Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

A gardener we know approached Kate’s car yesterday to ask if she had any fun plans for the Fourth of July, and if she likes the British new wave band The Cure. Kate said yes, she loves The Cure, but a discerning listener might have been skeptical, for at that moment the car was filled with the sounds of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.” The gardener said that his brother is performing in a Cure tribute band, and that Kate and Dr. Andy are invited. She said that she would keep that in mind, but over dinner last night, Kate made her musical preferences clear by recounting the lyrics while telling her story:

Hold me closer, tiny dancer

Count the headlights on the highway

Lay me down in sheets of linen

You had a busy day today

Speaking of dancing, I was writing a poem this morning about how spending time with my Kate first thing in the morning has to be better than coffee. The verb form “has to” indicates conjecture, for I’ve never had a cup of coffee. Then I wanted to include a line about Kate’s dancing, and one of the rhyming words recommended by my rhyming dictionary was “Stockard Channing.” I dropped everything to see if Stockard Channing is still alive, and she is!

I remember that the entire Rehoboth Beach, Delaware audience and I were so concerned in 1978 that teenager Betty Rizzo (played by Stockard Channing at age 33) was pregnant because back in 1958, that would mean that Rizzo would have to drop out of Rydell High School and have the baby, perhaps derailing her life’s goals, and imperiling her future, both socially and financially. As you may remember (spoiler alert), it turns out that Rizzo wasn’t actually pregnant, so everyone in the movie theater breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that it was 1978 and not 1958.

In real life, Stockard Channing has been married and divorced four times. She has no children. She fled to London to commit herself to her first love, live theatre. I can imagine why. Having seen Daniel J. Travanti, Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins and many other TV and film actors on stage when I lived in London (and Ian McKellen, Marlo Thomas, and Yul Brynner when I lived in Washington DC), I remember the thrill of being in the same room as someone whose characters I had admired on the small screen many times.

If my dad were alive today at age 90, he would remember the eight plays he took my brother Oliver and me to when we spent Thanksgiving week of 1984 in London and Stratford. I remember Starlight Express, The Hired Man, and this production of Henry V. I’m frustrated that my mind is fuzzy about that theatrical experience. Future Oscar-winner Kenneth Branagh was not yet famous in 1984, but you think the Star Wars fan in me would have noticed and remembered that both Ian McDiarmid (The Emperor) and Sebastian Shaw (Darth Vader without the mask) appeared in this production. For some reason, I do remember the Duke of Exeter, played by larger-than-life Brian Blessed, who later would become the oldest man to have reached the North Magnetic Pole on foot. (Late addition: Oliver says we also saw Passion Play.)

Covid- and crowd-averse, Kate and I will not be seeing a play tonight. Outdoor holiday weekend time spent with fellow Davisites is always welcome, but we feel disinclined to celebrate when the Supreme Court is making America into a crueler, more autocratic, and less safe place (as Kate told our gardener friend). Who knows if we will see some of you on the Fourth of July; we definitely won’t be seeing that Cure tribute band. 

All that said, I have been listening to some Cure songs while writing this newsletter. Here’s a favorite, one that reminds me of Kate, and one that also includes dancing, but without the square imposition of rhymes – it’s from The Cure song “Doing the Unstuck”: “It’s a perfect day for doing the unstuck / For dancing like you can’t hear the beat and you don’t give a further thought to things like feet / Let’s get happy.”

I hope you are able to get both unstuck and happy this holiday weekend.

I hope you get to see this week’s Pub Quiz. Expect questions on topics raised above, and on the following: southern states, famous caregivers, Hollywood reporters, magnolias, people named “Orel,” gloves, largely wordless characters, Davis people, music festivals, cellists, long naps, snakes, baseball greats, states and territories, poisons, butterflies, political memoirs, wars you should have learned about in school, funny nicknames in unfunny families, boulevards, secondary siblings, beans, cross-dressers, clothing stores, lakes, famous sculptures, comedic actors, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to all the supporters on Patreon who make this weekly newsletter and the asynchronous pub quizzes happen. Special thanks to the Outside Agitators, the Original Vincibles, and Quizimodo. I’m always grateful to players who pledge for their entire team. Thanks also to Faith, a new subscriber, who gives me faith in humanity.

Dr. Andy

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

1. State Capitals. Originally settled in 1867, what state capital of more than a million people is majority-minority? 

2. College Endowments. Which ivy league private college has the third largest endowment? 

3. Pop Culture – Music. David St. Hibbins and Nigel Tufnel are the lead singers of what British band? 

P.P.S. “Humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.” Marie Curie

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

We are not used to losing rights and privileges. Throughout my lifetime, and throughout the life of our nation, we have always expanded the circle of people who have rights to self-determination, to agency, to privacy.

As was the case with Prohibition in 1920, soon wide swaths of the American public will be unable to act on opportunities previously available to them. While Chico, Berkeley, Folsom, and Placerville were once considered “sundown towns,” meaning that African-Americans were prohibited from spending the night in those place, this time it’ll be women who are singled out for diminished privileges depending on where they find themselves. Some residents of those towns were comfortable with the racist prohibitions, while other fought back.

This time, the fight is about medical privacy, topics that men and women should be able to discuss with their doctors without governmental interference. As an unlikely source of Billy Graham once commented, “Once you’ve lost your privacy, you realize you’ve lost an extremely valuable thing.” Certain categories of citizen, such as people who look like the late Billy Graham or myself, will now be granted medical privacy, but women will not have the same rights over decisions made about their own bodies that I do. As with sundown towns, the privileges women are granted will be determined by where they live.

As Kaly Soto wrote in the New York Times yesterday, “With the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the United States joins a handful of countries, like Poland, Russia and Nicaragua, that have rolled back access to the procedure in the last few decades, while more of the world has gone in the other direction.” Is this the company we wish to keep?

Not surprisingly, our international allies have expressed concern about the regressive decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Canada’s Prime Minister Trudeau tweeted, “My heart goes out to the millions of American women who are now set to lose their legal right to an abortion. I can’t imagine the fear and anger you are feeling right now.”

President Emmanuel Macron of France tweeted that “Abortion is a fundamental right for all women. It must be protected.” Macron expressed his “solidarity with the women whose liberties are being undermined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, more conservative than some of these other western world leaders, said this: “I’ve always believed in a woman’s right to choose, and I stick to that view, and that’s why the U.K. has the laws that it does.”

The majority of Americans agree with Johnson. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll finds 71% of respondents, including 60% of Republicans, said they believed the decision to terminate a pregnancy should be left to a woman and her doctor. According to this poll, a mere 15% opined that this decision should be regulated by the government.

Somehow, when it comes to gun control, abortion rights, or even the U.S. Presidential elections of 2000 and 2016, the direction of the country continues to diverge significantly from the expressed wishes of the majority. Will these trends continue? We will see to what extent these dire circumstances jolt progressive voters into action and activism. 

Meanwhile, I’m grateful to be a California resident. I hope blue state geographic privileges will last beyond November of 2022, when opponents of medical privacy and bodily autonomy for women are likely to take over both houses of Congress. We will see how many more of our personal rights and freedoms are challenged by our minority rulers then, and what we might be able to do to confront them.

Speaking of confrontations, and the non-violent actions we may be called to take, I will close with the now oft-quoted words of the activist and educator Mariame Kaba: “Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair.”

Thanks to all my Patreon subscribers, including, this week, my new friend Faith from Dallas, Texas. Because of her, expect a few more trivia questions this year about knitting, ice hockey, and the TV show Jeopardy, of which Faith is a past champion. If you find anything in these newsletters valuable, and if you would like to see 31 new questions appear in your inbox weekly, please join the Pub Quiz teams Quizimodo, Outside Agitators, and Original Vincibles in subscribing to the Pub Quiz.

This week’s quiz includes questions on topic raised above, and on the following: Casper, iPhones, job titles, the year 1917, state capitals, ancient Greeks, people named Henry, sports lineages, new possibilities, faucets, kids, con jobs, dystopian geography, mobile phone calls, differentiations from Spain, common surnames, film ages, antiwar activists, caffeine intake, clothiers, Steve Wonder phenomena, smooth curves, yogis in Greece, army generals, Tennessee towns, friends and enemies, name changes, Canada, thorough blends, centenarians, wind speeds, playoff appearances, the differences in measurements, private colleges, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks for reading, everyone! Stay healthy!

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from a Pub Quiz from June of 2015:

1. Four for Four. Which of the following Presidents of the United States, if any, attended the funeral of Eleanor Roosevelt? Calvin Coolidge, Dwight David Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman.

2. Science. Starting with the letter P, what term refers to all the normal functions that take place in a living organism?

3. Unusual Words. What monosyllabic L word as a verb means “to kick, hit, or throw (a ball or missile) high up”?

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

It’s Father’s Day weekend, so of course I am thinking about my dad. And while I was composing thoughts about Davey Marlin-Jones for my newsletter, including by sharing Patton Oswalt’s thoughts about my dad, my wife Kate pointed out that today was the coolest day of the entire summer, so we spent the entire day refilling our garage and accidentally going through my “effects,” meaning the thousands of letters that friends and Kate sent me in the 1980s and 1990s, when people still wrote letters.

And then 16 hours went by. Mission accomplished. Thanks, Kate.

So as I do once a year or so, today I am sharing the entire Pub Quiz as the newsletter! Paid Patreonsubscribers get the answers, my thanks, as well as the print and audio of a two-page poem I’ve recently written from the point of view of my beleaguered running shoes.

But for right now, here is this week’s Pub Quiz:

Pub Quiz for June 18, 2022

1. Mottos and Slogans. The second highest-revenue athletic shoe brand taught us that “Impossible is Nothing.” Name the brand. 

2. Internet Culture. Bill Gates jokes about the retirement of what Microsoft  product when he said this week, “I guess we finally ran out of microchips”? 

3. Newspaper Headlines. CNN reminded us yesterday that you can’t pump your own gas in two different U.S. states. Name one of them. 

4. Four for Four. Which of the following products, if any, were invented in the 19^th century: 7-Up, Coca Cola, Dr. Pepper, Pepsi? 

5. European Explorers. Did Vasco Da Gama become the first European to reach India by sea during the lifetime of Charlemagne, Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, or William Shakespeare. 

6. Cursive. A study of grade-school children in 2013 revealed what about the speed of their cursive writing when compared to their print writing, regardless of which handwriting the child had learned first? That the cursive was faster, that the print writing was faster, or that they were about the same. 

7. Pop Culture – Music. What world-famous musician turns 80 this weekend?

8. Sports. The Detroit Lions play their home games in what alliterative stadium? 

9. Science. Which of the following is likely the longest: a lion, a lion’s mane jellyfish, or a giraffe that is “lying” down for a nap? 

The Short Round

10. Great Americans. Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale was the running mate of what unsuccessful candidate for President of the United States? 

11. Unusual Words. Starting with the letter B and ending with the letter N, what verb am I thinking of that means “to begin to grow or increase rapidly; flourish”? 

12. Swahili Words. Again with the lions. Starting with the letter S, what is the Swahili word for “lion”? 

13. Pop Culture – Television. “Stewie” Griffin is a fictional character from what animated television series?

14. Another Music Question. What billionaire American rapper and record executive was born with the name Shawn Corey Carter? 

End of The Short Round

15. Anagram. The name of the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States is an anagram of the phrase Likeable Belch Waltz. Name her. 

And now five questions on the same topic. This week’s topic is Celebrity Dads.

16.     What EGOT-winner has two children with model Chrissy Teigen? 

17.     What Grammy award-winning Latin pop singer is raising four children with his husband Jwan Yosef? 

18.    Who is the father of Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor? 

19.   Who is the father of Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha Momoa? 

20.  Born in 1947, who is the most famous of the two dads of Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John (10) and Elijah Joseph Daniel Furnish-John (8)? 

And thus end our round of questions on Celebrity Dads.

21. Books and Authors. The novel The Great Gatsby is set during what age? 

22. Film. As an actor in a leading role, only two of Tom Cruise’s top ten highest internationally grossing films were not sequels, remakes, or part of a series, such as a Mission Impossible film. Name just one of these two films. 

23. Jewish Culture. What is the Hebrew term for a good deed done out of a sense of religious duty? 

24. Cities of the World That Start with the Letter J.  Described in the Bible as the “city of palm trees,” what Palestinian city is claimed to be the oldest city in the world? 

25. Card Games. What is the triple-digit number of cards in a complete deck of UNO?

26. Science.  Do sponges have hearts? 

27. Books and Authors. Born just over 200 years ago, how many of the Brontë siblings were there (all were writers)? 

28. Current Events – Names in the News. Muhammad Ali International Airport hosts UPS’s worldwide hub and is the main commercial airport for what American city? 

29. Sports. Since Steve Kerr took over as the head coach of the Golden State Warriors in 2014, the Warriors have won how many of the 18 playoff games that they have played against Western Conference teams? It is 12, 15, or 18? 

30. Shakespeare. With a population approaching one million people, larger even than London or Constantinople, what was the most populous city in the world in 1603, the year that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet? 

Tie-breaker.  According to a 2012 study published in The Lancet, what percentage of people get migraines? 

I hope you enjoyed that. You can probably tell that a few of the questions are easier than usual. Special thanks to Patton Oswalt.

Happy Father’s Day, and happy Juneteenth. I get to meet a new bunch of student journalists on Wednesday, and even though doing so will mark the end of my current mini-vacation, I can’t wait!

Be well,

Dr. Andy

P.S. If you enjoy these newsletters with the weekly trivia attached, please consider supporting these efforts on Patreon. Thanks!

“The cure of many diseases remains unknown to the physicians of Hellos (Greece) because they do not study the whole person.” Socrates

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

As I write this, my French Bulldog Margot has stretched her tiny pill-shaped body to its full length, trying to beat the heat by exposing as much of herself to the morning air.

The shades are drawn. The fans are going. Fresh popsicles wait for us in the freezer. We are enduring a heat wave.

Margot’s lethargy results not only from the heat, but from our lap-dog’s recovery from our early start this morning. Leaving before dawn, she and I took a four-mile walk, with her eagerly walking ahead of me, as if she knew instinctively that that hour would be the only safe time to enjoy the day. Leaving around 5:30, we strolled south Davis greenbelts for almost a half hour before we encountered our first pedestrian.

As Margot and I returned home around 7:30 this morning, I saw as little activity on our cul-de-sac – there are ten houses total on our street – as I did on our entire Saturday walk: we seemed to have the streets to ourselves. Beholding the trees in my neighbors’ yards (our departed birch was cut down and the stump removed earlier this month), I was reminded of what impressive benefactors we have for neighbors in Davis.

For example, on our street we have a critical care physician who works in the ICU – one can imagine what he has seen over the last two years. We have the executive director of an organization that supports families of locals with mental illness. And we have a Black Lives Matter activist who founded an organization that provides educational opportunities for Black, Indigenous, and other students of color here in California, and in Zimbabwe. It would be difficult to quantify all the good these people bring to the world.

None of these impressive characters astound me as much as my own wife Kate. As the Communications Director and Family Services Manager for the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation, Kate welcomes and supports overwhelmed parents who in many cases are just discovering that their children have a serious (and in some cases, fatal) syndrome (the same one that our son Jukie has). Just yesterday morning, for example, Kate spent more than three hours messaging with a distressed dad in Turkey whose eight-year-old daughter had been diagnosed with the syndrome, and who had many questions.

These questions arrived in Turkish, so Kate had to paste each one into Google Translate. Here’s an example of the result: “Hello, I live in Turkey, my daughter was diagnosed with smith lemli opitz syndrome, I was doing research for information purposes, I think there is a cure, what way should I follow, I think Turkey is weak in terms of the disease, I do not understand what you wrote because it is in English, but if you share information, I would be very happy.”

Kate shared some encouraging news, such as a video slide-show of our son Jukie in action, including lots of smiles and video of Jukie running, but also some bracing news, such as the fact that Jukie has not spoken a word since he was three, and that, contrary to what this dad hoped, there is no cure for Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome.

Towards the end of the extended conversation, the dad sent Kate some kind words that I think should be posted on the SLO website: “I believe you have a lot of knowledge about this SLO, even the doctors are not as enlightened as you.” I love that “enlightened” turn of phrase, even if Google Translate might have slightly embellished the intended meaning.

Whether she is guiding distraught parents in Turkey, Ireland, or Indiana, or chatting with moms in the new-parent support group that she runs at the Davis Co-op Teaching Kitchen on Wednesday mornings, Kate is careful not to give out any medical advice. The best social workers are versed in empathy, in patience, and in attentive listening skills. Kate’s experiences, and the experiences of other humanitarians on my street, suggest to me that the whole person – the parent, the citizen, the graduating senior — deserves our attention, our guidance, and our care. 

As we celebrate the anniversary this week of the 1956 District Court decision that bus segregation was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, I will close with a Rosa Parks quotation about acting steadfastly when confronting need or injustice: “I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply inside. I will no longer act as if I were less than the whole person I know myself inwardly to be.”

Stay cool, download my podcast, and take care of your inward self!

I appreciate everyone who invests a little bit in me via Patreon so I can create fresh Pub Quizzes for you every week. Sustaining Patreon supporters include the Outside Agitators, the Original Vincibles, and Quizimodo. I’m always grateful to players who pledge for their entire team. Let’s look forward to a time when we can all gather again to play with our friends! I’m also available this summer to perform a quiz for your group or function. Contact me for details.

For this week’s quiz, expect questions on the following topics: fish, marketing, benchmarks, alphabets, famous ancient poets, bananas, base football players, commanders, job openings, extreme temperatures, phones on Jupiter, revealed sisters, ducks, archers, dinosaurs, songwriters, southern cities, the neutron age, collaborations, stunt men, the appearances of sylphs, unwelcome smacks, preservatives, decks, freaks, counters to austerity, current events, names in the news, and Shakespeare.

Poetry Night is Thursday evening at 7. Join us on the roof of the John Natsoulas Gallery. During the open mic, we will let everyone who signs up walk across the stage.

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

1. Know Your Oceans. The Coral Sea, the Tasman Sea, and the Solomon Sea are all found in what ocean?  

2. Doo-Wop. The most famous doo-wop song by The Monotones was about a book. Name the song.  

3. Pop Culture – Music. In 2018, Time named a guy named Shawn as one of the 100 most influential people in the world on their annual list. He was also one of five musical artists ever to debut at number one before the age of 18. Name the musician.  

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I find it disproportionately rewarding to fill our trash can, compost can, and recycling can every Wednesday morning before wheeling the three of them out to the curb.

How glorious to be rid of things, to make the house lighter, to lessen one’s load. Amazon Prime members seem to be surrounded by boxes, opened or unopened, and always walking them out to the recycling bin. As we have been taught since we first started separating our recyclables as children, eventually some of these boxes may return to us in the form of boxes recycled from the previous boxes.

But we don’t know this. We just trust that our empty plastic water bottles will serve another drinker in the form of a picnic table or a play structure in a neighborhood park. I like to hold on to these hopes, these illusions. That’s why I didn’t click on the Atlantic story titled “Plastic Recycling Doesn’t Work and Will Never Work.”

We recently had a new garage floor put in (largely against our will, but that’s another story). Right now, our garage is empty. The concrete has been curing, — hardening, preparing for our footfalls, our vehicles, and the weight of our bins and boxes — for more than a month. Our garage probably didn’t look this nice when our home was built in 1992. As part of the preparation process for the newly-poured slab, we donated a few vanloads of stuff to Goodwill, filled our garbage cans so full that it almost took two of us to wheel them to the curb, and sent a lot of 1970s and 1980s furniture to the Yolo County Landfill. But much of the contents of our garage sits in a POD in our driveway, a daily visual reminder of all our stuff, stuff we might use someday, stuff that our kids will really appreciate owning after we are gone. Keepsakes and such. Valuable stuff.

You are probably familiar with the ways that comedian George Carlin talked about all this in his famous comedic rant about Americans and their stuff: “Actually, this is just a place for my stuff, ya know? That’s all; a little place for my stuff. That’s all I want, that’s all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know? I can see it on your table, everybody’s got a little place for their stuff. This is my stuff, that’s your stuff, that’ll be his stuff over there.

That’s all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That’s all your house is- a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you’re taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody’s got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn’t want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you’re saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That’s what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get…more stuff! Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore.”

When our Saturn was stolen from in front of Crepeville in downtown Davis one evening about ten years ago, we were despondent. We loved that car. It was an example of stuff that we actually used. It was discovered in a midtown Sacramento alley a few days later, smelling like an ashtray. The thieves had taken the car seats (probably to make room for more smokers) and the DVDs of jazz and recorded poetry that National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia had given me, but not my signed copy of the late Amiri Baraka’s Transbluesency: The Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (1961-1995).

When I told English Department professor Jack Hicks this Saturn story, he remarked, “I wish someone would steal my car for a while and remove the contents of my trunk. I keep my garage unlocked for the same reason.” I bet it took Jack more than a weekend to clean out his office when he retired.

I’ve been reading about renunciation in recent years. Some Christians renounce the devil and all his works and temptations, but I’m sure that many of them notice that replacement temptations can be mailed to the house, sometimes the same day. I bought a microphone this morning, and it has already arrived at the house. Soon poets will be speaking into that mic on the rooftop sculpture garden of an art gallery. I am not yet ready to renounce this new treasure, but perhaps we always say that of our most recent purchases.

In the Buddhist tradition, we refer to the Pali word “nekkhamma” when we talk about renunciation. It coincides with the first practice in the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path: “Right Intention.” This is how the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön talks about it: 

“Renunciation is realizing that our nostalgia for wanting to stay in a protected, limited, petty world is insane. Once you begin to get the feeling of how big the world is and how vast our potential for experiencing life is, then you really begin to understand renunciation. When we sit in meditation, we feel our breath as it goes out, and we have some sense of willingness just to be open to the present moment. Then our minds wander off into all kinds of stories and fabrications and manufactured realities, and we say to ourselves, ‘It’s thinking.’ We say that with a lot of gentleness and a lot of precision. Every time we are willing to let the story line go, and every time we are willing to let go at the end of the out breath, that’s fundamental renunciation: learning how to let go of holding on and holding back.”

Even though she uses the word “insane” in her first sentence here, Pema Chödrön is nevertheless framing renunciation positively, indicating that gentleness and precision await those who renunciate foolishness, needless distraction, and pettiness. In his book Beyond Religion, the Dalai Lama uses the words “compassion” and “discernment” to communicate the same principle. These contexts for renunciation resonate for me.

We seek to live according to our systems of ethical beliefs, even when we are taking only small steps in the right direction. As Abraham Lincoln said, “I walk slowly, but I never walk back.” As for me, Wednesday is around the corner, and I will seek once again to fill the recycling bin and recycle my cardboard. I feel more like a renunciant as I’m shedding my life of acquired stuff than I do when I unlock our huge POD and behold and mentally catalogue its contents.

Amongst the hundreds of audio books that I have acquired, one in particular is calling me. We will see if minimalist Joshua Becker’s new book Things That Matter will guide me towards keeping my mental and actual garages tidy, to lessen my own cognitive and spiritual loads. As Becker says, “The first step in crafting the life you want is to get rid of everything you don’t.” 

I hope you value these missives! Subscribing to the weekly Pub Quiz is inexpensive via Patreon, and it will add nothing to your garage as long as you don’t print out the quizzes, as I used to do every week when I was performing the quiz in person. This week’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on Apple developers, driven ambition, funny names that start with L, founding fathers, chipmunks, titles with five words, spiders, job seekers, Trojans, islands, World Series winners, Ben Stiller, African cities, Ireland attractions, overworked musicians, legends of past ages, Nebula awards, famous speakers, odd syntax, notable mayors, Academy Award-winners, the example of roses, beverages, southern cities, intransitive verbs, Johns Hopkins, Pacific voyages, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to new subscriber Jasmine and to all my regulars. I so appreciate your monthly support.

Be well.

Dr. Andy

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

1. Mottos and Slogans. Starting with the letter R, what company uses this tagline: “The best ideas are often the simplest, like streaming made easy”?  

2. Internet Culture. The search engine PimEyes allows one to search for what?  

3. Newspaper Headlines. The University of California has announced that it is waiving fees and tuition for what category of students?  

P.S. Happy June to all the graduates!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Last Tuesday I enjoyed an appointment with an endodontist, an expert in root canals. I remember the very phrase “root canal” inspiring pity and fear in me when I was a child, when my stepmother endured multiple iterations of the procedure. She had my sympathy, but I never asked her for details about the experience.

My new specialist explains the upcoming tortures thoroughly. In the town of Davis, Dr. Ramesh Thondapu treats us with the respect of a colleague. Thinking of the medical professionals, thinking of their patients, I estimate 10 or more doctors in the building, including myself. I suppose that we all deserve thorough explanations. An informed consumer and a mentor teacher, I appreciate expert instruction from my dentist. After four years of regular meditation training, I’m also grateful for my expertise in sitting still.

That said, today I am on the move. Looking at the clock, I drive home briskly from the appointment. An inveterate walker, I’m not used to driving, but Kate is still recovering from (driving) foot surgery, so I am the family chauffeur and gofer. I arrive home with only 30 minutes available for the 40-minute walk to campus; I grab my safari hat and a snack and head out.

Running late for class, I can’t process the day’s news. Kate texted me during the lessons from the endodontist: “The news is devastating.” She sent me a broken heart emoji for each person reported killed in an Uvalde elementary school. She would send more such hearts later in the day, and video of an impassioned speech by Steve Kerr.

Race-walking to work with my tooth still in pain, I’m reminded of Dustin Hoffman’s character, history graduate student Thomas “Babe” Levy, in Marathon Man. I first watched that movie as a runner, and long before I was a graduate student. Even though I also read the book, details of the film are fading from my memory; nevertheless, I remember the film’s central question: “Is it safe? Is it safe?” This query was a sort of a sick refrain shared by Lawrence Olivier, and the allusion was then repeated as a bad joke to the rest of us since 1976. 

The Olivier line is more haunting and less corny than the joke a dental hygienist once told me: “Only floss the teeth you want to keep.” Can this tooth be saved? Is it safe?

In order to make a 40 minute walk in 30 minutes I accelerate my pace, take the shortest route, and never take a breath. Forswearing my earbuds, I cross diagonally across intersections. Is it safe?

Marathoner Levy is shown to be training in the beginning of Marathon Man, emulating his hero, Abebe Bikila, the first Ethiopian Olympic gold medalist and the first athlete to successfully defend an Olympic marathon title. Levy is shown sprinting around The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park, an area of New York City that I also got to explore in the 1970s. The camera crew probably encountered Jackie O. while filming some of the film’s famous scenes around that reservoir. 

Levy’s training as a runner came in handy later in his adventures, inspiring me to keep up with my own training as a runner. That film made me want to run as Bikila did (though with athletic shoes, rather than barefoot). On this Tuesday, my own training as a walker – more than seven miles a day so far in 2022 – makes it possible for me to make it to class on time.

I wanted to focus on my task, but I walk past Montgomery and Peregrine Elementary Schools, where I know children, parents, and teachers. Later I walk past the Campus Early Childhood Laboratory, a nursery school mostly for the children of my UC Davis colleagues. I see mothers and fathers picking up their children.

No one hears gunshots, except in our imaginations. No one is stopped by the police from reuniting with their kids. I imagine that the car radios are left off as the schoolchildren are asked about show and tell and snack time. So much love in those cars.

Because a new surge of Covid has ravaged the bus driver workforce, my son Jukie is kept home today. I hugged him before leaving for work. Is he safe? Jukie is safe.

I think of Jukie’s older sister Geneva, finishing up a shift as a paraeducator at Patwin Elementary. She is safe. All the children there are safe. 

I think of our youngest, Truman, as at that hour he bikes home from the high school. There were no incidents at the high school today. Is he safe? He is safe.

I imagine the trees waving their branches to me like cheering bystanders as I reach Olson Hall. Above us, I see only sky. I make it to class with 90 seconds to spare. I imagine smiles behind my students’ masks. They are weary, but still ready to get to work.

An echoing question fades as I stand up at the whiteboard, blue marker in my hand. 

Is it safe?

If you enjoy these newsletters, please subscribe via Patreon! Thanks to all the sustaining supporters, especially the Outside Agitators, the Original Vincibles, and Quizimodo. Heroes come in all sorts of guises.

This week’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about issues raised above, as well as the following: Simple ideas, beautiful faces, mountaintops, religious warnings,  free rides, bachelor composers, dangerous collections, equality before the law, long streaks, steep escarpments, forms of reparations, the Honourable East India Company, violent delights, welcome targets, public servants, best men at weddings, unusual rain showers, literary destinations, numerous islands, Benedict Cumberbatches, fabled treasures, first and last sermons, alternatives to gutter journalism, protest songs, new attorneys, couches, moral superiority, current events and Shakespeare.

Be well.

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from a previous quiz:

1. Countries of the World. With a population of over 200 million, what is the world’s most populous Roman Catholic-majority country?  

2. Spices. Both starting with the letter C, two different spices in the parsley family are confused with one another. Name one of them.   

3. Books and Authors. In Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, Virgil refers to what author as “Poet sovereign,” or the king of all poets?  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

This morning I encountered a meme that one might only find on Instagram. A man is shown doing push-ups on a lawn in what looks like Hawaii. The caption reads, “I woke up. I have clothes to wear. I have running water. I have food to eat. Life is good. I am thankful.”

After being up all night with a broken-tooth toothache – did you know that dental offices in Davis get to take Fridays off? – I finally slept from about 7 AM to 10 AM, meaning that my wife on crutches let the dog out, cleaned the kitchen, and made our son Jukie a three-egg spinach omelet. When I awoke, I felt like that self-congratulatory fitness buff in Hawaii. My meme would sound like this: “I woke up. I have soft t-shirts to wear. I have running water. I have Kate. I am enjoying a short respite from demoralizing tooth pain. Life is good. I am thankful.”

Speaking of gratitude, right now I’m listening to Stop Making Sense by Talking Heads, an album that spent more than two years on the Billboard 200 chart, a crucial time period that for me lasted from my junior year in high school to my freshman year in college. I probably would not have loved the album so much if it had not been for the 1984 concert film directed by Jonathan Demme, a film that just last year was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Accompanying my friend Moose to the Circle West End Theatre on 23^rd Street in Washington DC, I was simultaneously introduced to concert films and to Talking Heads.

I wrote much of this week’s pub quiz in an Adirondack chair in the back yard, with our French bulldog Margot looking under the trampoline for Charlie, the neighborhood cat who seems to love our yard the most. Later I am going to take a long walk with Jukie as we wend our way towards a favorite Mexican restaurant. I will call my mom so I can hear whatever updates she has to share. The pain is not as bad during the day.

This month Kate and I spent tens of thousands of dollars propping up our sinking home and getting the garage floor redone. Such are the vagaries of the ownership of a home built on unstable farmland the same year (1992) that Kate and I got married. I’m grateful that we have built our relationship on a sounder foundation than that of our expensive house. I think of the beginning of a favorite Talking Heads tune (“Girlfriend is Better”):

I, who took the money?

Who took the money away?

I, I, I, I, it’s always showtime

Here at the edge of the stage

Later Kate and I folded some clothes together, and then decided which of our remaining t-shirts are bookcase-worthy – we are waiting on replacements after giving our long-serving dressers away to our daughter Geneva after she moved into an apartment on the west side of town. My favorites are the four Oxford University t-shirts that somehow always make it onto my shelf, even though my former student, Melissa, sent shirts for everyone in the family. We don’t know what happened to Melissa, but we do know that Daddy loves to sleep in the softest shirts we’ve ever been gifted.

With the warm and lazy mid-May sun heading towards the west, and with my tooth pain held in abeyance for a few more hours, I think of what the poet and essayist Cynthia Ozick says: “We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” Resolving to take note of what matters most, I myself am grateful finally to have had some sleep this morning, I’m grateful for the weekend that is almost as long as my dentist’s, I’m grateful for Benzocaine, and I’m grateful for a partner who makes me laugh and smile while we put away our socks, shirts, and bows. Only one look from Kate, and that’s all that it takes. As Talking Heads say at the end of that song “Girlfriend is Better,” “I got a girlfriend with bows in her hair / And nothing is better than that (is it?).”

This week’s Pub Quiz will touch on topics raised above, as well as the following: Expectations, California islands, esports, promising sequels, the time that Cher stood alone, George Orwell, volcanoes, the story of one’s life, tennis standouts, local kings, old people in swimsuits, French classics, performing organisms, Irish band locations, regional temperature records, ambassadors, government languages, Klugman projects, autobiographies, national parks, renamed frogmen, glamorous songs, three-word titles, prolific actors, ridiculousness, people named Peter, buteos, prominent nicknames, Russian empire exports, famous hams, current events, and Shakespeare.

If you enjoy these newsletters and would like to support me, and thus subscribe to the weekly pub quiz, please check me out on Patreon. Thanks to the teams the Outside Agitators, the Original Vincibles, and Quizimodo who support this effort generously. 

Also, as of this week, my KDVS radio show, Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour, is now a podcast. I would love to count you among my subscribers! Please check out https://poetrytechnology.buzzsprout.com to add my weekly show to your subscription list. Thanks! 

Dr. Andy

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

1. Newspaper Headlines. NASA’s Curiosity Rover has evidently spotted which of the following on the planet Mars: A doorway, an obelisk, a tombstone, a waterfall?  

2. Stephen King Cinematic Remakes. What movie released this week did Rolling Stone call “A Four-Alarm Disaster”? 

3. Celebrity Birthplaces. All of the following Americans were born in what city that starts with the letter L: Bob Hope, Jerry Springer, Slash, Elizabeth Taylor?  

P.P.S. “You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

If “fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil,” as Aristotle says, then perhaps joy is the gratification arising from the anticipation of a well-earned accomplishment.

I teach at a prominent public university with over 40,000 students. This means that we start graduating students around now (mid-May) and don’t finish until a month later (mid-June). As a parent of three and a potential incidental mentor to 40,000, I continue to be impressed with all these students, so I am grateful to be given an opportunity to celebrate their victories and accomplishments.

Later today, for example, all our UC Davis King School of Law graduates will be commemorated in the next-door Mondavi Center. I got to know one of them, Alexander Joel Watson (we use middle names when speaking of graduation ceremonies), for he is the son of a high school friend and classmate of mine, one whom I will get to lunch with today for the first time since we were graduating together more than 35 years ago.

UC Davis is ranked eighth in the nation for offering students excellent social mobility opportunities. I see this as good news not only for our students, but for the communities where our students go on to live, work, and “mobilize.” Having encountered Alex at a number of Black Lives Matter rallies over the last couple years, I am eager to follow the ways that this young lawyer will improve the world. Congratulations to Mr. Watson, Esquire, and his family!

I send a different sort of congratulations also to one of my fellow Boston University graduates and a best friend from college, Teresa. It seems like just yesterday that Teresa and I were donning our bright red robes to watch then President George Herbert Walker Bush and then French President Francois Mitterrand give commencement addresses on the occasion of the 150^th anniversary, or sesquicentennial, of our expensive private research university. (Ted Kennedy was also there, and I would have loved to have heard him speak again, having been inspired by remarks he made on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.)

Born and raised in Micronesia, Teresa as a college freshman expressed amazement at everyday sights in New England, such as snow. Later she brought her fresh perspectives and penchant for insatiable hilarity to our house on 2454 Tunlaw Road in DC’s Glover Park neighborhood when she secured positions at U.S. PIRG and later, if I remember correctly, the aluminum company Alcoa. She was definitely “going places” at the same time that I was going to California to study poetry.

Fast forward to the present, and Teresa is visiting Venice. She shared this via social media this morning: “The Viking Sea is a beautiful well-appointed ship with several lounge areas, bars and five places to eat. We spent the afternoon at the pool, played Scrabble before dinner and had a delicious Italian meal. After dinner, we sat on the top deck and watched lightning streak across the sky. And then we took a walk around the ship before heading off to bed.”

I’m so happy for Teresa who is finally getting to realize her dream of a Venetian vacation. Whether we are breathing deeply from the deck of a cruise ship on the Adriatic Sea or on stage at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, we only get so many opportunities to experience actual or figurative lightning as it streaks across our skies. I commemorate the joy inherent in these accomplishments, I celebrate life-long friendships, and I wish for all our UC Davis graduates that they realize great merit from their committed years of curiosity, ingenuity, and hard work.

I hope you get to see this week’s Pub Quiz. It has questions on topics raised above, as well as the following: Tyranny, Apple products, curiosities, electric utilities, critical race theories, warriors, faraway countries, sovereign poets, common compounds, spices, populated countries, Star Wars characters, rivers and creeks, road rage, novelistic sea voyages, pop musicians, tragic moms, bleak crashers, port cities, matriarchs, stamp acts, meanings of stuffing, woke OGs, nautical terms, mononyms and duonyms, iconic Americans, four-alarm fires, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to all the supporters on Patreon who make all this happen, especially the Outside Agitators, the Original Vincibles, and Quizimodo. Some team captains who pledge for their entire team. I do offer Pub Quizzes for special occasions, so please reach out to me if you are interested in that!

Best,

Dr. Andy 

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

1. Sports. Who is the only player in NFL history with more than 20,000 receiving yards?  

2. Science: Space Exploration. Divisible by six, what is the number of people who have walked on the moon?  

3. Great Americans. A Yolo County judge named Tim, the author of Running for Judge, shares a last name with what season?  

P.S. Please do join us for Poetry Night this Thursday at 7 at the Natsoulas Gallery!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Happy Mother’s Day to you and to all the mothers you know and who love you. 

We are not so materialistic, so I bought my wife Kate some Whole Earth Festival earrings, and I wrote her a poem. The spouse of a poet reasonably expects to be compensated with works and dedications.

Shakespeare’s fair youth, for example, was the recipient of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets, many of them encouraging that youth to find a mother for his future children. When I read “Love’s Philosophy,” I imagine Percy Shelley writing one of the Romantic Era’s most famous love poems to his wife Mary, and mother to four of their children.

One of our kids has moved out, one will be our perpetual housemate, and one has been thinking high school sophomore thoughts about current writing projects and future college applications. They all live perpetually in our hearts. My three kids don’t often come up in the poems I write to Kate, but the love we share for them infuses our mutual love, and our life for them.

Even though it is filled with private allusions, in honor of Mother’s Day, I share with you the poem I wrote to share with Kate on this day for celebrating all moms.

To Have and To Hold

I will hold your hand throughout the ongoing pandemic

I will hold your hand as the peace dividend is drained

I will hold your hand as bombs fall on Ukrainian hospitals

I will hold your hand as blowhards mobilize belligerent xenophobes

I will hold your hand as the Supreme Court overturns precedents

I will hold your hand during the coming revolution

I will hold your hand postoperatively, as soon as they let me

I will hold your hand while you hold the railing

I will hold your hand as you grip the crutches

I will hold your hand to keep you upright

I will hold your hand at the play, the dance recital, the poetry reading

I will hold your hand as we are skimming stones

I will hold your hand during accordion lessons

I will hold your purse in the shopping mall

I will hold the leash for you

I will hold the extra jackets when we grow warm from walking

I will hold two keys: one for each of us

I will hold your hand as the house sinks unevenly

I will hold your hand when there’s a midnight knock at the door

I will hold your hand for the 3 AM phone call

I will hold your hand as we read the test results

I will hold your hand when we can’t find the dog

I will hold your hand when our texts go unanswered

I will hold your hand as our mothers forget us

I will hold your hand even after your hand has been holding your cold phone

I will hold your hand when NPR announces the deaths of our heroes

I will hold your hand as the children, one by one, go

I will hold your hand as your eyes share bad news 

I will hold your hand while reading you love poems 

I will hold your hand after I have forgotten our home phone number

I will have you and hold you and have you and hold you

I will forget much, dear one, but I will not forget to hold your hand

Thanks for reading. Enjoy the day.

If you forgot to send a Mother’s Day gift, I’ve got just the thing! Thanks to all the supporters on Patreon who make all this happen, especially the Outside Agitators (who won first place at a recent charity event I hosted), the Original Vincibles, and Quizimodo. I’m always grateful to players such as these who pledge for their entire team. Speaking of play, I am repeatedly ask when I plan to “bring trivia back.” Trivia permeates all that we read and talk about, like the Force. What Davis restaurant should be the new home of the Pub Quiz? Let’s look forward to a time when we can all gather again to play with our friends! 

I hope you get to see this week’s pub quiz. Nothing else can hold a candle to it. Expect questions about judges, long S words that no one ever uses, ghost towns, pervasive Disney, museums of play, favorite birds, postage stamps, errors, balls, incorrect sparkles, losses, receptions, new faces, the problems of downsizing, physical terms, ownership of old documents, hot corners, notable figures, favorite flowers, candles, magnetism, big cities, people who are as rare as onions, famous daughters, political incorrectness, frozen tunes, grammar quandaries, current events, and Shakespeare. I hope you get to read it!

Be well.

Dr. Andy

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

1. Mottos and Slogans. Did Wheaties first become “The Breakfast of Champions” in the 1920, the 1940s, or the 1960s?  

2. Internet Culture. Activision Blizzard stockholders recently voted in favor of the company being acquired by what tech giant?  

3. Newspaper Headlines. Ted Nugent passed on hosting this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, so they chose someone else with his initials. Who was it?