2025-2026 – Travels

Andrea and Stu Wedding

2026-06-142026-06-13 by Paul

May 23, 2026, Lancaster, Pennsylvania

The wedding is not a large, grand event with bridesmaids, bishops, a cathedral, and an orchestra. There are 20 souls in attendance and it’s held in Andrea’s and Stu’s living room. It’s a very pleasant and friendly event; a small, grand, event.

The photo on the left is as close as we get to a formal wedding portrait. (click to enlarge)

If you’re in a hurry right now and you have time for only one photo this would be it and it’s OK for you to leave and move on.

If you have no idea who Andrea or Stu is you’re also free to leave this website. You may have reached here by mistake but if you want to stay and look that’s fine with me, too.

This blog post is assembled in a matter-of-fact way as the event looked to me. The photos tell much of the story and are presented in mostly chronological order. Photographers are Andrea, Paul, and Kate.

There are 24 photos and 2 videos in the rest of this post. Clicking on any of the 24 will show you an enlarged photo as part of a 4-, 5-, or 6-photo gallery, that will almost always display a caption. From there you can swipe or click your way through the rest of the gallery.

Thursday, Travel Day

Two days before the wedding Kate arrives in Lancaster from the east (via Philadelphia) and only a few hours later gets to drive west to pick up Rose and me in Harrisburg. We do important shopping.

Bet Andrea could use my help. Wonder if she has any of this stuff?

Friday, the Day Before the Wedding

Andrea & Stu’s other solar array. This array doesn’t produce as much power as their prime solar array on the roof but it creates more smiles. [8 second video]

Friday is not a time of intense activity!

Linda has been viciously cropped out of the two right-hand photos in this gallery. This software doesn’t always do just what I’d like it to, but if you click on any of the next six photos and swipe or click your way through the gallery she’ll be there.

In case someone has forgotten who’s getting married.

Saturday, Wedding Day

Nice table and balloons in a warm, friendly, and dry room looking out on a lovely, green, wet, backyard

Click to listen to my long, tedious, father-of-the-bride speech that drags on for 12 seconds. I’m speaking softly so in case you’d like a little assistance, I’m saying, “…each of my four daughters has been married at least once but this is the first time I’ve ever said anything as the father-of-the-bride.”

Andrea and Stu choose to hold a Self-uniting or Quaker wedding. Pennsylvania is one of 8 states along with the District of Columbia to allow two people to marry without an officiant.

Quote from Gemini AI Overview of “Self-uniting Wedding:”

“A Pennsylvania self-uniting marriage license allows you to legally marry without an officiant. It is recognized statewide and only requires the signatures of the couple and two adult witnesses. You can apply online or in person through any Pennsylvania county courthouse, but your ceremony must take place within state lines.”

Sunday was more relaxed

If you’re interested in local history you might like to read more about Historic Rock Ford that contains the circa 1794 mansion of General Edward Hand and the art gallery where Stu’s 12 foot tall clock lives. https://www.historicrockford.org

The back of the clock; how ’bout that vicious-looking escape wheel?

That’s it, folks

***** End of post “Andrea and Stu Wedding”

My Biggest Discovery of the Week

2025-10-23 by Paul

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

2025-06-152025-06-15 by Paul

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.

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