Dear Friends,
I wonder if living in Davis for so long has made me afraid of heights. As you will read below, I had no fear of summits when I was younger. The “akron” of acrophobia refers to “summits.” Almost all my climbing of summits, of peaks, has been figurative.
My birthplace, Washington D.C., is full of hills; in fact, I (re-)discovered today that it is sometimes called “The City of Seven Hills.” I lived in the Glover Park neighborhood, equidistant between Georgetown, which stretches from an elevation of 35 feet down by the Potomac to that of 115 feet, and Cathedral Heights, home of the National Cathedral, at around 300 feet. Still being built when I attended elementary school in Hearst Hall next to the cathedral, the top of the cathedral’s Gloria in Excelsis Tower stretches to 676 feet above sea level, making it the highest point in the District, more than 100 feet taller than the Washington Monument.
The back alley behind our home at 2454 Tunlaw Road was so steep that when I didn’t have someone to place softball with (and there was a time almost 50 years ago when softball was an important part of my summers), I would just hit the ball up the alley, and wait for it to come rolling back with great impetus. I still remember the first time I rode my red Schwinn to the top of our alley – I reported this with pride to my Washington Waldorf School teacher, Jack Petrash.
Before taking to softball, I took to the trees and the jungle gyms in my neighborhood. My friends and I played one game in the mid 1970s that today sounds inadvisable: we would climb to the top of the largest storage structures behind the Stoddert Recreation Center, perhaps ten feet off the ground, and then run full tilt towards the sand area, jump as high and as far as we could, barely clearing the chain link fence, and then land triumphantly in the sand, sometimes barely avoiding the smaller children who were using the huge sandbox as it was intended.
About 20 feet from the sandbox was a large birch tree that many of us used to climb to watch the baseball games that were played in the nearby diamond, that is, until Seth Carpien fell out of the climbing tree. I was not present for that event, but the description of Seth’s broken arm certainly alarmed me. If an ambulance ever visited Stoddert, neighborhood moms would walk over to check to see which child was being taken to Sibley Hospital for repairs. The rest of us would walk that child’s bike home – for Seth, that meant Beecher Street, a few doors down from the MacKaye home, later known as Dischord House. All of us, including all five of the MacKaye children, were injured at Stoddert, but most of us who stayed at ground level didn’t require hospitalization.
Today I stay at ground level, walking Davis streets, walking Davis greenbelts. Although our disabled son Jukie would bravely climb out his window to do laps on the roof of our south Davis home when he was eight or ten years old, these days he grips my hand when our walks take us above Interstate 80 on the Pole Line Road overpass or The Dave Pelz Bike Overpass, neither of which had been built when I first moved to Davis 34 years ago (now I sound like Bob Dunning).
To approximate the hills of my youth, I sometimes run up the nine flights of stairs of Sproul Hall, but when Jukie or I take the two flights of stairs to my office in Voorhies Hall, he hugs the railing farthest away from the breezeway, believing that the perimeter is safer than the interior of the stairwell. As Terry Pratchett says, “Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.”
I smile when monitoring Jukie being so careful. “The cautious seldom err,” Confucius said, and “The superior man wishes to be slow in his speech and earnest in his conduct.” We are grateful that Jukie’s roof-hopping days are behind him, and that he is cautious around heights, if not yet greenbelt bicycles. And with regard to his speech, like the character Ada in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible, Jukie imposes long stretches of silence between his spoken words.
These days Jukie’s intermittent yodeling sounds like he’s warming up for an eventual impressive aria. As a parent of flatlanders, I do prefer the sounds of his plaintive yodels to those of ambulance sirens arriving at the community park. Stay safe out there!
Both today’s newsletter and the following bonus poem were inspired by the first line of T.S. Eliot’s poem “La Figlia che Piange”: “Stand on the highest pavement of the stair.”
Impetus
“Stand on the highest pavement of the stair.” T.S. Eliot
I’m told this baby gave gravity no thought,
Lifting both brave legs upon the crib’s railing,
Flexible and poised, like a stout macaque.
I’m told my opposable toes and alpine goat’s
enter of gravity led Pentecostal Aunt Lilah
To ask if I had secret horns or split hooves.
I’m told my pointer finger would perseverate
Upon the tightrope artist, the acrobatic squirrel,
Those cornered pages creased in my picture books.
I’m told that my wingless taxidermic Curious George
Considered an autumn midday attic nursery
Leap upon the distant latticed power lines.
I’m told that, like the “terrific, radiant, and humble”
Wilbur, I would gawk up in envious wonder
At the artfully suspended and short-lived Charlotte,
Sure that I’d bounce back from almost any drop.
I hope you can join us on a warm and breezy evening for a pub quiz at Sudwerk. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for everyone. As Saint Augustine allegedly said, “Good times and crazy friends make the best memories.”
In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on beans, punks, Scottish lakes, successful leaders, oversized storytellers, magical realism, chromosomes, median youths, clean money, sudden exclusions, films featuring Polish women, new silver medalists, game passes, truthful endings, better tomorrows, bloomers, games of thrones, science fiction classics, AI antagonists, horse assignments, confederate states, people who could use a hand, cities that start with the letter D, resting places, Asian perspectives, hedgehogs, laborious omelets, spinning assessments, judges, caves, founding fathers, happy energies, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. Sometimes a question is substituted at the last minutes because of the day’s news.
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 also to Brooke, Jeannie, Becky, Franklin, and More Cow Bell. 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 dependable Mavens, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon (where I am also now sharing drafts of poems). 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 Pub Quiz:
- Science. What is the measure of the strength of an electric current?
- Books and Authors. What author created the siblings Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy?
- Sports. Including the goaltender, how many members of a hockey team do you typically see playing on the ice?
You can see if I don’t like a question from the previous week’s quiz, I will choose a substitution before I publish the quiz for subscribers. Instead of jumping elephants, this version offers a strong current.