The walk provided me one of those moments (and a long one at that) I’ve written about before, how not having several unfinished projects waiting for me has allowed me to slow down and be mindful. A good lesson for when I again have several projects needing my attention.

During the walk back, the part when I wasn’t quite sure where I was, I encountered a dirt trail and decided to take it to see where it came out. Along the trail I found this overgrown apple tree with dozens of rotting apples on the ground around it. Given that, I decided it would be acceptable for me to pluck a couple of ripe ones from the tree itself and did so. I then continued along the path, now accompanied by the pleasant crunch of biting into a fresh apple. Needless to say, it was an ideal moment.

In other news of the day, Ella & Melinda had tea with a classmate of Ella’s named Aude and her mother, the two having been invited to their house. This was a great thing because now Ella is familiar with a girl her age in her school. Melinda and Ella reported that Aude and family are extremely nice and that they have even put in a request at school for Aude and Ella to be in the same class. Chloe had her first paid babysitting job and has one lined up with same girl for each of the next two Wednesdays. And I had a Skype conversation with a representative from the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, the likely result of which will be me doing some partnership work with them.

Oh, this morning I watched the pilot episode of “Get Smart.” The episode began with Max getting a phone call in the middle of a live theatre performance. It made me laugh out loud, given how common it is for people to get personal phone calls in public places these days. But the episode is from 1965 and the call was on his shoe phone…

And, no, I’m not embarrassed. Really.

At the risk of embarrassing myself… Wait, no, I’m not really concerned about that. Let me start over. At the risk of embarrassing my family, I submit today’s post. Today when the mail arrived I was as giddy as a kid on Christmas morning. A DVI cable came that I had ordered from Amazon.com UK that I hoped would allow me to connect my laptop to the large screen TV in our house. I had done extensive Internet research to find the cable I thought I would need, and searched for it at several shops in Nantes without luck. Anyway, like I said, it arrived today.

Before saying more, I have to acknowledge this “disease” I have. I love old American TV shows, especially those from my youth. And before leaving for France, I literally spent hours and hours over several months digitizing DVDs and storing them on an external hard drive with the hope I could hook my laptop to the TV here and watch them. I even brought along the cable we use with our TV at home, just in case it would work (no luck, obviously), taking up valuable suitcase weight-space that could have been used for clothes.

As I hope you can see from the photo, the cable worked (!) and at approximately 11am this morning I took a break from reviewing the exciting onslaught of emails I am receiving about the kindness class offerings to watch the program “Room 222.” In this episode, Jason thinks the school guidance counselor is romantically interested in him and gives her a present. What a misunderstanding! Thank goodness Mr Dixon is there to help clean up the mess.

Really, I’m not embarrassed.

After a long weekend of soccer games and jazz festivals, I fell a little bit behind on one of my sabbatical projects, that of expanding on and writing about the online kindness classes I’ve facilitated since PSCS began in 1994. I’ve designed three such classes that I’m facilitating from France this fall, and spent much of the day today working to promote them. You can learn about each of the classes, and even sign up to participate if you’d like to, at their respective class sites:
Practice of Kindness
Kindness Blessings
Kindness Theme of the Week

Melinda & I also took time to accompany Chloe to the University of Nantes where she is hoping to enroll in a French class. We had our trusty translator Romain with us, thank goodness. For now, Chloe is on a waiting list to get in.

Today’s photo is actually a couple of weeks old. I’ve keep it in a queue of my favorite French photos and decided to unveil it today. It’s a close-up of Ella with Melinda being reflected in Ella’s sunglasses. We were all being a little silly at the time and I rushed in close to Ella and quickly snapped the picture, not sure what would come out. Some of my best pictures are taken this way….

The Les Rendez-vous de l’Erde, the jazz musical festival, in Nantes is quite the party. The last weekend in August the city of Nantes throws a huge party that pretty much occupies all of what is called Centre-Ville (the town center). Streets are closed and people come from miles away. There is no cost for any of the performances and you just walk from stage to stage. It’s like Folk Life and Bumbershoot in Seattle, but even bigger. The party is the last big bash of the summer before what is called La rentrée, the big return to school from summer break for the kids and the big return to work from the August vacations for the adults.

Today’s photo is from our trip to the festival last night. We were crossing the river and I was taken by the incredible spectacle. I asked Ella to pose by the side of the bridge and was delighted when Chloe agreed to join her. You can see some of the people packed along the water’s edge but that’s just a fraction of how many were there. On the subject of the music, our favorite last night was China Moses, the daughter of Dee Dee Bridgewater and who sang classics like “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby” and “Cry Me a River.” At one point Melinda & I looked at each other and wished PSCS staff member Liana Green was with us.

Earlier today we went back and were quite taken by “One Leg” Toad, so much so that I bought their CD and am listening to it as I type this up. And Melinda & I are heading back later tonight to meet up with Laurent & Frédérique and to be part of the fun on closing night.

After having had such a fun time last night and having been out a bit late, Melinda and I had a quiet Saturday morning today. We had an errand to run related to finally getting Ella’s cell phone. On that subject, it has taken us since July 10 to get the local provider, Orange, to allow us to have four phones, and that is really thanks to the kind young man, Saad, the same man who helped us way back in July, going to bat for us yesterday afternoon. Anyway, we now have the four phones and this morning Melinda and I went back to the store to set it up so the four of us can have unlimited calls between them.

We arrived a little early so sat down for a pastry and morning drink at a nearby café. Melinda had a pain au raisin (pictured) with a grand café and I had something called a chausson pomme with a chocolat chaud. The weather was picture perfect and the food delightful, giving us one of those “pinch-me” moments. This is the kind of morning we envisioned having when we imagined living in France.

I’m posting early today as we leave soon to head into town to meet up with Laurent & Frédérique and Isabel & Luc (from Pornichet) for Les Rendez-vous de l’Erde, a jazz festival taking place on and along the river in Nantes this weekend. Now that should be fun!

I’m posting later than I normally do because I wanted to wait until we got home tonight from the soccer game we attended. Yesterday, Laurent emailed me to ask if we’d like to go see FC Nantes play Vannes OC tonight. Of course we did! When I asked the girls if they wanted to go, Chloe answered very quickly with an emphatic yes. This was on our Top 5 list of things to do in Nantes. And given the result, FC Nantes may want us to return. They won 2-0.

The victory is significant in that the team hasn’t played very well so far this year. If I understood Laurent correctly, this was their third game at home and the first in which they scored. And we got a great view of the first goal. We were sitting just behind the net and the goal came off of a well-orchestrated corner kick. I must also compliment Romain who correctly predicted the outcome as we were walking into the stadium.

Speaking of the stadium, it seats upwards of 45,000 but probably had 10-15,000 in attendance, a reflection of the team’s recent performance. Still, we had an absolute blast and intend to return. Today’s photo shows Chloe & Ella from behind and our unobstructed view of the game.

As Chloe has gotten older I have been startled to see how much she looks like Melinda. I think this is a very good thing; in fact, it’s a great thing, a tribute to them both. But it is surprising and disconcerting to think that the person walking down the stairs in your peripheral vision is your wife when it is really your daughter.

The resemblance goes beyond the physical, too. Sometimes the two give me the same look, or Chloe will make a gesture or movement that, to me, belongs to Melinda. So I really didn’t find it all that surprising when the three of us went exploring the other day and I got this picture. We were sitting in a café along the riverfront in Nantes (okay, I’m not in the picture but that is my chair between them). I got up to take a closer look of both the river and some cool public art. I turned around to find the two sitting like this and quickly snapped the picture.

They don’t even know I took it…

When I was a little boy my mother instilled in me a love for libraries and, perhaps inadvertently, an ongoing secret crush on librarians. I mean if there are such things as angels on earth I think they disguise themselves as librarians. Children’s librarians are especially holy.

So it goes to follow that I would fall for the librarians at the nearby branch of the Nantes Library System. The woman on the left is named Elodie. She is the person who assisted Melinda and me with getting cards for the family. And the woman on the right is named Céline. Céline not only speaks English, she seems to instinctively recognize my desire to practice French so doesn’t speak English with me unless I ask. Both women are so quick to greet me each time I visit the library that I always feel welcomed and appreciated. I asked if they’d be willing to pose for a picture and got this shot. Don’t tell them but I’m going to try to recruit them to participate in one of the upcoming kindness classes.

Returning to the origin of my crushes, I remember the librarian at Hartman Elementary School in Omaha, Nebraska helping me check out my first book. I was probably in first grade. The book was called “Rough Ice” and was about hockey. When I read it, I pronounced the word “rough” as “rugged” and thought the book was named “Rugged Ice” for the longest time. It was one of those books that I checked out again and again, the librarian always being so kind, understanding and helpful…

At first it might not make sense but today I felt like a little boy being sent off to the barbershop by his mother on a Saturday with enough money for a haircut and bottle of pop. Either I’d been dreaming about being Opie in an Andy Griffith episode, or something about Nantes is making me feel nostalgic. It’s not that I remember my mom ever sending me off to get my haircut like that.

It might have been that I left on foot late this morning to the salon de coiffure, walking on picturesque side streets under a beautiful blue sky, slight breeze and sun. I could picture Opie riding up beside me on his bike and saying hey. There’s something about these walks I take that contribute to me feeling relaxed. They’re quiet and peaceful, yes. But I think the biggest part of it is that I don’t have 25 things waiting to get done, all making me feel like I need to hurry, hurry, hurry. And that’s where I think the nostalgic thing is really kicking in. I’m feeling like a kid on summer vacation, a feeling I haven’t had since, well, I was a kid.

The monsieur who cut my hair was extremely friendly and nice. He didn’t speak any English to me, other than the word “ok,” which I think can actually qualify as both an English and a French word. He did a great job with my hair, completing the job with a flair involving hair gel that made me appreciate having short hair as much for it looking good as it being so easy to maintain.