Dear Friends,

Having moved from my hometown of Washington D.C. after graduating from Boston University, and leaving behind three parents and two grandparents, I came to California looking for new mentors. At UC Davis, I found a number of people to look up to.

Sandra Gilbert was as confident and ingenious as my favorite BU professors, including Howard Zinn, Elie Wiesel, Derek Walcott, or Sir Christopher Ricks. Offering feminist and psychoanalytic approaches to reading poems, Gilbert opened my eyes to new authors, new discoveries, and new insights that inspired the several sections of my doctoral dissertation (for which she was the first reader on my committee). She was also a richly imaginative poet who explored form and personal reflection in her creative works, each of which had an honored spot on my bookshelf. I enjoyed long conversations about literature and other topics in the two classes Sandra Gilbert taught me, in Washington DC when she hosted the 2000 MLA conference there (as MLA president), at her home in Berkeley, and at a 1996 poetry conference in Stirling, Scotland.

Sandra McPherson, who all of us called “Sandy,” invited me to participate in a directed study of contemporary American poets in schools different from the confessional and formal poets that I studied most closely. A Davis poet, fine art and folk art collector, and independent press founder, as well as a favorite professor of many, McPherson also invited her students to her richly-decorated home. One of the most prolific poets I’ve known, McPherson had a poem in the 1973 collection titled No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women that my mom had on her bedroom bookshelf and which first introduced me to contemporary poetry. McPherson and I kept in touch frequently via Facebook in the years after her retirement.

John Boe was the most accomplished, most dynamic, and most multi-talented of my colleagues in the University Writing Program. He had a great sense of humor that he brought to the classroom, to faculty meetings, and to my radio show. Boe co-founded Writing on the Edge and Prized Writing, two important journals of writing that are still being published today. A past Picnic Day Parade Marshal and an accomplished pianist, Boe participated in both faculty speaker series that I ran and the Poetry Night Reading Series where he performed storytelling and blue comedic bits. I saw Boe’s perpetual energy and irreverence as qualities worth emulating.

As I explored instructional technology and pedagogical excellence at UC Davis, I soon found myself on committees with Physics professor Joe Kiskis. Kiskis cared so deeply about undergraduate education that he would drop in on faculty leadership meetings to learn about the university’s vision for teaching and learning, and to pepper campus leaders with seemingly impertinent questions that always elevated the needs of undergraduates over campus bureaucracy. Because of these concerns, Kiskis took a lead in helping the University Writing Program amiably separate from the Department of English so that it could become one of the best such programs in California. I turned to him so many times for wisdom that reflected concerns outside of the humanities, and thus he helped me widen my perspective on the support that I offer faculty across the disciplines as Academic Director of Academic Technology Services.

After I completed my PhD and started supporting English Department and University Writing Program faculty on the use of emerging technologies in the classroom (and later with remote teaching), one of my favorite and most steadfast attendees at my workshops was Beth Freeman. Via Facebook, we discovered that she was an Oberlin College classmate of a friend from high school, so even though we were in different programs, Freeman always treated me as a peer. I would report to her when our mutual students would rave about her teaching (which was always), and she supported me when she became a dean in Letters and Science, adding personal notes to my official review letters. It feels like just yesterday when Beth lunched with me at Yeti downtown, so full of questions for me and affection expressed for my family.

I dined with all these colleagues, interviewed them all in different forums (on video or on the radio), and welcomed them all to Poetry Night, as performers or as attendees. I looked up to them, admired them, and laughed with them. When I reflect back on my years at UC Davis, I see how all five of these friends made my life richer and more meaningful. Their love and support helped my transition from a time of constant mentorship from my parents back East to a time of discovery of new mentors and friends in Davis. 

As you can discover by investigating them online, all five of these friends and mentors passed away this year. I will miss them profoundly and will always cherish their influence on me.

---

The temperatures will be brisk at Sudwerk tonight, but I’m sure some of you will bundle up and join me for the outdoor show on the patio. Cooler heads will be warmer, for they will head inside. I encourage you to come early to snag a table. Also, I plan to move the quiz along quickly — the entire quiz is a mere 976 words long! 

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on the uses of dirt, subscribers, annulled cowpokes, people whose names start with Q, Spanish exports, Boeing airplanes, bankruptcies, five countries in alphabetical order, video game appearances, German markets, baby boomers, soft fabrics, people named Bailey who are not from Bedford Falls, the birth years of presidents, nameplates, newspapers, the distance between Chicago and LA, bears, river stadiums, still waters that run deep, layers of soil, athletic conferences, the height of favorite celebrities, again with the bats, nudity in nature, Arden Way, digital services, beauty filters, surfing destinations, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

I share the entire Pub Quiz with subscribers via Patreon every Monday. Because Christmas falls on a Wednesday this year, I will video record a pub quiz and publish it by Christmas Eve, making it available to all my paid subscribers, no matter the level. If you enjoy the quiz and would like to share the content with a friend or family member, or if you would like to see the Christmas quiz, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscribers Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, who keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the dropping temperatures and the cost of avocado. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1. Mottos and Slogans. Starting with the letter O, the most disappointingly-popular breakfast cereal in 13 U.S. states uses the slogan “It’s Not a Dream – You’re Next.”  

2. Internet Culture. Social media visibility is fleeting, so some people online use the acronym ICYMI. What does that refer to?  

3. Newspaper Headlines. According to a recent article in the New York Times, in 2024, The United States was the sixth largest exporter of automobiles in the world. With 5.7 million cars exported, what country is first?  

Dear Friends,

Today I have been listening to Charles Mingus (right now: “Boogie Stop Shuffle”) and luxuriating in the relative warmth of the afternoon sun.

In conversation with a friend recently, I meandered through a series of synonyms to describe how we heat our home during the mild Davis winters. I described us as pioneers, as homesteaders, as frontiersmen, comparing us to Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family in the Minnesota sod house that she describes in such rich detail in her book On the Banks of Plum Creek.

All of this is hyperbole, perhaps an expectation from conversations with a poet who traffics in metaphor, amplification, and grandiloquence. What I meant, mostly, is that we keep it cold in the house in the winter and warm in the summer.

If you were to look at our heater or air conditioning unit, you would see why. Both were installed when our Davis home was built in 1992, the same year that we got married. With its odd noises and uneven functionality, our old heater might remind one of the furnace in the McCallister basement in Home Alone. In recent years, we’ve felt cold drafts like an affliction, and not the refining kind that John Adams describes when he says that “The furnace of affliction produces refinement, in states as well as individuals.”

When we recently discovered both warm and cold air coming from the registers in our home, we called Greiner Heating, Air, and Electric so we could get a diagnosis. As with visits to the doctor, diagnoses typically result in expensive treatments, so we agreed to replace the entire unit even though Kate somehow fixed the temperature variance in the interim. 

As replacing an HVAC system typically takes two days or longer, the folks at Greiner kindly delivered us space heaters – one for our room, and one for my son Jukie’s – for us to use overnight when we had access to no heat whatsoever. I wanted to say that we call such days “Tuesday,” by which I meant that we always turn off the heat at night. That’s what layers of blankets are for.  Consider what Melville says in Moby-Dick: “For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air.”

December temperatures in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, near where Laura Ingalls Wilder once homesteaded with her family in a sod house, range from a low of 16 degrees to a high of 28 degrees. At one point, Wilder wrote that “Snow as fine and grainy as sugar covered the windows in and sifted off to the floor and did not melt.” Sometimes the Wilder family tacked their blankets to the window-frames to protect the home from the ravages of winter.

With our powerful new heating system, seemingly ready to heat a home twice the size of ours, I anticipate that future winters will see me wearing no more than three layers at once. My late mom, who used to read to me from Laura Ingalls Wilder, has indirectly paid for our warmth this winter, providing for my comfort as she always did when I was a boy. 

Like then, I am full of gratitude. And like then, today I am spending a bit of time with some cool jazz, a warm blanket, and a writing project.

---

Thanks to everyone who joined us for Thanksgiving Eve last week. Tonight, we will have clear skies and warmer than average temperatures, but you should still be like Half-Pint and bring an extra layer if you plan to enjoy the Pub Quiz outside amongst the towering heaters. Surely the jollity will be unfiltered as we welcome back former players who have been missing the quiz but can now return to Davis to partake in the fun. As Albert Schweitzer said, “Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.” I encourage you to come early to snag a table. Also, I plan to move the quiz along quickly — the entire quiz is a mere 983 words long!  

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on hats, people who are next, acronyms, dancers, notable novels, trees, foreign cars, people from Portugal, ghosts, gold rushes, archeologists, sluggers, incipient job hunters, Russians, baby. Animals, UC Davis majors, cities that are unlike Paris or New York, sleepwalking, the example of Clockwork Orange, surfers, relative pasts, musical snakes, Pittsburgh, composites, company founders, pirates, ersatz Japanese cuisine, high school shows, dance moves, calm ushers, Harry Potter, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscribers Michael (welcome!), Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, who keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1. Four for Four. Which two of the following are terms for the phenomenon of a moon having a moon: micromoon, moonmoon, second moon, submoon?  

2. Laundromats. According to Yelp, how many laundromats are there in the city of Davis: Two, five, or ten?  

3. Name the Year. In what single year were the biopics Elvis, The Fabelmans, and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story all released?    

Dear Friends,

As we prepare for Thanksgiving, my mind journeys back to this week 40 years ago when, a high school junior, I took my first international trip. My father took my brother Oliver and me to London, England, so we could explore the city (and a bit of Stratford-upon-Avon) and see eight plays in seven days.

The Davis Joint Unified School District has long excused students from class for the entire week of Thanksgiving (this is likely one reason why school seems to start so early in the fall), but back in my day, as old people say, we just had Thursday and Friday off. As a result, I had to ask all my teachers for my assignments early (I would soon be applying to college, so I needed to stay ahead of expectations), so we could leave guilt-free on a Friday night.

As I look over the hotels near Euston Station to see which one jogs my memory, I keep coming back to “The Suites” at 31 Argyle Street. I remember being fascinated by the imposing iron fences that surrounded so many of the buildings in London, as if each home were its own castle or its inhabitants were still preparing for the next Viking invasion.

Speaking of invasions, one of the most memorable of the eight plays we saw was a production of Shakespeare’s Henry V that featured Kenneth Branagh in the title role, a role he reprised in the notable 1989 film. Famously, Henry V and his “happy few,” his outnumbered “band of brothers,” defeated the French at Agincourt on St. Crispin’s Day:

This day is called the feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,

And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.

And say, ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,

But he’ll remember with advantages

What feats he did that day: then shall our names.

Familiar in his mouth as household words

Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,

Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,

Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

While I loved the play and was impressed with Kenneth Branagh, in 1984, none of us knew who he was. But I did recognize the name of Ian McDiarmid who played Emperor Palpatine in the biggest movie of 1983, Return of the Jedi, and likewise the name of Sebastian Shaw. In this case, Sebastian Shaw was coincidentally not the Marvel supervillain, but the British actor and poet who played the role of the unmasked Anakin Skywalker in that same Star Wars movie.

That week we also saw the premier of The Hired Man, a new musical that won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor (Paul Clarkson) in a Musical, and the premier of Starlight Express, a new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that featured all the actors performing in roller skates to portray really fast train cars, like a racy and glamourous Thomas the Tank Engine. We listened to the soundtrack for the next year.

40 years later, I am grateful for the time I got to spend with my dad and brother, and for the investment that our dad, Davey Marlin-Jones, made in our theatrical educations. Fast-forward to 2024, and my brother is a film critic whose daughter just starred in a production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, while I put on my own very different shows six times a month.

I also became an Anglophile during that trip and resolved to return to London if I could. Just under three years later I returned to London as a resident. One of the first people I met was the person I initially nicknamed “my beautiful London roommate” to everyone in Boston or DC who would listen to my stories. 

Thirty-seven years later, that woman, Kate, is still my roommate, and even more beautiful. We hold hands while watching new plays in Sacramento and Davis. I look forward to returning with her to the West End where we will again fill our theatre dance cards with wonderful productions and performances.

---

Thanks for your patience as I was finishing that story.

We had a full house at Sudwerk last week as everyone crowded indoors to escape the rain. Tonight we will have clear skies and cool temperatures. Bring an extra layer if you plan to enjoy the Pub Quiz outside amongst the towering heaters. Surely the jollity will be unfiltered as we welcome back former players who have been missing the quiz but can now return to Davis to partake in the fun. As Albert Schweitzer said, “Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.” I encourage you to come early to snag a table. Also, I plan to move the quiz along quickly — the entire quiz is a mere 964 words long!  

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on cheese, animals, dancing, skiing, to-go food, golf hernia anagrams, rocker medical conditions, threads, The New York Times, greeting cards, namesakes, American stages, cat and mouse games, long-distance calls, speed demons, laundry, weirdnesses, moons, telecasts, Canadians, mountains, schoolchildren aptitudes, typefaces, festivals, helicopters, missed meals, trilogies, Islam, superheroes, hyphenated names, porridges, storytellers, proverbs, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscribers Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, who keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the dropping temperatures and the cost of avocado. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1. Books and Authors. The Brooklyn Public Library has 163 copies of the Caldecott Medal-winning book of 1963. Starting with the letter W, what is the title of the most checked-out book in the history of the BPL? 
2. Film. What 2005 animated Disney feature film starred Zack Braff, Joan Cusack, and Garry Marshall, and featured supporting roles voiced by Don Knotts and Patrick Stewart, all of them playing animals? 
3. Old Cities. Name one of the two U.S. states that were added to the Union during the U.S. Civil War.  

Dear Friends,

Yesterday I had a 70-minute conversation with a stranger who lives deep in Trump country. Blissfully, we didn’t bring up politics once.

My new friend Karen is the President of the Beavertown Historical Society. As is likely the case of every local historical society, Karen works tirelessly to preserve the history and identity of her home town, in this case a small town in Pennsylvania.

I visited Beavertown every summer from the time I was born until I moved to California. My brother and I own a cabin in the woods right on the creek that provides Beavertown its water. This creek was my childhood playground. I spent hundreds of hours exploring, playing, reading or just sitting between the revetments that were built by the Work Projects Administration.

Born in 1900, my grandmother Vera remembered when, in the 1930s, all those workers descended upon Snyder County to improve its roads, bridges, creek-beds, water systems, and other municipal projects. Millions of people stayed busy and fed during the depression because of the ambitious vision and projects of the WPA.

Nobody from my grandmother’s generation is left to tell those stories, but Karen is preserving other sorts of stories in a new book about the history of Beavertown. I plan to buy a copy for my brother Oliver and me, and I will share one of the photographs in a future newsletter.

---

Speaking of faraway places, I first visited California in June of 1987 by car with my New England friend Bob, a lifelong Red Sox fan. On our way to San Francisco to see the Jerry Garcia Band play in a club, At one point, Bob and I were driving past the Kansas City Royals stadium on I-70 when Bob said he’d turn on the radio to see if there was a game we could listen to. The announcer immediately reminded listeners that the Royals were hosting the Red Sox that night. We got off at the next exit. The Red Sox won, but we were careful not to cheer too loudly.

---

Please plan to partake in the Pub Quiz festivities on this pleasant if chilly evening at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for everyone amongst the towering heaters. The temperatures are dropping, so you might want to bring an extra layer. Surely the jollity will be unfiltered after sunset tonight. As Albert Schweitzer said, “Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.” I encourage you to come early to snag a table. Also, I plan to move the quiz along quickly — the entire quiz is a mere 994 words long! Do you ever notice that the word count changes every week? Sometimes I make extra work for myself.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on silhouettes, generatively, hunks, athletes who return to surprise you, armor classes, progressive records, giants of literature, people from Boston, Brisbane airports, civil wars, more gloves than hands, art, grace and faith, optics, glasses, countries you have heard of but likely not visited, thumb icons, the absence of pandas, populous cities, international flavor, schools where notions are a blast, crosswalks, video games, teeth, troublesome customers, Newtons, professional wrestlers, people people, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscribers Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions The Mavens who keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the dropping temperatures and the cost of avocado. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1. Unusual M Words with Four Syllables. What M noun refers to a feeling of pensive sadness?
2. Two Asian Nations. What alternated as the two largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 CE?
3. Pop Culture – Television. The two of last week’s most- watched non-sports broadcast TV shows have the same American city name in their titles. Name the city.

Dear Friends,

My late mom, Mary Clementine Ternes, was an avid reader. Her mother Vera would read to her until her daughter could read on her own, and thereafter the two of them would just read together, sometimes in my grandmother’s bed, until late into the evening. I’m not sure what my grandfather thought of this practice. A radio, a record player, and eventually even a television came into their Detroit home, but my mom preferred to read.

In the late 1950s, my mom had an entry-level job in a Mad Men style advertising agency in New York City. Her supervisor, during the conversation in which he informed her that she was being fired, told her that she reads so much that she should travel uptown to Columbia University to get a master’s degree in library science. So that’s what she did.

My mom kept reading journals. Also called commonplace books, these are hardback blank books in which one records quotations, responses to book passages, and unfamiliar, mellifluous, or inspirational words. Thus inspired, the keeper of a commonplace book can be like Wordsworth who said you should “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

Sylvia Plath kept such journals. In one of them she wrote, “I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart.” In another, she expressed a sentiment that my mom would have agreed with: “Aloneness and selfness are too important to betray for company.”

Sylvia Plath would also underline words in red in her dictionary, many of which Plath scholars have also found in her poems. One imagines her underlining sharp and biting words, such as “acerbic,” or dark and shadowy words, such as “tenebrous,” “stygian,” or even “atramentous.”

One favorite evening word of mine, “noctivagant,” refers to wandering the streets at night, the way the speaker does in that famous Robert Frost poem:

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. 

I have been one acquainted with the night. 

Today many of us have dropped our eyes, perhaps unable to explain. 

I regretted that my father, a great proponent of civil rights and someone who was optimistic about the promise of America, did not live long enough to see Barack Obama be elected U.S. President.

I regretted, too, that my mom passed away a couple of weeks before we received our mail-in ballots. She was inspired by the feminist movement – maybe this was spurred on by how she was treated at that advertising agency, or by all the books she read – and would have been thrilled to vote (again) for Kamala Harris.

We who are living get to see the best and the worst of America, and still we march on, even when we find ourselves marching on the “saddest city lanes.” We seek to hold our heads up, imagining ourselves to be supported by the investments previous generations of idealists have made in us. Wielding their dreams, we take stock and plan for future campaigns. Rolling up our sleeves, at least eventually, we won’t give up.

If my mom were alive today, I would have texted her another word for her commonplace book: “Recrudescence. (17^th century): the return of something terrible after a time of reprieve.”

I know that more than 51% of American voters think differently, but today I mourn for more than my mom.

---

Please plan to partake in the Pub Quiz festivities on this pleasant if gusty evening at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for almost everyone. The temperatures are joyfully dropping, so you might want to bring an extra layer. Surely the jollity will be unfiltered. As Albert Schweitzer said, “Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.” I encourage you to come early to snag a table. Also, tonight I plan to move the quiz along quickly — the entire quiz is a mere 820 words long! Do you ever notice that the word count changes every week? Sometimes I make extra work for myself.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on unfavorable houses, running times, solo dancers, Oscar-nominated films, flowery hotdogs, sports legends, reclaimed rights, repeated letters, young heroines, ancient rivers, bands of heroes, Pixar films, flowers, psychedelia, Florida and Cuba revenants, layoffs, fast songs, American cities, economic giants, moods, prophesies, bears, specimens, tennis, howls, recognizable leaders, wartime vitamins, three-pointers, legendary singers, closing empires, escaping daughters, varied diets, memoirs, city fires, halls of fame, architecture, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscribers Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions The Mavens who keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the dropping temperatures and the cost of avocado. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine!

P.S. Here are three pub quiz questions from last week:

1. Youth Culture. Who rose to prominence after winning the fourth season of American Idol in 2005, the same year that her single “Inside Your Heaven” (2005) made her the first country artist to debut atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart? Hint: She has the greatest net worth of any American Idol contestant. 
2. Big Ships. Starting with the letter B, in what city was The Titanic built? 
3. Countries of the World. The names of what percentage of African countries end in vowels? Is the number closest to 45%, 60%, 75%, or 90%? 

P.P.S. Tomorrow’s Poetry Night features Julia B. Levine and Murray Silverstein! Join us at 7 PM at the Natsoulas Gallery.

Dear Friends,

In the film Taken, Liam Neeson’s character Bryan Mills tells a kidnapper that he as a “particular set of skills” that will enable him to recover his daughter. The movie then reveals how he uses those skills. Considering that the film has two sequels and a spinoff TV show, we can surmise that Bryan Mills succeeds.

As a faculty member and academic director at Academic Technology Services at UC Davis, I have the skillset that you would expect: I know how to grade papers, speak about writing and literary topics before a room full of students, and sit patiently in long meetings.

All that said, it has come to the attention of leadership that I have an additional particular set of skills that can come in handy on rare and celebratory occasions: I have no fear of microphones, I can lightly roast (almost a “toast”) strangers in front of a large crowd, I can disperse humorous quips on the fly, and I can introduce speakers with the enthusiasm of Bruce Buffer.

This week these two worlds – the genteel and bureaucratic world of academia and the energetic and sometimes edgy showmanship of the pub quiz – collided at the California-wide UC Tech conference at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, where I was the Master of Ceremonies.

Although not as ebullient and irreverent as the Quizmaster, as MC I still brought a lot of optimism and humor to the job. I suggested at the start that I had been recruited for this position because of my poetry skills, that half the tech wonks were there mostly for the polka band, and that one of the keynote speakers I was introducing has been published in the Washington Post so many times that I was considering restarting my subscription. I had to clear that instance of political humor with one of the lead organizers of the conference. I did not have to clear my MC clothing choices, even my paisley shirt.

More than half the 800 conference attendees were still present to fill the first floor of Jackson Hall yesterday afternoon when I closed UC Tech with a poem, one I had offhandedly promised when I introduced myself at the start, and that I had written while the conference was ongoing.

I will close that this newsletter with that same poem. Enjoy.

“The Paisley Poet Closes the Tech Conference with Images Stolen from the Theoretical Physicist”

Thank you to keynote speaker Professor Raissa D’Souza for her work on Explosive Connectivity 

It might be said that we are all percolating.
Socially, intellectually, if we are lucky, also playfully,
We evolve at a comfortable pace;
HR would say, with mild approval, that we are meeting expectations. 
In a remote world of pathways, we are unhurried vertices,
Nodes in a network, for some of us, an obligatory network,
Fingers in contact with mediating keyboards,
Zoom tiles with Zoom tiles,
Rather than eyes in contact with eyes.
The debugging action items don’t care if we are smiling.
Our work from home Covid cocoons curtailed water cooler kinship, 
And since then, our connections have become more economical. 
Without fear of offending, we sometimes cut Slack short
Or respond curtly to the troubleshooting ticket
Without concerns about ourselves making trouble. 

As UC Tech comes to a close, let’s hope time spent
In this grand wine-funded palace for the performing arts
Led you to percolate not like coffee, but like eager volcanos.
Sometimes you have to travel far away to find yourself.
Abrupt phase transitions need catalysts, such as a Crackerjack Polka Band! 
Perhaps Mariachis Bonitas de Dinorah horns and castanets
Have lowered the activation energy needed for your involuntary reaction.
Ice is ice, baby, until suddenly, because of Davis October heat, the ice is broken!
We crafty organizers succeeded if a shared cookie
In the Mondavi courtyard became your critical connection threshold.
Your node is nodding; your point is tipping,
And now, raffle prize or no; Crackerjack Polka Dance Floor dance moves or no; 
Your rapidly evolving network has hot new broken ice nodes!
You have optimized for the timeline of this ephemeral moment.
We see you, eye to eye; we greet you, handshake to handshake.
Let the exploding social network percolations
Remind you, tonight and often, how it feels to step free from your cocoon. 

---

Please plan to partake in the Pub Quiz festivities on this pleasant evening at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for almost everyone. The temperatures are joyfully dropping, though the rain doesn’t come until tomorrow. Surely the jollity will be unfiltered. As Albert Schweitzer said, “Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.” I encourage you to come early to snag a table. We filled the restaurant and patio last week, and I expect that we will continue to do so throughout the school year and beyond. Also, tonight I plan to move the quiz along quickly — the entire quiz is only 937 words long! Do you ever notice that the word count changes every week? Sometimes I make extra work for myself.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on Joe Biden’s pumpkins, detectives, transformations, the loyal opposition, actors, Irish culture, famous sorceresses, grouchy lumberjacks, book genres, heavenly songs, auspicious beginnings (but not endings), country names, going home to Oakland, Miller settings, on-air courtships, adorable teddies, musical chaos, bears who swim, British partial retreads, screams, people who share names with superheroes, March events, captivating people, candy that talks back, Swedes, shoes, the connection between Dickens and Freud, vampires, lineups, fermentable sugars, physical ideas, famous creeks that no one has visited, old studies, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscribers Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions The Mavens who keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Happy Halloween!

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from last week:

1. Mottos and Slogans. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, KFC suspended the use of what slogan out of safety concerns? 
2. Internet Culture. The following video game subtitles have what titular fantasy setting in common: Age of Sigmar, 40,000, Space Marine? 
3. Newspaper Headlines. Which 2024 hurricane caused more power outages, Hélène or Milton? 

Dear Friends,

Today, for the first time, I listened to Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony.

You probably haven’t heard of this symphony. Nor had I until I started casting about for an archives-related topic to explore.

There are only nine symphonies by Beethoven, you might say, just as a baseball game has only nine innings and a pregnancy only nine months. 

Of course, we know these limits don’t always hold. Baseball fans know that in 2016, the Chicago Cubs ended their 108-year World Series championship drought with a dramatic 10-inning victory over the Cleveland Indians. This moment secured their first title since 1908 and is one of the most historic games in baseball history. This was also the only televised sporting event that my wife Kate has ever watched, outside the Olympics.

And if pregnancies lasted only nine months, we might be celebrating my daughter Geneva’s birthday today, instead of waiting until November 7^th. She would not be enticed to come out to play back in the late 1990s, just as today she sometimes has trouble waking up from a Sunday afternoon nap.

Scholars knew that notes about Beethoven’s Tenth were found among the Maestro’s records. Fragmentary sketches gave scholars hope that the work could be completed, even hundreds of years after composition had begun.

Beethoven’s later-years secretary, the violinist Karl Holz, had taken some notes after hearing the first movement being played, and these notes corroborated the approach to assembling the symphony by British musicologist Barry Cooper, editor of the Beethoven Compendium.

In 2019, the third and fourth movements of the symphony were reconstructed (extrapolated) by artificial intelligence. Beethoven X: The AI Project premiered on October,  2021.

We writing professors have learned to be suspicious of generative AI, but as I write these paragraphs, I’ve been pleased in this case with what AI has generated. I’m no music professor, but I can hear echoes of the genius of Beethoven’s recognizable works in the different movements of “new” music that I’ve heard today.

I also recognize that such compositions would not be possible but for the archives and archivists who gather, safeguard, organize, catalogue, and make available to scholars and sometimes even laypeople such as myself the physical (or digital) works by artistic masters or important historical figures whose work has come to matter to so many of us.

In the Archives and Special Collections at Shields Library one can find 41.2 linear feet of recordings and transcripts from the “Oral History Office.” One can also find there the papers of two men who I know (or knew) a bit: Gary Snyder and Wayne Thiebaud. There you can also find the papers of Isao Fujimoto, who was a good friend. All of us who appreciate the Davis Food Co-op or the Davis Farmers Market owe Isao our thanks.

The National Archives is celebrating American Archives Month throughout October, so tonight at the Pub Quiz you can expect a few questions about archives and libraries. It’s an appropriate topic if you consider how much time  you spend in the dusty archives of your own brain’s library every time I ask you an obscure question about Beethoven’s symphonies or Roman emperors.

---

Please plan to partake in the Pub Quiz festivities on this pleasant evening at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for almost everyone. The temperatures are joyfully dropping, and the jollity will be unfiltered. As Albert Schweitzer said, “Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.” I encourage you to come early to snag a table. We filled the restaurant and patio last week, and I expect that we will continue to do so throughout the school year and beyond. Also, tonight I plan to move the quiz along quickly — the entire quiz is only 908 words long! Do you ever notice that the pub quiz word count changes every week? Sometimes I make extra work for myself.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on hammers, diamonds, Harvard University, umbrellas, Greek and Roman colors, British monarchs, special family moments, Spider-Man, southern history, scriptures, writing habits, multiclassers, mermaids, cliff faces and such, Ws. groupings of birds, ownership questions, island chains, horses, mealtimes with strangers, roses, Italian attractions, conversions, random audits, People Magazine, Buddhism, unusual fish, chicken strategies, strong winds, fantasy settings, mountains, kilometers, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscribers Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank, such as Sophie. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions The Mavens who keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz: 

1. Books and Authors. Sharing a name with the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the Southern United States, which Virginia Woolf novel is a fictional biography of an English nobleman who changes sex and lives for several centuries? 

2. Film. Which “Terrifier” movie topped the box office this past weekend: Terrifier, Terrifier 2, or Terrifier 3?  

3. Youth Culture. What might be a three-letter synonym for “cap” in the slang phrase “no cap”? 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Earlier this month I hosted a DOLCE meeting that made me want to return to my study of German, a study that concluded when my German teacher retired in about 1978. 

DOLCE stands for “Discussing Online Learning and Collaborative Education.” I’ve been hosting this particular series of faculty talks for about a dozen years. Held in person until the pandemic lockdown, now DOLCEs take place via Zoom, thus making it easy for us to record the speakers.

On October 4^th, we heard from Brie Tripp, an NPB professor who talked about “Formative Feedback increases Instructor Immediacy for Students.” Tripp uses QR codes to collect anonymous survey responses at the end of every lecture.

Second was Kirsten Harjes, a faculty member in German, who presented on “Ideas for writing assignments in the foreign languages in the age of Google Translate and ChatGPT.” 

Like many faculty, Harjes has come up with ingenious ways to harness ChatGPT as a helper, almost a virtual TA, so the act of “translating” that second-language learners will always be assisted in some way by generative AI. As Harjes puts it in her recorded talk, faculty in German and the other languages have been “battling and welcoming” AI for years.

I love seeing how my faculty colleagues innovate. Seeing the Harjes approaches made me want to return to learning German, a language I “abandoned” when my German teacher retired from her work at the Washington Waldorf School, where I was also learning French and Latin. My elementary French classes prepared me for high school, my high school classes prepared me for my last formal French class in college, and all of the above prepared me to teach the French translation exam during my first year of graduate school here at UC Davis.

Since my time at Waldorf, I have studied poetry by Goethe, Rilke, Hölderlin, Heine, Brecht, and Celan, all in English. Friedrich Schiller was an ancestor of ours, my Grandmother Vera taught us, though I haven’t independently confirmed this via FamilySearch.org.

Mostly I would like to visit Germany, as my wife Kate and my son Truman got to do last fall, retracing some of the steps of our ancestors on both sides of our family. The Ternes family crest of arms surely has the seabird “terns” upon it, for that is the derivation of my Mom’s maiden name.

Do you have a language or a land that you would like to return to, even if you’ve never been there? Do share.

---

Please plan to partake in the Pub Quiz festivities on this pleasant evening at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for almost everyone. The rain has stopped and the jollity will be unfiltered. As Albert Schweitzer said, “Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.” I encourage you to come early to snag a table. We filled the restaurant and patio last week, and I expect that we will continue to do so throughout the school year and beyond. Also, tonight I plan to move the quiz along quickly — the entire quiz is only 748 words long!

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on credit concerns, approximations, jumbled memories, recent boat travel destinations, unforgiving weather, salesmen, sequels, electric vehicles, legends who switch jobs, NPR, members of halls of fame, Scrabble, primates, significant walks, platoons, the absence of mendacity, beautiful words, jazz fans, debit cards, state nicknames, playlists, familiar moons, Rite Aid, the consternation of bakers, naming rights in Los Angeles, schoolboys, caps, Germans who speak Polish, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscribers Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank, such as Sophie. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining Mavens who keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon (where I am also sometimes sharing drafts of poems, including one this week about my move to California in 1989). I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1. Science: The Measuring of Horses. Starting with the letter W, what do we call the highest part of a horse’s back, located at the base of the neck between the shoulder blades?  

2. Great Americans. First name Samuel, who developed the standard for the rhythmic transmission of data?  

3. Unusual Words. What five-letter T words means “understood or implied without being stated”?  

P.P.S. Tomorrow’s Poetry Night features readings by Tim Hunt and Michael Gallowglas. Find the details at Poetry in Davis.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Of all the enjoyable duties that Chancellor May of UC Davis gets to perform, I imagine that one of his favorites must be helping the freshmen move into dorms every September. 

No matter how digitized we become, with the huge record collections and book collections that we transport in our phones, and no matter how much easier our lives might be made with the help of AI, we are still physical beings. Although often encumbered with too many possessions, we are still delighted to be moving bodily through the world.

Dancers know this. Martha Graham said, “Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul’s weather to all who can read it.” Philosophers know this. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Sit as little as possible; give no credence to any thought that was not born outdoors while one moved about freely — in which the muscles are not celebrating a feast, too: all prejudices come from the intestines. The sedentary life — as I have said once before — is the real sin against the holy spirit.”

Walkers like me know this, too. I saw Rebecca Solnit give a talk on campus the day after my father died 20 years ago, and I have been reading her essays ever since. In her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit writes, “Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.”

Just over a week ago, I got to help a friend move out of her Woodland condo and into a new home in West Sacramento. I was not my friend Margaret’s strongest helper, but I was one of the most energetic, arriving early to get my steps in and loads carried before running off to host a charity event. I climbed 38 flights of stairs that day, more than three times my average of 11, and got a significant workout in the form of what trainers call “functional fitness.”

I was feeling rather dysfunctional when I was asked to help carry a full size upright piano down two flights of stairs. Trained to love old films by my father, I immediately envisioned scenes from the 1932 Academy Award-winning short Laurel and Hardy film The Music Box, which we can watch in its entirety on YouTube.

Luckily, I was one of three movers, chosen because my lithe frame could squeeze between the piano and the stairwell as we rounded corners. I’m happy to report that our trip to and on the stairs was far less musical than that of Laurel and Hardy. One wonders what the Three Stooges would do with such an assignment.

On my walks, I’ve passed many a family moving endless boxes into a new home, often a student apartment, and wanted to offer to help, but as a longtime faculty member, I have an obligation not to come off as creepy, so we keep walking by, preferring walked miles over climbed flights.

But the Chancellor, he dons his gloves and perhaps his nametag and gets to walk right up to strangers who quickly become friends, or at least fans, and he gets to substitute a functional workout for another trip to the Rec Hall. And I bet that so far he has not dropped a single piano.

If you are curious to know how my wife Kate’s foot is doing, please read the long postscript at the end of this week’s newsletter.

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Please plan to partake in the Pub Quiz festivities on this pleasant evening at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where the misters will be misting and where we have room for almost everyone. The jollity will be unfiltered. As Albert Schweitzer said, “Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.” I encourage you to come early to snag a table. We filled the restaurant and patio last week, and I expect that we will continue to do so throughout the school year and beyond. Also, tonight I plan to move the quiz along quickly — the entire quiz is only 859 words long!

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on angels and their counterparts, billionaires, old nippers, Benedictine creatures, printed errors, liberties, guards, horses, large cities, people named Pierre, adopted fathers, early balls, hours, French women, John Malkovich, forgotten roles, hackles of sorrow, people born in Oakland, Mars, spruces and pines, places that start with the letter M, presidential trivia, John Lennon’s birthday, the roles of rolls, Saturday Night Live, young legs in the never garden, rhythmic communications, original teams, race cars, aces, unusual measurements, painters who changed jobs, implications, French commonalities, understudies, bodies, devoted players, T leaders, valuable minerals, oceans, roses, basketball players,  beloved animals, unbelted books, scientific units, capitals,  current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscribers Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank, such as Sophie. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining Mavens who keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon (where I am also sometimes sharing drafts of poems, including one this week about my move to California in 1989). I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Also, my friend Leslie is visiting from Oregon this week. I wonder which team will get to add her as a ringer!

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Find here three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Youth Culture. Born in July of 2024, Moo Deng is a really cute example of what sort of animal?  

2. World Cities. What European city has the nicknames “The City of Counts,” “The Catalan Capital,” and BCN?  

3. Video Games. Which multiplayer online game exploded in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, one where colorful and armless players try to identify imposters? 

P.P.S. And here is Kate’s update:

Six months ago, I walked into the hospital to get a bionic hip and left a few days later with a paralyzed foot. Of all of the possible outcomes of surgery, the surgeon accidentally crushing my sciatic nerve (which controls movement of the foot) was not on my list of concerns. Welcome to the story of my recovery. 

If you know me well, you know that I like to walk. Because walking is integral to my sense of wellbeing, I had built walking into my daily life: walking and processing life with friends, walking my dog while listening to music and podcasts, and hiking with my husband and kids to sustain and center me. I loved running into people all over town on my walks. On most days I would end up walking many miles, rarely sitting down until the end of the day.

Waking up from surgery unable to feel or move my foot made me feel as if I had been suddenly thrust into my own terrifying disaster film. I had entered the land of disability, and as the months passed, I came to learn how much I had taken my able-bodied status for granted. None of us is promised health and strength. 

The doctors all said that the chance of recovery from my injured nerve was unknown and that I needed to practice patience because nerves heal slowly — my recovery might take one to two years, they told me. The sciatic nerve is the biggest nerve in our bodies, starting in our back and traveling all the way down our legs into our heels. That’s a long way for nerve impulses to travel when the nerve itself heals so slowly. Not only did the injury prevent me from lifting or feeling any sensation in my foot, but it also caused numbness from my thigh down to my toes. With a numb leg and foot and my new hip, I felt as though I were learning to walk on a prosthetic leg. 

Facing many medical challenges at once, I found that even getting in and out of bed required practice and help. I also had to sleep with my newly-dropped foot in a boot to protect it and to keep it in a 90° position. Manually turning my immobile foot in its big and heavy boot while I tried to sleep at night made me feel as if I were disconnected from my own body.

A few nights after I returned home, a new burning pain in my foot and ankle woke me. It turns out that this sciatic injury causes intense nerve pain, pain that had just begun. Take it as a good sign, my medical team said, for the pain was evidence that my nerve was trying to heal. Over the months, I tried to make peace with the pain as part of my healing process, so when a sudden stabbing pain would grip my ankle, I thought: heal me. When burning enveloped my foot, I thought: heal me.

Convalescing slowly at home, I found it disorienting not to trust what I was feeling. Was my foot burning up, or cold to the touch? Would a light massage comfort me, or trigger gasps of discomfort? Sometimes the leg sensations felt less like pain, and more like water was being slowly poured on my foot, a sensation that seemed so real that I needed to check that my foot was actually dry. 

I knew that attitude would be important in my recovery and for my mental health, so I adjusted my mindset to “positive.” I needed to believe that my foot could and would recover. However, maintaining that positive mindset proved difficult as I started feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenges. The pain, my paralyzed foot, my inadequate sleep, and the glacial pace of surgery recovery together led to my first ever panic attacks. I am so grateful to friends who came over and sat with me, took me to doctor appointments, and coaxed me to go out to lunch. I cried throughout more than one Crepeville lunch with friends. I have no sisters, but my friends are all sisters to me. I couldn’t have gotten through any of it without them. 

In physical therapy (with a wonderful neuro PT named Laura), I found hope and encouragement. Determined to regain use of my foot, I sought to become an overachiever with my assigned exercises. In the early weeks when I couldn’t move my foot at all, Andy lifted it for me as I focused on sending the correct “MOVE” signal from my brain to my foot. I looked forward to those times with Andy, as he so tenderly held and moved my foot for me. After a few weeks of these exercises, I began to feel sensation on my sole, and his healing touch gave me comfort. 

And then, after a couple months of this, I could lift my foot enough to do my own exercises without direct enabling assistance. But trying repeatedly to move your foot when it barely responds still felt demoralizing and depressing. Needing inspiration, I turned to music, to my old friends like The Boss, The Chicks, and sometimes, solely for comfort, to Joni. I spent hours every night listening to music and lifting my foot to the beat of whatever tempo I could manage. I saw this discovery of music to accompany and facilitate my exercises as a turning point. With this musical support, I began to feel joyful, thinking less about the strain of my PT exercises, and instead tapping (and laboriously raising) my foot to the beat. 

Over the summer, I resumed long walks, now with an AFO (ankle-foot orthosis) brace in my shoe. How great it felt to encounter friends on the greenbelt again! I said to myself that if I had to, I could live the rest of my life with this level of functioning. But AFOs kind of suck. They feel uncomfortable and awkward and can even cause pain, as all four of mine did. My ultimate dream was to shed the carbon fiber and Velcro straps of such devices and walk barefoot on the beach with my husband. 

Although my foot and ankle still have more strength to recover, and although I still have nerve pain and a numb leg and foot, I am pleased to report that six months after my injury, I have ditched my AFO brace and have walked barefoot on the beach with Andy. I no longer have drop foot! I can even wear my Birkenstocks, which had been another goal. After so many tears, so much work and therapy, and so many attempted and then successful walks, I feel like me again.

I am so grateful for everyone’s love and support. I didn’t need to live through the last six months to learn what a lovely community of friends I have, but I’m thankful for the reminder: I love you guys.