Sunday, February 15, 2009

Sam Potts and Barack Obama

A few months back I discovered an inspiring 20 minute TED award acceptance speech video by Dave Eggers and I fell in love with his vision for pairing community volunteers and students who need tutoring. In San Francisco, they set up a tutoring center in conjunction with a "fake" store front... a Pirate Supply Company. The gimmick worked better than they ever expected and now their store actually makes a profit. Other tutoring centers have cropped up all around the US and one in Brooklyn is fronted by this Brooklyn Superhero Supply store. Sam Potts did the design work on the storefront and on the product lines within. It's fantastic, especially for a superhero fan like me.

Recently I ran across the name Sam Potts Inc in conjunction with an entirely different venture. On a website I visit regularly I read that Sam was giving away pamphlet copies of Barack Obama's speech from March 2008. I quickly emailed him and my pamphlet arrived in the mail on Thursday. I was thrilled. I am sure it seems silly to be so excited by something like this. Except that it's lovely and did I mention, free.

And as I emailed my mailing address to Mr. Potts I had a student working on a project that included Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" and we paused for a moment and speculated what bits of politics today might have lasting impact... that 50 years from now, or 100 years from now might be remembered or studied. Perhaps this will be one of those. Maybe not. Either way, I have a lovely copy of the speech and I will treasure it. Thank you, Sam.

3 comments:

Nancy Devine said...

i love the videos on ted.
where could we set up our tutoring center?

stephy said...

Yesterday we went by the Seattle branch, it's a space travel supply center. We met Dave Eggers there when it opened, it was rad.

Carm said...

I've actually wondered that myself... where could this local tutoring center be? It seems like it ought to be downtown.

I'm so jealous, Stephy. Dave Eggers seems pretty cool. Have you ever considered volunteering at the Seattle branch? I wonder how involved you'd need to be? I have other Seattle area friends... I should really send them over there to do their civic duty! :)

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