Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Today is my wife Kate’s birthday. Happy birthday, Kate!

Like many Americans, Kate is in the middle of a fitness kick right now, though one that is purposefully gentle on her forlorn knees. She walks a lot, usually with Margot, and now that she has an Apple Watch, she has also been known to run up and down the stairs of our home in order to “close her circles.”

An author friend of mine once remarked to me that there is no place to “dine” in south Davis. Nevertheless, yesterday afternoon my son Jukie and my French bulldog Margot and I dined at Dos Coyotes, another restaurant where everyone seems to know my name. Afterwards we strolled home by moonlight at dusk (meaning that it was 5pm). As someone on Twitter said, “Hello darkness, my old friend. Why are you here at 4 PM. That’s not effective satire, but it still made me smile.

The greenbelt that connects our local Tex-Mex restaurant is the same one that Margot knows well from her daily walks with her “mom.” I’m the dog’s dad, and the three kids are her siblings. Does everyone refer to their pets this way? We have such affection for this puppy-sized bulldog that we think of her as a member of the family, and not only because she sleeps on my side of the bed at night.

So the walk home made me think of the route of Kate’s daily walk. And then last week I also thought of Kate when I saw the barest wisp of a slender, sliver moon rising early one evening. I appreciated that that sliver of luminescence helped to light my bike ride home after my evening journalism class adjourned. This is a magical time for me. Having worked a number of jobs over the years that required me to be indoors and even underground at sunset, often on the phone back during an era when people answered their phones, I’m always grateful to be outside and mindfully “present” at dusk.

Speaking of gratitude, I’m grateful that my wife Kate and I met in London when we were so young, and that now I get to see her every day. Reflecting on these two sources of light, Kate and the slender moon, I couldn’t shake the imagery of today’s birthday girl strolling the Arboretum by moonlight. This poem, my birthday gift to her, is the result.

 

Kate Walks the Arboretum at Night

The sliver of the moon

hints at her intentions,

winking wistfully

between the weeping willows.

In strong winds, the willows

personify, dusting the underbrush

with long elastic limbs,

or dancing unreservedly,

fresh and jaunty in the autumn air.

On rare evenings, the slender moon

walks paths among the willows,

noting the other dancers,

the Autumn Purple Ash

offering moon-shade

to a nearby Scarlet Oak,

an Autumn Blaze Maple

in the fleeting glow reaching

an arm out to Bald Cypress,

aching as if offering a bid for love.

The walker is supple,

like the teenage trees,

the ones that bend so easily.

The walker is subtle,

like the tallest branches

during the still hour of midnight,

poignant in their serenity.

The walker is timeless,

like the oak whose tireless roots

dig patiently for the center

with a silver light internal,

not knowing they live in the earth.

On this night, she is a silver

echo of all she surveys.

When no one is about,

she inhabits the trees,

stretching like a dancer.

When no one is about,

she inhabits the prairie grass,

spreading democratic tendrils

of love into the world.

When no one is about,

she renders herself,

inhabiting with sighs

her own ephemeral waning,

remembering suddenly

the hour of her birth,

with whispered hints

of mutual brightness

to everyone that spies

the silver sliver

of the meandering moon.

 

Thanks for reading my poem. The photograph that goes with that poem can be found on Facebook, where you could also wish Kate a happy birthday, if you are so inclined. Here are the hints for tonight’s pub quiz. Tonight expect questions on topics raised above, as well as on the following: cardinal directions, alternative shapes, the locations of walnuts, arresting halts, androids, small mammals, attempted normalcy in small towns, cats, prohibitive costs, flying crows, toughness, the example of diamonds, independence, popular choices, musical fruits, unnerving copies, larger and less famous examples, London greenery, hunting poplin with hermits, grading papers, old textbooks, wirelessness, candidates, current events, internal organs, the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago, hauling capacity, and Shakespeare.

My poetry mentor and the esteemed professor emeritus Alan Williamson will be reading from his first new book of poetry in the last dozen years. Join us Thursday night at 8 at the Natsoulas Gallery. Details at http://www.poetryindavis.com.

See you tonight!

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

 

P.S. Here are three questions from a 2013 quiz:

 

1. Science.  What three-syllable word refers to a chemical bond that involves the sharing of electron pairs between atoms? 
2. Books and Authors.   Judy Garland, Frida Kahlo and author Jack Kerouac all died at the same age. Within two years, how old were they? 
3. Shakespeare.   The storm that is battering the British Isles right now is thought to be stronger even than the hurricane that wrecked the English sailing ship The Sea Venture in Bermuda in 1609. Eyewitness accounts of that shipwreck inspired the beginning of what Shakespeare play?  

 

P.P.S. “A man should never be ashamed to own that he is wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.” Alexander Pope

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Many of us had our sleep disturbed by the unruly gusts of wind Saturday night, and now wide swaths of California are on fire, prompting, for example, the largest evacuation on Sonoma County history.

I learned this today from the CalFire website: “CAL FIRE owns and operates over 3,000 fire and emergency response and resource protection vehicles. In support of its ground forces, the CAL FIRE emergency response air program includes 23 Grumman S-2T 1,200 gallon airtankers, 11 UH-1H Super Huey helicopters, and 14 OV-10A airtactical. From 13 air attack and nine helitack bases located statewide, aircraft can reach most fires within 20 minutes.”

Of these resources, currently more than 80 crews with over 4,000 personnel are confronting California fires, including those down south that have flared up just this morning. The Kincade fire alone has already torched more than 66,000 acres, all in Sonoma County. Around 200,000 people have had to evacuate their homes.

Having lived in California in three different counties over the last 30 years, I have friends and family in affected areas in the north and south of the state. I bet you do, too. Barbara Kingsolver once said this: “Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.”

I’ve seen on Facebook and Twitter that many people in Yolo and Sacramento Counties have offered spare rooms to those escaping fires. I thank and honor such people, the best of our neighbors. Donations and volunteers are needed if you would like to help.

We will keep those escaping the firestorms in mind while gathering with friends tonight for some mindless distraction in the form of a pub quiz.

 

In addition to topics raised above, tonight expect questions on the following topics: Amazing robots, clever cows, California universities, acids, Chico exports, U.S. presidents, forces, Disney movies, Hugos, armed equality, the height of musicians, famous sons, clippers, the World Series, full titles, large scale gasses, reminders, intact medieval buildings, diasporas, odd couples, conversations, weights and measurements, optional footwear, satire, metrics, Joyce Carol Oates, famous albums!, criminal minds, ZIP codes, noses, unfortunate smoking, English noblemen that are relevant in America, final words, and Shakespeare.

Because of the fires, there will be no Halloween questions this evening. Instead, this: Boo!

See you tonight.

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Countries of the World. What country has the fourth-largest GDP in all of Asia?  
2. Neckties. Neckties originated during the 30 Years War (1618-1648), worn by mercenaries from what C country?      
3. Current Events – Names in the News. What prominent U.S. Senator has been using a secret Twitter account with the name “Pierre Delecto”?  

 

P.S. “If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.” Henry David Thoreau

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

“You can’t always get what you want,” the song says. Sometimes we just might find that we don’t want what we thought we wanted. We might find that we want, and were granted, something better.

Last night at the Davis Shakespeare Festival yearly “Bard-BQ,” I learned that Yolo was once a dry county, even though the campus University Club was technically in Solano County, meaning that faculty could order alcoholic beverages on campus at a “club” that barred non-faculty.

At one point, the one-mile buffer around the Davis city limits for alcohol purchases was lengthened to five miles. Why? Because students at the university “farm” were riding their horses – their HORSES – to the watering holes outside the city, and then ventured back towards town and campus with beverages for their friends. I assumed that the patient and stalwart horses involved drank only water at these watering holes.

Steve Jobs once had horses in mind when quoting Henry Ford:

Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!'” People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.

When a pair of close friends offered us their orchestra section tickets to see Béla Fleck at the Mondavi Center Friday night, Kate and I jumped at the chance. We had seen Fleck perform in the same venue in 2017, with that show called “The Real Nashville: The Del McCoury Band & Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn.” Although I prefer my real Nashville in moderation, both these groups were undeniably talented. And my wife Kate was in heaven. After all, she had given our youngest son the middle name of “Banjo.” The sound of the instrument makes her and most of us happy.

Always ready to support Kate, I had mild qualms that we’d be experiencing similar good ol’ boy twang that we so enjoyed during Fleck’s last visit. Luckily this time Béla Fleck was traveling with Zakir Hussain, one of India’s most celebrated performers of the tabla drum. I have long loved Indian music, probably ever since George Harrison introduced me and other listeners to the sitar more than 50 years ago. I have listened to many Ravi Shankar recordings without knowing that I was also listening to Zakir Hussain, and I loved the soundtrack to the Bernardo Bertolucci film Little Buddha, which I taught earlier this year in my “Buddhism and Film” class, without knowing that Hussain had performed on that, too.

To my mind, Zakir Hussain stole show, and I was grateful for the public act of larceny. Sitting on his elevated platform with four or more hand drums before and around him, this percussionist was witty, graceful, encouraging, and, as a performer, masterful. I’m listening to a record of his as I write this, grateful for the opportunity to broaden (and deepen) my repertoire of favorite musicians.

We discussed the night of music during intermission and during the drive home. Kate wanted more banjo and less of everything else – there was also a stand-up bass player and an Indian flutist, both of whom could keep up with the consummate headliners with whom they shared the stage – but I wanted more of what I discovered, tabla drumming and Indian-inflected music, and I got it.

As my favorite Russian novelist says, “It’s life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.” I wish for you many acts of discovery this week.

 

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following: visual acuity, Indian solenoids, languages at home, feminists in their fields, actresses whose movies have grossed over a billion dollars, sleepers, royalty, veganism (even outside California), northern and southern idols, new freedoms, Kings with working-class jobs, Chardonnays, Irish settings without dogs, languages, underrated benches, Americans of German heritage, one-word titles, favorite drinks, American obsessions, the hurt of a smoldering burn that finally catches fire, curatorial identities, Pennsylvania, names that end with “O,” cultivated trees, mercenaries, midnight in Belfast, existentialism, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us this evening for the Pub Quiz!

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are three questions from a 2013 quiz:

1. Science.  According to the website Biology-Online.Org, what H word could be defined as “The disappearance of responsiveness to accustomed stimulation”?  
2. Books and Authors.   Of the 17 novels published by this author, the B novels are titled Breakfast of Champions and Bluebeard. Name the author.  
3. Current Events – Names in the News.     When asked today to comment on the Nobel Peace Prize—which was awarded to the UN group currently working to dismantle chemical weapons arsenals—what Syrian ruler quipped that it “should have been mine”? For this one, I will provide you the answer: Bashar al-Assad

 

P.S. “Part of the problem with the word ‘disabilities’ is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can’t feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren’t able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.” Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I am writing to you this afternoon from the picnic table in my back yard. I meant to finish the pub quiz and the newsletter at work this morning, but my Box.net account was malfunctioning. I see why the kids today stick with Google docs.

Yesterday my son Jukie joined our French bulldog Margot and me on a long walk through a variety of neighborhoods in west Davis. Starting on 5^th street near the northwest corner of campus, we meandered through the presidential streets, through Village Homes, and all the way up to Watermelon Music on Covell Boulevard where we bought an advanced jazz for alto saxophone workbook for my son Truman.

Neither Jukie nor Margot the French bulldog is a talker, so I have to keep watching them for signs of thirst, fatigue, and the need for play. I suppose that on the weekend, we should all also be watching ourselves for such signs, especially if we are aiming for 10,000 steps, as I do on most days. The more modern the greenbelt, the more frequent the water fountains, we decided.

For some reason, as we were traipsing through the halcyon paths of Village Homes, an alert appeared on my phone from Scientific American alerting me that life on Mars was likely discovered decades ago, back in 1976. I should have silenced my phone.

It occurred to me that the widely-lauded science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson might be interested in this story. He knows something about Mars. How odd, then, that this unexpected alert appeared when I was walking just a few blocks from Robinson’s home! Was this a cosmic coincidence, or further proof that the big five tech companies, in their ongoing quest to be “useful,” are spying on me, my contacts, my friend Stan, and my location?

If I hadn’t been so focused on my two charges, and the quiet beauty of the site of our walk, I might have forwarded the article to Stan. Instead, we enjoyed the groves and topiary.

Well, it turns out that I didn’t have to use electronic means of communicating with Robinson, for I found the winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards tending to his (public) garden on our way back to the car. He and I discussed Mars research, the Davis Shakespeare Festival, including next Sunday’s “Bard-BQ,” and the pleasures of gentle exercise on a weekend afternoon.

I think neither magic nor science nor science fiction can account for that phenomenon of thinking of a friend, and then encountering him on the street. Every weekend afternoon merits a walk. Serendipity rarely happens at home.

 

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature landscape, magic, and science questions, as well as questions about shoes, military service, 4K content, dry streams, redheads, thunder, the difference between Switzerland and Sweden, wild specials, King Hrothgar, the legend of the phoenix, aborted airport romances, big games, hollows, sluggers, fruits and nuts, runners who pass, waterfalls, Batman, fictional towns in Pennsylvania, digable planets, banishment, Ptolemy, continental vowels, big ships, fidelitous faxes, totalitarianism, bifurcations, biopics, gloves, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us tonight for the Pub Quiz, and Thursday for poetry at the Natsoulas Gallery with featured poet and UC Davis English Department Professor Margaret Ronda. See http://www.poetryindavis.com for more information.

Sincerely,

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

 

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

 

1. According to a 2017 Oxfam report, a certain number of the richest billionaires own as much combined wealth as “half the human race.” Is that number of billionaires 8, 18, or 80?  
2. Aliko Dangote, the richest person on the African continent and the richest man of African descent lives in what African country, the seventh most populous in the world?  
3. Almost a decade ago, Warren Buffett made a famous claim that he paid a lower tax rate than his WHAT?  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

How do I love the Pub Quiz? Let me count the ways.

I love the Monday afternoon writing prompts, the delicious mix of protein and healthy fat in the Dr. Andy Salad, the tasty cocktails, the time spent with Kate and often one or more of our kids at the pre-PQ meal, the reading I get to do while preparing quizzes, my necessary attentiveness to world events, the simplicity of the Monday evening wardrobe, the opportunity to clean out my home two swag items at a time, the brief chats with the proprietors of Bizarro World (appreciated donors of weekly swag), the building thrum of revelers waiting for the chime to ring, the vainglorious buffoonery of the opening spiel, and the sight of the slow early-meal eaters skedaddling out the door once the boisterous and near-deafening welcome begins.

But most of all I appreciate the friendships I have made at the Irish Pub, and at the other events where I have hosted pub quizzes at charity, school, or corporate events. I have dined (even outside the pub) with pub quiz friends, helped them move furniture, delivered books to their homes, met them for Hollywood movies, attended their yard sales, attended their readings at The Avid Reader, consulted with them during my public office hours, attended pool parties at their homes, met them at a Sacramento nightclub (that was years ago), written them letters of recommendation, visited their art openings, donated to their charity events and fundraisers, thanked them for attending my own head-sheering events for children’s cancer research, greeted them at poetry readings, sang for their birthdays, and even, on a couple occasions, joined them at a competing trivia night. Isn’t that scandalous!?

Sometimes our activities together have transcended the incidental. Pub Quiz participants have counseled my daughter at Davis Senior High School, visited the house during times of family injury of illness, and babysat my children. I have even officiated the marriage of two couples who got to hear my voice first at a Pub Quiz. Imagine that!

These days, I typically stay up past one in the morning only when grading my student essays, when I am working on a writing project, or when I can’t put down an inspiring book. But this past Saturday, I stayed up talking past that hour with friends whom I have encountered at many different events, restaurants, and street corners here in the city of Davis. After much interrupted planning, Kate and I got to dine at the home of local friends whom we would not know so well, or feel so endeared to, were it not for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz. I’m grateful for that, and for them.

I once encountered a memorable tweet by a Mormon comedian and commentator. It read simply, “Nobody talks about Jesus’ miracle of having 12 close friends in his 30s.” I know thousands of people, but close friends are a modern miracle, I think, one that I am celebrating and expressing thanks for right here at the end of the personal essay portion of the weekly Pub Quiz newsletter. I hope that you can sustain such miracles in your own personal life, no matter your age or proximity to affectionate, note-taking religious acolytes.

 

Tonight’s Pub Quiz may touch on topics raised above, but it will certainly take on the following this evening: twins with secrets, the Beyoncé trajectory, the airport problems with hamburger, press conferences, shipwrecks, hidden hotspots, chickens, unlikely landslides, obstructions, places to drink juice, gun rights and wrongs, the really rich, the question of metabolism, jeering music critics, bicycles, traitors, famous brothers, social media experts, Primetime Emmys, unstable economics, significant predators, relative taxation, Caribbean vacation opportunities, Viking diets, Jason Statham, incomplete swimming lessons, grand islands, the question of Africa, young Californians, oil money, dented gums on The Simpsons, and Shakespeare.

Don’t we have fun? I hope you will join us this evening for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. Word Puzzles. Using capital letters, what five-letter present-tense verb looks the same whether right-side-up or upside-down?  
2. Pop Culture – Music. The top-selling Ed Sheeran song of 2018 begins with these two lines: “I found a love for me / Darling just dive right in.” Name the song. If you were going to answer “Shape of You,” that’s wrong.  
3. Sports: Basketball. Former Rookie of the Year Damian Lillard received four NBA All-Star selections and is one of four players in his team’s franchise history to become a four-time All-Star. Name his team.  

 

 

P.S. Gary Snyder is reading at the Natsoulas Gallery this coming Friday night at 7. Once in a lifetime!

 

 

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

 

“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.” Jonathan Swift

 

Casual readers of political history think that President Trump was the first president to contact the leader of another country to compel that leader to investigate the son or daughter of the U.S. president’s political opponent.

Even if you don’t count the crucial help in 2016 of the Russian overlords of the NRA for a moment, Trump was part of a well-established 21^st-century tradition of such skullduggery. Now the truth can be revealed.

It is not widely known that one of Mitt Romney’s five sons (even today we don’t know if it was ‎‎Craig Romney, Tagg Romney, ‎Matt Romney, ‎Josh Romney, or Ben Romney) did not plan to have children. This is surprising because Mitt had 18 grandchildren at the time that he was running for president in 2012; evidently all Romneys have certain familial obligations. Well, you know who DID discover at the time of the yearly Romney French Riviera vacation that there was a Romney son who was considering having no children? Barack Obama. People don’t remember how well he milked that Romney scandal. How else do you think he was re-elected? Thanks for your help with that, Nicolas Sarkozy!

Now, of course, John McCain was born at Coco Solo, Panama (which, coincidentally, is also the name of one of Han Solo’s granddaughters). Recently unsealed Presidential records have revealed that then Senator Obama and then Panamanian president Martin Torrijos had many conversations about this what they called McCain’s “Central American Roots.” Evidently the Senator from Illinois and presidential candidate promised future additional Canal dredging work contracts in exchange for photographs of the baby McCain wearing a “McCain for Herbert Hoover” onesie on a Panamanian beach in October of 1936. This might explain why the Arizona Senator was so flustered during the 2008 financial crisis.

In 2004, President George W. Bush, hoping for a second term, telephoned the then president of Vietnam, Trần Đức Lương, and told him that his country could expect significantly more military aid if Trần Đức Lương himself would make a large personal contribution to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which he did. It was a beautiful phone call.

Bush was confident that this tactic would work because in 2000, his brother Jeb had successfully negotiated with Festus Mogae, the onetime President of Botswana (in power from 1998-2008), regarding Gore daughter Karenna’s recent trip to the African nation. Evidently she had haggled rather rudely with a shopkeeper! Mogae promised the Bush family actual footage of the overseas incident in exchange for “future considerations” (which he received). Eventual Bush cabinet member and Department of the Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne was even dispatched to Botswana to help with the Mogae re-election campaign.

They decided on this campaign slogan: “Don’t Mess with Festus.”

So, as you can see, Trump hinging innocent “favors” to hundreds of millions of our American tax dollars of military aid to Ukraine is not so odd. Those in the know see this as contemporary presidential politics as usual. As David Hume said, “The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”

 

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will somehow address an issue peripherally raised above, as well as the following: love as a driving force, the state of California, guards with cymbals, state borders, Samuel L. Jackson, residual bleachers, angelic enjoining, pianists, short gentlemen, momentous trials, bodies of water, contiguous states, darling dives, integration, British poets, bonus deals, Idaho, popular reads, chemical bonds, escape plans, Indiana, private colleges, Oscar nominees, AI sneezes, particulate matter, disappearing vocations, monkeys, apps that record audio, Colorado, and Shakespeare.

Poetry Night Thursday will feature Camille Norton and Maya Khosla as our featured poets. Join us Thursday night at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery.

See you this evening!

Your Quizmaster

 

Here are three questions from a previous quiz:

1. Japanese Cities. The second most populous city in Japan has four syllables in its name. What is it? Angeles    
2. Food and Drink. Vermiculture depends on what W word?  
3. Books and Authors. What Chinese author was the founder of philosophical Taoism?

 

P.S. “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” – Ernest Hemingway.

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

For tonight’s competition, I had planned five questions on Dromio, but then I saw the two captains of the team that won last week’s quiz unlocking their bikes outside of the Veterans’ Theatre yesterday, so I changed my mind about asking questions about The Comedy of Errors.

As I write this, my faculty colleagues int eh University Writing Program are finishing their lunches at our fall welcome. I feel so lucky to be working with such diverse and accomplished colleagues. For example, sitting at my table today are Steve Magagnini, the longtime race and ethnicity reporter at the Sacramento Bee who always presents himself as the most positive and humble people I know (despite his prize-winning recognition for his important work, even though his contract with the Bee has ended).

Sitting next to Steve is Sasha Abramsky, the author of many books on political and cultural topics who, as a reporter, has been leading the charge in exposing public corruption. Born not far from where I met my wife Kate (in London, England), Sasha studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Balliol College, Oxford. If you ever have a chance to see one of Sasha’s public addresses, take advantage of it! Meanwhile, you can find hi give talks about his various books online.

Each of my University Writing Program colleagues deserves the attention and love that I am sharing with Steve and Sasha here, and I’m sure that would be true for the friends who join you at your Pub Quiz team Monday evenings. So much intellectual curiosity! So much cultural capital! I could have chosen to live in any number of cosmopolitan capitals, but people like these remind me why I chose this town, this university, and this life.

As the students return to clog our streets and bike paths, I hope you have similar reasons to feel and express gratitude.

 

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following topics: questions of travel, light years, the unlikely example of Ajax, words that start with Q, time travel, recognizable traits, drama, friends, what counts as dressing, philosophical authors, unpleasant helpers, distant relatives, comparisons to Los Angeles, millions of visitors, the Moon, sandals, people named Heather, aromatic spices, yeast, learners who are also ladies, hills, fannings, elephants, rhythms, alphabetized verbs, computer leaps, who vs. whom, alternative bookings, and, of course, Shakespeare.

 

I look forward to seeing you this evening at the Pub!

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are three questions from a 2012 Pub Quiz. What are the answers? Who knows?

 

1. Books and Authors.   What founding father, author of The Gospel Preacher: A Book of Twenty Sermons, once said, “Glass, china and reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended”?  
2. Retail Sales. According to a profile published in the Sacramento Bee in 1990, Cal Worthington grossed $316.8 million in 1988, making him at the time the largest single owner of what kind of retail chain?     
3. Irish Culture.  The population of all of Ireland, the Republic and Northern Ireland, is closest to that of which of the following US States, presented here from most populous to least? Pennsylvania, Tennessee, or Nevada.  

 

P.S. “[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air … Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.”  Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

This past Friday I got to host the yearly Summer Institute on Teaching and Technology (SITT) at UC Davis. I’ve been involved in coordinating or hosting SITT for what feels like 20 years, and it is an exciting (and draining) culmination of a lot of the work I do every year with the instructional designers and graduate student researchers who are part of my team at Academic Technology Services.

Our theme this year was “Building in Active Learning.” Reflecting on that phrase, my poet’s brain reflected on all the “acting” we do as faculty as we attempt to “build learning” in our UC Davis classrooms. The students happily watch us (as faculty) at the front of our classrooms, sometimes happy that the “sage is on the stage,” but also wondering what exactly they should be doing while we ham it up in the front of the room while wearing a lapel microphone. We faculty feel that all the world’s our stage as we flip the next textbook page.

Now, of course, part of our “act” as teachers is reacting, reacting to what the students with their projects and responses to our assignments are building and rebuilding. Students don’t always immediately grasp the lessons we so dutifully create for them. In fact, sometimes it works this way: we build, they burn (or crash and burn), and then they rebuild, and we react. And then, we invite further rebuilding in response to our reacting, sometimes acting as if our reacting was the point of all this building.

I have learned, for myself, that my lectures can also lead to what might be called “churning.” How do we prevent the churning? By imagining that our lessons are giving our students kindling for burning! Sometimes this burning (curiosity, etc.) takes place only when we faculty learn to spurn the lectern.

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Benvolio says that “one fire burns out another’s burning.” I love that. Sometimes the professor’s impressive fires take up all the intellectual and active fuel and oxygen in the room. I argue that, rather than being the sole steward of this bonfire that we are imagining,  the faculty member should light the long wick and stand back, in fact, stand way up in the back of the auditorium so that our students will engage in active learning without the added pressure of our nearby looming.

We faculty also need to do a better job of calling on our students, even when they don’t want us to. I say, pluck the student out from all her peers; for a moment, confirm her realized performance fears! Such a student quails, she pales when I put her on the spot, hoisting her ideas upon the scales. She takes no pleasure in all this measuring, but eventually her confidence grows when I let her take a turn, encourage her to stand; she will even learn something during the long walk up to the lectern. We allow too much sitting in our active learning buildings!

The meditation center has its gongs, while churches and schools have their bells. In each case, the ardent practitioner’s heart will sing if we provide the room and mic for them to do so. But we must spend more time reflecting on what active part students will play in all this learning. In my computer classrooms, that means letting my students wield the whiteboard markers. I like to think that Clark Kerr, the UC President who came up with California’s multiversity approach, would have handed over the marker. When we give students something to do, rather than just providing them content to record as if they were merely able transcriptionists, then we will find students willing and eager to learn and, when the bell rings or the gong gongs, sometimes we will find them even unwilling to adjourn.

For me, my primary legacy, and my most fulfilling work, would be the mentoring relationships that I have built with my launching and launched students. As Jim Rohn says, “Whatever good things we build end up building us.”

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as on the following: imaginary workplaces, Joseph Haydn, Alabama, significant exporters, unexpectedly Irish folklore, child labor laws, worker bees, technology owners, Asian parents, poets on beaches, loosely-defined theology, North Carolina, anticipatory measures, translated accomplishments, proxies, American engineers, phone numbers, dinosaurs, ornithology, lucky acts of dodging, keeping up with the Fords, grocery stores, lessons we can learn from twins, big cats, U.S. Senators, tickets, chimney sweeps, rivers, French speakers, famous literary characters, nurses, prize-winning fiction, falcons, welcome and forgotten “miracles,” space, rookie sensations, fire labs, American cars, repeated letters, numerical changes, rich plumbers, the rust belt, median ages, primary protagonists, and Shakespeare.

Speaking of Shakespeare, the new Davis Shakespeare Festival production opens this Friday, and tonight our theatrically-inflected pub quiz returns at 7. Last week everyone who arrived by 6:15 secured a table, while those who arrived closer to 7 were asked to wait and see what might turn up. I hope you will plan accordingly!

 

See you tonight.

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com  

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http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster 

yourquizmaster@gmail.com 

 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. Newspaper Headlines. As we learned in an article in Politico recently, Liberty University has about how many online and face-to-face students? Is it closest to 25,000, 50,000, or 100,000?
2. National Mammals. What mammal has been chosen as the U.S. National Mammal?
3. Bulldozers. What monosyllabic word do we use for the bulldozer’s large metal plate used to push soil, rocks, and gravel?

 

P.S. Poetry Night Thursday at 8 at the Natsoulas Gallery will feature Mischa Kuczynski and Elana K. Arnold, two sisters who graduated from the graduate creative writing program at UC Davis. Please join us!

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Some people who follow history, or who read historical novels, gravitate to one time period over all others. For example, my friend Christy English, an author of historical novels and romances situated in distant lands, has written about Eleanor of Aquitaine, who spent most of her intriguing life in the 12^th century. Others spend their time imagining the wild west, Jane Austen’s England, or the Nara period of Japan. Some prefer to read about revolutions in America, France, or even Ireland, looking for lessons from times of tumult that we as individuals have been spared. While it’s fun to visit the past, eventually we have to let it go, lest we be dragged.

When we gravitate to these faraway time periods, do we do so because of what the age offers, or what the age could not yet offer? For example, Tolkien’s Middle Earth depends upon medieval technologies, but also magic, while a Victorian novel will rarely involve people being interrupted at dinner by telemarketers. Once I interviewed the prominent novelist Joyce Maynard on my radio show, and she revealed that she situates all of her novels in the 1990s or before so that none of her characters would keep disappearing to send or receive texts, Google the context of topics that come up in conversation, or insistently show their friends hilarious YouTube videos.

How many of us make decisions according to what we wish to avoid, rather than according to what we wish to do? As a high school student, did I limit my college search to city schools because I wanted big-city culture or because I wanted to avoid small-town parochialism? When Kate and I consider where we eventually might want to retire, do we choose Davis because it is bikeable and because we have so many friends here, or another location because it is more affordable? You might ask yourself a question like this every Monday night: Do we attend the Pub Quiz because we love the competition, the hubbub, and the time with friends, or do we, like readers of a Joyce Maynard novel, appreciate the break from gadgets and pixels for a couple hours?

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was choosing the “Four Freedoms” he wished to emphasize in his 1941 State of the Union Address, 11 months before Pearl Harbor, he settled on two freedoms “of” preferred practices (speech and religion), and two freedoms “from” unwanted burdens (want and fear). America’s formal involvement in World War II would test our relationship with these freedoms, and subsequent presidents have had vexed relationships with all four of these American concerns, but I think they give us a helpful framework for understanding how we gauge freedom in our own personal choices and pastimes, our obsessions and our phobias, our obstacles and our motivations.

I reread speeches by Lincoln, Roosevelt(s), or King from time to time to help remind myself how I want to spend my day, my year, or my life. As Zig Ziglar says, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.” Thanks to all of you who bathe before joining us at the Pub Quiz on Monday nights. I’m expecting way more than 100 motivated people tonight, each of us embracing or escaping something, together.

Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions about topics raised above, as well as the following: The Journal of Nutrition, sweetness, name confusion, the orders of heroes, sporting bullies, current events, colorful book titles, magpies, ways back, menus in national parks, American royal families, M for Mendelssohn and masks, people who know Avogadro’s number, dogs not named Rover, romantic hammers, smart as a post, actors who have won Oscars in unexpected categories, superheroines, strong countries, rocks, art galleries, ethical syringes in politics, pansexuality, SoCal acronyms, news or information, three-word titles, prominent universities, stories on stage, right angles, two verb hits, storytelling, metal plates, roaming examples, Chicago ends, silly Siri, special deliveries, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us tonight at the Pub Quiz. So many people moved around or moved away at the end of August. We may need to recruit some new players!

Best,

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

 

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

 

1. Great Americans.  David Strathairn played Secretary of State William H. Seward in what 2012 film?  
2. Unusual Words: Three six-letter P words with pretty much the same meaning. The first word is “priest,” and the second is “pastor.” What is the third? 
3. Pop Culture – TV.  What show features Hugh Laurie, Lisa Edelstein, Omar Epps, Olivia Wilde, & Amber Tamblyn?  

 

P. P. S. Tomorrow night, the 10^th of September, at 7:30, I will be hosting a read-through of some scenes from an upcoming production of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors with members of the Davis Shakespeare Festival. Please join us at the Avid Reader bookstore for this casual preview of what promises to be a marvelous presentation of the classic comedy.