Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. The funds raised by all new December monthly sponsorships will be donated to charity. See below for details.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I wonder to what extent this pandemic will help some of us wake up. 

A review of the demographic statistics of who is succumbing to Covid-19 will help to make more of us aware of the ways that our country’s ever deepening economic disparities affect who has access to health care. As a result, we might encourage lawmakers to support policies that widen access to basic care, as many European nations do. Boston University’s Antiracist Research Center Director Ibram X. Kendi wrote a piece in April’s Atlantic that reminds us who Covid affects the most.

A review of how we spend our evenings – formerly our Pub Quiz nights, our movie (theater) nights, and our Poetry Nights –, that is, at home, might awaken us to the importance of visual, literary, and performing arts. We might imagine a future in which we take better advantage of all the cultural offerings of our home towns, and support those who seek to bring us joy and cultural stimulation, whether it is provided by a busker outside a coffee shop or the Davis Shakespeare Ensemble in a packed house at the Veterans Memorial Theatre in Davis, California.

A review of how we have been forced to spend our time may reveal to us how we would prefer to spend our time. Disconnected from our old routines, we might discover new goals, whether they be a game night with our family or a new book project, and act accordingly. We might choose what to embrace, such as each other, once it is safe, and what to limit, such as our screen time, once our lives are not necessarily so mediated by our phones and computers. “To live is to be slowly born,” said Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Speaking of phones, I recently bought myself a new smartphone and then set out for a walk with my son, Jukie. Not having yet connected to the cell network, my phone offered me no access to the audio books that keep Jukie and me company during our long walks, so I spent much of our time together trying out the camera. Because of something called a lidar scanner, the phone sees things at night that we cannot. For example, Friday night I took a picture of a grove of unilluminated trees growing along Putah Creek. While my aging eyes could see nothing but pitch blackness, my camera revealed the outlines of individual branches, silhouetted upon the night sky’s previously undetected starlight, beyond.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all had such a magical device that could make us aware of the secret life of objects and people that otherwise live in the shadows, that could awaken us to both the depth and he nuance of the world around us? With training, perhaps that “device” might be our imaginations, or our awakening perceptions borne out of stillness, reflection, and ever-deepening compassion. 

The next afternoon, Jukie and I took another walk, this time in daylight, returning home at what my friend the professional photographer Melanie E. Rijkers calls “the golden hour.” Before I took a picture, I thought the sun was merely setting beneath the blanket of clouds on an overcast day, but the lens of the camera insisted that the world was full of red and orange light, as if fires had been set to illuminate the dusk.

The Dalai Lama once said that “A truly peaceful mind is very sensitive, very aware.” We have often noticed that Jukie is never so calm as when out for a long walk, his eyes examining the edges of distant clouds or the pruned branch in his hand. Without words, Jukie spends a lot of time either in center of his own perception, or wrapped in what the Mexican poet and diplomat Octavio Paz calls “the silence of memory.” Perhaps all of us become more peaceful when we take a break from our screens, to part our curtains of sensitivity and perception, and behold the nuanced diversity of shadows and lights that we typically pass by, unaware and unawakened.  

Thanks to everyone who donated to the little fundraiser that I announced via the newsletter and on Facebook a couple weeks ago. As I updated you earlier, I surpassed my goal of raising $500 for the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation after a week, and in the ensuing weeks, readers of this newsletter donated more than a $1,000 more! If you would like to find an additional home for your tax-deductible giving before the end of the year, the Foundation would welcome your help. I will do my part by immediately sending any December money raised from new monthly Patreon sponsorships to the Foundation so that the volunteer staff there can continue to support affected families going through a tough time in 2020 and beyond.

I hope you get to play tonight’s quiz. Expect questions on angels, answers, editions, Italian-American poets, mature cells, alternatives to guns, naval escorts, textiles and fabrics, current events, Spanish words, American scholars, witches, long books, Dana Gioia, team names, illness, closers, landfill concerns, world capitals, rebuffed colonizers, oddball states, spies, games, falcons, clear coasts, everyday acids, two-syllable names, people who do not respond when their name is called in class, clever riddles, house-founders, and Shakespeare. Sadly, there will be no questions on the panoply of colors viewable in a Davis winter sunset, but you can play that game at home.

Thanks to all the sponsors of the Pub Quiz, including our new sponsor Meaghan. Our flagship sponsors, The Original Vincibles, will be receiving their monthly curated book gift before Christmas. What should it be this month? Time will tell.

Stay healthy!

Dr. Andy

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

1. Internet Culture. What was the most-downloaded iPhone app of 2020?  

2. Santa’s Reindeer. When Santa’s reindeer line up in alphabetical order according to their first names, who comes last?  

3. Pop Culture – Music. Born in 1966, what star of the film Poetic Justice holds the record for the most consecutive top-ten entries on the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart by a female artist with 18?  

P.S. Perhaps no holiday gift would get more use and garner more gratitude than a yearly membership to the Pub Quiz with Dr. Andy. If you are looking to splurge for someone on your list, consider sponsoring with a yearly subscription. Details on Patreon.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Thanks to all of you who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon.

Some things just can’t be done anymore. The restaurants reopened for indoor dining for a while, but most of us stayed outside, enjoying the warm summer and autumn evenings. Now winter seems almost upon us, and we are barred from entering restaurants where we used to huddle.

The furniture that used to invite us in to an eatery is stacked in the corner, as if the floor were being prepared for a thorough mopping, like so many of the touchable surfaces in our lives. These days, some restaurants block the entranceway with a table where we used to sit and eat, the other tables just waiting, seemingly as lonely as the wishful diners. Like a Dutch door (called a half-door in Ireland) that was once used to let the light in without inviting in the local livestock and poultry, these barriers let us only wistfully see into a restaurant, recalling where we used to converse unhurriedly with friends. We may not enter.

Now entire restaurants function as mere antechambers outside the kitchen, a place where staff loaf until the next customer shows up for takeout. They wish they had more to do. As Helen Hayes once said, “If you rest, you rust.” Even the tables outside the Tex-Mex restaurant that my son Jukie and I use to incentivize our long walks offer little comfort: every other one tells us THIS TABLE IS NOT IN USE. I fear more such signs will not be affixed outside the restaurants themselves.

Like restaurants, the public busses are running, but empty. Soon they may both be running on empty, as well. With our widespread use of Zoom, bicycling, and farmers markets, the citizens of Davis will fare better during this crisis than those who fill big cities or who have long commutes to in-person jobs. We fear the carpool, and so many of us would not dare step upon a bus or a subway car. This pandemic may change public transportation forever. As yesterday’s New York Times article by Christina Goldbaum and Will Wright put it, “Across the United States, public transportation systems are confronting an extraordinary financial crisis set off by the pandemic, which has starved transit agencies of huge amounts of revenue and threatens to cripple service for years.”

Meanwhile, we participate in simulacra of interaction, waving goodbye at the end of a Zoom conversation, shrugging a hello to a neighbor from 20 feet away, and watching others interact on TV, noting how closely the different characters on our binge-watched Netflix shows converse, living as they do in a world of casual hugs and handshakes. Every time Beth Harmon reaches across the chess table to shake hands with a grandmaster from Kentucky or Moscow, I want to yell “Don’t do it!” One can imagine a dystopian science fiction novel, or our America in 2022, where people wear their Covid non-infection documents pinned to their lapels, informing others that they have recently tested negative, or that they were willing to be vaccinated. As our hospitals continue to fill up, and then overflow, clearly we have more to fear than fear itself.

Two of my closest local friends are sick right now, but not, it has been understood, or confirmed, with Covid-19. One of them was Door-Dashed a container of soup by a friend. He says his throat feels like that of Smaug right after incinerating a local lake town. The other wrote this on Facebook last night: “A cold is nothing compared to what folks are dealing with. Briefly terrified, then got results and now just guilty about being in position to get anything and thinking about folks having to deal with COVID and losing loved ones— no more chances taken. I’ll do a socially distant outside thing without being part of any food/drink handoffs, etc., but back to my semi off grid for life again.”

While we miss the “grid,” I appreciate those people in my circles who are so careful that they “just guilty about being in position to get anything.” Concerned for our health, we distrust the entire world, seeing it as the equivalent of the Mark Watney’s Martian rock-scape, as an Erin Brockovich unregulated superfund site, or as a 1960s Las Vegas casino second-hand smokefest that is hosting one of Beth Harmon’s chess opens. Unsafe environments, all.

William S. Burroughs once said, “Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.” That might be amended today as the sudden realization that everything and everyone around you may be infected. Different people cast the blame in different directions, whether it be Donald Trump, horseshoe bats, spring-breaking college students who don’t heed CDC warnings, the people of Wuhan, or that guy at Costco who wears his mask under his nose. The politically paranoid are concerned about what our leaders and other conspirators are hiding, while epidemiologically paranoid people are worried about what their neighbors are sharing too freely. As Philip K. Dick puts it in his novel A Scanner Darkly, “Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.”

In such a time, we call upon our inner resources and, perhaps in a mediated fashion, our family and friends. Some of us pursue creative projects, as I do. My distant friend the author Joyce Maynard once said “Telling my stories has allowed me to feel less alone in the world.” Some of us host Pub Quizzes. I agree with the poet John Ciardi: “Every game ever invented by mankind is a way of making things hard for the fun of it!” As someone who inspires, guides, and then assesses students for a living, I might describe teaching the same way. 

I hope you will enjoy tonight’s Pub Quiz. Playing it remotely may give you some short-term respite from the thoughts of isolation and healthy paranoia that informs this uncertain time in what is nevertheless a beautiful world.

Soon I shall start a tradition of choosing one question a week from the bonus trivia that I share on the Patreon page of the Pub Quiz. There seem to be a number of questions about musicians and composers there, and such will be the case with today’s Quiz. Expect also questions on topics raised above, and on pleasure designs, Wikipedia articles, doomed rebels, brotherhoods, George Washington, people who are often confused with their friends, the minute distinctions between zip and lark, accused actors, fictional command structures, insensibility, Oscar-nominees, original senators, holiday traditions, Hawaii, conspirators, draft picks, Nobel Laureates, the weather, smart seahorses, spies, Abraham Lincoln, population density, architectural materials, hilarious kidnappings, vegetarian nonagenarians, iPhone preferences, presidential elections, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to the Original Vincibles and all the other teams who support the Pub Quiz so generously. If you would like to give yourself or someone else the Pub Quiz as a gift (and what a generous and loving gift that would be), Patreon now lets Pub Quiz patrons buy an annual subscription at a 15% discount. I really appreciate all your help in keeping this outfit afloat, and thus keep me ready to offer some live events to local non-profits this holiday season.

Stay healthy, and I will be in touch next week.

Dr. Andy

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

1. Batman. What actor has portrayed Batman/Bruce Wayne in the most live-action Batman movies, at four?  

2. Science. Dawsonia, the tallest moss in the world, can grow to what height in inches? Is it 2 inches, 20 inches, 200 inches, or 2000 inches?  

3. Books and Authors.  What American Nobel Prize winner said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”  

Thanks to everyone who co-sponsors the Pub Quiz!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

In 2020, Covid-19 confirmed Einstein, reminding us that we are aging at different speeds. Find the photographic evidence of this on Facebook.

Some of us – I should say, some of you – seem not to age at all, remaining fixed in time like the “sylvan historian” frozen in pursuit on upon the Grecian urn that Keats (further) immortalized with his ode. You are doing something right if a picture of you from the Obama years closely mirrors a picture of you from today.

Others of us seem like we are on a fast track, not that this is a race one wants to win. For example, I feel like I have gained about five pounds since this time last month (the scale agrees with my assessment), and on our Thanksgiving Zoom session, my extended family helpfully remarked on how grey my unruly beard had grown. Every year I increasingly resemble Santa Claus.

While I would prefer to stave off Santahood merely by losing the five pounds I have gained since stepping back from the intense walking regimen that Jukie and I observed this summer, I also realize that to play Santa someday would be to participate in a family tradition. Towards the end of his life, my beloved Uncle Alan Ternes promised toys to many unsuspecting Vermont children; he had the kindest eyes one could imagine. And when my wife Kate was little girl, she had to be instructed not to speak the word “Grandpa” while visiting Santa at Gimbels Department Store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her Grandpa Carl Duren had the belly, the low voice with a German accent, and the white beard: a convincing Santa!

But what strikes me most about personal transformations in 2020 is not the growing rotundity of my peers who have necessarily let their gym memberships lapse, but the rapid evolution of all their teenagers. As I did when I was moving from elementary school (where I was one of the shortest boys in the class) to high school (where I felt like I was a foot taller), my son Truman has grown more than six inches this year. In 2020, he passed up his sister Geneva, and then his brother Jukie, and then his mom, and, probably by the time you read this, his dad.

And how strange that Truman has not seen a single junior high or high school friend since the last day of in-person school on Friday, March 13^th. Will they be able to recognize him at the post-vaccination reunions next year? Will he be able to recognize any of them, or their younger siblings? Just yesterday Kate remarked to me that it must be the younger sister of one of Truman’s friends in the family pictures posted on Facebook – by process of elimination, it couldn’t be anyone else – but it’s still difficult to understand how someone could mature so much in just a year.

We should be receptive to such feelings of awe, of amazement, of delight in the evidence of growth and accomplishment in our overlapping circles of friends and family. Albert Einstein knew that relativity is (perhaps by definition) a state of mind as well as an increasingly provable theory in astrophysics. He offered this advice: “Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.”

I hope such curiosity guides you this week, and for the rest of the year. Dark forces stand arrayed against us, so we will need to foster curiosity, amazement, and sufficient socially distant joy in all the ways we can until we can once again raise a toast together. When next we congregate, we will no doubt reorient ourselves to our friends’ changing faces and hear stories about our rapidly-developing children as they prepare for the world that we have wrought for them. 

I want to thank all of you who donated in response to my little fundraiser last week for the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation. With your help, I was able to raise over $500 for the Foundation, and thereby support its work on behalf of kids (and some adults) who have the same syndrome as my son Jukie. The need is ongoing, and the donations are tax-deductible. Thanks especially to Jim Grellas of Eldorado Hills. He is one of the most civic-minded and generous friends I have. 

Thanks also to all of you who support the Pub Quiz by becoming patrons on Patreon, including especially The Original Vincibles, who prompted me to start video-recording quizzes. As today is Cyber Monday, I will offer an informal sale. For the month of December only, all new and ongoing patrons will enjoy Pub Quiz offerings at two tiers above their level of support. People supporting the Quiz at the $4 tier will receive print quizzes this month, while everyone supporting the Quiz at the $20 or higher tiers will receive video quizzes, this month. I invite you to subscribe, if only for a month, to see what you have been missing, or to consider upgrading your subscription. Also, all subscribers will eventually receive a digital copy of my 2021 book, The Determined Writer, which is filled with wise quotations and advice from established authors on how you can sustain your writing habit.

OK, here are the hints. Tonight expect questions on science fiction franchises, animals that provide comedic relief, medics, the anticipation of obstacles, balloons, World War I, people named Chris, future secretaries, musical kings, Neil Sedaka, comedians, Disney, velvety substances, mixtapes, third choices in the face of apparent binaries, Syracuse, doors, Athenians, co-players, writing compulsions, impressive green growers, Batman, Stans, juniors, 30-second tributes, public service announcements, and Shakespeare. 

Happy December to you. “See” you next week!

Dr. Andy

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

1. Film. What Pixar film ends with these words? “There are those who say fate is something beyond our command. That destiny is not our own, but I know better. Our fate lives within us. You only have to be brave enough to see it.” 

2. American Comedians. The first-ever Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was presented to the man who was listed at number one on Comedy Central’s list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians. Name him.  

3. Science. Ionic, covalent, and metallic are all kinds of what?  

P.S. One more quotation from Einstein: “In one’s youth every person and every event appear to be unique. With age one becomes much more aware that similar events recur. Later on, one is less often delighted or surprised, but also less disappointed than in earlier years.”

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

This newsletter is made possible by the patrons of the Pub Quiz. If that includes you, thanks!

It’s late 2020, and I’m sitting on my couch with both a laptop and a blanket across my lap. If I am lucky, I expect to be doing the same thing 30 years from now, though, sadly, with a different dog resting her head on my shoulder.

Over the weekend, while walking with Jukie through the greenbelts of south Davis, I hatched a plan to focus this week’s newsletter on the Cal Newport book Deep Work, which I am rereading for a book club meeting. Newport reminds us that we must commit to determined practice of skills if we are to improve them and become superstars in our fields.

But then I got to thinking about “The Pandemic Economy in 7 Numbers,” an episode of The Daily podcast that the New York Times released on November 19^th. Only 75% of Americans aged 25-54 are employed, a statistic that is “about as bad as in the worst of the Great Recession.” I learned that the change in economic data — wealthy Americans are refinancing their homes with record-low rates and spending much more on goods than services —disproportionately harms lower-income people in America, especially women, and especially people of color.

I am lucky to have other windows into the world that is shaped by the grim statistics. My students’ first essay in my journalism class this quarter required that my young correspondents report on a group of people that has been affected by one of the big three news stories of 2020 (the pandemic, the economic downturn, or the revived racial justice protests). From their writing, I learned a lot about families whose steady economic progress over generations has halted this year. Many have faced unemployment and food insecurity, and with some benefits and protections running out the day after Christmas, many will face hunger and eviction from their homes.

My wife Kate interacts with many families facing these or other economic and health challenges because of her volunteer work as Communications and Family Support Director at the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation. In addition to providing a necessary network of information, encouragement, and support, this organization supports medical research that helps us understand and treat kids like my son Jukie. Many families who have always been stretched too thin because of the strain of raising challenging kids and adults now find themselves in crisis mode. Kate has heard from parents who wonder if it’s safe to visit doctors with a medically-fragile young person who refuses to wear a mask. She also talks to parents who have recently lost a child to SLO.

Not surprisingly, given the widespread economic distress in the world, donations are down to the Foundation at a time when those affected most need its support. What’s more, the (entirely unpaid) board has hatched plans to help more SLO families. They would like to pay contractors to update the content and look of the website, begin planning on the 2022 family and medical conference that brings together the parents and children affected by this syndrome, and determine other ways to support all the families that have it so hard right now. The conference also provides the many scientists and clinicians studying this rare syndrome their only opportunity to meet and compare their findings and discoveries. 

Here comes the call to action. Our family does what it can, mostly with Kate’s hours of volunteer work every week of the year, but maybe you would like to help. The Foundation always welcomes tax-deductible donations, and potential donors know those gifts will go far because of the Foundation’s negligible administrative costs, for no one in the history of the organization has ever taken even a dollar of salary. They do remarkable work on a shoestring budget.

If you are interested in Dr. Andy premiums to incentivize you to help, I have a few thoughts. Maybe you would like to invest in some “services” rather than “goods” this year, and thus provide those on your gift list with something they will remember and not have to eventually throw out or recycle. 

I will videorecord a holiday greeting for a friend or family member for anyone who donates $25 or more, I will write a poem for a friend or family member (I will need some content ideas and details) for anyone who donates $100 or more, and I will create a new Pub Quiz on topics, even specific topics, of your choosing for anyone who donates $250 or more. You could just send a check to the address below and put “Jukie” in the memo portion of the check. I can start work on your gift as soon as you let me know that you’ve sent the check.

If that is too complicated or old-school (some young people don’t write checks), these same premiums will also be triggered for anyone who starts a new Patreon sponsorship for The Pub Quiz at the $20, $80, or $150 or greater tier. In that case, I will send you a copy of the acknowledgement for the donation I make on your behalf, and then contact you for the details needed for me to create the premium.

Along with the bonus trivia that I share on Patreon (20+ questions thus far — I hope you will check it out from time to time), I will acknowledge the generous new donors there. I’ve set a goal of raising $500 for the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation before the end of this iniquitous year of 2020. Will you help me reach it? The address: SLO/RSH Foundation, P.O. Box 10598, Fargo, ND 58106. Thanks!

I hope you will get to see tonight’s Pub Quiz, or even that you will get to see me perform it on video! There will be questions about Agatha Christie, Canada, Google News, climate change, years in power, metallic adjectives, women of a certain rage (Hi Eileen!), moon rocks, American humor, fates that live in us, gay heroes, the fraction 5/13ths, the comparative populations of US states, people named Charles, historical divisions, insistent questions, people born in Harlem, family squabbles, Division I sports, winners of Grammy Awards, people named Howard, people named Harris, cabin cleaning projects, video games, breakfast cereals, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to all the patrons of the Pub Quiz, especially the Original Vincbles for their support. Because of the tier they chose to keep the Pub Quiz going, they will receive a copy of Cal Newport’s highly recommended book DEEP WORK before Thanksgiving!

Stay safe!

Dr. Andy

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

1. Chess Culture. What is the chess TV show that everyone’s talking about? 

2. Landslides. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2016, voters in landslide counties accounted for 30% of all votes nationwide. What was that percentage in 1980: 4%, 15%, or 40%?  

3. Current Events – Names in the News. The 13th hurricane of the 2020 season, named after the ninth letter in the Greek alphabet, is heading  toward Central America. What is the hurricane’s small name?  

4. Sports Films. In 1942, who starred in Pride of the Yankees as the baseball player Lou Gehrig?    

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I was just three blocks away from President Ronald Reagan when John Hinkley shot him and three others on March 30^th, 1981. The T Street exit of The Washington Hilton was directly across the street from the donut and bagel shop where I had lunch about two hours previously. At 2:27, when the shooting took place, I was in one of my final 9^th grade classes of the day on the second floor of The Field School, 2126 Wyoming Avenue. I took a DC Metrobus home that afternoon, not having heard about what had happened until I turned on the evening news that night.

No one that I knew in our inner circle had voted for Ronald Reagan, but we were all less partisan then, and more circumspect about our voting habits. Despite our political leanings (Reagan earned 13% of the vote in Washington DC in 1980, which might be compared to Trump’s 4% in 2016), we all felt deep sympathy for the president after the assassination attempt, and for the others who had been shot, especially Press Secretary James Brady. We recognized the symbolic importance of the office, and we all wished Reagan to be safe from harm.

Donald Trump has also been laid low, but under different circumstances that make it difficult to create parallels. Reagan was a staunch advocate of gun ownership; however, unlike, say, Vice Presidents Burr and Cheney, his firearm practices did not put others in danger. With all the times he had played cowboys in the movies, many Americans still likened Reagan’s interest in guns with a sheriff’s wish to keep order in a wild west full of outlaws. (In the America that some saw as “Reagan’s ranch,” many friends of my parents enjoyed seeing themselves as ideological outlaws.) Most Americans who didn’t own guns did not begrudge Reagan his love of hunting or his nostalgia for TV westerns.

Comparisons between Reagan’s attitudes towards gun safety and President Trump’s attitudes towards COVID-19 safety invite an absurd tone, but as a poet, I have been known to traffic in absurdity. Let’s give it a try.

Imagine a world where Reagan fired his gun up into the air during New Year’s Eve celebrations, not caring where the stray bullets might fall. Imagine Reagan inviting a dozen or so friends to go hunting in circular formations, so that one couldn’t tell if it was a deer or a wealthy businessman who was crouched in the brush. Imagine a world where Reagan mocked those hunting buddies who wore orange safety vests, suggesting that to do so was a sign of weakness. Imagine him forbidding the use of sunscreen or insect repellant, or insisting that no one get tetanus shots after being scraped up by rusty barbed wire on a hunting trip. Imagine Reagan encouraging secret service agents to play Russian roulette with his antique gun collection. Imagine if Reagan were to bring a frequently-misfiring gun to a fundraiser in New Jersey. Imagine President Ronald Reagan sending out a public memo that reads, in part, “DON’T FEAR BULLETS!!!”

More than 100 people die every day from firearms in the United States. Daily, COVID-19 kills more than ten times that in this country. As we all consider what President Trump’s illness might signify about him, his presidency, and our nation, the families of those 1,100 are too grief-stricken to interpret the trends, the statistics, or the symbolism. As bad as the gun violence epidemic and the AIDS epidemic were in the 1980s when I was growing up in Washington DC, today when we consider the lives lost, what Donald Trump in his inaugural address called “American carnage,” 2020 seems our darkest year yet. As I write this, the COVID-19 death count in our country is about that of the population of Salt Lake City, more than three times the entire population of Davis, California. As I try to fathom this, I look forward to a time in the future of greater clarity, greater transparency, greater honesty, and greater adherence to scientific recommendations.

I wish the President a steady recovery from the coronavirus that has felled so many. I also look forward to American democracy and our citizenry recovering from this dark period in American history. We would all benefit from some better news and, speaking personally, better leadership.

I hope you get to see tonight’s Pub Quiz, which our subscribers on Patreon will receive soon. I will gladly send you a copy. Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, and on binary choices, terabyte acronyms, regrettable consultations, anchors, old jobs, chemistry labs, the 2018 World Atlas, hammers, kiss frontmen, international visitors, Nobel Prizes in Literature, “debates,” athletics, French and German people, oceanography, witches, European countries, African singers, gangsters, working-class protagonists, Denzel Washington, U.S. presidents, Bible stories, organizations, Academy Awards, questions of Canadian citizenship, wrap-ups, Spartacus, timing with phones, happiness, and Shakespeare.

I’m grateful for all the friends that I’ve made from the Pub Quiz over the last decade, friends I would likely not have met in other circumstances. One family that I just adore is the Nedwin family, people who have brought great competitive exuberance and bonhomie to the pub over the years. I’m grateful to count the Nedwins among my most recent subscribers. 

Speaking of our Pub Quiz Patreon page, did you know that I frequently share individual quiz questions there for visitors to noodle over. Visit https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster a few times a week to see what I mean. Right now there’s a question about the Spanish Flu that I bet you will answer correctly. One thing I can tell you: The Original Vincibles will always be in the Winners’ Circle. Thanks, OV, for being the top sponsor of The Pub Quiz!

Stay safe, everyone!

Dr. Andy

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

1. Know Your Flags. The five oldest flags still in continuous use all have the same primary color in them. What is that color?  

2. Countries of the World.  Lemurs are the flagship conservation species of what country?  

3. California Cities. Starting with the letter M what South Bay city is found north of San Jose and south of Fremont, and is the 99^th most populous city in the state?   

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Walking the dog around the circumference of Laguna Del Rey in Monterey yesterday, I came across large chalked letters along one side of the parking lot. They said THANK YOU.

At first I thought this was a novel way for the Embassy Suites by Hilton Monterey Bay Seaside to welcome lodgers, perhaps an attempt to make up for the cancelled managers’ receptions, the disallowed visits from housekeeping, or the closed up fitness center, all due to Monterey County COVID-19 ordinances. The world is a dangerous place, but I think we did a good job of not breathing other people’s air or touching common surfaces. Only the elevators would have forced us into close quarters with strangers, but with our room on the second floor, we found it easy to take the stairs. 

The first time Kate and I visited Monterey, we could hear the surf from the open windows of our bed and breakfast. That was also in September, and we had just been married in Hinsdale, Illinois. The wedding had been a joyful reunion of our families and closest friends, some of whom we had not seen since. We saw our honeymoon trip to Carmel and Monterey as a consolation that our extended Labor Day weekend with all those delightful people had come to an end.

On that 1992 trip, we tandem-biked the entire 17 Mile Drive from Monterey to Carmel, where we had lunch, and then we biked back. Making that same drive yesterday in our minivan, we remarked on how narrow and twisty those roads are, with insufficient shoulders for bicycles. Perhaps we were too confident and naïve to be worried about the safety of the endeavor, especially with all the tourists looking to spot the famous Lone Cypress rather than looking out for bicycling honeymooners.

We are lucky to have so many beaches just a couple hours from Davis. Yesterday, as I looked out on the western horizon from Asilomar State Beach, I found myself wishing that I had taken classes with the world-famous UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources so I could better name and describe what I was seeing.

Then I remembered that my son Truman shares a September 26^th birthday with a favorite poet, T.S. Eliot, so we might remember Eliot at the same time that we celebrate Truman (with music, 15 candles on a cake, and a weekend away). This is how Eliot described the coast along Cape Ann, Massachusetts in his poem “The Dry Salvages”:

The river is within us, the sea is all about us; 

The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite

Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses 

Its hints of earlier and other creation:

The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale’s backbone; 

The pools where it offers to our curiosity

The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.

It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,

The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar

And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices, 

Many gods and many voices.

Sometimes a poet’s words can suffice when one lacks formal training in Marine & Coastal Science.

As we drove away from the hotel parking lot yesterday morning, I realized that this was once a staging area; our temporary home had housed some of the people who most deserved our thanks: Firefighters. This had been a staging area for the heroes who just a few weeks before had worked selflessly to protect homes and wildlands in Monterey County. The fact that no rain had washed away the chalked thanks reminds us that the threat persists, that our Golden State vacation hotspots remain hot, imperiled, and needful of our concern and protection.

I’m grateful for the firefighters, grateful for Truman on his birthday, and grateful for our first summer vacation, taken a good month after the schoolkids’ end of summer. School starts for UC Davis this week, giving us all a chance to see how we handle the coming threats and opportunities at home. We will see what heroes will step up for our community.

Thanks to all the subscribers to the Pub Quiz! Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions on the following: Nicknames, Ellen, groups of books, executive producers, flagship species, valuable horses, federal taxes, Shia, Kentucky, Yo-Yo, programming, David Bowie, prominent Native Americans, the King of France, moss, misinformation, novelistic output, Paris, five year margins of error, fibers, California cities, forgiving friends, Missouri exports, Thoreau, doorbell rice breeds, fierceness, nests, pipes, chess, founders, successful coaches, shoes, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to new Pub Quiz supporter Kristin Kameen. She subscribed to the Pub Quiz newsletter more than a decade ago, and now she will receive quizzes (via PDF) in her inbox on Mondays. Thanks, Kristin! The Original Vincibles support the Pub Quiz at the Adamantium Tier, and thus earn a mention in every newsletter. I invite you also to subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster.

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

1. Name the Year. We first went for a walk with Pokemon Go, we laughed at the female Ghostbusters, and we watched the Chicago Cubs win the World Series all in the same year. Name the year.  

2. Famous Mountains. Found on the eastern edge of one particular Unitary presidential constitutional republic, Mount Ararat is the highest peak in what country?  

3. Famous Movies. What actor and director ad-libbed this famous line in the classic film The Third Man? “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”  

4. Science. According to NASA, what W phenomenon comes in the categories of longitudinal and transverse? 

“There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.” Nina Simone

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

It doesn’t do any good to think about what might have been. “Isn’t it pretty to think so,” Jake asks Brett, reminding us all that, had it not been for the war, the lives of the characters in The Sun Also Rises would have been more comfortable, more typical (and thus perhaps less worthy of the novel in which versions of Hemingway’s friends all appear).

My French bulldog Margot lounges about during the day, resting on an elbow on an arm of the divan like Édouard Manet’s Olympia before lulling back towards sleep, saving her strength for her 5 AM demands to be let out into the cool and healthier air. Insofar as six months is a quarter of her life, she may barely remember when people used to leave the house. Our animals have grown comfortable with our perpetual quarantine. Once when I was working in the garage, she had to exist for a few minutes without immediate companionship, so she expressed her displeasure by chewing up my second-favorite headphones. While the girl may make trouble, she never gets into trouble. She is our baby with canines.

I’m grateful for Margot, even if we cannot travel as easily as we could during those few months between dogs. And now there are so few places to go. I am grateful for our old house as it fills again with boxes, though sometimes I still imagine unpacking those same boxes in that other house. When a person dies, and she returns to us in our dreams, we live in two worlds, our brains not catching up so readily to the new absence, focusing almost unwillingly on what might have been.

America has been feeling a new absence since Friday with the loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Commentators on the news remind us how Ginsburg had radically improved the lives of women long before Hillary Clinton recommended to her husband that he choose her for the new job opportunity that made her even more widely known. Sometimes, such as when the current U.S. President asks the women at his maskless rally if their husbands “are OK with” their attendance at his event, we can imagine that alternate universe, a handmaid’s tale time when women had to ask permission, and were not present when important decisions were being made.

Writers know this sort of speculative double-consciousness well, for we spend so much of our time in other, private worlds of our own creation, interacting with or impersonating the characters who we have brought to life. Catherine Drinker Bowen said that “Writing is a kind of double living.” I hear an echo of Bowen’s idea in words spoken by Jennifer Egan, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad: “When I’m writing, especially if it’s going well, I’m living in two different dimensions: this life I’m living now, which I enjoy very much, and this completely other world I’m inhabiting that no one else knows about.”

Just as The Sun Also Rises makes me grateful for Paris in the 1920s, rereading Frank O’Hara’s book Lunch Poems as I did today makes me grateful for New York City in the 1950s. Creatives make distant places and times come alive, whether they be authors or musicians. African rhythms and tones had once transmogrified into the Blues, and strains of the Blues subsequently morphed (or matured) into Jazz. And Jazz, still tinged with the struggle of its practitioners, informed O’Hara’s poetry and the writing styles of many authors since, especially those who value invention and surprise. Whether we are American authors or musicians, we are inclined to rebel, to bristle when instructed by authorities to act properly, or to think or write in approved ways. As Oscar Wilde said, “A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.”

National Book Award winner and American statesman John Lewis called this sort of misbehavior “Good trouble.” As is the case with many mischief-makers, John Lewis became stronger because of the struggle that he helped to lead. Of the recent dark times, 2020 is the darkest of them all. The deaths of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis, and even The Black Panther lead us to lament the loss of so many heroes. The deaths of 200,000 Americans to Covid-19 remind us how widespread the unexpected losses are being felt. We should remember that people like Lewis and Ginsburg struggled to make our country more fair and just, but insofar as they transcend the times in which they lived, they represent ideals that deserve our continued support, and labor. Ginsburg once said, “Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say, ‘My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.’ But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.”

Speaking of hope, and of a wish for the future, I will close with some encouraging words that Lewis published online two years ago: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Yours in trouble,

Dr. Andy

 

In addition to the topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following topics: households, same-sex couples, ghostbusters, baseball teams, a Caribbean free of pirates, peace preferences, runners up to Cinderella, steals, detectives, speedy thieves, European culture, greetings, famous statues that no one wants to topple, Harry Potter, Zillow, The Avid Reader Bookstore in downtown Davis, hitchhiking, jurisdictions, racial diversity, central heat, certain people feeling hushed by throttlers, heavy metal, Joe Biden, first ingredients, uncertainty, NASA science, impressive clocks, World War I, constitutional republics, bad news, musclebound villains, notable mountains, Pokemon Go, matrices, filters, candy bars, and Shakespeare.

Thanks and welcome to the following individuals or teams who are new subscribers to the Pub Quiz on Patreon: The Mavens, Dana Ferris, Keltie Jones (of Canada!), Craig Lowe, June Gillam (who signed up mostly to receive a weekly essay from me), Portraits, Greg Miller, Richard Deneault, Quizimodo, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos.

Special thanks to our first Adamantium Tier subscribers, The Original Vincibles, one of whom will soon be mailed some swag: a hardback copy of the aforementioned Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara. Because of this team’s investment in this expanded enterprise, they now get video performances of the Quiz. Last week I purchased a new microphone, a new webcam, and even a green screen: today I shoot my first-ever video Pub Quiz. I suppose I will have to unpack one of my black shirts. Should that come together, everyone at the Gold or higher tier will receive a link to that video this week. Note: There will be less caterwauling in my house than there was in the Pub.

I invite you to join the fun over at Patreon. Even at the $4 a month level, subscribers are enjoying bonus Pub Quiz questions on most days, including some with visual hints. Expect also additional audio and video as I become more adept with the new equipment. I’m deeply grateful for all of you who subscribe.

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

1. Energy Fields. What “A” word do new-agers use for a human energy field?  
2. Pop Culture – Music. Nicknamed the “Father of Rock and Roll,” what rock pioneer was born in St Louis, Missouri in 1926?  
3. With its elongated body and fast swimming speeds, what fish from the family Istiophoridae is the name of a Major League Baseball team?  

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Now that Anthony Fauci has told us that we may not be back to normal until the end of next year, we are taking stock, wondering to what extent our homes can accommodate serving as our offices, gyms, and movie theatres for the foreseeable future. There is nothing inherently dangerous about those indoor places, but we must keep our distance from the people they attract. Like our souls, the coronavirus thrives when we socialize with friends and strangers. Keeping away from those communal activities will help to ensure that we stay safe, if perhaps lonely.

In preparation for our unsuccessful move to west Davis, my family and I started purging our household of items in June, and for us, that process continues. We continue to excavate, as it were, in our closets and garage, and If something sparks more exasperation than joy, it has to go. On Friday, despite the poor air quality, I dropped another 15 boxes by Goodwill, and a box of DVDs by Bizarro World, the comic book shop that has so kindly provided pub quiz swag for the last couple years. Some of these items would have made excellent swag, to be sure, but for right now we are happy to be unburdened. 

As I have already chronicled exhaustively, this summer we had planned to move into a larger home with a lot of built-in shelves, so we sold and gave away desks and shelves that we now miss. Moving much of our stuff back into the house from storage means that we are living out of boxes in a different way from what we anticipated. Kate’s heroic work of unpacking sometimes feel like an anti-climax: I find myself wishing that many items could just stay in storage. For instance, while I gave away more than half my pants (evidently pleats are out, as is the threadbare look I adopted as a graduate student), I still own too many shirts, including black ones for the Pub Quiz and flamboyant paisley ones for Poetry Night. All our important papers and photographs from the pre-digital era may necessitate that we acquire a (lockable) filing cabinet for Jukie’s room. He won’t mind. Although he had been handed down (or up) many toys from his siblings, these days Jukie’s needs are simple, and in that way, he is enviable.

With the air so bad, Jukie and I do miss our long walks together. While he and I averaged more than five miles a day in July, in September my phone indicates that on a typical day indoors I am not walking much more than 500 yards. Jukie peers out the window with a look of longing and forlorn, so we have had to find other ways to stay active. Sometimes we play disco in the morning – thank you, Donna Summer – so the resulting dancing gets us moving, and reminds me of the summer that I spent in roller skates. Rather than kneepads or a helmet, such as what I would wear today, back in 1980 I would often just don a cape.

Back to our choked and infectious dystopian future, much of our workout equipment is still in storage, and the stores have largely sold out of dumbbells, but at home we had left behind two kettlebells and a yoga mat, so I have been getting by with those and killer workout videos that I have purchased for streaming on demand. Even though I have been intermittently attempting Jillian Michaels’ “Six Weeks to a Six Pack” for about six years, I still don’t have a six pack. I’m sure Michaels would be disappointed in how I interpret “intermittent.” Yesterday I attempted “Raise Some Bell: The Ultimate Kettlebell Workout” with Amy Dixon, and was left with the impression that such videos are intended primarily to train teenage cheerleaders, Olympic decathletes, and professional dancers. Maybe I could have kept up back when I roller-skated every day. Let’s just say that last night the living room fans and air purifiers were working overtime, along with me. Nevertheless, I would call exercise to energetic music the best sort of work, the work we reserve for the weekend, when we get to play in our little castles like children stuck home on a sick day.

 

And now, on to the hints for the first full-length new quiz that I have written since March! ! In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following: New York City, exercise equipment, Harry Potter, idevices, St. Louis, your elders, queens and princes, Australians, the book projects of political candidates, regrettable diagnoses, double India pale ales, sweet tigers, narrow strips, cheesecake, baseball, film trilogies, free-form anger, total market capitalization, consumer video, transitions in power, sailing ships, famous addresses, panthers, laundered money, rung bells, nautical terms, generals, molecular formulae, fish, pioneers, energy fields, and Shakespeare.

If you would like something different to do on your day or evening stuck at home, perhaps you would like to see tonight’s Pub Quiz? There are a number of ways you can do that, most of which involve joining us on Patreon, as Gadi, Lynne, and Bruce (and their teams) have done, and as the Vocal Art Ensemble and Wallace-Everitt teams have done, mostly at the Gold or higher tier. Also, thanks so much to THE MAVENS for their ongoing support of the Quiz — they have attended almost every Monday for a decade! The gold tier ensures receipt of new pub quizzes every Monday, and as one team will be reminded today, the platinum tier comes with an audio performance of the Quiz. Thanks to my first patrons!

Pub Quiz fans who join us at Patreon at ANY tier (even the $4 a month bronze tier) will get that first week’s quiz immediately as a thank-you gift. On many days, I also send bonus questions to my patrons, just so they have something to noodle on if it happens to be a non-Monday. Patreon will also provide us a way to sustain the community of Pub Quiz regulars once we have more people joining.

If you just want to see any particular week’s quiz without any sort of monthly commitment, send a me PayPal or Venmo contribution of $5 or more (along with your email address), and then you will have it straightaway. As has been the case at the pub, each quiz is 31 questions long, divided into familiar categories, perfect to use to play with friends. You will receive a copy with no answers, and then one with, so you can test yourself. The contributions will go to paying my web hosting and newsletter service bills for the last year; eventually I will hire an assistant to help distribute all the goodies to the Patreon Patrons.

With thanks,

Dr. Andy

 

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

1. Science. What three-syllable plural word correctly fills in the blank? BLANKS are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth and are the most abundant type of biological entity.  
2. Current Events – Names in the News.  What celebrity tweeted this in 2014? “Guess what? @DavidBurtka and I got married over the weekend. In Italy. Yup, we put the ‘n’ and ‘d’ in ‘husband.'” Hint: Elton John performed at their wedding reception.  
3. Sports. Born in 1980, what former American football quarterback and sports analyst played in the National Football League for 14 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys? 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I have more immediately pressing matters that I would like to share with you, but last week I promised a revelation about my ancestry that I suggested would interest you. My most famous direct relative, my 13^thgreat-grandmother, lived from about 1499 to 1543. She knew two kings intimately, shall we say, and has been portrayed in film by an actress who in recent years has been nominated for two acting Oscars. Any guesses who this might be?

Anyone who claims to have a famous relative should be told to prove it, so please forgive me as I trace the lineage, backwards, from me to my famous great-grandmother. Let’s begin the begats!

My father was David Marlin Jones, born to Marlin Matthew Jones, who was one of eleven children born to Albert Newton Jones. Marlin was the only one born in Oklahoma when it was still “Indian Territory.” Albert’s mother’s maiden name was also Jones, so I’m sure that helped save money on stationery when she got married in 1860, the year Albert was born. Emily’s father was Thomas Bradford Jones, who was son of William Jones, born the same year as our country (if the United States is your country). Speaking of our country, William’s father Captain Samuel Jones, Jr. served with George Washington (and got in trouble for allegedly gambling and stealing a pair of gloves, but was granted clemency by the good General).

Captain Jones was married to Leah Jones, née Thomas, daughter of John Thomas, who himself was the son of Reverend William Elias Thomas, who (in the winter of 1712) brought this line of my family from Wales (he was born in Llanwenarth, Monmouthshire, in southeast Wales, near the River Usk) to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he bought six farms, one for each of his surviving American children, for a total of 1248 acres (or two square miles) of what was then “wilderness land.”

Also born in Wales, the Reverend Thomas’s wife, Ann (Griffith) Thomas, was the daughter of Captain Samuel Griffith I, who came to the colonies in 1651, being awarded a tract of land in Calvert County, west side of the Patuxent River. I’m wondering who might have been living there when the land was given to the Captain. Griffith’s father was Sir Henry Griffith II, a baronet, meaning that he was the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. Sir Griffith’s wife, and the Captain’s mother, was Lady Margaret Ann Willoughby, daughter of Elizabeth Knollys.

OK, we are getting close now. Elizabeth’s father was Henry Knollys, a member of Parliament representing Oxfordshire (he attended Magdalen College at Oxford, which I guess would be like a Yolo County student earning a degree at UC Davis, and then representing this part of California in the California State Senate). Knollys also consorted with pirates, so he must have lived an exciting life. He died in Amsterdam of either illness or wounds, we are not sure which.

The mother of Henry Knollys was Lady Catherine Carey, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, so much so that the Queen arranged for Lady Carey (who had the title of chief Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen) to be buried in Westminster Abbey when this Lady Carey, her first cousin, died in 1569. Here’s what the epitaph says, with the original spelling:

“The Right Honourable Lady Catherine Knollys, chief Lady of the Queen’s Majesty’s Bedchamber, and Wife to Sir Francis Knollys, Knight, Treasurer of Her Highnesses Houshold, departed this Life the Fifteenth of January, 1568, at Hampton-Court, and was honourably buried in the Floor of this Chapel. This Lady Knollys, and the Lord Hunsdon her Brother, were the Children of William Caree, Esq; and of the Lady Mary his Wife, one of the Daughters and Heirs to Thomas Bulleyne, Earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde; which Lady Mary was Sister to Anne Queen of England, Wife to K. Henry the Eighth, Father and Mother to Elizabeth Queen of England.”

If you have been reading closely, then you have figured out that my 13^th great-grandmother was Mary Boleyn, sister of Queen Anne Boleyn (who led to England’s break with the Pope and Catholicism), and, previously, consort (AKA mistress) to both King Francis I of France (who jump-started the Renaissance in France, “recruiting” Leonardo Da Vinci, who brought The Mona Lisa with him), and to Queen Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII of England. (Mary was played by Scarlett Johansson in the 2008 film The Other Boleyn Girl, while my 13^thgreat-grandfather, the courtier William Carey, was played by Benedict Cumberbatch). Today scholars think that my 12^th great-grandmother Catherine Knollys was so beloved by Elizabeth because the Queen knew that Catherine was not just her first cousin, but also her step-sister.

Does that make me illegitimate British royalty? I’m not going to press that case with the British Crown at this time. But it does mean that Elizabeth Tudor, Queen Elizabeth I, is my first cousin, 13 times removed.

When word about my royal connections gets out, I expect to be invited to a much higher class of society balls and cocktail parties, especially after we are all vaccinated from COVID-19. And when will that be? 2021? 2022? We will have to see, and we will have to wait. I for one am lucky that I can look to my cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, as an inspiring object lesson in regal patience. As her suitors knew well, Elizabeth did not make hasty decisions. Living through the plague gives one perspective!

Who’s in your ancestry?

Devotedly,

Dr. Andy

 

P.S. If  you want sample Quizzes, please sign up for the newsletter.