Larry Swanson’s Blog

I went to a wedding reception in South Seattle last night.  It was a great party, a very eclectic crowd spread out throughout a classically updated old Seattle house.  A couple of hours into the festivities, a familiar-looking guy walked up an greeted me.  It was my old friend Rob H., a guy I met almost 20 years ago when I first moved back to Seattle but who I hadn’t seen in several years.  It turns out that he lives literally right next door to my friend Matt, the host of the party.

I had actually had another small-world experience with Rob several years ago, when I saw an article in the Seattle Times about his eco-friendly remodel of another friend’s home.

My neighbor Griggs told me about a nice house-share available for rent in Wedgewood.  I went over to check it out and in the course of my conversation with Aaron, the owner, I discovered that he works part-time in an office on the same floor as my new massage office in the Medical Dental Building.  In fact, I’d seen him through the door a few nights before but couldn’t place him.

Once again, my worlds collide. Earlier today I was chatting with Rand Fishkin at the SMX Advanced conference. It was fun to finally connect with the local search engine marketing wizard (and former office neighbor of my friend Danielle). I wasn’t star-struck, but it was a little surreal having a face-to-face conversation with the talking head whose search engine marketing training videos I’ve been watching. Later that night, at a Seeds of Compassion wrap party, I ran into Tracy Wong of the well-known Wong Doody ad agency. Tracy admitted that he wasn’t totally on top of internet marketing, so of course I googled him when I got home to see how he was doing in the search engines. I can’t remember the exact query I entered, but the first result was this post by Rand, Seattle’s Wong Doody needs Web Site Help.

I went to a web usability presentation at Adobe down in Fremont tonight. Steve Krug, the presenter, mentioned that he was a Boston College grad. I know a bunch of BC alumni from my days in NYC, so I went up and chatted with him afterwards. Sure enough, he knows, and is in fact a good friend of, my friend Jim in Boston. (Steve had expressed some concern that both BC and the Red Sox were trailing in their games as he arrived. No need to worry, Steve. I checked the scores when I got home, and both teams had won.)

This week one current neighbor (Lyle) and an old neighbor (John) contacted me out of the blue with questions about how to get started studying hand drums. This qualifies as a small-world story because 1) I hadn’t connected with John (still a very down-to-earth guy even though he’s now a big-shot software entrepreneur) in several years and 2) neither of them knew that they were asking about this just days before Seattle’s big annual World Rhythm Festival, which happens this weekend, April 13-15, at the Seattle Center. There’s a kid’s day Friday, a big, participatory opening ceremony Friday night and then FREE workshops, classes, and performances all day Saturday and Sunday, plus a big dance party Saturday night. The full schedule is available at the WRF web site.

(If you’re wondering about Small World Stories #638 & #639, they involved running into my old friend Jesse on the #74 bus heading to Sand Point for a Rat City Rollergirls bout and a few days later running into another old friend, Molly, on the #16 and discovering that we have a friend in common, who, it turns out, is also one of the organizers of the World Rhythm Festival. And so it goes. RIP, Mr. Vonnegut.)

The small-world stories just keep rolling in. This one is particularly unlikely and random.

I got a call from a young woman named Rebecca today asking about buying a massage gift certificate for a friend she had stayed with during a recent visit to Seattle. During our conversation she mentioned that she had recently graduated from St. Olaf College in Minnesota. A week earlier I had taken the Clipper to Victoria and a young woman named Britt had sat next to me. She was a senior at St. Olaf looking at west coast graduate schools and had mentioned that she ran track at St. Olaf. Anyhow, I asked Rebecca, “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone named Britt?” It turns out that she not only knows Britt but had even been on the same track team. [insert “Twilight Zone” music here]