Andy Smallman

I’ve mentioned before how I lived in Seward, Alaska in 1982, the year I turned 19, working as a deejay. I was a year out of high school, disillusioned about education, and lucked into the gig, thanks to my good friend, Hank. Hank finagled a deal with a man who owned a string of stations and then persuaded him to give me a job. It was an absolute blast and a year of great personal growth for me.

The radio station, KRXA, was housed in the Liberty Theatre building in Seward, a beautiful old movie house owned and run by a kind couple, Skip & Marie Fletcher. I learned last night that they still are there, in charge of the theatre in Seward, me having come across this blog posting from March with great photos (today’s photo is one of mine from 1982 – the theatre is the green building in the foreground).

One of my duties was to make a new commercial each week to promote the movies playing. They always started out like this, “This week at the Liberty Theatre…”

First, I took this picture in France, using the Photo Booth application on my Mac. I had just received a package from PSCS that included this file folder containing bits of magic. By the way, I highly recommend receiving packages containing bits of magic.

How that connects to Ode Magazine, I’m not sure, but I have no doubt the connection is there. You see, Ode just published my second blog post for them, are apparently printing something I wrote in their May/June issue, and asked me to contribute to their online auction. Regarding the latter, four high bidders will get the chance to hang out with me talking about kindness, maybe even completing some random acts along the way.

Chloe and Alex, her longtime boyfriend, pulled in at about 4:30 this afternoon, her first year of college behind her. She reported much sadness at saying goodbye to all of her college buddies, knowing she won’t be seeing most of them again until she’s back at school in August. Ah, now it’s both ways. Sadness at leaving home, sadness at leaving school.

But now it’s happiness both ways, too. 🙂

Chloe requested we go out for a healthy meal of predominantly raw food in celebration of her return so we went to a restaurant called Thrive not far from our house. She also requested that Ella do the driving, which put Chloe and me in the backseat, the place from which I took this photo.

I took a PSCS student, Maddie, to The Evergreen State College today, the place from which I earned my undergraduate degree in 1988 (Maddie starts there this fall). “Evergreen” was HUGELY influential in my subsequent life, as any good college should be. One of the first things it taught me was to question the cookie cutter style education I had received in high school, something that caused me to delay starting college until I was 22, so turned off to education was I at 18.

So I took Maddie around campus, showing her places that were important to me, each time saying something to the effect of, “This is the place where…”

The place in today’s photo is where I remember, during my first few weeks at Evergreen, asking myself, “Why couldn’t I have been in a school like Evergreen when I was 13?” That question is one of the pillars of PSCS, Puget Sound Community School, the middle & high school Melinda & I founded in 1994.

So said the subject line of the email Melinda & I received last night from Chloe on the eve of the last night of her first year at college (complete with the emoticon). There was no text to the email, just this photo. Indeed, as of today Chloe is no longer a college freshman but a sophomore.

I wrote to her earlier this week, saying something to that effect, to which she responded, “I’m pretty pumped to be a sophomore! Sad to be leaving… :(”

Sad to be leaving her friends and all the great experiences of a first year at college. Complete with the emoticon.

This unflattering self-portrait was taken on our doorstep about 10 minutes ago. I had just arrived home on foot after spending part of the evening with an old friend, Lance, getting a beer at a nearby pub.* It’s pouring rain outside and the pub is about a 10 minute walk so I am reasonably wet.

Anyway, one of the things I intended to do post sabbatical was spend more time connecting with old friends. I’ve found I haven’t done that as much as I planned. Often, after work, I just want to come home and not go out again. But connecting is a good thing; in fact, it’s related to the theme in the current kindness class I’m facilitating. Take a look.

*Incidentally, Melinda was excited to learn from our Downton Abbey viewing that “pub” is short for “public house.” FYI, in France, pub is short for a TV commercial.

Meet Dan, a former PSCS student (from last century, by the way). Dan came over for dinner tonight to interview us for a college project he is working on. He is studying what the term “home” means to people and interviewing people from a variety of cultures. He even traveled to Germany to work on his project (check out his blog) and is now back in Seattle.

You know it’s a good interview when someone gets me to talk about (in no particular order):
— having been born in Omaha
— my first day of school in Bellevue, Wash (5th grade)
— hockey cards, specifically the 1955 Topps Lorne “Gump” Worsley card
— living in Alaska as a deejay
— The Evergreen State College

And more… Thanks, Dan!

Okay, it’s time for all of you Downton Abbey fans to reveal yourselves, starting, I guess, with me. I’m not going to suggest that you don’t know it’s a British TV show, part of PBS and Masterpiece Classic. I’m not going to suggest that you aren’t hanging on to every episode, like Melinda and me (who this very minute is waiting for me so we can watch the next one).

You know who you are, just like me.

Melinda and I paid $21 to Amazon for the right to stream episodes online in high definition, which we are doing through our TV (see today’s photo). And apparently there is talk between Melinda and her mother for us to have some kind of Downton Abbey theme dinner party. But just who will play the part of my valet?

“I’m coming, Melinda!”

Sundays in Seattle are very different than Sundays in Nantes. I found myself thinking about this today as Melinda & I were sunning ourselves in our backyard. I’m sure the mid 70 degree weather in Seattle today contributed to me thinking about Nantes, too, so many times did Melinda, the girls and I lay out in the sun next to our pool.

Anyway, I found myself thinking about Sundays and how in Nantes all the grocery stores are closed. I just returned from making a quick Sunday afternoon grocery store run in Seattle. Wanting a few things for school lunches this week and deciding to pick up a cold roasted chicken for dinner tonight, I didn’t have to give a second thought if it would be open.

In the spirit of all the posts I made about our neighborhood grocery store in Nantes, I took this picture today of the Safeway not far from our house.

When I was a little kid, my brothers and I raised rabbits. It’s fair to say my parents helped, but I really look back on this and say it was something my brothers and I did. We were responsible for feeding and providing drinking water, which was especially challenging during the Nebraskan winters. The rabbits all lived in hutches in our backyard and the water in their crocks would freeze. We’d bring in the crocks and soak them in hot water in the kitchen sink, then take the crocks back out with fresh water.

There are SO many stories I could tell, the most memorable being when my older brothers locked me in the hutch with Sniffles, my rabbit, and ran inside to get a camera. Little did they know they not only locked me in there with Sniffles, there was a wasp nest in there, too.

Anyway, here you go, Perrin, a post about rabbits, complete with a picture of two bunnies from the the first litter we ever had.