Andy Smallman

So says the flyer I am holding in my hand from the Black or White Café. And having had lunch there today with Melinda, I can say that it’s true. We learned about the café from Christine, who is longtime friends with Kimberly, captured in today’s picture.

So, yes, meet Kimberly, originally from Chicago but now a restauranteur in Nantes. She and a friend envisioned a café in Nantes in which native English speakers would feel at home, and where native French speakers could come practice English. As you can see behind Kimberly, the menu is in English. On top of that, she speaks almost entirely in English in the café. It’s a very small place, more for take-out, perhaps, than eating in. But it is quite charming. Having lunch there today was like being transported home for a meal.

Upon entering, Melinda and I heard three men speaking French to each other while Kimberly made them their homemade burritos (think “wraps”). But when they turned to talk to her, they spoke English (with a French accent ), as she did to them (minus the French accent). This happened with each customer who came in. It was an amazing experience, to be in France but feel like the native speaker, a feeling I haven’t had since arriving in France. It was oddly exhilarating, especially knowing that as soon as we exited we would be back in the French-speaking world.

Kimberly made us delicious chicken burritos and then served me a chocolate chip cookie and a brownie to Melinda. We talked, in English, about being in France. I told her about the blog and asked if I could take her picture for today’s post.

FYI, we are returning tomorrow with Ella.

Look who we found walking along the Erdre in Nantes! That’s Mr. Pete Dixon on the left, the idealistic social studies teacher at Walt Whitman High in Los Angeles. Next to him is his student teacher, Miss Alice Johnson. Talk about idealistic! She can hardly see straight her glasses are so rose-colored.

What a surprise it was to see Pete and Alice in Nantes in 2011, especially since their hip TV show was cancelled back in 1974. Ah, do you remember those Friday night glory days of 1970, home on a Friday night after a week at school, hanging out with the Bradys and singing with the Partridges before getting that week’s morality lesson from Mr. Dixon? Somehow fish sticks and oven-heated french fries factored in. Can you say Swanson?

It feels appropriate to honor the number 222 today so with that I present today’s post. For more context, please enter your time machine and visit August 31, 2010.

Melinda and I took a nearly two hour walk this afternoon, wanting some time together outside in what turned out to be a lovely afternoon, relatively no wind and temperatures in the mid-50’s. We started out along a usual route across the tram tracks toward the Hippodrome before veering to the east and exploring a neighborhood we’d not looked at before. It turned out that there was only one way in and out, so we walked the circle, smiling at the small children playing dodgeball and the two girls in a courtyard pushing baby doll strollers.

We soon made our way to a nearby field currently set up for rugby, one surrounded by a lovely running track. An entrance was marked private but it was open so we decided to walk the track, using our pedometers to estimate its distance. We decided it’s 1/4 mile track, just like those you’d find in the US, and made four trips around before continuing on our way. We walked through the University of Nantes campus all the way to the Erdre River. There, we joined dozens of other people, walkers, joggers and bikers, enjoying the trail along the river on the first mild Sunday of the year.

Today’s photo is of the Erdre and representatives of the number of people we saw along the trail. I’m using my cell phone to take the picture and shooting south, what would be in the direction of town. We are standing on a road above the trail, next to a row of lovely houses.

Are we ever in for a treat today, but before going further I have to tell a story related to the expression “in for a treat.” It was often used by my third grade teacher, the woman who so frightened me that I developed night terrors. Ultimately, though, I credit her for me wanting to become an educator. I wanted to make sure that what she did to me was not done to others. Anyway, her idea of “treats” had to do with something she deemed educational. My third grade idea of a treat was what you aimed to get on Halloween, something that involved sugar. As you might guess, I became wary of the expression, “Are we ever in for a treat.” I use it today with more than a little bit of sarcasm.

So the treat? Today’s photo, of course. You see, I wiggled my way up to the front of the tram, Line 2, of course, in order to watch the driver do his thing. Trying to look like I was composing a text message, what is referred to here as an SMS, on my cell phone, I snapped this photo. We are heading north at the moment I took this photo, between the two stops for the University of Nantes. That’s “École Centrale Audencia,” the stop just ahead on the right, what I’ve referred to before as Chloe’s stop. It’s just two stops from our home stop. This stop is somewhat infamous, at least if you consider it having its own Facebook page makes it infamous. You see, some of the trams stop here and then turn around to head back to town. They’re marked as such but that doesn’t mean you always notice it. So when it happens and you want to go further, it can cause some frustration.

Speaking of our home stop, it’s called “Bourgeonnière.” That’s a mouthful. I’ve starting a campaign to rename it “Petit Homme.” 10 points to anyone who can explain why.

And by that I mean shutters, but not what most Americans think of when they picture shutters. Yes, here in France there are shutters like you find in the United States, door-like devices on hinges that one can pull shut in front of windows. But there are also these more elaborate things that most houses have. Called “volets,” these are lowered in front of one’s windows in a way that resembles enclosing a tank or something. Modern volets are handled electronically by flipping a switch near the windows. You hear a humming sound and this partition lowers, enclosing you inside a dark room by basically eliminating the function of a window. Older volets are hand-cranked. In our house, the volets in the kitchen have been modernized and are quite slick. All the others in the house are of the hand-crank variety. Oh, I should say, that some doors have volets, too.

So why am I telling you all of this and what does this have to do with today’s picture? Simple. Last fall I was hand-cranking the ancient volet associated with our dining room doors to the backyard. As I was cranking it, it broke. Ugh! We’ve been unable to close it since. I mentioned this to our landlord and he called a repairperson to come take a look. That’s his truck parked outside our house in today’s photo. I liked the truck’s color and got a kick out of the words across the top. Fenêtres is windows. Isolation is insulation. And services is, yes, services.

Anyway, the repairman, Bertrand, looked over our broken volet and will be back next week to fix it.

I’ve mentioned some of my sabbatical projects, including the online kindness classes I’m facilitating (Anonymous Kindness & Undivided Kindness right now), reading all of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, and things like organizing my iTunes library. I have other projects, too, but enough about me, right?! Let’s talk about Melinda!

If you know Melinda, you are aware she has this creation itch and is always looking for ways to scratch it. When we are in Seattle, this is most visibly done through work on our house. Since we bought it and moved in back in 1998, she has transformed the place. The first time inside she envisioned a way to move stairs and create more space and better flow. I couldn’t conceptualize it but was smart enough to know just to trust her. In short, our house just keeps getting better and better. One of the best parts, she figures out ways to do things we can afford.

One of her friends here in Nantes, Nathalie, has asked Melinda to help her come up with some remodeling ideas for her kitchen. After she visited Nathalie’s house last week, I found Melinda at our dining room table busy drawing. She had put a table lamp under the table, which is made of glass, by the way, in order to be able to trace ideas from one page to another. A homemade light table, of course!

I took today’s photo earlier this afternoon inside a store in the center of Nantes that has become one of Melinda’s favorites. It’s a crafts store and Melinda likes it because she has started making bracelets and necklaces. I liked the rows and rows of these jars of beads and rather than succumb to the temptation of sticking my fingers in them while waiting for Melinda to finish, I took some pictures.

A profile of Melinda was created for our school’s new website. I think it captures her pretty well. Take a look.

Americans have their groundhogs. But the French have their foods. And while Americans are busy watching groundhogs to see if they see their shadows, the French are busy making crêpes! And with that introduction, a happy Crêpe Day to you all!

I just learned about this celebration a week or so ago, as Frédérique was explaining it to us. I can’t say that I understood much more than people in France eat a lot of crêpes in February, and that February 2nd has some kind of religious significance. So using the trusty Internet, I googled “Chandeleur” and came up with this link. I’m not clear on the connection between eating crêpes and the purification of the Virgin Mary, other than the feast portion, I suppose. But who can explain Groundhog Day to foreigners? Who wants to?

Anyway, we joined in by eating crêpes for lunch today and we are looking forward to more crêpes throughout the month. Chloe told me I Americanized mine when I put on maple syrup and cashew butter. This was after she filled hers with chocolate chips my mom brought to us from the U.S. in November (since we can’t find the kind we like here). I will say that my crêpe did not see its shadow, which means either there will be 6 more weeks of crêpe eating, a cold spring, or the Virgin Mary is not being properly purified.

Today’s photo is another from yesterday’s shopping excursion at Leclerc. Many things are on sale in support of La Chandeleur including the delicious Bonne Maman jams. For you Americans, that 0,62€ translates into less than 90 cents for a huge jar, a heck of a deal!

Melinda and I stopped in at the giant grocery store Leclerc, the one on the other side of town from where we live. It’s bigger than “our” Leclerc at the end of Line 2. Walking to the back of the store I was captivated by the meat department and especially the retro look of these round signs promoting the different meats one can buy. Perhaps most intriguing to Americans is the easy availability of horse meat (cheval). I tried some last August and it pretty much tasted like a lean cut of beef, at least the piece I tried. The rest of the family refuses to try it, along with rabbit. Me, I’m pretty much willing to try anything.

Another interesting meat item, of course, is steak tartare (raw beef). I’ve had this a couple of times in restaurants and loved it each time. What a surprise it was when I discovered I could buy steak tartare at Leclerc. It comes in a foil package with a seasoning packet. I add finely sliced onion and cornichons (small pickles). I last had it in December when Melinda’s family was visiting. Although I made it available to everyone, only Greg and I ate it. I find it delicious. Perhaps it’s my Nebraskan roots.

On a separate subject, Chloe just shared with me a link to a music video directed by one of our PSCS graduates, Jostin Darlington. We are very proud of him and want to share the joy. Check out the video at this link. And speaking of PSCS, the school just launched an updated version of its website. Look how productive the rest of the staff can be with Melinda and me gone!

Now some of you are likely saying “Alice,” like the housekeeper on the Brady Bunch. But this beautiful young French girl is not Alice. She is Alice! If you haven’t figured this out yet, in French you pronounce her name like this – A Lease!

So here’s the deal. A Lease comes to our house every Monday afternoon at 5:30 to eat Pain au Chocolat and drink hot chocolate. What a great situation for Melinda and me. We have a wonderful French girl coming over to eat at our house. In exchange for her presence, we not only provide the food and beverage, we encourage her to speak English while kind of forcing her to listen to the two of us speak English. A Lease doesn’t seem to mind having to put up with us. Today I used the blog as a conversation starter. We reviewed several of the entries, starting with my favorite bakery post from July. You see, A Lease lives near that bakery. She does not have any clues as to the whereabouts of my baker-woman. I still think she is looking for me in other parts of the world.

Chloe arrived in the midst of this blog review and felt sorry for A Lease. She has had to put up with Melinda and me speaking English to her for nearly 18 years so her having empathy makes sense.

I have upwards of 40,000 items in my iTunes Library, a crazy amount, I know. Just before leaving for France I started organizing this massive amount of digital information, beginning with getting everything moved over to an easy-to-transport external hard drive. I brought it all with me, both because I love having access to my audio library and because I had designs on getting it super-organized while on sabbatical. And beginning in late November, that’s what I started doing. I am proud to announce that as of this afternoon, after literally spending all day on the task, I finished organizing my thousands of songs. I feel like someone has come along and taken some weight from me, so wonderful does it feel to have my library organized. It has me inspired to organize all my other “collections” once we are back in Seattle.

This is not to say I’ve finished organizing my iTunes library. I just have the music files organized. I also have quite a bit of educational material, from books on tape to audio lectures and the like. I also have a collection of old time radio programs and stories still to organize. But the bulk of it has been my chaotic music files, which included hundreds of duplicate songs which have been purged from the library.

For those of you who know me and like statistics, here are some interesting numbers. Searching the following names yields the following number of unique items in my iTunes library:
Elvis Costello – 1322
Tom Waits – 1439
Kurt Vonnegut – 203
Air Supply – 0

Sounds about right…