Dear Friends,

Today’s newsletter comes from two of my favorite writers: My wife Kate and my daughter Geneva. Both are writing about dropping off my son Truman off at Ithaca College.

First let’s hear from Kate:

We parents all know what’s coming. From the day we first look into our newborn’s eyes, we know our assignment. We are to spend 18 years – or 6570 days – nurturing, feeding, encouraging, teaching, watching, and loving our child. And then we let them go.

As we spend these long days of their childhood playing with, caring for, and doting on our kid, we are sometimes told by our elders that these years go fast. We acknowledge this truth in our heads, but our hearts sometimes can’t absorb that eventually childhood ends and kids launch. Our last 18 years with Truman passed by in a blink.

This push–pull of our hearts and minds looms above all that we do with our kids. We know that we parents are tasked with fostering our kids’ independence in every stage of development. It’s in our job description: we aim to do such a good job as parents that one day our children won’t need us. And when that day arrives, we step back as they step forward. This week I learned that the mama grief that comes with this transition is not any less or easier the second time around. 

With long hugs and teary goodbyes, Geneva and I have dropped Truman off on the other side of the country in Ithaca, New York. He’s attending the Park School at Ithaca College, and we couldn’t feel more excited for him. Over the days we spent in Ithaca, Geneva and I commented to each other that Truman had found the perfect college fit. As they say, “Ithaca is gorges,” nestled in the natural beauty of the Finger Lakes in New York, with hills and trails and waterfalls everywhere (150 waterfalls within 10 miles!). Truman’s dorm room windows overlook the beautiful, hilly IC campus below and Cayuga Lake in the distance. 

And so while I am feeling so sad to say goodbye, Truman’s confident smile as he walked away told me that he is ready. And while I am really gonna miss our boy, I couldn’t feel more proud of him and excited for all of his adventures ahead.

Have a great year, Truman — we love you! ❤️

Second, let’s hear from Geneva:

Having a sibling is pretty perfect. You get a built-in friend with a parallel sense of humor. You have your own language that nobody—not even your parents—can understand. One shared smirk across the dinner table can send you into conniptions. When you fight, it’s always with the knowledge that your friendship will survive—because it has to.

But for as much as you and your sibling have in common, the two of you are just as different. Maybe you are a homebody and he is a world traveler. Maybe you show your fears on your face while he buries his deep in his stomach. Maybe you are impulsive and excitable; he is reserved and thoughtful. Maybe you stumbled into your college years backwards and blindfolded—letting parents college-search on your behalf and committing to the first school you toured—while he meets his eagerly, finding the perfect campus to actualize his career ambitions and nourish his artistic spirit.

I say this not in self-deprecation or resentment, but in awe. At eighteen, Truman understands things I am still trying to figure out at twenty-six. His successes are his own, but his joy is my joy. Today I hugged him goodbye at @ithacacollege, and as I watched him walk away, it was with total confidence that he will thrive here. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

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Please plan to partake in the Pub Quiz festivities this evening at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where the misters are misting and where we have room for almost everyone. The jollity will be unfiltered. As Ralph Waldo Emerson allegedly said, “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” Tonight some will want to play indoors. I encourage you to come early to snag a table. We filled the restaurant and patio last week, and I expect that we will continue to do so throughout August and beyond. Also, tonight I plan to move the quiz along more quickly — I know that for many of us, it’s a school night!

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on mountains, tech giants, football players, distribution rights, flavors, nights that are so hot that they hit you like a slap in the face, stages, PGA tours, justice systems, early sunrises, bone covers, rivers in the Midwest, Buddhist borders, bringing home the blues, sloths, polarization, birth states, kings, shots, explanations, things that you wouldn’t think could be fired, college towns, fictional hazelnuts, podcasts, people born in Ohio, pits of naive asps, card games, Japanese special effects, alternatives to French frisbees, viruses, big birds, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. Sometimes a question is substituted at the last minute because of the day’s news.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscriber Sophie! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank, such as Janet. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the scintillating Mavens who carefully take note of casual adjectives and precise pronunciations, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon (where I am also sometimes sharing drafts of poems). Thanks again to Toby. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions read by Toby last week:

1. Mottos and Slogans. Sammy the Owl is the official mascot for the largest private research university in Houston, Texas, famous for its slogan: “Letters, Science, Art.” Name the university.  

2. Internet Culture. Which viral challenge, starting in 2014, saw participants dumping buckets of ice water on themselves to raise awareness for ALS?  

3. Newspaper Headlines. Authorities have directed citizens living in the Kursk region of what country to stop revealing personal information on dating apps?   

Dear Friends,

I’m looking forward to welcoming my wife Kate home from her extended trip to Chicago (last week) and Ithaca (this week). Having spent much of this week on or around the campus of Ithaca College, she is looking forward to returning home tomorrow.

Speaking of Ithaca, I feel like Odysseus’s wife Penelope at home with our son Telemachus, waiting for my venturing hero to return to our hall, even though it’s a small hall. Luckily I don’t have to feed or fend off any suitors. Rather than weaving the burial shroud of Laertes, I’ve been weaving together lines of poetry.

The most famous 20^th century poem about Ithaca was written by the Greek poet C.P. Cavafy. After it was read at the 1994 funeral of Jackie Onassis, interest in Cavafy’s work skyrocketed in poetry communities. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, the poem begins this way:

Ithaka

By C. P. Cavafy

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

When Kate returns, we will have two parents at home in charge of one kid, something we remember from before our son Jukie was born, 23 years ago. Jukie is rather headstrong, like Cavafy’s wild Poseidon or like Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, so at times Kate and I will feel like that play’s Gremio and Hortensio.

Because either a Gremio or a Hortensio is necessary for handling our charge, I’ve asked a Pub Quiz friend and regular participant, Toby, to guest-host tonight’s Pub Quiz. As you will be able to tell, I’ve still written the quiz. For once I try not to include any difficult to pronounce words, such as “Gremio” or “Hortensio.”

Apprentice Quizmaster Toby has a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Pittsburgh with minors in Religious Studies and Studio Art. An inveterate traveler, he has lived in New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona before settling in California 15 years ago. At least one of those states will be a topic of conversation during the quiz tonight.

Toby has been coming to Sudwerk since the Dock Store opened back in 2011, so he is a known quantity to the staff, and still they keep welcoming him back.

Impressively, Toby was a DJ for five years at a dance club in Pittsburgh. His high school and college classes in drama and public speaking prepared him to be a teacher on various technical subjects. 

He looks forward to trying his hand tonight as a substitute Quizmaster. Despite his Bachelor of Arts in English degree, he will likely make fewer unexplained literary allusions than I do. I hope you will stop by to see how he does.

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Please plan to partake in the Pub Quiz festivities this evening at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where the misters are misting and where we have room for almost everyone. The jollity will be unfiltered. As Ralph Waldo Emerson allegedly said, “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” Tonight some will want to play indoors. I encourage you to come early to snag a table. We filled the restaurant and patio last week, and I expect that we will continue to do so throughout August and beyond.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on dating apps, innocuous conspiracy theories bass players, Olympic games, no smoking signs, ice chases, fictional councilors, allotropes, dams, academies, odes, Canadian-Americans, latitude measurements, Hawaii exports, notable Americans, southern singles, Californians, Hams, supervisors districts, princes, letter carriers, alliterative commands, early sport heroes, human body parts, letters and science, buckets, people pleasers, people named Tim, hammers, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. Sometimes a question is substituted at the last minute because of the day’s news.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscriber Sophie! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the scintillating Mavens who carefully take note of casual adjectives and precise pronunciations, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon (where I am also sometimes sharing drafts of poems). Thanks again to Toby.  I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

1. Robin Williams. When the father of the female lead of the film Mrs. Doubtfire suddenly passed away, Robin Williams kindly arranged for the filming to focus on scenes in which she did not appear so she could go be with her family. Name the actress.  

2. Federal Services. According to a Pew Research Center survey, the least popular federal agency and the most popular federal agency have three words in their names, with the first word ending in the letters NAL and the third word being “service.” One of the two is the Internal Revenue Service. With a 76% favorability rating, what is the other?    

3. Pop Culture – Music. Born with the last name of “Duckworth,” what 5’5” tall rapper and songwriter won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his 2017 album Damn, making him the first non-classical or jazz artist to receive the award?  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

When Kate and our bookend kids leave town for one of their summer trips, Jukie and I listen to a lot of jazz and eat a bunch of pistachios.

My son Jukie, who will be attending the entire pub quiz this evening, is a young man with autism, intellectual disabilities, and the inability to speak. My constant companion, he likes to hang back on our long walks on the greenbelts of Davis, sometimes strolling 100 yards behind me in areas that are well removed from car traffic. Just this morning a mom who passed us stopped to make sure that someone was watching out for this unusual seemingly solo walker. 

Because of his OCD, if I ever want Jukie to catch up with me, I just wear my backpack on one shoulder, instead of two, and then he will sprint up (or, like Simone Biles, “spring” up) to my position to help me wear my backpack properly. He doesn’t like things to be out of place. Earlier this week at Dos Coyotes he noticed that someone’s laptop wasn’t closed all the way, so he walked right up to the table and slowly pushed down on the laptop lid until he heard that satisfying click. People in Davis typically smile at me when Jukie engages in such behavior. Everyone accepts my apologies.

We will see what sort of village it will take to corral or redirect Jukie at tonight’s pub quiz. I’m especially grateful to my friend Don, who will be arriving tonight with newly-purchased comic books and a willingness to intercept Jukie is he heads for the parking lot while I am busy being Quizmaster.

To give you a better understanding of Jukie’s lively and curious spirit, I will share here a poem I wrote a decade ago that continues to reflect his sense of wonder.

Sunday in the Back Yard      

                      

A blur of a boy in new clothes,

superhero-themed, sent by grandparents,

races round and round the backyard,

shaded by fences eight feet tall.                                            

Far above, the lichens and birds’ nests call to him.                                 

Next to the picnic table, our boy baptizes the bulldog,

his unwilling and unsturdy steed.

The praise he sings with gospel lungs

rings sympathetic with the morning’s 

distant soccer-game cheers, 

and nearby yellow-billed magpies.

Our pale angel brandishing wooden spoons              

knocks doggedly on the garden gates, dark cedar, 

with crossbeams resembling ladder rungs.                                                     

Wishing for someplace more remote,

a place beyond the memorized and mangy lawn, 

he imagines a jubilee where dragonflies

and honey are their own reward:                         

a celebration of unremembered sunshine,

sublime and jaunty in the gallops of air

that gleam beyond ego, beyond experience.                                 

Who’s to say that this boy, unworded and noisy mystic,

keeper of everyone’s secrets, chronicled unlearner,

does not commune hourly with an aspect of God?

I look forward to seeing you this evening. Should you attend this event, whether you are a village elder or a village leader, you may see an opportunity to see that it sometimes takes a village to prevent an elopement. How exciting!

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I hope you can join us on this warm evening for a pub quiz at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where the misters are misting and where we have room for almost everyone. The jollity will be unfiltered. As Ralph Waldo Emerson allegedly said, “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” I encourage you to come early to snag a table; that way, we won’t have a line out the door as I first ring the cowbell. We filled the restaurant and patio last week, and I expect that we will continue to do so throughout August.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on Paula Poundstone, sunshine, dashikis, big thoughts, declining Americans, San Antonio, magical island spirits, USA teams, flight opportunities, sets of books, continental facts, ranked countries, cute dogs, again with the Wolverine, hypocrites, global warming, songs that might even have been hits before your mother was born (if you are young), levees, supportive machines, friends indeed, U.S. states, inevitability, Nobel Prizes, non-jazz albums, agencies, kindly costars, red blood cells, lifetime achievement awards, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. Sometimes a question is substituted at the last minute because of the day’s news.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscriber Sophie! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the scintillating Mavens who carefully take note of casual adjectives and precise pronunciations, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon (where I am also sometimes sharing drafts of poems). I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Find here three sample questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Books and Authors. Bill and Ted stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are making their Broadway debut together in 2025 in what Samuel Beckett play? 

2. Film. What 2024 animated film recently kicked The Avengers out of the worldwide all-time box office top 10? 

3. Youth Culture. Speaking of Marvel movies, is the Deadpool and Wolverine film the first, fifth, or 11^th R-rated Marvel (not MCU) movie? 

P.S. Tomorrow is Poetry Night in Davis, and 21 people have already responded to the Facebook event pagefor this reading by Mercedes Ibáñez and Jean Biegun at 7 PM on Thursday, August 15th, 2024 at the John Natsoulas Gallery. I hope you can join us!

Dear Friends,

I am just tickled that a teacher has been chosen as a candidate for Vice President of the United States. Like many of us who have recently discovered Tim Walz, I admire his character, his eloquence, and his authenticity. I hope these qualities matter in the coming months of debates, discussions, and deliberations.

Another teacher who eventually went into politics, Lyndon Baines Johnson taught speech and debate at Sam Houston High School in Houston, Texas. One 1931 photograph shows the future president with members of his debate team. Just as Walz did with football, Johnson led a statewide championship in debating.

A great storyteller, Johnson told an interviewer in 1965 how he was offered a much-coveted teaching job at one of the state’s best high schools (in Houston) even though he had already promised to serve as principal at a much smaller rural school. Johnson turned down the plum job via wire, an indication of the sort of moral strength that would serve him well later in life. I will include here an entire paragraph of his reminiscing: it gives you a sense of President Johnson’s speaking style:

That night, I guess it must have been about a Friday, I had a date with one of the teachers and in the course of the conversation she asked me what had happened in Houston and I told her. Saturday night she had a date with the coach. The coach lived with the superintendent. I swore her to secrecy but it didn’t matter, she told the coach, and the coach Sunday morning told the superintendent. So Monday morning the superintendent called me in. I thought he was going to lecture me about it. He said that he understood I had an offer and I said, “Yes.” He said, “Do you remember our conversation when you told me that you would stay?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “What have you done about it?” I pulled out a copy of the wire I had sent to the superintendent. And he said, “Well, I thank you and I appreciate it.” [He said] he thought that that was what I would do, that the coach had told him that he had heard from this lady teacher that I had told her that I had been offered a job, and it had troubled him over the weekend. [He said] that he had a young boy and that if some man in subsequent years happened to be superintendent and refused to release his boy when he had a chance to go into Houston and have the chance to move up, why, he would never forgive him. And [he said] he had thought about it so much that he thought that I ought to go take it. I told him that I couldn’t do it, I had turned it down and I was going to stay with him. He said, “I just feel like a criminal tying you here. I will be both superintendent and principal if I have to. But this is such a wonderful opportunity that I want to urge you to take it.”

Just as I can recount stories about favorite teachers like Jack Petrash, Marcia Clemmitt, Will Layman, Sir Christopher Ricks, or Sandra Gilbert, Johnson had all the details of his story about admired teachers ready for the interviewer. Like these heroes, Walz has inspired many young people, and he will likely continue to do so. As Henry Adams said, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”

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I hope you can join us on an especially warm evening for a pub quiz at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where the misters are misting and where we have room for almost everyone. The jollity will be unfiltered. As Ralph Waldo Emerson allegedly said, “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” Tonight some will want to play indoors. I encourage you to come early to snag a table. We filled the restaurant and patio last week, and I expect that we will continue to do so throughout August.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on shoes, layoffs, automobiles, big houses in California, detectives, Doja Cats, early Britain, vertebrates, dumb moves, delightful flowers, literature Nobel Prize winners, gold mines, punishers, dudes, people no longer named Eugene, AI, motorcycles, rain storms, crossover hits, mythical places, human body specialties, rappers and riders, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. Sometimes a question is substituted at the last minute because of the day’s news.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscriber Sophie! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the scintillating Mavens who carefully take note of casual adjectives and precise pronunciations, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon (where I am also sometimes sharing drafts of poems). Congratulations to the team with a future Jeopardy! player among them — they have won two in a row! I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

1. Charades. Living from 1904 to 1986, what actor starred in the films Notorious, To Catch a Thief, Operation Petticoat, and Charade? 

2. Science. On July 31^st, 2023, at Brights Zoo, in Limehouse, Tennessee, a distinctive giraffe was born, the only one in the known world with a certain trait. What makes this giraffe special? 

3. Current Events – Names in the News. We recently learned that a New Jersey elementary school will remove a home state senator’s name from its building after his conviction on federal bribery charges. Name the U.S. Senator from New Jersey who is not Cory Booker. 

Dear Friends,

Sometimes when I join others meditate in Chestnut Park in Davis on Sunday mornings, I count the sounds that I hear. Doing so slows my breathing and helps me focus on embodied acts of perception, that is, taking note of the perception of being alive, rather than just following my recursive thoughts where they might go.

Each sound is noted, heard, understood, and recorded with the objective of excluding it from being counted again. Once, a mother red-tailed hawk, accompanied by her two fledglings, perched in the tree above us. Their sharp, high-pitched cries and intermittent chattering filled the air for the entire hour of our meditation. After that experience, in my counting practice I resolved that if I hear the same bird make two different sounds, I count that once, even though for most birds I’m not yet qualified to differentiate and identify the different avian vocalizations I hear. 

On the other hand, if a person in squeaky shoes walks past my meditation spot while talking on the phone, I count that twice. As I gradually awaken to a sonorous world, from my summer spot in the shade or my winter spot in the sun, I hear the rhythmic thwack of tennis balls being hit back and forth, a soccer coach’s enthusiastic shouts after each of his sole player’s attempted goal, children calling out hide and seek instructions from a distant play structure, a fenced dog barking a greeting to every passerby, squirrels scampering through the branches of a nearby black walnut tree (Juglans hindsii), the rumble of a truck driving down Chestnut Lane, and the plaintive wail of an ambulance siren slicing through traffic on Covell Boulevard, six blocks away.

As my ears became more sensitive, I would sometimes imagine using sonar to “map” the nearby east Davis areas where my son Jukie and I would walk on weekend afternoons. Once an especially loud motorcycle seemingly encircled our adopted neighborhood, driving south on what I estimated was L Street until it reached E. 8^th Street, whereupon it made a left, drove east on E. 8^th Street until it reached Pole Line Road, and then drove north until finally around Nugget Fields it escaped my earshot, perhaps on its way to visit the ears of Woodland residents.

With my eyes closed, I felt like Matt Murdock of Daredevil fame, my ears having opened to sounds that for most of us, and for me most of the time, go unnoticed. The psychiatrist Karl Menninger wrote that “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” Breathing calmly, settling my restless mind, and listening to the world’s sounds is a similarly expanding experience.

The counting practice is really an unplugging practice, a means of connecting to my entire self, rather than to be ruled only by my head. Any poet, such as myself, would agree with Voltaire who posited that “The ear is the avenue to the heart.” I hope you get to roll down the windows and drive down that avenue sometime soon.  

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I hope you can join us on an especially warm evening for a pub quiz at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where the misters are misting and where we have room for almost everyone. The jollity will be unfiltered. As Saint Augustine allegedly said, “Good times and crazy friends make the best memories.” Tonight some will want to play indoors. I encourage you to come early to snag a table. We filled the restaurant and patio last week.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on library users, balloons, defensive specialists, sinewy sleeping habits, vacating leaders, masked men, stations, bicycle culture, American chemists, common materials, members of halls of fame, strong winds that bring good news, numbers of championships, suddenly high vacancy rates, car maintenance, odd teethers, school names, sound machine settings, Limehouses, questionable leadership, love songs, words that start with the letter E, missed Emmy Award winners, screaming matches, river towns, political statements, California heroes, bacteria, sustainable bravery, peace messengers, distinguished men who wear hearing aids, declarations of independence, population centers, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. Sometimes a question is substituted at the last minute because of the day’s news.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscriber Sophie! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the scintillating Mavens who carefully take note of casual adjectives and precise pronunciations, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon (where I am also sometimes sharing drafts of poems). Congratulations to the team with a future Jeopardy! player among them — they have won two in a row! I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

1. Mottos and Slogans. According to Kamala Harris, what happens when we fight? 

2. Newspaper Headlines. We learned this week that sharks off the coast of Brazil have been testing positive for which of the following: Cholera, Cocaine, Covid?  

3. Festivals. Which Indian festival is known as the Festival of Lights?  

P.S. Tomorrow is Poetry Night in Davis. Join us August 1^st at 7 PM at the Natsoulas Gallery. Find details about this special event here.

Elizabeth Sudemeier in about 1937

Dear Friends,

If you were ever to live next door to a retired superspy, say a James Bond or Jason Bourne, would you be surprised if you never knew it? The spy I knew was never seen doing wind sprints through local parks, lifting weights in the basement, or cleaning guns, as you might expect from an off-duty field agent. When this spy came in from the cold, it was me who shoveled the snow from her front walkway.

From about the time I was born until the time I graduated from college and moved to California, I lived next door to Elizabeth Sudmeier, one of the founders of the CIA, and a trailblazer who broke a glass ceiling for women who worked in intelligence agencies. She evidently had nerves of steel and could speak many languages. Like me, she was an English major in college. She went on missions, developed sources, and trained recruits.

I knew none of this. To us, she was the slightly odd woman next door with a living room that featured a pink Victorian chaise lounge and matching fancy chairs. I never felt well-dressed enough or clean enough to sit in her home, but when I was invited over, I would always be eyeing the individually-wrapped hard candy in a cut glass bowl with a pedestal base. Candy was such an important part of childhood back then.

Elizabeth’s large framed landscapes seemed like originals to me, likely representations of the rolling prairies of the land around Timber Lake, South Dakota, where Elizabeth was born and raised. She had a Poodle named “Gigi,” and sometimes her sister would visit with her two Boston Terriers. Elizabeth attended church regularly, though I don’t remember which one.

Elizabeth and my family lived in almost identical row houses (we had adjoining porches separated by a low gate that, as I finally grew taller as a teenager, I could simply step over). Depending on where the sun was, sometimes our pug Spindle would lounge over on Elizabeth’s porch, listening to the constant humming exhalations that Elizabeth made while nursing a drink and sitting on our elevated porch overlooking the alley. She could see easily into the back yard of Dischord House, where Ian MacKaye, Alec MacKaye, and Amanda MacKaye buried their iguanas and formed their punk bands. Alec would eventually inherit Elizabeth’s Ford Galaxie.

I have memories of playing in Elizabeth’s basement while her housekeeper Mercedes did laundry. I remember watching Happy Days in the spare bedroom on the second floor. I remember looking through catalogues of themed birthday cakes – one year it was a Beatles cake, another it was a pool party with surfers and surfboards – that Elizabeth would get out about a month before my birthday and my brother Oliver’s birthday.” Cake and birthdays were a big deal back then. I remember her address at 2456 Tunlaw Road and her phone number: 202 338-1380. That number is currently disconnected.

I seemed eager to eat those birthday cakes, to let my dog Spindle do his business in Elizabeth’s ivy-covered side yard, and to be paid to mow Elizabeth’s yard or shovel the snow from her walkway or driveway, but I don’t know that I ever sat down with Elizabeth to ask her questions about her youth, about her family, or about her work in government. She had wonderful stories to tell, though she was likely not permitted to tell most of them.

Luckily, The Wall Street Journal has done some uncovering of this spy who lived next door. Journal author Nathalia Holt published a story (“The Women Who Helped to Build the CIA”) on September 24, 2022 that begins with this paragraph:

“Elizabeth Sudmeier loitered outside a cafe in Baghdad one day in early 1954, taking care not to draw attention to herself. It was not easy for a young American woman in the Middle East to blend in, but Sudmeier, her colleagues would later attest, was practiced in making herself disappear in any setting. In a few minutes, the man she had been anticipating, the one she had spent months persuading to meet her, arrived, handed her an envelope and moved on. Sudmeier, one of the female intelligence officers who helped start the CIA, had just stolen Soviet secrets. In her hands were the blueprints for the MiG-19 jet fighter, just gifted by Moscow to the Iraqis to gain favor in the region.”

Reading a Wikipedia page and the CIA page about her special commendation, and learning more about her work in Baghdad from this excerpt from the Nathalia Holt book Wise Gals, I discovered all this about superspy Elizabeth Sudmeier long after I moved from Tunlaw Road (she died three months after we sold out house – maybe she missed us that much?), long after I moved to California, and long after my memories of our neighborly conversations had faded from my aging brain.

I’m approaching the age now that Elizabeth Sudmeier was when she was forced to retire from her work as a spy. I’m grateful for any time that she spent watching my brother or me while my parents were away, I’m grateful for the many birthday cakes, and I’m grateful for all the hard candies that I surreptitiously palmed while passing by her cut-glass bowls, all paid for by her CIA pension.

Looking back at the self-centered and hopelessly irreverent boy that grew up on Tunlaw Road, I think I could have been a better friend or neighbor. With all the decades between 2024 and my last missed opportunities to converse meaningfully with Elizabeth Sudmeier, how does one make amends?

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I hope you can join us on an especially warm evening for a pub quiz at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where the misters are misting and where we have room for almost everyone. The jollity will be unfiltered. As Saint Augustine allegedly said, “Good times and crazy friends make the best memories.” Tonight some will want to play indoors. I encourage you to come early to snag a table. We filled the restaurant and patio last week.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on streaming music, Texas stories, tribes, Cary Grant, pugilism, Brazil, people named Morgan Jones, hot water jobs, securities, perceptual properties, toast, pseudonyms, dystopian players, beliefs, swing states, Vietnam vets, Roman emperors, faraway lakes, government jobs, comforting forests, technology drops, alternatives to Singapore, laces, a question that becomes a name, pre-history, muffins, TV hosts, Ohio heroes, people you would like to greet, permissions, committees, old people, AI artwork, sequel reunions, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. Sometimes a question is substituted at the last minute because of the day’s news.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscriber Sophie! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the scintillating Mavens who carefully take note of casual adjectives and precise pronunciations, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon (where I am also sometimes sharing drafts of poems). Hello to Ellen. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Find here three questions from last week:

1. The California Legislature. What is the term length for a California State Senator? Four years

2. Science. What three-letter acronym do we use for a nucleotide that provides energy to drive and support many processes in living cells? Adenosine triphosphate (ATP)

3. Books and Authors. The title of what Joseph Heller novel has become a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice? Catch-22

P.P.S. “Opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss.” Andy Rooney

Dear Friends,

The comedian Steven Wright once asked, “If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?” Well, this past Thursday night we saw the heat waving to us, and we decided to wave goodbye, at least for 48 hours. 

This past Friday morning, well before the temperatures reached towards 111 °F, we pointed our family van towards San Francisco where later that day we found temperatures a full 50° cooler a mere 70-minute drive from home.

Kate discovered a hotel, the Marriott Marquis on Mission Street, that had two queen-size beds to a room, necessary when you have to accommodate a French Bulldog who prefers to sleep horizontally across one’s feet, and a son, Jukie, who prefers to sleep diagonally while somnolently claiming all his patient brother Truman’s covers and both his pillows.

Even before checking in to the Marriott we drove right to our favorite San Francisco restaurant, The Hard Knox Café on Clement Street, to enjoy some soul food. Still recovering from getting four wisdom teeth extracted, Truman enjoyed the relatively soft choice of French toast with berries, while I dined heartily on a veggie scramble with grits and a corn muffin. Jukie sought to dash El Yucateco hot sauce across his entire meal, especially the red beans and rice.

Fueled up, Kate was eager to try her favorite SF hike, Lands End, for the first time since her April 1^st hip replacement surgery and subsequent foot injury and paralysis. Friends will be happy to know that Kate has long since been liberated from her boot and crutches, and, with the help of physical therapists and assiduous attention to her nightly hip, knee, ankle, foot, and even toe exercises, Kate has returned to her regular walking habit.

She still uses an AFO brace in her larger left sneaker, and she wears a special compression sock when donning her summer-fashion Birkenstocks, but she was determined not to let a little concern like a fully (and now partially) paralyzed foot from keeping her from walking many miles, first in flat Davis, and more recently, up and down the hills along the San Francisco Bay.

Everyone is impressed with her excellent progress, especially the experts who understand how serious such an injury can be. The healing process with nerves takes a long time. But by all accounts, she seems to be ahead of schedule. She still attends neuro PT sessions regularly because she knows that the hard work will pay off, and because she’s determined to regain full use of her foot. 

For packing insulated hoodies for our visit to San Francisco, which felt like the refrigerated room at Costco, and for walking all over those City hills like a billy goat (well, a billy goat who would take my arm from time to time), Kate is our hero! Diminutive Margot and I are so pleased to have our walking partner back.

Still locked out of her Facebook account after someone tried to assume her identity, Kate misses seeing updates from her friends, so people have been turning to me to discover “How is Kate doing?” Now you know! I will make sure that she sees whatever messages you have for her here.

Happy mid-July to you. I hope all of you are also enjoying triumphant adventures.

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I hope you can join us tonight for a pub quiz at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where the misters will be misting and where we have room for almost everyone. The jollity will be unfiltered. As Saint Augustine allegedly said, “Good times and crazy friends make the best memories.” Tonight some will want to play indoors. 

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on stalwart coaches, Florida exports, national newspapers, the height of writers, swim meets, wing men with sharp quills, absurd choices, energy and drive, reasonable terms, crossroad locations, gorillas, transport options, heat waves goodbye, new competitions, WalletHubs, vacancies, deep cuts, late arrivals, granted wishes, fast paces, celebration dates, actors we’ve lost in 2024, days of the week, precise numbers, weevils, international armies, briefly famous mountains, clever riddles, aspirations of the polyglot, serious pulls, Spotify standouts, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. Sometimes a question is substituted at the last minute because of the day’s news.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscriber Sophie! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the scintillating Mavens who carefully take note of casual adjectives and precise pronunciations, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon (where I am also sometimes sharing drafts of poems). I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

1. Unusual Words. Starting with the letter G, what adjective means “lean and haggard, especially because of suffering, hunger, or age? 
2. Island Chains. The Outer Hebrides is an island chain off the west coast of mainland what? 
3. Pop Culture – Television. What was the name of the Starfleet captain of the USS Voyager? 

P.S. Poetry Night is tomorrow! Check out www.poetryindavis.com for the details, and plan to join us July 18 for Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas and Rina Wakefield.

Dear Friends,

People who earn PhDs in English don’t automatically know how to teach writing. It might be argued that the cerebral, erudite mastery of abstruse rhetorical flourishes that fill doctoral dissertations nudge their authors away from the sort of clear, thoughtful, and audience-centric writing that best serves a college upperclassman or new employee.

At UC Davis, I learned how to communicate effectively with the most distinguished and poetic professors of the previous generation—a skill of questionable marketability outside elite English programs like the one I attended.

Fortunately, my self-funded PhD program required me to work, allowing me to teach writing and introductory literature classes throughout the 1990s. Teaching such skills required me to learn about rhetoric and composition, composition theory, and writing across the curriculum. My years of teaching writing prepared me for this work just as my PhD in English prepared me to analyze and discuss literary texts.

Should I have earned a second PhD, the way that Stephen Strange, Reed Richards, and Bruce Banner did? Not a Marvel superhero, I chose to stick with just the one. In the real world, even our smartest and most ambitious scholars don’t earn multiple PhDs. They are too busy writing books in their fields of specialty.

This month of July, 2024, I got to wield my poetry PhD in a new kind of classroom, a class and workshop series that I am teaching at the University Retirement Community. Working with almost a dozen students ranging in ages from 20 to 40 years older than I am, I have returned my first love: conversations about poetry. I’ve been quoting poems that I’ve carried around in my head for decades, connecting comments made by class participants to the joy of a creative life, and lectured about literary topics without notes, a skill that I’ve learned from teaching all those writing classes. So far this summer we’ve been reading and discussing poems by Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Hayden. Next week we cover a former professor of mine, Robert Pinsky.

In 1989, I asked Pinsky what classes I should take when I start graduate school. He told me that I should focus not on the courses, but on the horses. Choose professors with a long track record of inspiring and enthusing students, without regard to the subjects they are teaching. I did this largely by auditing classes even after my classwork was done, taking multiple classes with Sandra Gilbert, Alan Williamson, and David Van Leer (RIP). In some of those classes, we’ve read and discussed texts by authors and professors whose works and personalities I got to know when I lived back east, including Seamus Heaney (RIP), Paul Muldoon, Roger Shattuck (RIP), Rosanna Warren, and Howard Zinn (RIP).

As for myself, I haven’t always taught the courses that my first and only PhD trained me for, but I’ve tried to be the professor whose lessons, lectures, and inspiring words continue to matter long after my students were launched just as my multiple degrees launched me.

When it comes to teaching, I agree with horse trainer Pat Parelli: “A horse doesn’t care how much you know until he knows how much you care.”

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I hope you can join us on an especially warm evening for a pub quiz at Sudwerk in Davis. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where the misters are misting and where we have room for almost everyone. The jollity will be unfiltered. As Saint Augustine allegedly said, “Good times and crazy friends make the best memories.” Tonight some will want to play indoors. Understandable!

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on terrifying technologies, fronts, airports, southern states, concession stands, classical music, sluggers, tissues, famous streets, boxers, crime novelists, national heroes, co-authors, fabric dates, American idols, masks, decades of cars, shared atoms, board games, superhero actors, grateful friends, place names, evolutionary biology, ducks, philanthropy in action, emaciation, islands, birds, steamy actresses, captains, tornados, colonies, New York City, summoning whistles, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. Sometimes a question is substituted at the last minute because of the day’s news.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscriber Sophie! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the scintillating Mavens who carefully take note of casual adjectives and precise pronunciations, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon (where I am also sometimes sharing drafts of poems). I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Three questions from a previous Pub Quiz:

1. Mottos and Slogans. Starting with the letter N, what company, according to its slogan, invites you to “See what’s next”?  

2. Technology Culture. If we were to say that the Jet Age started with The British de Havilland Comet, the first jet airliner to fly, the first in service, and the first to offer a regular transatlantic service, then in what decade did the Jet Age begin?  

3. Newspaper Headlines. Starting with the letter B, what powerful hurricane recently struck Jamaica before heading towards Texas? This hurricane shares a name with a British-born Kenyan author who is known for her memoir West with the Night.  

P.S. The next Poetry Night will feature Carl Lynn Stevenson Grellas at the Natsoulas Gallery on July 18^th at 7 PM. I hope you can join us that night!

Dear Friends,

“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.” — Khalil Gibran

Walking home from the UC Davis campus after teaching a class yesterday, I found myself charting a route that provided me the most shade. Even when the temperature hits 105 degrees in the bright sunshine, it might feel 15 degrees cooler under the shade of a tree.

I developed this habit as a boy who was not burdened by vigilant supervision. In the summers of my childhood, both my parents worked seemingly more than 40 hours a week, and I I spent almost as many hours every summer week exploring my neighborhood, and, when I became older and could run farther, more of Washington, D.C. My friends and I invented games, invented quests, and even built forts in public lands, typically not sharing the details of our adventures with our parents.

As a fair-skinned child who was not told to sunscreen before leaving for the day, I hugged the shade or burned, typically the latter. Unlike in Davis, D.C.’s humidity held the heat, meaning that on some nights it might still be 90 degrees outside at 11 PM. On such nights, we set out the futons and Japanese mattresses on the living room floor where the window AC unit was the strongest.

As a young reader, I would revel in those passages of classic novels that showed characters who loved the environments they explored as much as I did. For instance, consider this passage from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë: “I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”

Consider also the decidedly less literate narrating of Huckleberry Finn: “Sometimes we’d have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark – which was a candle in a cabin window – and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two – on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts.”

We have to turn to Steinbeck for representations of the intense heat we are feeling today: In The Grapes of Wrath, we learn that sometimes California clouds just give up trying: “The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.”

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck makes us glad that most of us don’t have to labor outdoors on a day like today: “The sun beat down upon them, for it was early summer, and her face was soon dripping with her sweat. Wang Lung had his coat off and his back bare, but she worked with her thin garment covering her shoulders and it grew wet and clung to her like skin.”

The wind was still blowing at dawn this morning when my son Jukie set out to claim our daily quota of steps, so far 15,829, while we still dared. As we cut through the increasing heat, I was reminded of Hilda Doolittle’s poem “Heat”:

O wind, rend open the heat,

cut apart the heat,

rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop

through this thick air—

fruit cannot fall into heat

that presses up and blunts

the points of pears

and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat—

plough through it,

turning it on either side

of your path.

I don’t know where your path will take you on this hottest day of the year so far, 109 degrees as I write this Wednesday afternoon, but as you go, give thanks for the trees that protect us, and visit every water fountain that you encounter on the way. As Frost says in his poem “Directive,” “Here are your waters and your watering place. / Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.”

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I hope you can join us on a record warm evening for a pub quiz at Sudwerk. Bring your team to the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for everyone and misters that will keep you from deep-frying. As Saint Augustine allegedly said, “Good times and crazy friends make the best memories.” Tonight some will want to play indoors. Understandable!

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on sequences, twins, coffee drinks, Greek gods, good fortunes, fake dukes, dynamic Canadians, shorts, hot and lucky visas, marmalade, football teams in Texas, Brooklyn tensions, composers, good dogs, singers who play title characters, ivy league colleges, monarchs, foundational interactions, Arab countries, aviatrixes, different ages, hot days, rivals with funny names, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients, Oscar winners, U.S. presidents, Arizona notables, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. Sometimes a question is substituted at the last minute because of the day’s news.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks especially to new subscriber Sophie! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the scintillating Mavens who carefully take note of casual adjectives, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon (where I am also sometimes sharing drafts of poems). I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Thanks to everyone who came to the bonus Pride Pub Quiz that I hosted last week. Here are three questions from that event:

1. Notable Davisites. What local politician served as Mayor of Davis during most of the Coronavirus pandemic lockdown?  

2. Harvey Milk. Was the town of Woodmere where Harvey Milk was born found outside Boston, Chicago, Houston, or New York City?  

3. People Named James. What essayist and novelist wrote the influential 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room, which explores queer themes?  

P.P.S. Happy Independence Day!