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:
- Four for Four. Which two of the following are terms for the phenomenon of a moon having a moon: micromoon, moonmoon, second moon, submoon?
- Laundromats. According to Yelp, how many laundromats are there in the city of Davis: Two, five, or ten?
- Name the Year. In what single year were the biopics Elvis, The Fabelmans, and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story all released?