Andy Smallman

We’re just back from a family dinner at the home of my brother Scott. Scott and his partner Sally live in Kirkland, which means to get there we need to cross the 520 bridge. That bridge closed tonight for construction at 11pm so we had to hustle home. We were likely one of the last cars across.

The dinner also included my parents and two of Scott’s three daughters, Stephanie and Olivia. The dinner was in celebration of our good friends Bill & Teresa Elder being in town from Denver to attend a fundraiser to help find a cure for Cystic Fibrosis. You may recall that a year ago a number of us in the Smallman family traveled to Denver to a similar event at which Bill & Teresa were honored.

Bill took today’s photo of Ella across the dinner table on his snazzy iPhone and was gracious enough to email it to me. There it was, on my computer, when we got home.

We have eight 6th & 7th graders at PSCS this year and have created a new structure to help them learn to get the most out of our unique school. Recently, this involved me reading aloud to them a book selected by our new middle school teacher, Tawni, a book called “Wonder.” The book is about a 5th grader born with a severe facial deformity that has kept him from attending school to this point in his life. The story describes his adaptation to attending school, the challenges he faces, and the successes. It’s a touching story, one that the students, Tawni, & I all loved.

Coincidental to me reading the book, a woman named Dawn, the wife of Melinda’s cousin Ian, created a Facebook page called Facing Up to It to promote the book she just finished writing about living with a facial deformity from birth. Dawn is feeling called to talk about her experience so I asked if she’d be willing to come in to PSCS to talk to our middle schoolers.

Today she did and her talk was not only great, it was inspirational. Thanks, Dawn!

Yup, it’s funny night tonight. And by that, I mean it’s comedy night. And by that, I mean it’s PSCS Comedy Night, a fun event at the Comedy Underground in which professional comics go on stage to support the school. We get 70% of the ticket prices and 100% of the raffle tickets we sell.

On top of that, two PSCS students will be taking the stage to be funny. They’ve been taking a class since September facilitated by a professional stand-up comedian.

That’s funny all by itself, right? An actual high school class taught by a professional comedian that culminates with its teenaged students taking the stage in an actual comedy club.

That’s not only funny, it’s fun! And that’s where Melinda, Ella & I are heading.

To illustrate something as fun as this I went looking for the perfect picture. I found this self-portrait.

That’s what the sign on the corner said.

I’m not suggesting anyone take the advice of a sign on any corner. I just found the existence of this sign laugh-out-loud funny. So I took a picture of it. I’m writing about it.

That doesn’t mean I’m endorsing it.

I may have once had beer for breakfast, I admit. I was in college and a friend of my brother’s came to stay with me. He came on a Friday night We didn’t get much sleep. We drank some beer. We went fishing on Saturday morning. We drank some beer.

We didn’t catch many fish.

Chloe sent a text last night indicating it was snowing in Squamish, British Columbia, the city in which Quest University, her college, is located. I asked if she could send me a photo, what with how exciting a first snowfall always is. She couldn’t send one last night because it was too dark so she sent today’s photo this morning.

She also commented that the snow had turned to rain. Another typical result of a first snowfall.

Poor Melinda, though. With the weather being chilly in Seattle and the darkness coming earlier, she is ready to hibernate or fly south for the winter. One look at her right now, huddled at the computer while completely bundled up in her warmest winter coat, and you’d feel sorry for her, too.

If a picture was truly worth a thousand words, I should just keep my big mouth shut and post nothing but this photo, right?

Actually, though, this picture is probably worth 1001 words, the one written on it being pretty important to my meaning.

Now back to the first paragraph and me keeping my big mouth shut. Does that expression work if I’m not saying anything but am just writing? Should I keep my big keyboard shut?

Let me close this post with an apology. I’m sorry. It’s been a quiet day (although I did run for 2 hours, had a 90 minute PSCS Finance Committee, and was sadly disappointed by the Seattle Sounders).

I’ve been posting every day to this blog since July 1, 2010 and I’ve tried to keep the topics and text to a general audience. But it is Saturday, after all, and it’s starting to get late. You’d think I could squeeze in one PG post, right? Especially since today Melinda, Ella & I rode the S.L.U.T.

You see, it was a beautiful (but very chilly) sunny day in Seattle and we had plans to take a family outing. Melinda was in charge of it and didn’t tell Ella or me what she had in mind. What a surprise it was when she drove us to South Lake Union (S.L.U.), parked the car, and walked us to the stop for the Trolley (T.). Today’s upper photo is Ella & Melinda watching the S.L.U.T. arrive. And the lower photo is of them inside the S.L.U.T. itself. Ella seems quite pleased.

We rode from one end of the line to the other, disembarked and then walked to and around Pike Place Market before heading back. Melinda told us we were to imagine we were tourists. I tried to figure out what all that talk was I heard about it always raining in Seattle.

As I’m writing, Bob is using Ella’s iPad to try to log in to his Hotmail account. It’s taken him about 10 minutes so far, long enough for me to take this photo, connect the camera to my laptop, upload the photo, and use photo manipulation software to crop and ready the photo for uploading to WordPress for this blog post. Not only that, but to start writing this post.

Wait, there’s an update! Oh, darn. Bob just gave up.

That’s too bad because what he wants to do is show us what he described is the greatest picture of all time, one of his daughter Naclaysia who is getting married soon.

Wait, there’s another update! Melinda has moved Bob from the iPad to a desktop computer. Hope is returning.

Maybe not. Bob just said, “What am I doing?” I’ve been asking that about him for a long, long time.

Wait, there is a late, post posting update. Bob managed to not only show us the photo, but has convinced me to add it to this post. Here it is, the greatest photo ever!

It was a big day in Nantes two years ago yesterday. Why? Because two years ago Melinda and I, along with my visiting parents, took Frédérique and Laurent to the racetrack. Sitting across from my dad at a racetrack in France, one that was a short walk from our house, was as close to a dream coming true as I can imagine. Go take a look at the blog post I wrote for that day.

In celebration of that post, that day, of the racetrack in Nantes, of the sabbatical itself, I present today’s photo. It’s a screenshot from the Nantes racetrack website, which I regularly visit to watch videos of the races. Ah, I love doing that.

Today’s blog title comes from a song written by a man named Harry Chapin. He’s most famous for the song “Cat’s in the Cradle,” which is a wonderful song, too. But I think “Flowers Are Red” is its equal. The song has to do with the natural art ability in kids and how formal education tends to squelch it.

If you look at little kids, they are always creating something. Look at this picture of Ella. She’s sitting on the kitchen floor some 11 years ago just drawing away, fully absorbed in her creation. This makes me think that it’s natural to humans, but we seem to lose the drive (or have it taken from us).

I challenge you to see if you can recapture it, or pay attention to something creative that you do.

By the way, you can see Harry perform “Flowers Are Red” here.