It took a tiebreaking round against the other remaining competitor, but at the end of the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee, St. Pete-based Bruhat Soma correctly spelled 29 out of 30 words correctly, trouncing Faizan Zaki from Texas, who managed to get nine of them right.
He won with the word “abseil” (pronounced “ab-SAIL”), a term used in rock and mountain climbing to descend a vertical surface by using a rope tied around your body and secured to a point above. It’s used more in the UK than in North America, and it’s a synonym for rappel.
In his honor, these billboards have been popping up alkl over the area:
Congrats, Bruhat, and thanks for representing all of us Asian overachievers in Tampa Bay!
Once a year, the Glazer Children’s Museum holds what I like to call “Grown-Up Night,” an adults-only event where we grown-ups can explore the museum and play with the exhibits as if we were kids.
Anitra’s been a member of the museum’s board for a couple of years now, so we’ve gotten to know the board members and staff of the Museum and of course we were there!
We got a couple of photos of us and Little John, the smaller costume version of Big John, the triceratops skeleton on display on the Museum’s third floor. They’re album covers waiting to happen!
Join or Die is a film about why you should join a club — and why the fate of America may depend on it. And I want to get it screened in Tampa — at the Tampa Theatre.
Here’s the trailer for the film:
Join or Die is a feature documentary about community in America, as viewed through the lens of political scientist Robert Putnam’s research and the ideas from his 2000 book, Bowling Alone. The thesis of Bowling Alone is that:
Social capital, community involvement, and civic engagement have been dropping in the U.S. since the 1950s, and
How we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and social structures.
The title Bowling Alone comes from a friend of Putnam’s who owned a bowling alley. The friend remarked that while bowling was up, bowling leagues and bowling as a group activity had gone down.
The decline of bowling as a group activity mirrored other declines. As Putnam says in interviews featured in the film:
How many times last year did you go to church? Down. How many times did you go to a dinner party? Down. How many times last year did you go to a club meeting?
In barely a couple of decades, half of all the civic infrastructure in America had simply vanished. It’s equivalent to saying half of all the roads in America just disappeared!
Here are some “bowling alone” stats, taken from the site for Join or Die:
40% decline from the 1970s to the 1990s in the number of Americans who attended even one public meeting on town or school affairs in the previous year
60% decline from the 1970s to the 1990s in the amount of picnics Americans attended annually
50% decline from the 1970s to the 1990s in the number of Americans who took any leadership role in any local organization
35% decline from the 1960s to the 2020s in religious congregation membership
50% decline from the 1970s to the 1990s in the number of times Americans attended a from the 1970s to the 1990s in the number of times Americans attended a club meeting the previous year
66% decline from the 1960s to the 2010s in union membership
Putnam’s research is all about what makes a society succeed or fail, and he puts forth the idea that it’s about the connections and trust that people make, and the sense of “duty of care” that arise from them. If you get together, get to know your neighbors, build trust not just within a group (“bonding”) but between groups (“bridging”), there better things are — and not just for individuals within the society, but the entire society itself.
Northern and central Italy had a society where people were more civic-minded and involved, where people took part in social gatherings and governance, with their social organization being flatter and high-trust. Their system was more democratic.
Southern Italy, on the other hand, was more hierarchical, with kings at the top, knights below them, and peasants below them. Their system was more autocratic.
(By the bye, the next time some crank tries to tell you that America isn’t supposed to be a democracy, remember that they’re envisioning a southern Italy-like scheme and that they won’t be the peasants in that setup.)
Putnam believes that for democracy to be successful there needs to be a level of mutual trust among the citizens and a more horizontal system of governing, all of which Northern and Central Italy has enjoyed. Putnam states in Making Democracy Work that civil society creates wealth, wealth does not create a civil society. The civic nature of Northern Italy and Central Italy dating back to medieval times has caused the region to be prosperous in modern times. Southern Italy, however, with its more feudal nature in medieval times has caused the region to be the origin of the Mafia and has created a less successful region. The Mafia’s hierarchical structure is very similar to Southern Italy’s feudal roots, according to Putnam.
Here’s the challenge: it’s not available on streaming platforms and it’s not being distributed in the way more mainstream films are. If you want to see it, you have to contact the filmmakers and ask them to host a screening in your community.
So I did just that. I even suggested that Tampa Theatre would be a great venue for it.
Getting a screening here in Tampa will take more than just my effort, and it may take some money. I’m going to need help with this one, and if you’re interested in helping, drop me a line!
Lake Roberta is on my daily bike ride, and four circuits around it make a mile. I stopped for a moment to take this photo, which is one of my favorite scene shots from 2023:
I combine errands with my daily bike ride, which includes grocery shopping. The nearest Publix is around the corner from Lake Roberta, so the two are often tied together:
I often end up passing by one of the few remaining Lustron houses in the world, just a couple of blocks over from our place. These are houses made of enamel-painted steel that came in kit form and were available in the late 1940s, and one of them is in Seminole Heights:
The house was on this year’s Seminole Heights House Tour, and the owners did a fantastic job preserving its 1950s vibe. I’ll post the interior photos that I took on the tour later.
There’s no shortage of murals in Seminole Heights, including many that feature our mascot, “Bite or Smite,” the two-headed alligator:
Ella’s owner, Melissa Deming, has been running it for 15 years — her son pretty much grew up in the restaurant — and she’s looking to sell. I hope there’s a buyer out there who can keep it running with the same quality, care, and quirk that we in the neighborhood have come to know and love.
Here’s another mural featuring “Bite or Smite.” This one is on the wall of the service depot for ABC Autos:
Two new local pubs opened in Seminole Heights in 2023. One of them is The Rollin’ Mullet, named because it’s “business in the front, party in the back” — literally! The owner, Angi Brittain, has an architecture business in the front, which features this fine octopus mural:
In the back is the bar itself, a deck built around an Airstream trailer:
It’s a lovely, lively place:
Spaddy’s Coffee is another place Anitra and I regularly go to. If you’re one of my Facebook friends, you’ve probably seen me post status pics here:
Another regular haunt of ours is The Corner Club, once a dive bar built into a windowless bunker, now a neighborhood cafe serving great homemade food, a nice selection of drinks, good coffee, and just a generally great place to hang out.
It’s where we often host our “Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer” meetups, like the one pictured below:
Also worth checking out: Rene’s Mexican Kitchen, a taco truck that makes excellent tacos and burritos. Their sign on Nebraska Avenue cracked me up, and I had to take a picture of it:
I wrote about the other new pub in the ’hood, Common Dialect Beerworks, back in January 2023, but I thought it was worth mentioning it again, as well as including some photos from that article:
It would be wrong of me to not mention the pub we go to most often: Southern Brewing and Winery. That’s because it’s the home of the Tuesday Afternoon Tipplers, a little “let’s get together every week over beer” club that the folks in our neighborhood formed years ago.
As you can see, we tend to go there, rain or shine:
The selection is pretty nice…
…as are the people.
Every year, a few weeks before Christmas, Northeast Seminole Heights organizes a progressive potluck dinner where four house volunteer to serve as houses for:
Appetizers
Soups and salads
Mains
Desserts
Each hour, the entire group — about 80 people this year — moves from one house to the next, starting with the appetizers house and ending at desserts. It’s a great way to get to know your neighbors, as well as reconnect with those whom you haven’t seen in a while.
We provided a lot of pea soup for the “soups and salads” house, whose backyard is pictured below:
A couple of days after the progressive dinner, we had the neighborhood tree lighting in Park Circle…
…and event which included a guitar player leading the Christmas carols and accompanied by a surprise guest musician:
And finally, I’ll close with a couple of photos of home sweet home:
It would’ve been the band’s last official gig of 2023 for Tom Hood and the Tropical Sons — which includes yours truly on accordion and keyboards — but the venue, Jollimon’s Island, while covered with a roof, is pretty much an outdoor one, and it’s just going to be too cold tonight.
Under warmer circumstances, we’re the house band at JolliMon’s Tuesday “Raw Talent Nights,” where the stage is open to musicians who want to join in on the open mic fun. If you’re in the Clearwater area, come on down (temperature permitting) and enjoy some great live music!
After a summer hiatus, Tom Hood and the Tropical Sons (of which I am a member) are playing gigs again — this time on the third Tuesday of the month at Jollimons Island in Clearwater from 6 to 9 p.m.
We’re part of their Tuesday “Raw Talent Nights,” where the stage is open to musicians who want to join in on the open mic fun.
If you’re down Clearwater way, join us, whether you want to hop onstage and play, or sit back and enjoy the music!
