Meet Eric Schmidt,
volunteer tutor since April 2014 at the
King County Correctional Facility!
LS: Where are you originally from? What brought you here?
ES: My family moved here from rural Ohio when I was an early teenager. I left to live in NYC for a couple of spectacular decades and returned to Seattle 15 years ago. I love the cool peace of the landscape here, but miss living in a city where it was impossible to talk too much.
LS: Please share something of your life so far and what you would like to do in the future.
ES: I'm a playwright with a base in poetry, ex Zen Monastic, ex UN staff, now retired. Always ambitious to do more theatre, now struggling with an audio recording where I play all 6 characters of a verse play set in chado huts, and am beginning to write yet another epic about wrestling.
LS: Why did you choose to volunteer at LS/KCCF?
ES: I found Literacy Source by happenstance, walking by when people attending an event spilled out, and I decided to investigate. Later, was drawn by the unusual, international, varied range of volunteers, staff and students, the mission, and the quiet intensity about the place. During orientation, I learned there was a possibility to tutor in the jail and felt destiny was on the prowl. The penal system makes me grind my teeth big time, and it was time to do something. So, a really lucky fit.
LS: What do you like about volunteering at KCCF?
ES: I happen to love my clients and I like the opportunity to attempt to be of some use to people who are at the lonely crossroads where prisoners find themselves. I like the reality of the work, the edgy, immediate and meaningful demands upon my intellect and spirit.
LS: What are some highlights of working at KCCF?
ES: The guys I have worked with have failed a lot in schools and in society, and have many of the superficial affects in speaking that you'd expect in prisoners: attitudes of anger, clowning, contempt, or utter unconcern. I really enjoy it when even the most inhibited get frustrated enough to speak directly and without insecurity. The simple, quiet, and clear stuff that comes out is as good as language gets, without any help from me at all. Society doesn't foster that type of voice any more than it does poetry, but I wish I could convince my clients of how beautiful and how brave I find their voices to be, or to promise that this honesty and authenticity is all they need to go forward in the world.
LS: What might others not know about you?
ES: My favorite weather condition is a really windy rain storm complete with huge thunder and lightning.
Thank you, Eric, for your thoughtful reflections on your volunteering, we so appreciate all you do to help the inmates at KCCF!
Literacy Source Summer Party
