2025

My Biggest Discovery of the Week

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by Paul who must live a very exciting life

It all started with Chris’s current romance novel: First-Time Caller. 

 A person looking more closely might see or imagine some scenes reminiscent of the movie “Sleepless in Seattle.” Turns out there are several intentional similarities: call-in radio show, Baltimore, Tom Hanks’ monologue, Orioles’ third baseman, for example.

 Somebody (there are only two candidates for “somebody!) said, “Ooooh, what about watching Sleepless in Seattle tonight?” We could rent it on Apple TV+ for $3.99. We could afford it and we knew it wasn’t gonna make us think about something or make us better human beings — three (maybe four) important features. So we watched it. Do Chris and I know how to be spontaneous?

 A couple hours later as the credits were rolling I noticed the Meg Ryan character’s Uncle Harold was played by the actor Tom Tammi. (He’s allergic to bees.)

 Tammi is not a common name so I wondered if Tom Tammi is any relation to our John Tammi, who I knew was a theater professor somewhere. A brother? Son? No relation at all?

The movie was released in 1993 when John (and I, if John and I are the same age, born in 1941) would have been about 52. Now 52 was about the right age for Uncle Harold. IMDb.com also revealed that Tom Tammi was born in 1945 and that his brother is John K. V. Tammi, a Professor of Theatre at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. So it all fits and Meg Ryan’s Uncle Harold and our classmate John Tammi have gotta be brothers. I found this photo of John from 2014 somewhere online. 

Woah! — the biggest “aha!” moment of my week. 

This document of this exciting discovery plus 85 cents will get you one ride with the Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District bus from my house to downtown Santa Barbara on the #2 line. Well — it’ll be 85 cents if you’re my age. 

No Kings Protest

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Santa Barbara, June 14, 2025

Every photo will fill screen if you click on it.

I’ve been reluctant to read, listen, or talk about the direction our country has been heading in the last few months but I can show up to this protest and just by being there count in some minuscule way to registering my objections.

Protest location along Santa Barbara waterfront; Map from Google Earth; Nominal protest gathering area about 0.96 miles long;
Walked to the event — parking would have been terrible. Seeing all these people was a lovely sight as I was approaching the east end of assigned gathering area.
Looking west
Ran into Bonny and Jim, got handed a sign and got my picture taken. We’re pretending we’re taking a break from being generally angry and pissed off!
Looking to the east the crowd is noticeably thinner than looking west. My phone camera makes the day look pretty gloomy, mainly because it IS gloomy!

Local news reports on the protest from the day after;

These photos are from the State Street area (where Stearns Wharf meets the shore) where there were a lot more people than where I was.

Published crowd estimates range from 4,000 to 18,000. My estimates are consistent. A single line of people standing gently shoulder to shoulder (about 2½ feet apart, say) would require about 2000 people for the 5080 ft length of our area. I’d say we were at least 2 layers of people deep at the east end of the area where I was, implying a crowd of at least 4000. At the intersection of State Street and E. Cabrillo Blvd. the density of bodies was considerably higher; effectively 5 layers deep? 10 layers? Mathematical extrapolations are notoriously fraught. I’m fine with 4000 to 18,000, with 10,000 to 12,000 being a best-guess average.

***** End of post