Category: Friends

France 2017 (From the Archives)

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

I often use this blog as a memory jog and one of my favorite “jogs” is to review Melinda’s and my trips to France. Melinda left PSCS in June of 2017 and that summer we took what we intended to be our annual trip to France

The idea of an annual trip to France got blown up in 2018, the year I left PSCS. Instead, we moved to the Bay Area and stayed there until 2019. We came back to Seattle and bought a little fixer-upper house. But we really hadn’t made any money over those 12 months. And living on savings and then buying a house that needed a LOT of work, well, annual trips to France were out. Besides, in 2020 there was a little thing called a global pandemic…

Still, all was quite innocent during the summer of 2017 and Melinda & I made our annual trip to France. This trip included some extended time in Amsterdam with Christine & Bérnard, celebrating Bérnard’s parents’ 60th anniversary in Normandy, and lots of fun times with Laurent & Frédérique. One downside was that my beloved tram line in Nantes, Line 2, was closed in our old neighborhood. To help me cope, Bérnard took me dumpster diving to find some Line 2 souvenirs to bring home.

To easily see all the posts from 2017 in reverse order, click this link.

“Don’t Turn Your Head,” a Song About “Goodbye Moments” At the End of a Date

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

I’m fairly convinced that my family and friends think I’ve gone off the deep end with the amount of time I’m spending on Suno, the AI-music generator. I know I keep saying it but it’s so true. Doing this really brings me a lot of joy.

I’m spending the most time adapting my Tao of Kindness poems into pop songs. As a refresher, over 81 consecutive weeks beginning in 2018, I adapted the 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching into kindness-themed poems. After discovering Suno in March, I had the idea to take those 81 kindness poems and make them into pop songs. So far, I’ve completed 48 of them, all of which you can find on Bandcamp.

Here I am, 1985, age 22.
But I’m just as enamored with taking song lyrics I’ve written over the years and using Suno to make them into full-blown songs. About the lyrics, I wrote most of them in the 1980’s, long before getting married, having kids, and starting a school. And most of those songs are about my romantic plights at the time. It’s kind of remarkable that through all of the moves and changes of the last 40 years I held onto the lyric sheets. But I’m a sappy archivist at heart and these songs serve as a kind of diary or journal, much like this blog has been serving as a memory jog for me over the last 14 years.

With that long introduction, I offer a song that I first wrote in June of 1985. I’m 22 years-old and know I’m heading off to Olympia and The Evergreen State College in a couple of months. My job as a statistician at The Daily Racing Form had been automated, meaning I had been laid off (truthfully, I was offered the opportunity to continue with the DRF but had to move to Los Angeles to do it, which didn’t really interest me). In short, I had a lot of time on my hands.

My apartment in NE Seattle, called Executive Estates, had an outdoor swimming pool. I spent a lot of time that summer out by the pool (well, in the pool, too). I also spent time with Matt, my “little brother,” part of the Big Brothers program. And I had a couple of women friends that I hung out with that summer, too. One, Janet, would come over to the pool quite regularly. We went to the Puyallup Fair in September to see Three Dog Night. She was a security guard at the time and we drove to Puyallup in her patrol car that had lights on top, like a police car. Driving down Highway 167 to Puyallup, it was fun seeing the drivers ahead of us slow way down when they caught a glimpse of Janet’s car in their rear view mirrors.

My other female friend was Cynthia who I’d known since my family moved to Washington State in 1974. She was in the combined 4th/5th classroom I was placed in upon our arrival in March. We went onto the same junior high school, Tillicum, grades 7th-9th. I remember being in the same English class in 9th grade, the year she was a cheerleader. We became more casual friends in high school although by the time we were seniors I had a pretty serious crush on her. Late in the school year, I asked her to the senior prom although we both had said we didn’t plan to go. She turned me down, perhaps because of that earlier pledge. I don’t know.

My feelings for Cynthia remained fairly dormant over the next couple years, during which I had the first adult romantic relationship of my life (Suno has helped me develop a whole album of songs dedicated to that relationship – stay tuned). But it had long ended and by early 1985 my feelings for Cynthia had rekindled. We hung out fairly often and my desire to be more than friends increased significantly.

After doing something together (what, I don’t remember – maybe a movie, a walk in the park, whatever), we’d say goodbye. And it was in these awkward moments of saying goodbye that I’d get flustered. I wanted the friendship to blossom into a romance so in each of these “goodbye moments” I’d imagine that we’d have a romantic kiss. Clearly, though, she wasn’t interested. So we’d say goodbye and she’d turn her head, offering me her cheek to kiss. Very European, a French bissou.

After one of these goodbyes I went home and wrote this song in which I imagined a time in which she wouldn’t turn her head, that instead of her cheek I’d be offered her lips.

Original lyric sheet from 1985 (click to enlarge)
Maybe it’s kind of sappy, maybe it’s kind of sweet. Over the years, I still remember the feelings of it.

Finding the lyric sheet in a notebook after discovering Suno in March, I tried a number of different genres and AI prompts, more than any other of my old songs. In the end, the one that I like best is as a country song. I rephrased a couple of the lines and got this final result.

If you like this one, I created an entire album of similar songs, all country-sounding and using my original lyrics, and posted it on Bandcamp. One of those, “Off Course, Of Course,” was also inspired by me wanting to date Cynthia.

“To Be a Blessing” by Recteur Schmitt (a get well card for David Spangler)

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

I put the embedded song together as a “Get Well Card” of sorts to my friend David Spangler, he of the Lorian Association. David has been a major source of personal & professional inspiration and support for more than half my life. He and the entire Spangler family helped Melinda and me start PSCS back in 1994. Since then, David and I have had regular lunches, email back & forths, and many other ways to stay connected.

David facilitating a PSCS class in the 1990’s. Yes, that’s me in the striped shirt.
The central part of David’s work is about what he calls “Incarnational Spirituality,” which revolves around the idea that being human, with our unique physical bodies, is a sacred experience. It emphasizes the importance of appreciating our physical selves and our connection to the Earth. Instead of simply aiming for oneness with everything, this approach sees our individuality as a strength that allows us to express love and make the world a better place through acts of service and kindness towards others.

I’ve long been a subscriber to David’s newsletter and a few years back he shared how a number of people associated with Lorian individually described incarnational spirituality. I was taken by their descriptions and as an exercise designed to increase my understanding, I worked to make each individual’s description into a haiku. If you’re interested in them, I’ve pasted them below.

Earlier this year, I discovered Suno, an AI music generator that allow you to quite easily create songs. Having enjoyed poetry- and lyric-writing for all of my adult life, I started playing around with Suno, learning how to best use prompts, extend songs, etc, and have really enjoyed the results. Knowing David hasn’t been feeling great and remembering my haikus, I thought I’d work on adapting them into a pop song. Today, I made the accompanying music video that allows the listener/viewer to follow along with my lyrics.

If you’re interested, here’s the music genre prompt I entered into Suno to get it to create this sound: Eastern European, gypsy punk ballad, accordion, trumpet, male vocal

I actually created an album’s worth of songs with a similar sound, many of them adapted from other things I’ve written over the years — poems, essays, memoirs. The album is called “Rediscover Play” and the band is called “Recteur Schmitt,” a tribute to Nantes, France, where my family lived for a year in 2010-11, specifically Line 2 of the tramway there (Recteur Schmitt is the name of a tram stop). Listen to the album (and/or pay $1 to download it) on Bandcamp.

Get well, David! I hope you get a kick out of this, my “get well card.”

THE HAIKUS THAT INSPIRED THIS SONG:

Souls walking on ground
enable a partnership.
To be a blessing.

We are each sacred.
An intimate universe.
Pre and post mortem.

Live a human life.
An inherent act of love.
Ourselves being here.

To work as partners.
Physical and spirit worlds.
In joy, love, and will.

The unfolding spark
is linked through relationships.
Unique and vital.

Metaphysical.
Practical simplicity.
Heart-wise renewal.

Go inwards with heart.
Unexpected hope rising.
Life, weaving its way.

Physical, subtle.
Interconnected wholeness
of co-creation.

France 2016 (From the Archives)

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

Since we had taken two trips to France in 2014, one during the summer and one in December to celebrate Ella’s 18th birthday, we didn’t make a trip in 2015.

In London, 2016.
So Melinda’s and my next return to see our friends in Nantes was in 2016. This time, to do something different, we flew in and out of London, staying for a few days both times. It was my first ever time in England and I thought it was fabulous. Even though we weren’t in France, I tagged the days we were in London with the “France 2016” moniker so they will appear when you click the link below.

While in Nantes, we rented a house in the neighborhood in which we lived during the sabbatical year, just a couple of blocks from the Bertail’s. Part of what I loved about this decision is that it put us on the same tram line (Ligne 2) that I fell in love with when we were there initially in 2010-11. It also put me in close proximity of the Nantes racetrack (the hippodrome) which is where I began running in 2011. Each morning, I’d get up and go for a jog from our house over to and around the track, plus anywhere else that suited my fancy.

Also, this was another one of those trips that consisted of just Melinda and me. While we missed having the girls with us, there was something liberating about traveling “sans enfants.”

To easily see the posts from 2016, click this link.

France – Winter 2014/15 (From the Archives)

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

Here’s another one of those posts designed to take the dedicated reader (I think I mean myself) back in time to revisit my family’s various trips to France. This time, the blog time machine is taking us to December 2014/January 2015 when we returned to celebrate Ella’s 18th birthday.

It’s fun to visit a familiar place at a different time of year, especially one in which you’ve experienced all four seasons. Because of our work responsibilities with a school, returning in the summer was fairly straightforward. Going in December, even over winter break, required a little more coordinating.

We began this trip in Paris which is where we celebrated Ella’s 18th, much as we had done in 2011 for Chloe’s 18th birthday. What an experience – to be able to celebrate both girls’ 18th birthdays in Paris!

We also had both the Boudeaus and Bertails visit us in Paris before we all gathered back in Nantes. This time around, Melinda & I rented a wildly cool apartment inside the Passage Pommeraye in the center of Nantes. Having access to this place allowed us to show off some hidden Nantes treasures to our friends.

To see the posts from this trip, please click here.

France 2014 (From the Archives)

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

Last spring, I started adding posts that included links to Melinda’s and my return trips to France, something we vowed to do each year after our brilliant sabbatical year of 2010-11. I got away from that and am committed to getting back to it. So, yes, in the summer of 2014, we again returned to France with Ella and, um, a girl named Chloe*.

Boudeau Pool in Nantes, 2014
But not our Chloe.

Ella’s best chum in high school happened to be named Chloe* so back in 2014 I joked that Chloe*, Ella, Melinda, and I were returning to France. But I added an asterisk next to Chloe’s* name to indicate that this Chloe* needed a footnote.

Pretty soon, I just called her asterisk.

The trip includes an extended trip to Normandy and the WWII beaches for anyone interested in this kind of history. To see all the posts from this summer trip to France in 2014, use this link.

* not our Chloe

France 2013 (From the Archives)

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

So as I mentioned in previous posts, toward the end of our sabbatical year, back in the early summer of 2011, Melinda and I began dreaming of the idea of returning to France, and specifically to Nantes, for the better part of a month each summer. We worked out the details at PSCS to make this happen and in 2012 we returned with Chloe and Ella, as summarized in my previous post.

In 2013, Melinda and I returned to Nantes without the girls. At age 20 and 16, they kinda liked the idea of having time by themselves in our Seattle house.

How odd…

While not having the girls with us provided a lot more flexibility, I’d hate to suggest that we didn’t miss them. To be honest, some nine years later, I don’t really remember missing them. I do remember posting on the blog little tests for them, cryptic photos of places in Nantes that I invited them to identify. So clearly, I was thinking about them…

The point that really felt different without the girls is when Melinda and I spent extended time in Paris, just the two of us. That was, indeed, a glorious time.

To gain easy access to all the posts from our 2013 trip, use the France 2013 tag or, even easier, click here.

Return to Nantes 2012 (From the Archives)

Published on by Andy Smallman2 Comments

In my last post, I talked about how Melinda, Chloe, Ella, and I spent 13 months in France beginning in July of 2010. These 13 months got dubbed the “French Sabbatical” as Melinda and I were granted paid time off from our jobs during that time.

From our “bonus” night in Iceland after missing our connecting flight to Paris.
Not surprisingly, while we there we grew quite fond of living in France, especially living in the city of Nantes. I’m not quite sure how to describe this, but living as we did in Nantes, as well as traveling to various destinations in France and once to Italy, felt completely ours. It was different than anything done by other members of our family and carved out a super-special context in our lives that the four of us will forever share.

Melinda and I would go on regular walks while the girls were at school and it was on one of these walks that we talked about taking a month off from work each summer to return to Nantes.

We spent our first week in Pornichet where it was unfortunately quite rainy and cool.
We starting seeing this as a focal point for the next phase in our lives, one that would ultimately settle with us living in Nantes and Seattle for maybe 6 months each year. At first, though, because of work and other responsibilities, this would need to be a single month in the summer when school wasn’t in session.

So in 2012 we put the plan into action. Our good friends in Nantes, the Boudeaus (who were responsible for us choosing Nantes in the first place) and the Bertails (who lived around the corner from us during the sabbatical and had become among our closest friends), were only too pleased to help us. And it was Christine Bertail who found a place for the four of us to live for the month of July, 2012. A colleague of hers and his family would be in Spain that month so it worked out for us to rent his house.

This is more like it. Summer in Nantes!
As I had done during the sabbatical year, I decided I would post to my blog on a daily basis while we were there. Truth be told, I had kept doing this once we had returned to Seattle in August, 2011. All of these posts can be found here by using the “Monthly Archive” pull-down menu below and selecting one of the months. Still, the idea of returning to France in 2012 and not posting daily seemed sacrilegious in some way.

So here was are in 2022, nearly ten years after our “Return to Nantes.” It’s hard to believe that much time has flown by. Because of the pandemic and other reasons, it’s been five years since we’ve been back but we do have plans to go this summer! And, yes, we did return in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. I’ll be focusing on each of those trips in future “From the Archives” posts.

For now, I invite you to explore our trip in 2012 using the “France 2012” tag.

French Sabbatical (From the Archives)

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

From our first visit to Paris in October, 2010.
One of the highlights of my life, of Melinda’s and my marriage, and in our role as parents of Chloe & Ella was the 13 months we spent in France from July 2010 through July 2011. We were granted a sabbatical from our jobs at Puget Sound Community School (PSCS), both as a tribute to the work we had done to get the school going and keep it running since its humble beginnings in 1994 AND to provide the school community an opportunity to know it could exist without its founders being present (ie: the infamous “Pie Truck Scenario” – perhaps I’ll explain that in a future post).

The concept of the sabbatical being a real thing began while Melinda and I were on spring break in 2008. The concept of living in France with our children began as a pipe dream we’d tell each other before we even had children. That this could become a reality is a tribute to a lot of people, most significantly the PSCS board and staff at the time. I can vividly recall the months leading up to our departure like they were last month, not twelve years ago.

Our first family photo taken on July 6, 2010 in our adopted hometown of Nantes.
Officially, the sabbatical began with the school’s 2010-11 fiscal year, meaning on July 1, 2010. But we didn’t leave for France until July 4th so we had a few days in Seattle on our own. Because we were renting our house (note, this link takes you a site we created in 2012 to promote the idea of swapping houses with someone for a month that summer) to another family for the year and they moved in on July 1, we were staying at a friend’s. The day of the 1st, Chloe was out with some friends on one of her many goodbye tours and Melinda & Ella were doing some last-minute shopping. I was alone in an unfamiliar house with my laptop for company.

I had recently been reading how a person had documented his life for a full year by posting a daily photograph and some quick comments on a website. The idea appealed to me so that afternoon, alone in the house, I investigated how to do something like it. I knew a tiny bit about WordPress since one of the PSCS teaching staff members had taught the rest of us how to use it to post our class offerings to the students. On a whim, I created a WordPress blog, calling it “frenchsabbatical.”

Outside the Castle of Nantes (Château des ducs de Bretagne)
I had promised myself and told others that I wasn’t going to over-commit myself to projects while on sabbatical. I wanted some practice of living more spontaneously, freed from the daily requirements of being a school director. Indeed, Melinda and I would have parenting obligations but beyond that, I wanted a sense of freedom. That the PSCS board had agreed to supply Melinda and me with a monthly stipend helped tremendously with this.

Little did I know that the whim of starting my “frenchsabbatical” blog would propel not just me but many others on a daily adventure, one I never regretted for a minute. Beginning on the 1st of July from the home of our friends, I posted every day until our return (truth be told, I kept posting every day after that for another year or so, all of which you can find here). Conversations emerged, first just among Melinda, Chloe, Ella & me – “You could put that on the blog.” And, “Don’t you dare write about that.” To, “I get to approve any photos you use of me.”

The blog features a lot of silly posts, like my fascination with the sexiness of French fire hydrants.
As the months went by, our French friends got in the act. My dear friend Laurent made sure I had a way to post when his family took ours to their cabin in the French Alps that didn’t have an Internet connection. I also learned that part of his morning ritual while we were there was to read what I posted the night before.

Around the corner from our house in Nantes we met the Bertail family, people who have become among our closest friends in the world. There are so many stories to tell about them, from Christine, the mom, twice stopping by to introduce herself to us only find Chloe and Ella at home, to how they helped me celebrate my 48th birthday in style.

Then, of course, there were our friends and family members back in Seattle who used the blog to keep in touch with us. As a writer, I often would picture a member of our family as the audience to what I was writing. Michele, my mother-in-law, my brothers, or one of our nieces were common “targets.” Certainly, my mother was always in mind (she’d regularly send me edits – catching my typos with her usual flair).

To this day, I pay WordPress a fee each year to keep ads from the site and to maintain its unique domain name, meaning you can find it in its entirety at https://frenchsabbatical.com. Two years ago as a holiday present, one of the best I’ve ever received, Chloe & Ella had the blog posts made into a two-volume hardback book set that will forever hold a place of prominence in Melinda’s and my home.

I took up running while in France. Here I am crossing the turf track at the Nantes racetrack to get to the inner trotter track where I regularly ran after dropping off Ella at school.
Last week, in order to have all of my personal blog posts in one spot, I copied the content to this site, my ongoing personal blog. So if you’re interested in seeing what we were doing on a given day, you can do so right here. In fact, in the footer you’ll see a pull-down menu on the left for a monthly archive. Choose a month from the sabbatical year, July 2010 – July 2011, and enjoy some reading.

You can also use the “French Sabbatical” tag (you’ll see the posts in reverse order) or simply start with the first post I wrote on July 1, 2010 and go to the next and then the next…

Some nights when I’m feeling especially nostalgic, I’ll pick a month and do some reading, remembering what an amazing year we had.

The Soundtrack of My Life

Published on by Andy SmallmanLeave a comment

A few years ago, a buddy of mine named Marc challenged me on Facebook to post ten record albums that I love, a soundtrack of my life, so to speak. I was to post one album a day for ten days. Explanations weren’t necessary, just include a picture of each album cover. Being a storytelling-kind-of-guy, I couldn’t resist giving a little detail about each of my ten choices.

I came across the archive of my choices and thought it would be fun to compile into a blog post. So here you have it with some slight edits. I encourage anyone touched by this project to create their own list and share it with someone they know who would appreciate it. Note, the year in parentheses is the year I first heard the record, not the year the record came out.

#1 — Armed Forces — Elvis Costello & the Attractions (1979)

Okay, Marc, I have to start with Armed Forces since it was the first album I bought with the idea that I would actually own records myself instead of listening to my brother’s records (or the radio). That album led me in many important directions. From a memory and person standpoint, Armed Forces was not only a staple of the poker night soundtrack, I have a distinct recollection of singing along to Oliver’s Army with my girlfriend in the parking lot of the Lake Hills Community Center in Bellevue, Washington. She had the kind generosity to compliment my singing.

#2 — Cloudy, With Occasional Tears — Skeeter Davis (1982)

So, Marc, I’m planning to do this chronologically, if that matters. And today’s album is one I discovered as a 19 year-old deejay in Seward, Alaska in 1982. Every third song we played on the radio was supposed to be a country song and I found myself drawn to the older stuff. This Skeeter Davis album quickly became my favorite, so much so that one night I played it in its entirety while waiting for the monthly meeting of the Seward City Council to start, which we broadcast live. The challenging part was flipping the record over to play Side 2 while talking about it…

#3 — Foreign Affairs — Tom Waits (1984)

So, Marc, I was in Tower Records on University Way in Seattle in 1984 and spotted this album, Foreign Affairs, being sold for what they called a “Nice Price,” something like $3.49 for an LP, practically giving it away. It was winter time and snowing slightly. I had a date, a woman named Paula, coming to my apartment for dinner so I was out shopping for dinner food (you’ll understand why that included a stop at Tower to buy a Tom Waits record). I don’t remember what I made for the main course, but I do know I made a mint chocolate pie with an Oreo cookie crust for dessert, the recipe coming from a box of Jello pudding. So picture this. I’m back at my apartment, the needle on the record, crushing Oreo cookies to make the crust. On comes the Tom Waits — Bette Midler duet, “I Never Talk to Strangers.” It was a perfect moment, honestly. Snowing lightly, a date coming, Oreo cookies, Tom Waits on the hi-fi. Not even the fact that Paula stood me up could ruin the perfection of this record. I think of it every time I play it.

#4 — The Cole Porter Songbook — Ella Fitzgerald (1987)

Well, Marc, here is record #4, Ella Fitzgerald performing the Cole Porter songbook. The album came out in 1956 but I place it in 1987 in my chronology because that’s when I started listening to it. My copy belonged to my mom who bought it new back in the 50’s. Come 1987, she wasn’t listening to vinyl anymore so I took some of her more choice albums down to Olympia, Washington where I was living while attending The Evergreen State College. It’s a double album so it has four sides, lots of great music with Ella’s beautiful singing. I have distinct memories of sitting at my work table doing research about brain injuries and writing reports about cross cultural special education practices while listening to this record. Did you know that there is no word in the Navajo language for disability? I found that very enlightening. Still do, actually. Final note: I eventually passed the record on to my nephew who loves having vinyl. That this copy belonged to his grandmother makes it all the more special.

#5 — Workers Playtime — Billy Bragg (1989)

Marc, I had always appreciated Billy Bragg’s early albums, the really pared down Billy-alone-with-his-electric-guitar-post-punk-protest songs. But there is something about 1988’s “Workers Playtime” that makes it my favorite Billy Bragg album by far. It could be that I played it regularly in 1989 when I moved into the favorite of my many solo residences, a $240/mo attic in downtown Renton, Washington. But I think the bigger reason I’m crazy for this record is for the love songs on it. I had been trying my hand at songwriting (more like lyric writing, to be honest) and found how difficult it is to write a non-sappy love song. Billy seemed to have figured it out, all while respecting women and communicating in simple terms that relationships are complex. An important romantic relationship for me ended during this time and this album is part of that soundtrack, maybe IS that soundtrack. Decades removed from the attic, that relationship, and “Workers Playtime,” I look back on it all with great fondness and appreciation.

#6 — Diva — Annie Lennox (1993)

I’m jumping ahead to 1993 now, Marc, the year Chloe, my oldest daughter, was born. Yes, I know, it’s hard to believe that people as youthful looking and vigorous as Melinda and I can have adults for children. Anyway… Melinda went into labor on February 27th and didn’t tell me anything about it until about 7:30pm, at which point, due to a bad cold and the comfort of Hockey Night in Canada on TV, I was dozing on the couch. She said something to the effect of, “When do you think we should start timing these contractions I’ve been having?” Let me just say, that is a question that counteracts the effects of NyQuil, Don Cherry, and comfortable couches. Four hours later we were in the birthing center at Virginia Mason, and less than four hours after that, Chloe was born. I had brought along a couple of CDs to be the first music our baby would hear as a breathing human, kd lang’s “Ingenue” and Annie Lennox’s “Diva.” As I recall, Chloe came into this world to Annie Lennox, hence its presence here.

#7 — Songs From Einstein’s Violin — Frank Tedesso (1998)

Hey Marc — I don’t remember how I found this album although I do know I kind of stumbled upon it. It might have been on CD Baby or some other seller of independent music. What I do know is that the songs on the album have touched me like few others I’ve heard in the last 25 years, which is why I’m including it here. It always makes my top 10 list. I’m placing my awareness of the album as being 1998, the year we moved into our Seattle house, although I know it came out in 1996. I was able to track down the performer, Frank Tedesso, and we even had a short email exchange 20 years or so ago. I bought some of his other songs from him, along with a book of his poetry. It’s all good, but this record, for me, is great. It may be of interest that it was produced by William Ackerman, the founder of Windham Hill Records whose most famous performer is probably the pianist George Winston. Oh, one more thing about this record, Melinda can’t stand Tedesso’s singing voice so when I play it, I have to do so when she’s not around.

#8 — Rabbit Songs — Hem (2005)

So, Marc, back in 2005 or 2006 I made a mixed tape for Melinda (okay, it was a mixed CD but that just doesn’t sound right) called “Songs I Wish I’d Written for Melinda.” To be clear, the idea wasn’t to make a mix for Melinda of songs I wish I’d written, although technically that would have been true. The idea was to make a mix of songs I wish I had the brilliance to have written FOR Melinda. Like with her in mind, you know, and coming from her husband/best friend… On that CD, err mixed tape, I placed a song from this album by Hem, “Stupid Mouth Shut.” The brilliance of the song comes from the singer knowing she should tell her partner that she loves him but when the opportunity comes she just keeps, you know, her stupid mouth shut. Why I wish I had written this song for Melinda is because she thinks I should tell her I love her more often than I do. Go figure. Do note that the album didn’t make this list of 10 because of this song alone, though. It’s packed full of lovely songs, including “Half Acre” which was used in a Liberty Mutual TV commercial.

#9 — The Reluctant Graveyard — Jeremy Messersmith (2012)

Back in 2011 while living in France, Marc, I discovered the music of Jeremy Messersmith via Paste Magazine, to which I had an online subscription. That spring, his album “The Reluctant Graveyard” was played more than any other in my iTunes library, so much so that it still ranks as the most-played album in my listening history as recorded by last.fm, and by quite a bit. We returned to Seattle that summer and in 2012 Jeremy launched what he called his Supper Club Tour. He’d find someone to host a potluck dinner in their home and after eating together with the attendees, he’d play an intimate show. I bought two tickets for his Seattle engagement which took place in a pretty small house in Wallingford, perhaps 25 people packed into the living room. I tried to get Melinda, Chloe, or Ella, my other daughter, to go with me, but they weren’t interested so I went by myself, squandering one ticket. It was so much fun and I had a great time talking to Jeremy about his music. Since then, Ella has become a fan and regrets not going. The lesson here, children? Listen to your parents.

#10 — Tree of Forgiveness — John Prine (2018)

We’ve come to the end of my 10 albums, Marc, and I’m wrapping it up by presenting John Prine’s “Tree of Forgiveness.” In making John Prine my last entry, I’m doing so with a nod to his career which is as impressive as any as far as I’m concerned. I bought my first John Prine record in 1984, even though his first album came out in 1971. I don’t recall really knowing who he was until 1984 and I try not to beat myself up about that. But those 13 years seem kind of wasted and I’ve spent the subsequent 3+ decades trying to make up for it. I’ve followed everything he’s done since then and regularly get in my musical time machine to go back to listen to what I’ve missed. If anyone has ever been able to sum up what it means to be an ordinary human, it’s John Prine. Like everything John Prine does, this record is really good. Some time, Marc, if you want, let’s go out for a beer and I’ll tell you about taking my mom to see John Prine in concert. It may be the best concert experience of my life.