Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I once heard a comedian say, “Unless your name is Martin Luther King, Jr., I don’t want to hear about your dream.” Freud, astrologers, image-hungry poets, and new significant others are interested in a dream from the previous night, but most of us zone out, perhaps starting to check our mental “to do” lists, when someone insists on telling us their dream.

Ironically, I review my “to do” lists in my dreams, and then get to work solving absurd problems. Just last night, for example, I asked former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky to run to the deli to pick me up a sandwich, I enlisted my students to come up with pub quiz question topics in choir practice, and I was so late for a meeting that I didn’t realize that my bicycle had no brakes. So many apprehensions!

I suppose some people (maybe retired people?) have short, or even absent, lists of action items, and thus they don’t have what some productivity specialists, such as David Allen in his book Getting Things Done, call “open loops.” (The term “open loops” deserves disambiguation, for it has other meanings in other contexts.) But those of us who foolishly try to remember in our heads everything that has to get done, instead of depending upon an air-tight system, such as what David Allen espouses, will find ourselves haunted by symbolic representations of our various practical obligations in our dreams.

Perhaps this is why Wallace Stevens said, “A pension is the salary we earn for all the work we do in our dreams.” Of course, other poets resented Stevens for his insurance agency vice president salary and his pensions, for he was the most well-off of all American poets, meaning that he could afford to say that “Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.” As you would expect from an American, he also said, “The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.”

So with a busy life and a busy dreamlife of errands and obligations, I find it such a relief to join a group of friends in Chestnut Park every Sunday morning at 9:00 for an hour of meditation. While walking the one and a half miles to the park, maskless, near no one, I seemed to inhale every known allergen that the stiff winds could blow my way. But when I sat down amidst (but at least six feet apart from) a group of meditators, the mask I wore protected my closed mouth not only from unlikely Covid 19 exposure, but also from whatever was making me sneeze so violently during my travels.

The feeling of relief, of sanctuary, was mental, as well as physical. Beneath the swaying trees, I heard the gong sound and then settled into myself, finally able to breathe easily, and to focus on my own sense of attentive belongingness. Noting and slowing my heartbeat, I began to count my breaths in cycles of 21. This may sound like an easy task, but in my first months (and perhaps years) of meditating, my mind would inevitably wander off before I got to ten or even 15 breaths, resulting in my having to start over. These days, I notice when my mind wants to go somewhere – to attach itself to some past or imagined moment of delight or anguish – and then I gently usher it back to the task at hand, observing the breath, and adding one more incremental eupneal step towards 21.

The time is fleeting, but I appreciate these moments of equilibrium, and relief from the attention one pays to the world’s (or the self’s) woes, and to one’s increasingly complex duties. When one can’t realize true respite, even in sleep, the meditator’s cushion becomes a life preserver.

I hope you can join us for our asynchronous Pub Quiz this evening. I will send out 31 questions and 31 answers this evening to all my subscribers. Some will get to see the show on video! Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, perhaps, as well as the following: cyborgs, belonging (see above), leaps and landers, Oscar-winners, great Scotts, timber, real-life doctors, slams, purported thefts, remorse, fast and slow pitches, seeds, European neighbors, carousels, people who disagree with themselves, college basketball, the opportunity to work with animals, candidates, short enterprises, running in spats, home insurance claims, old ladies, California locales, smarts, stadiums, aviators, Greeks, the Electoral College, and Shakespeare.

Thanks as always to our regular subscribers. People supporting this venture on Patreon sustain this entire enterprise. I would love to welcome more of you, if you would like to gain all the benefits of sponsorship. Thanks especially to The Outside Agitators, Quizimodo, The Original Vincibles, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos.

Stay safe, stay curious, and, as Frank Lloyd Wright says, “stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

Best,

Dr. Andy

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

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

1. Unusual Words. What do we call a broad, flat, flexible blade used to mix, spread and lift material, including foods, drugs, plaster and paints? 

2. Pop Culture – Television. What James Spader crime thriller television series was recently renewed for a ninth season? 

3. Anagram. What famous naturalist has the word INTERVIEWS as an anagram of his name?  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I missed going to church on Christmas Eve last year, and I have missed most Super Bowls since moving away from Washington DC in 1989, but I can’t ever remember missing a showing of The Academy Awards.

I grew up in a family that celebrated film. My dad laughed so hard the first time he saw the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz that he chipped a tooth on the theatre seat in front of him. My parents watched Lawrence of Arabia, all three hours and 48 minutes, on their wedding day. My dad showed Citizen Kane at my 3^rd Grade birthday party, leading a discussion of the film after the first reel (yes, reel). I got a job in a movie theater not long after my 16^th birthday, and was rewarded with a minimum wage of $3.75 an hour and retired movie posters, such as that of The Bounty, a 1984 sea adventure film that starred Anthony Hopkins and three other eventual Oscar-winners. My father was a movie critic all through the 1970s and 1980s (I donated his press kits to Shields Library Special Collections at UC Davis), and my brother Oliver has been a film critic since the 1990s (Check out some of his recent reviews on Rotten Tomatoes).

During the commercials at last night’s Oscar party, my ninth grader Truman had his turn, asking us tricky questions about Oscar winners from the past. With my encyclopedic knowledge of trivial pop culture facts, I often knew the answers, but somehow could not remember the names of the actors. For Maggie Smith I could only come up with “Maggie.” For Joe Pesci I could only come up with “that guy from Goodfellas.” We make many jokes about the fading memories of our parents (though my dad’s memory never faded before he died), but how soon will I need to get my own memory evaluation? Whenever I try to recall the name of one of my wife Kate’s favorite actors, Owen Wilson, I inevitably come up instead with Wilfred Own, the British World War I poet who reminds us repeatedly that our lives are as ephemeral as the memory of an actor’s name, or a line of poetry: 

Red lips are not so red

As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

Kindness of wooed and wooer

Seems shame to their love pure.

O Love, your eyes lose lure

When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Speaking of mixing acting with poetry, Sir Anthony Hopkins recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and he was mixing in lines of Shakespeare with his answers to questions, perhaps the way that a preacher can’t help but cite scripture when chatting with friends at a local coffee shop, or the way that my dad would quote plays or movies while teaching me how to play chess or basketball. Our foundational learning and artistic experiences keep us company and inform our thoughts for the rest of our lives.

As my friends have grown tired of hearing, Kate and I saw Anthony Hopkins perform the title role in my favorite Shakespeare play, King Lear, in London in 1987. That semester abroad I also saw Sir Anthony and Dame Judy Dench in Antony and Cleopatra years before either one of them had been “promoted” to their aristocratic titles. As mad Lear, Hopkins wore the sort of fingerless gloves that he had seen some worn by some of the homeless who could be seen frequenting the east London neighborhoods around the Barbican Theatre where we saw him perform.

It’s amazing to think that Hopkins won his first acting Oscar (“Hello, Clarice.”) just a few years after we saw him do Lear, and his likely last Oscar last night for The Father, about a man who can remember his favorite tunes, but otherwise loses his bearings and risks losing his flat. Everything will be lost, eventually, but the magic of movies lets us visit faraway times and places while we are here, follow the careers of talented actors and directors while we are here, and revisit the film gems of our earlier lives, reliving personal and cinematic memories whenever we have a dark room, welcome company, and two or more hours to spare for the familiar, flickering journey.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the history of difference, food insecurity, lactic acid, goblins, big pianos, naturalists, mask policies, wonders of the world, trumpets, ferrets, bluffs, beat joints, notable universities, pets, pompous stewards, summer meals, propaganda, Chicago triumphs, hosts, best-selling books, cow’s milk, the Department of Agriculture, triangles, places partially named after trees, Canada, inherent goodness, dead fathers, intermissions, cowboys, ponds, flexible blades, actors named Chadwick, bells, rap stars, US States, famous cups, Vermont, biodiversity, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to my regular super-supporters. People who choose one of the higher tiers on Patreon make it possible for me to keep sharing these newsletters, and to make pub quizzes for you during our many months apart. Any bets on when we will get to re-converge? Thanks especially to The Original Vincibles, Quizimodo, The Outside Agitators, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos. Oboes actually come up on the quiz tonight, so that’s fun. I hope you get to enjoy it, and I hope all of us get to go see a film in a movie theatre, such as The Varsity, sometime soon. The Varsity is opening on April 30^th! Exciting!

Be well.

Dr. Andy

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

1. Family Mysteries. What is a “pibling”?

2. Science. What chemical element has the symbol K (Neo-Latin kalium), an atomic number of 19, and an atomic mass 39.098? 

3. Books and Authors. The title of Stieg Larsson’s most famous novel features a tattoo of what sort of creature? 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Here is the deepest question you are likely to be asked today: “What do you want written in your obituary?”

One of the productivity gurus I follow, Michael Hyatt, has a book coming out tomorrow titled Win at Work and Succeed at Life: 5 Principles to Free Yourself from the Cult of Overwork. I’ve preordered my copy. In his talks and books, Hyatt asks his readers to consider their legacies, the accomplishments that really matter, when he asks questions such as, “How do you want to be remembered?” and “What do you want written in your obituary?”

This morning at my son’s school, his principal told my wife Kate and me the story of a man whom I have never met, but whom I highly admire. George W. Hinkle died in 2016 at the age of 95 – this is the year his descendants can celebrate what would have been his 100^th birthday. According to the Woodland Daily Democrat obituary, “George [Hinkle] was a veteran of the U.S. Navy, a Medic and stationed with the Marines in North Africa during WWII. Earned his Masters Degree at San Jose State, and for 30 years was a High School Principal and Teacher.”

George Hinkle had a special relationship with Greengate School in Woodland, for in his 80s and 90s, he used to come tap dance for the children there with disabilities. You can imagine their delight and wonder. Whereas a significant population of dancers in Hinkle’s day knew how to tap, today it seems almost a lost art, seen primarily in the same MGM musicals that once would have inspired young George Hinkle to take up the joyful practice in the 1930s.

Obviously Hinkle was touched by the connections he made at this special school over the years, for when he died, this former high school principal and teacher bequeathed $150,000 to Greengate School to use as it saw fit. While my son Jukie and his classmates were learning at home over this last year, “Hinkle’s Musical Garden” was built on school grounds. Today Kate and I saw the plaque, festooned with the image of disembodied dancing tap shoes: “In memory of George Hinkle who loved music, tap dancing and our Greengate students. George’s generous donation brought this musical garden to life for many students and community members to enjoy.” 

Along with a beautiful mural and new planter boxes, the new garden includes giant weatherproof marimbas, xylophones, and drums. Jukie will be particularly excited. Every time we go into Watermelon Music, Jukie makes a beeline for the steel drums. Mallets gripped tightly in each hand, he starts sharing experimental Caribbean music that delights others almost as much as himself. Recess will provide even more incentives for escaping the classroom than usual!

But for today, finally fully vaccinated, our unmaskable son Jukie is excited to return to in-person learning with his community of teachers and peers. When we arrived this morning, the lucky boy reached across me to open my car door. As has been true for so many of us, Zoom school has been an uneven substitute for embodied instruction, especially for this boy who loves to run and yodel in the sunshine between lessons.

Any principal or teacher’s legacy is established at the end of a school day, or the end of a long career of teaching. John Steinbeck said, “Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.” For a select few, a second legacy of song and dance can complement all those years of service as an educator. Like me, Jukie will never meet his school’s benefactor, but every day for the rest of his time at Greengate School in Woodland, he will compose and perform unruly songs on instruments that will echo across the Sacramento Valley the sounds praise and gratitude for the legacy of George Hinkle.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz may review some of the topics raised above, but it will definitely address the following: pursuits, listening robots, weasels, choices, girl groups, Harry Belafonte, sailors, Keanu Reeves, jerseys, candidates, dragons, chemical elements, electrical engineering, Oceana, the City of Davis, Arkansas, super heroes, developed nations, the example of hammers, ABC, thin items in baseball, bad puns, composers, famous islands, strange players, windows, the deaths of sole survivors, Venezuela, influential ladies, Springsteen heroes, perfection, current events, and Shakespeare.

I really appreciate everyone who supports the Pub Quiz and these newsletters on Patreon. Thanks especially to new subscriber Charles, who joined at the silver tier. The regular sustaining subscribers are creating a legacy in my heart with their ongoing support. They include The Outside Agitators, The Original Vincibles, Quizimodo, and Bono’s Pro Bono Obo Bonobos. I would love to include you or your team in this list, so please subscribe or upgrade at https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster.

By the way, do you know anyone who would like to work in an Irish Pub? 

Be well, and I hope you get to read or even view tonight’s Pub Quiz!

Dr. Andy

https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster

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

1. What European capital starts with a W?      

2. According to a 2016 study, at the time there was only one major capital city in Europe that depresses its country’s per capita GDP.  Name the city.  

3.  Which European capital is built on eleven million wooden poles?    

P.P.S. Contact me if you want me to perform a Pub Quiz for your event. Today I was contacted about a gig to take place in February, 2022! Some people plan further ahead than I do.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I remember the names of my strongest students. Years after Matthias Gafni enrolled in my Introduction to Literature class, he earned a Pulitzer Prize for his journalism. Years after Melissa Skorka graduated from UC Davis, having taken two of my writing classes, she earned her third degree from Oxford University. One of the last times I heard from her, Dr. Skorka sent me pictures of her submitting her dissertation. These students represent UC Davis well. As Chancellor Gary May would say, “This is who we are.” After all the help I’ve offered to students who have asked for it, I sometimes feel a slice of a parent’s pride when they graduate, but the accomplishments reflect only the hard work and the perspicacity of our impressive alumni.

Sometimes I recognize the potential for greatness (or at least a serious work ethic) before a student has graduated, and thus can offer them paid internships helping me with different projects. These have included supporting my radio show, my poetry reading series, or my attempts to place new poems in journals. All of these community-supporting endeavors feed my soul (and cost me money every month).

Right now I am working on a number of book projects. For example, I’ve written explanations of the meanings of the hundreds of acronyms that stand in for marginal comments that I write in the margins of student essays. At some point, I will turn that 100-page document into a PDF book that I can gift to students when they enroll in my writing classes (right now they have to scroll through the Google Doc). At some point, I will collect the best of these newsletters into a little tome of incidental essays, some of which have been adapted for publication elsewhere, such as The Sacramento Bee. I haven’t decided what I might title such a book. Maybe Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz? How about Monday Morning Four-Minute Reads? I will keep working on titles.

A favorite former journalism student, Jackie is a contributing editor of my book The Determined Writer, a compendium of quotable writing advice from notable authors. Although this book will highlight only a few hundred quotations to be sorted into chapters with titles such as “Courage,” “Discipline,” and “Productivity,” this book will be only the first of a series of eight or more books. So far I have collected 4,216 quotations, each of which needs to be “tagged” with one or more of exactly 100 categories.

Now we come to the title of this week’s newsletter. Perhaps you would like to help Jackie and me with this project? The task before us is daunting. If it were to take about a minute to read, mull, and add two tags to each quotation, that would result in about two 40-hour weeks’ worth of reading, mulling, and tagging. Jackie tells me that she loves making new discoveries about the writing process, learning, for example, that “Where we all think alike, there is little danger of innovation” (Edward Abbey), or that “One forges one’s style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines” (Émile Zola). Here is a new favorite that I discovered today, courtesy of Meredith Ireland: “Even if you’re fully vaccinated, the CDC still recommends getting off Twitter and writing your book.” I don’t know if that one will make it into the book.

We are learning so much from this project, but Jackie and I shouldn’t get to have all the fun. Like Tom Sawyer white-washing Aunt Polly’s fence, I believe you’d be interested in helping us with this task, though I wouldn’t charge you “a knob off a brass door-knocker” or your favorite frog or piece of string to participate. “Writing is a constant exercise in longing,” Isabel Allende says, and I worry that if you don’t get to see a selection of quotations (25? 100? All 358 quotations written by authors with last names that start with “B”?), you may feel haunted by a deep and unquenchable sense of longing.

So, you should join us! People who participate in this crowdsourcing experiment will enjoy the following benefits:

• The appreciation and gratitude of your friend, Dr. Andy;
• Acknowledgement in The Determined Writer and in subsequent books in the series;
• An e-copy of the book The Determined Writer when it is published later this year.

People who offer extraordinary help will receive a paperback copy of The Determined Writer and some Pub Quiz goodies.

Here’s how it would work:

• You tell us how many quotations you would like to tag (or what letter of the alphabet you would like to claim as your own, if it is not already taken);
• We will “check out” your requested allotment and send it to you in the form of an editable Google sheets spreadsheet;
• We will send you clear directions, some already-tagged entries from the book, and a list of the 100 tags we are using;
• You return your assigned selection of quotations in a week (100 quotations or fewer) or two weeks (more than 100 quotations).

Even if you don’t take Meredith Ireland’s advice to write your own book over the Covid lockdown, perhaps you will feel some of the same satisfaction by working on someone else’s book. Drop me a note if you would like to participate. I would welcome the opportunity to acknowledge you as a contributor!

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will take on topics raised above, as well as the following: cities that are more populous than Davis, Johnny Cash, strawberry trees, popular people named Michael, Elizabethan small margins, early oil, hockey, consorts, domestic lobsters, wooden poles, GDP drags, faraway counties, democratic republics, stone age culture, coats of arms, overrated movies, India, The Oxford English Dictionary, Generation X, gender barriers, cave lights, nominations, San Francisco, people named Benedict Cumberbatch, spicy studio albums, symbolic bears, Robin Williams, European capitals, modernist novels, lamps, current events, and Shakespeare. I hope you can join us.

Thanks are always due in these newsletters, primarily to those of you who sustain the endeavor with your generous sponsorships. I so appreciate the teams Quizimodo, The Original Vincibles, The Outside Agitators, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos for their special support of the Pub Quiz. One bonus treat for members this week: I recently uploaded a BONUS Pub Quiz to Patreon, one that I used Friday night with friends at the San Francisco Writers Conference. If you are a member, make sure to check it out. New members will appreciate all the questions there about books! If you enjoy these newsletters, please join us on Patreon.

With thanks,

Dr. Andy

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

yoourquizmaster@gmail.com

https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster

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

1. Film. What kind of creature is featured on the poster of the film Happy Feet?  

2. Work Preferences. According to a survey released today by global human resource consulting firm Robert Half, would more workers surveyed prefer to work remotely, prefer a hybrid of remote and office work, or prefer to return fully to the office?  

3. California Counties. The gateway to Kings Canyon National Park, Porterville is found in what California county that starts with the letter T?  

P.P.S. Today is the birthday of the Fresno-born poet Gary Soto. He once said, “You can always spot bright people. They are reading a book.”

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

William Cowper’s poem “The Task” (1785) reminds us that “Variety’s the very spice of life, / That gives it all flavors.” One way to ensure variety is to invite surprises. This past Friday, four different past players of the Pub Quiz added significant welcome variety to the first face-to-face class that I have taught in over a year. I shall tell you how.

Like judicious college students around the country, UC Davis students have been sheltering at home or in their single dorm rooms, keeping a healthy distance from their similarly unvaccinated classmates. Most of them see each other’s unmasked faces only on Zoom. Like the rest of us, they ache to return to their communities of peers, whether in restaurants, pubs, or classrooms.

With this in mind, this quarter I’m offering an outdoor class called “Journaling Our Long Walk Together.” As the title suggests, the class has my students and me meeting in different locations on campus and in the city of Davis, walking around while I share context, wisdom, and information about the sites we are visiting, and then sitting down to write in our hardback journals for an hour or more. Walking and writing are how I spend my leisure and mental health time, so, I wondered, why not introduce a group of new students to a couple of the habits that have been so good to me?

The class filled immediately. And then the emails started coming in from first-year students desperate to get out of the house (or the dorm), and into my class. Here’s an example from a UC Davis freshman: “I was wondering if there is any chance to be able to get into the class, as I don’t have the ability to even waitlist until Thursday. I feel like it would be very beneficial to my mental and physical health as it is challenging for me to leave my dorm room and have stomach inflammation that is often relieved from taking walks (I just currently do not have a walking buddy). Please let me know as I would love to be a part of your seminar and will be adding to the waitlist as soon as I can!”

Now, I’ve taught first-year seminars on The Borg, Buddhism and Film, Jazz and Literature, and Poetry Marketing that have attracted interest from single-digit numbers of students. This class, by contrast, soon had a waiting list almost as large as the capped enrollment. Rashly, I offered to teach a second section of the class, meaning that I would be meeting with my students at both 9 AM and 2 PM for our walks and talks. Like my students, I know that I would relish the chance to connect with a new group of people. Plus, as I told my students on at our first meeting, they don’t need to worry about infecting me, for I’m vaccinated!

We met on the first day in the T. Elliot Weier Redwood Grove near Old Davis Road and discussed how odd it was to find a grove of coastal redwoods on a creek in the Sacramento Valley. Soon, though, the welcome interruptions began. One of the passersby revealed that beneath his mask he was Sinisa Novakovic, owner of the Davis cultural hotspots Mishka’s Café and (currently dark) Varsity Theatre. I promised him that I’d introduce my students to his businesses on one of our subsequent perambulations. All smiles, Sinisa said he would look for us in the woods on the subsequent Friday morning.

About 20 minutes later I spotted Eileen Rendahl, the Davis author of more than a dozen novels in several genres. So prolific and talented, Eileen would have to be using the redwood grove walking time to compose, I thought, but she was walking and chatting with a friend, so I didn’t interrupt her conversation or my class to thank her again for being one of the sustaining sponsors of my online pub quizzes. Eileen has made such an investment in the Pub Quiz that her team gets a book from me every month, and just this week I ordered her team some pro-science pins from Dissent Pins. Thanks, Eileen!

When Brian Sway came through the redwoods soon after Eileen, he also had a walking buddy, so I didn’t stop him to meet my students. I did tell my students about Brian’s Peace Corps work helping 350 South African health clinics reorganize in order to address the sort of epidemiological challenges that are now somewhat familiar to all of us. When asked about his work in the Davis Enterprise, Brian talked up his team. “I may be a change agent and pushing people, but I’ve not done this by myself,” Sway said. “I work with great people at CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), good people at Peace Corps and definitely in the South African government and the health clinics. If I don’t have a strong partner in the facility, manager of a health clinic, I can’t do anything. It’s their willingness to bring their people to the table and to be flexible and to collaborate that makes it happen.” In 2019, The State Department gave Sway the Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy, the same year that UC Davis gave him the Emil M. Mrak International Award for his work overseas. What a hero! I am grateful to call Brian a friend, and delighted in seeing him at so many Pub Quizzes in 2019, our last year of normalcy.

While my first three friends who strolled through our impromptu classroom had walking buddies, Heidi Bekebrede was walking solo, so I did stop her and present her to my students, telling her that I’m planning to introduce them to her public artwork when we took our art walk in our penultimate class. She asked if I planned to show them to the lyrics of the official City of Davis song, for she knows that I attended the 2013 unveiling of her grand ceramic tile mosaic masterpiece on permanent display in Central Park (also called Farmers Market Park). I asked Heidi if she herself would like to sing the song to my students. This was her response:

The Davis Song

16 miles from Sacramento, heading west on 80.

You will find an oasis where avenues are shady.

Laid out on a grid of alphabets and ordinal numbers,

You’ll find merchants selling pizza, cars, groceries and lumber.

Folks go ped’ling to and fro, to work, to shop, to classes. 

Others sit and chat at cafes, clinking ice–chilled glasses. 

Some would rather jog about, or do some skateboard jive. 

Yes I guess, I really must admit, some people drive.

The city I sing of is DAVIS.

It’s the place the UC Regents gave us,

Over hundred summers are the norm I better warn ya. 

D–A–V–I–S C–A Spells Davis California.

Aggies, bikes, tomatoes, Picnic Day, green belts and vet school, 

Farmers Market and the Rec Pool

Amtrak stops here umpteen times a day,

What more could a person ask for, what more can I say? Oh!

Pu-tah Creek, the Ar–bor–ee–tum, 

Cen–tral Park, you just can’t beat um. 

Solar homes and a sloooow freight train through town,

I don’t understand how any one can put it down.

The city I sing of is DAVIS. Where the peace of mind I crave is 

If I ever move I know I’m gonna mourn ya,

D–A–V–I–S C–A Spells Davis California

Some may claim we’re in the sticks…please write 95616

…And now that we are oh so great, we’ve added 95618.

I can still hear the echoes of my students’ applause (the echoes of their cheers were muffled by masks). After Heidi the singer-songwriter finished her song, took a bow, and continued walking the few blocks to her nearby home, two of my students raised their hands to say that they were born and raised in Davis, and that as children they had learned ceramics from Heidi at Davis Arts Center, meaning that a decade or more earlier, Heidi had actually prepared her students for her 2021 performance in the forest. As Henry Adams says, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”

Walking home after class (my commute to my two classes about walking was on foot, and I took my son Jukie for a walk that evening, for a total that say of 13.4 miles, longer than a half-marathon), I reflected on how much fun it is to engage with actual people once again. That great walking poet Wallace Stevens once wrote this in his own journal: “Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!” I welcome spring surprises such as these encounters, these experiences, and I look forward to encountering more admired friends as we all start to emerge from our year-long cocoons. 

In addition to the topics raised above, tonight’s quiz will feature questions about faraway places and the languages they speak, National Poetry Month, eastern states, red roses, happiness, electronic capitulation, royals, singular crabs, 12-page laments, insiders’ guides, invertebrates, California counties, Davis institutions, hybridity, involuntary dancing, Australia, bruins, patriotic songs, imposing doorways, foreigners playing Americans, birds and bees, San Francisco legends, the letter V, the crown, current events, and Shakespeare.

I’m hosting a free, synchronous Pub Quiz for Bay Area writers in support of the San Francisco Writers Conference this coming Friday night at 7. To say thanks to all my subscribers, I would like to include you, if you are interested and available. Would you like to gather a team and crash this Zoom event? If so, visit https://ucdavis.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwrdOyvqj4iEtyBoZEJw9M7NgsEwhAUmchz. Expect a lot of book questions.

I hope you get to see tonight’s Pub Quiz. It about two-thirds the length of this newsletter. Easy reading.

Be well,

Dr. Andy

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

P.S. Here are five (!) questions from last week’s quiz:

1. What poet wrote the books The Bell Jar and Ariel?  

2. Container Ship Culture. In what country does one find the Suez Canal?  

3. Puppet Movies. Released in 2011, the highest-grossing puppet film of all time featured songs originally performed by Paul Simon, Cee Lo Green, and Nirvana. Name the film.  

4. Science. What do we call an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Musa?  

5. Books and Authors. First composed over 3000 years ago, the title of what divination text is a translation from the Chinese of “Book of Changes”? 

P.P.S. If you are enjoying the Pub Quiz, please consider upgrading your membership to get more of the Pub Quiz experience, or consider inviting a friend to join us. As Joyce Carol Oates says, “A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.”

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

As I write this newsletter, I see gentle California hills on the left of me, along with the setting sun, and seemingly endless prairie on the right, interrupted on occasion with signs that ask me to “Build More Dams: Stop Man-Made Droughts,” to “Make California Safe Again,” to “Stop Dumping 78% of Our Water in the Ocean,” and to “RECALL NEWSOM.” As someone who has raised over $100,000 for Friends of the River to dismantle destructive dams, who favors gun control, and who voted for Gavin Newsom, I don’t think that I am the target demographic of these imperatives. Deep in the Central Valley, we are headed home, but we are still a long way from Davis.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that Davis and Los Angeles are in the same state. This past (long) weekend my family and I got to drive down to LA to see my mom who, like many 85-year-olds, has been facing some significant health issues. Realizing that no octogenarian should weather a global pandemic by herself, my brother Oliver insisted that mom fly out west to spend the many pandemic months in his LA home with his wife, Sarah, and their daughter, Clementine. These beloveds exemplify the heroism and self-sacrifice which so many people have shown since March of 2020, the sort of heroism that I see locally in people who volunteer at the Yolo Food Bank, who spearhead an activist or political campaign that seeks to confront racism and other forms of injustice, or who create opportunities for children in a faraway village in Zimbabwe.

Oh, sometimes I get a good feeling, or so says the song I’m listening to right now. Sorry for the interruption.

We really like the variety of homes in my brother Oliver’s West Adams neighborhood. Check out this Harry Potter house, one of us said to another. It’s difficult to approximate the majesty of Hogwarts with 1,200 square feet, but somebody pulled it off. More exciting than that is the new bookstore that just opened a block from Oliver’s house: The Reparations Club. Containing almost exclusively books by African-American authors, the store is Black-owned and woman-owned. My mom and I each bought a book (an Octavia Butler novel for mom, and a Selected Works of Audre Lorde for me), and the two owners each introduced themselves to us by name as we were checking out. One of the owners was sure she has met another customer with my eyes, so I told her that she must mean my brother Oliver, who has started ordering his books through The Reparations Club instead of Amazon. She made me smile when she asked if my brother and I were twins, even though Oliver was born more than four years after me. You can’t see my grey beard under this mask, I told her.

Celebrate. Don’t wait until it’s too late, Daft Punk says. Celebrate, and dance so free. One more time. One more interruption.

My son Truman and I met a delightful woman in the checkout line at Ralphs Thursday night. Like Flash, the sloth cashier working the customer service counter at the Zootopia DMV, this 70-soemthing diminutive African-American woman was much more interested in unhurried conversations than in getting her frozen bacon bagged. As the conversation continued, I inched a bit closer to put my quarts of non-fat and full-fat milk on the counter, when she promptly asked me if I wouldn’t mind moving back “about two feet.”

With regard to social distancing, she was in the right, and I was in the wrong, but she could not see the smile on my masked face, so she started to deescalate what might otherwise be a moment of contention. She pointed out that this “young man” was almost as tall as his daddy, and that she was sure he was going places in this world. She asked him what he planned to do for a career once he graduated from college. When he replied “I will be an author,” she said, “That sounds real nice. What’s your backup?” He said that he might be an architect or start a business. “You always gotta have a backup. Your daddy knows that, because he knows what’s best. Ain’t that right?” “Yes, Ma’am,” I responded. I wanted to add that we wanted to adopt this woman as Truman’s backup grandma, but I kept that part to myself.

“If you gave me a chance, I’d take it. . . . As long as we’re together, there’s no place I would rather be,” he interrupted, quoting another song filling my ears. It pained me to leave the misused subjunctive in that first lyric, but as a journalist, I must quote accurately.

Speaking of tragic interruptions of life as we know it, my friend Dzokerayi Mukome and her family of five (three young children) lost much of their and possessions to a housefire on Friday. I know Dzokerayi from about ten different contexts, including her work with Sunrise Rotary, with the Tese Foundation that she created to support over 100 girls who are staying in school in Zimbabwe, and with the anti-racist marches that she organized in Davis this past summer (and which Jukie and I participated in). Just last week I wrote a 1022 word response to a long poem she had sent me. This is how I finished the email I sent to her the morning we left for LA, just a day before she lost her home:

“I wonder if you would be interested in the poems of Audre Lorde. Her poem “Coal” does an interesting job of exploring Blackness, while her poem “A Woman Speaks” reflects on the imagery that could contextualize a particular woman’s rhetorical stance and message. The Poetry Foundation has a small collection of her works, but I would encourage you to pick up a copy of one of her books.

Thanks again for sharing your work with me. I invite you to join us at my twice-monthly Poetry Night on Zoom. If you look over our webpage at Poetry In Davis, you will see that we have been featuring a great diversity of poets in the last year (and for years). Our next event is next Thursday, April 1^st at 8 PM.”

The Mukome family has done so much for all of us in Davis. I hope you will join me in supporting these folks in their hour of need. I just donated to the GoFundMe effort from my phone, and I hope every author, architect, business owner and newsletter reader out there will help out, as well. Let’s see how generous we can be, for as the poet Khalil Gibran says, “Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.”

Thanks to the patrons of the Pub Quiz who support this effort so generously. Teams such as The Outside Agitators, Quizimodo, The Original Vincibles, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos make extra investments in this enterprise, and are rewarded weekly with audio and video versions of the Quiz. If you are a regular reader who is considering starting or upgrading a Patreon membership to support these newsletters and the quizzes that they presage, please let me know. I will send you the video quiz so you can get a sense of the bonus fun.

“We are never, ever going home,” sings Rani on this Post Malone song. Actually, the sun is kissing the western hills, and we just passed Tracy. We will be home before 9PM, thanks to helmswoman Kate, and thanks to the music that has fueled our road trip.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on issues raised above, as well as on the following: duplicity, Washington DC, stolen balls, divinations, world capitals, famous songs, botanical berries, Nirvana covers, Pearl Harbor, Catholic families, the new book by Julia Levine, jazz musicians, changes, Webby Awards, tourist destinations, famous thunder storms, bodyguards, animals, things to do on a ship, hipness, the most famous practitioner of a sport, Rolling Stone magazine, hello to tranquility, civil liberty concerns, derivations of five, current events, and Shakespeare. I wrote most of tonight’s Pub Quiz without internet access, so I have some serious fact-checking to do before this one is ready to be published. Luckily, as Kate did all the driving, I got a head start.

Best,

Dr. Andy

https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s Pub Quiz (and different ones from those you can find in the Davis Enterprise every Sunday).

1. Science. What food has only 75 calories but 7 grams of high-quality protein, 5 grams of fat, and 1.6 grams of saturated fat? An egg

2. Books and Authors. In what decade did Fyodor Dostoevsky die? Was it the 1880s, the 1910s, or the 1940s? Answer: He died in 1881 at the age of 59

3. Current Events – Names in the News. Today, the House Oversight Committee is holding a hearing entitled H.R. 51: Making BLANK the 51st State. Fill in the blank. D.C.

P.P.S. Thursday night, April 1^st, is the first day of National Poetry Month. It’s also the night (at 8 PM via Zoom) that Davisite Julia Levine will be reading from her new book, Ordinary Psalms. Julia is the author of four previous poetry collections, including Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight, winner of the Northern California Book Award for Poetry. She is also a recipient of the Discovery/The Nation Award and the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry from Nimrod. Her work has been widely published in journals such as Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner,and the Southern Review. Julia will be reading with Joseph Millar, whose poems have won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, as well as the Pushcart Prize. Please plan to join us via Zoom!

P.P.S. It was David Bailey who said that “Anybody can be a great photographer if they zoom in enough on what they love.”

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

At candlelight vigils, no matter how rousing the speaker, people can’t applaud to show their approval because they have lit candles in their hands.

Such was the case this past Friday when my son Jukie and I walked to Central Park in downtown Davis to participate in the Vigil for the victims of the Atlanta Shootings. As is the case for the many (usually mournful) events that Jukie and I have attended at the area now called “Solidarity Space” before the grand old oak tree, we opted not to accept a candle (we like to keep everyone safe), so my applause was often the loudest. Hosted by the Davis Phoenix Coalition and many other organizations, the event featured talks by local civic leaders and activists, including former California Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, and the Renetta Tull, the UC Davis first Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

I’ve known Yamada for years, having welcomed her to our driveway when she was campaigning door-to-door for her seat in the California Assembly, and later for the State Senate. I so enjoyed our long conversation when she came to my house, in part because I got to surprise Yamada that I actually knew something of important local issues and local political leaders. Also, she and I had a lot in common. A social worker like my wife Kate, Yamada and I had both lived in Washington DC, we both have hosted public radio shows (I might even have listened to her Jazz and information radio on DC the Pacifica station WPFW), and we both care dearly for people with disabilities.

Yamada spoke with such authority and eloquence at the Vigil Friday night that one could hear in her voice her years of experience arguing for compassionate policies in the California legislature. As she pointed out, anti-Asian and anti-Asian-American violence has been unfortunately prominent for decades, and has become more egregious, widespread, and deadly during and now after the Trump years. I myself love living in America’s most diverse state, but still in many parts of our state, and more so in parts of other states, any kind of difference is confronted with suspicion, and increasingly, with harassment, persecution, and violence. Joining more than 200 others at the candlelight vigil Friday night made me grateful for the perspectives and clear thinking of local leaders such as Mariko Yamada, Anoosh Jorjorian from the Davis Phoenix Coalition, and our Davis Mayor Gloria Partida.

A recent article introducing a reading list on Asian-American political and human rights concerns, published by the website Electric Lit, points out that “Anti-Asian violence and discrimination has increased precipitously, but it has a long history in the United States.” The article, titled “A Literary Guide to Combat Anti-Asian Racism in America,” lists a number of important titles, about half of which I have heard of, but few of which I have read. I am thinking of starting with Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong. I have followed Hong on Twitter for a long time, so I figure that it’s time for me to read her most recent book. If more people are being shakened awake by the terrible events of March 16^th, then perhaps more will read book lists like this one as a first step to learning more and broadening their circle of understanding and compassion. As Maya Angelou says at the end of her poem “Human Family,” We are more alike, my friends, / than we are unalike.”

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the country of turkey, proper names, home runs, great Russians, quality proteins, runaways, films with male leads, the 17^th century, alternatives to Philadelphia, conversations in Hebrew and other languages, kindergarten orientations, British poet, notable siblings, fears, unlucky protagonists, dirty rooms, unlikely instrument, favorite locations, endearing nicknames, northern California cities, mysteries of Canada, Jack Canfield, godfathers, places of worship, famous rocks, the long origins of short words, smart guys, current events, and Shakespeare.

Special thanks to our new subscribers for March, as well as to the teams that sustain this enterprise: Quizimodo, The Original Vincibles (who will receive a book this week), The Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, The Outside Agitators, and Bono’s Bro Bono Oboe Bonobos. There will be a musical instrument question on tonight’s quiz, but the correct answer will regrettably not be “Oboes.” If I had been on that team, we would have inserted the word “Hobos” somewhere in the title of the team name. My favorite hobo is the late U. Utah Phillips, the last performer at the old Palms Playhouse, once located just a couple blocks from my house. Remember live performances? I walked 12 miles yesterday, so I could easily have walked two blocks to see Mumbo Gumbo or Odetta perform at The Palms. Those were the days!

If you haven’t done so already, please consider supporting the Pub Quiz with a subscription. Depending on your level of support, you will receive weekly print versions of the Pub Quiz, as well as the bonus questions (over 50 so far) that are asked on Patreon. Thanks!

Dr. Andy

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

1. Mottos and Slogans. What soft drink uses the slogan “Be More Than One Flavor”?  

2. Internet Culture. What app is going to start offering background checks on would-be dates? 

3. Newspaper Headlines. As we learned this morning, what film with a monosyllabic film title garnered the most Oscar nominations with ten? 

P.P.S. “I don’t think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.” Arthur Golden

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

When you have smart friends, you receive smart texts. Here is an example from Michael Bisch, Executive Director of the Yolo Food Bank:

“Good afternoon, Andy! I took a break from my normal Neanderthal existence yesterday by listening to a Hidden Brain podcast regarding complex contagion for leading social change. It left me thinking of a current Food Bank initiative, but also of you and your weekly radio program. What, if anything, do you know about complex contagion?”

I like how Michael tucked in the politically-current adjective “Neanderthal,” remembering to capitalize the extinct human sub-species to show full respect. Secondly, he referenced the show of a radio journalist, Shankar Vedantam, knowing that I am a big fan of journalism, NPR in particular, and intellectual authors who seek to understand human behavior (Daniel Pink is another favorite). Thirdly, Michael brought up contagion – something we are all concerned about, as we seek out vaccinations for ourselves and our family members – but framed it positively, referencing the 2007 article “Complex Contagion and the Weakness of Long Ties” by Damon Centola and Michael Macy.

In this article in American Journal of Sociology, Centola and Macy suggest that information and viruses are simple contagions, but that behaviors are complex contagions, and therefore are more difficult to spread. Faculty members know this from our ongoing quests to get students in our classes to read the syllabus.

This was my texted response to Michael: “One of my jobs on [the UC Davis] campus is to encourage innovative faculty use of instructional technology tools. I host a number of faculty forums in which I feature faculty who use widespread tools, such as our learning management system, in creative ways, and who make any effective use unusual tools, such as a tool that allows batch-grading of scanned paper exams. As you may be able to guess, the principle of complex contagion informs all this work, because we are hoping to change / improve faculty behaviors so that their students will benefit from proven approaches to teaching. We focus on faculty presentations, rather than staff presentations, because faculty will more likely adopt or adapt an approach that has been used by a peer, including peers in different academic disciplines.”

I followed up with this: “Have you read James Clear’s book ATOMIC HABITS? It is the best-selling book right now on adopting favorable habits or breaking unhelpful habits. This month at work I am leading a weekly book group reviewing the book and its applicability to our professional goals. Highly recommended.”

Michael Bisch responded this way: “No, I’ve not read ATOMIC HABITS. Yesterday was the first I ever heard of complex contagion. I immediately recognized we at the Food Bank needed to course correct on some critical initiatives. Even a Neanderthal can have an epiphany! 😁”

I told Michael that “Positive change is built on epiphanies.”

By the way, I am enjoying this “viewer mail” approach to writing newsletters that I am trying out this week. Bob Dunning, my favorite Davis Enterprise columnist, has been using this approach in his daily column for decades (a record-breaking five decades, in fact), and it certainly saves a lot of time from the point of view of the journalist. I welcome your emails, comments, and (inner circle) texts, loyal readers!

Anyway, speaking of epiphanies, I typically turn to literary classics when I am looking for wisdom, even about understanding behaviors. Keeping that in mind, consider this bit of dialogue from The Sun Also Rises that has led to what some people call “The Hemingway Law of Motion”:

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. 

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

We could all think of examples of what Hemingway is exploring here, such as with the rapid change in national attitudes about gay marriage, especially during the time period between 2004, when same-sex marriages became legal in Massachusetts, and 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all same-sex marriage bans in the U.S. in deciding the case Obergefell v. Hodges. Consider also the nationwide soul-searching that came about after the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd, a Minnesota citizen who, like many of us, had lost his job because of the Covid-19 pandemic that we are still experiencing every day. While we would like to believe that attitudes towards equality and civil rights had been moving in more humane directions for many years (or gradually), the death of Floyd (and of Breonna Taylor, and of many others) moved the country rapidly, with regard to our attitudes and our behaviors, or so we would hope. Many people finally came to understand that, as Dr. King says, “The time is always right to do what is right.”

This week, we commemorate the one-year anniversary of the death of Breonna Taylor, and the one-year anniversary of the shutdown of most American businesses and schools. Both Covid-19 and the widespread outrage about fatal police shootings of unarmed African-Americans came to us gradually, and then suddenly. 

As complex contagion theorists would predict, when it came to responding to the pandemic, it took a while for us all to change our behavior (complex contagion) when confronted with the bracing information about the virus (simple contagion). When it comes to civil rights and human rights in the United States, I look forward to seeing continued awareness and evolution when it comes to changes in behavior by our police, and by all of us, in the coming months and years. 

Meanwhile, all of us would advance the causes of compassion and equity by making a cash contribution to the Yolo Food Bank during this difficult and ongoing season of need. Thanks to Michael Bisch for all his work in our community, and for his contributions to this week’s newsletter.

And thanks to all of you who support these efforts by becoming sponsors on Patreon. New sponsors for March include Lori Raineri and Doug DeSalles, new friends and old who appreciate the efforts I invest every week in keeping you intrigued and entertained with fresh trivia. Thanks also to the regular sustaining sponsors, The Original Vincibles (the folks who receive a copy of almost every book mentioned in the newsletter), The Outside Agitators, Quizimodo, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos. Please join us with a new or upgraded membership on Patreon to see your name or your team’s name in the newsletter every week.

Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions on issues raised above, as well as the following: muscles and fitness, birthdays and such, the qualities of mercy, research funding, extended stays, Democratic challengers, understanding sets, basketball, musical groupings, numbers of wings, the U.S. Supreme Court, brackish water, prominent conflicts, post-colonial commemorations, countries that start with R, droids, literary fires, Harvard’s School of Public Health, unkind anagram links, Mark Twain, flavors of the day, background checks, subtitles, diagrams, and Shakespeare.

Thanks. See you tonight, virtually, perhaps, and for sure next week, in print.

Dr. Andy

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

1. Science. What H word is the greatest threat to chimpanzees in the wild?  

2. Eye Color. A study released by the U.K.’s Centre for Advanced Facial Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery has determined that what former member of One Direction has the greenest eyes of any Hollywood A-Lister? 

3. Current Events – Names in the News. What is the four-syllable name of the rover that recently landed on Mars? 

P.P.S. “Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

P.P.P.S. As we consider the one-year anniversary of both the pandemic lockdown and the death of Breonna Taylor, join me in turning to poetry, that we may find some uplift and a moment for deeper reflection courtesy of the artistry of two fine poets. At 8 PM on Thursday, March 18th, otherwise largely isolated friends and readers will gather together virtually for a poetry reading via ZOOM. To participate, visit https://ucdavisdss.zoom.us/my/andyojones at 8 PM, or a few minutes before if you wish to chat with the host and the other attendees.

This short (30ish-minute) reading will feature poetry by Aaron Poochigian and Simply E The Poetess. Please join us Thursday for the particular pleasures of poetry: as the poet Andrew Motion advises, “Think big and stay particular.” 

Aaron Poochigian earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His first book of poetry, The Cosmic Purr (Able Muse Press), was published in 2012, and his second book Manhattanite, which won the Able Muse Poetry Prize, came out in 2017. His thriller in verse, Mr. Either/Or, was released by Etruscan Press in the fall of 2017. He has published numerous translations from Ancient Greek for Penguin Classics and W.W. Norton. His work has appeared in such publications as Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, and POETRY.

Poochigian’s new book, American Divine (March 20, 2021), has won the 2020 Richard Wilbur Award. Recent Poetry Night feature Dana Gioia said this about Poochigian’s new publication: “If any doubts remain that a splendidly original poet has arrived, American Divine should settle the matter. The book confirms Poochigian’s status as one of the most arresting poets of his generation. The poems are strong, individual, and unusually accessible despite their capacious erudition. The real critical question is more complicated, namely how does one describe the singular poet Poochigian has become? How does one characterize the potent and omnivorous style he has created? Poochigian is at once a traditional, indeed even classical, and yet his work is idiosyncratic, disruptive, and often disturbing — not the qualities usually associated with a classical sensibility.”

Simply E, the Poetess, will open for Aaron Poochigian. Simply E is a spoken word artist, singer / songwriter, recording artist, and voice actress. She’s currently working on a book of poems set to be released in 2022. Simply E opened for the award-winning, international megastar DaVido, at the Africa Muzik Festival in Atlanta, and has appeared in music videos by BET award-nominated rapper Big KRIT, and by the violinist Demola, featuring DaVido. Simply E graduated from the University of Memphis with a degree in Social Sciences, and is a candidate in the Georgia State University Executive MBA program. An artist and mentor active on Clubhouse and elsewhere, E divides her time between Atlanta and Memphis. Find out more about Simply E, the Poetess, at https://linktr.ee/ethepoetess.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Once a knock came on my office door, and when I answered it, one of the heads of Strategic Communications at UC Davis wanted to know if I would be willing to appear on televised panel that was starting in five minutes? I said yes.

Evidently a panel of VIPs was missing an important alumnus who had to cancel because of car trouble. I was being asked to stand in for him, to be interviewed alongside then Provost Ralph Hexter and a number of other faculty and administrators. As the mic was being attached to a orange necktie that I thought well complemented my black shirt (this taping took place on Halloween), one of my colleagues looked at my outfit and said, “Somebody didn’t read the memo.” Evidently everyone else on the panel was told what sort of clothes to wear and not wear. As you can tell from the photographs, back then I had a jet-black beard and bright orange pants. If it were not for the tie, I would have looked like a pirate who had recently escaped from the brig / county lockup.

Just before we started taping, I asked one question of our moderator: “What is our topic?” He responded, “The future of the student experience at UC Davis.” Great, I said, I’m ready to go. As you can tell from the transcriptof the 2013 interview, at least the moderator did me the courtesy of asking me the second question, instead of the first. The first thing Provost Hexter said when the director finally yelled “cut” was that he was especially impressed with the only one of us who was not given time to prepare. I replay those kind remarks when I’m having a hard day.

Unlike most people (one thinks of the Seinfeld line: “To the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy”), I love public speaking, and I actually love being put on the spot the way that I was that day in October. Just as I enjoy playing cards with friends, but not doing card tricks, I enjoy making jokes, but I don’t know if I could ever write a joke. 

This is why, even though I am a writer, I believe I do a better job when I don’t script out every word when I give talks and presentations, than when I do. When actress and comedian Bonnie Hunt was recruited to join the cast of Saturday Night Live, she was asked if there would be any room for improvisation, and Lorne Michaels told her “Absolutely not.” As a performer, I’m more in the Hunt camp than the Michaels camp.

This past Saturday night, I did work from a script. I performed a fifteen-minute Pub Quiz at the Davis Chamber of Commerce Installation Gala, their biggest event of the year. Such a short allotment of time meant seven questions and a tiebreaker before I sent teams to confer in their Zoom rooms. By the time we determined the winners (not surprisingly, the team with Mayor Partida and Vice-Mayor Frerichs came in first), and I thanked everyone, we were hauled back into the main Zoom room to hear speeches from the prizewinners. I “finished” about five seconds after we ran out of time. Perhaps a spare moment of improvisation caused the discrepancy, but I immediately forgave myself, knowing how much I relished working a live crowd again!

The Chamber event was as well run as the three-camera shoot back in 2013, but this time, instead of a crew of camera operators and a seasoned director, the entire evening was supported by Tim Kerbavaz, the founder of Talon Audio-Visual, and something called Zoom OSC. It was remarkable how much Tim could do from one control room. I was reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quotation: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Although we won’t have the advantage of the Kerbavaz magic, I am available to run synchronous Zoom Pub Quizzes for special events. If you are supporting the Pub Quiz on Patreon at the Adamantium Tier (I’m looking at you, Original Vincibles), you can schedule your bonus event now at no extra charge. For the rest of you, I look forward to seeing how I can add a bit of televised trivia to your lives. If you always suspected that you were smarter than most people you know, including your distant cousins in Chicago or Edinburgh, now is a good time to arrange a family or group competition and have it confirmed.

I appreciate all my subscribers. If you support the Quiz on Patreon and would like to see the bonus quizzes I wrote last week for the Davis Chamber of Commerce or the Unitarian Church of Davis (new supporters!), please let me know. Thanks especially to the teams known as The Mavens, Quizimodo, Quizzers with Attitude, Portraits, The Outside Agitators, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos. Let’s add your name or team name to the list for next time.

Here are the hints for tonight’s quiz: Expect questions on International Day of the Woman, pairs of cities, Chico, the U.K.’s Centre for Advanced Facial Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery, cartoonists, off-road vehicles, primates, minerals, puck locations, fashion, educated populations, former communists, goodbye stories, closet racialists, high-earners, musicians, cranes, rights, internet silver bullets, shades and shutters, doses, superheroes, unusual hobbies, announcements, grapplers, logical last names, colorful delimiters, fabulous girls, book statistics, and Shakespeare.

Stay healthy! I am vaccinated, and soon you will be, too! look forward to returning to the Pub later this year and returning to all the scripted and unscripted hilarity that we have waiting for us. I had better start exercising my lungs now!

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

1. Books and Authors. According to Lewis Carroll, what kind of rabbit is crazy?  

2. Current Events – Names in the News. What former European leader was recently sentenced to three years in prison for corruption?  

3. Sports. When Hank Aaron broke the home run record, whose record was it?  

P.P.S. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” Soren Kierkegaard