Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I wonder if a city such as Las Vegas will seem strange and irresponsible a decade, a half century, or a millennium from now, assuming there are still people in 3018 to take note of our obsessions and foibles. The 8,000 megawatts that Las Vegas uses daily, 20% of which comes from the city’s 40 large casinos, would power the entire state of Idaho. Do visitors consider such concerns when engaging with all those slot machine pixels, when strolling beneath blinding Strip lights, or when bundling up amid all that air conditioning?

Will we all someday live like this, separated from an environment that we have made unlivable, as foreseen by the dystopian science fiction worksThe Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritchby Philip K. Dick or Pixar’s WALL-E? Is it too late to make better choices? Perhaps in this coming century we will better understand and employ solar technology, so that Nevada and the rest of our desserts can bake solar panels, rather than our diminishing ice caps, and all our planet’s residents.

We can all make less wasteful choices. For example, this past weekend my family and I visited Stinson Beach, a place to commune with our nearby ocean. Despite the intense car traffic leading up to this fog-protected census-designated place with a population less than 1% that of Davis, and the illuminated road signs reminding tourists that one needs reservations to park at Muir Woods, a visit to Stinson Beach allows one to step away from the glowing “future” of Las Vegas, or even our busy present of our lives in Northern California, and instead spend some time in a never-changing past.

We know from the miracle of radiocarbon dating that a typical drop of water deep in the Pacific Ocean is about 1,000 years old, though the oceans themselves formed more than four billion years ago (I’m glad I’m not responsible for explaining the relationship between those two facts). The entertainments that awaited my family and me at Stinson Beach Saturday—the endless surf, the diggable sand, the pelagic birds (and no oil rigs)—are the same that have existed for each of those thousand or the past million years. Although these evergreen qualities of the beach were complemented by a sampling of my Kindle library and by my wife Kate’s amazing iPhone photography, the essence of our trip was timeless, or even outside of time.

Thoroughly sunscreened, Kate and I gripped the sand with naked feet and laughed at the seaside escapades of our children as the stress of the week or of the year faded from our shoulders. I was reminded of something Marcus Aurelius said: “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” Californians have access to delightful locales where we might step away from the consumption of megawatts and instead just breathe, just think, or even just attempt the cessation of thinking. Such delights are free, and freeing. If you can make such an investment in your peace of mind, consider an extended stint walking along a beach, hiking Sierra paths, or gazing up old-growth redwood trees. In these places you may find the essence of summer.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about kites, plot and plots, cute animals, sequels, Portugal, competition for Harry Potter, boxing, big questions, reimbursements, decarbonization, 17 seasons, rich rungs, tragic novelistic choices, the interests of billions, one-word names, the reduction of pathogens, imagination, famous daughters of famous fathers, the view from space, popular films, islands, geometry, fast “food,” dead rituals, Victorian releases, Oscar-nominated films, our many days of summer, people named Ellen, the Buddha, prisons for parents, the lessons offered by pain, people whose names start with M, and Shakespeare. When I asked the Buddha question to Truman, he answered it correctly and instantly, so I made it harder. Thanks for the QAQC testing, Truman!

Happy birthday to my brother Oliver, college professor and movie reviewer for the New York Observer.Click his reviews to see some fine and principled writing.

I hope to see you at de Vere’s Davis this evening at 7. If you bring a full team, I can all but guarantee that you will score in double digits. Jake will be there.

Your Quizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com 

Here are three questions from a Pub Quiz from July, 2008:

1. American History. Who was the first American to orbit the earth?   
2. Books and Authors. What is the last word of the title of this 1726 novel? Travels into several remote nations of the world, in Four Parts, by Lemuel [BLANK].Fill in the blank. 
3. Pop Culture – Music(Karaoke Question). What Rolling Stones song begins with the line “I was born in a cross-fire hurricane”? 

P.S. More oceanic inspiration: “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.” John F. Kennedy

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

My son Truman was born on the same date as a primary subject of my doctoral dissertation, T.S. Eliot. I used to recite Eliot poems to Truman when he was a baby, distracting him with the unusual combinations of words and sounds. Registering Truman’s delight, I recalled something that Eliot wrote in a long essay about the poet Dante: “What is surprising about the poetry of Dante is that it is, in one sense, extremely easy to read. It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” By this Eliot means that the power of mellifluous rhyming poetry can work its magic on the listener even before the words are understood. One of my Eliot professors in college, William Arrowsmith, an important classics scholar who had been called “arguably the most gifted poetic translator of his generation,” accompanied Eliot to Italy when Eliot presented that Dante appreciation essay, titled “What Dante Means to Me.”Arrowsmith noted the kerfuffle that resulted when the collection of Dante scholars expected Eliot to present his address in Italian, but the Anglican poet spoke in English. Scandal!

Arrowsmith was on hand for a centennial celebration of the life and work of T.S. Eliot that took place at Harvard Theatre at Harvard University, a building where Eliot himself doubtlessly spent some time when he was a Harvard undergraduate from 1906-1909. Also on hand were a number of authors who admired Eliot, such as UC Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott, and poets and even actors who knew Eliot. For some reason, the musician James Taylor also performed a song. When I attended this even in 1988, I knew that I would never forget the names of all the assembled literati and glitterati, many of whose names I have since forgotten.

Most of all I remember my conversation with Donald Hall, a poet and anthologist whose curatorial work shaped my understanding of 20^thcentury poetry, and whose works I had studied in my classes. Hall told the story of going with another undergraduate to interview Eliot in 1951, just before heading to Oxford.

Christopher Hitchens picked up this story in The Atlantic in 2005:

Then Eliot appeared to search for the right phrase with which to send me off. He looked me in the eyes, and set off into a slow, meandering sentence. “Let me see,” said T. S. Eliot, “forty years ago I went from Harvard to Oxford. Now you are going from Harvard to Oxford. What advice can I give you?” He paused delicately, shrewdly, while I waited with greed for the words which I would repeat for the rest of my life, the advice from elder to younger, setting me off on the road of emulation. When he had ticked off the comedian’s exact milliseconds of pause, he said, “Have you any long underwear?”

Hall earned the biggest laugh of the evening that night, but I was more impressed with how kind and patient he was with me, a poetry fan and undergraduate who didn’t know quite what to say when meeting an idol. He made conversations and made jokes, wishing that he was young enough to cavort on stage with the actors. Donald Hall seemed old to me then, and in recent interviews he has seemed ancient, having endured so much, and having shaped a generation’s understanding of poetry as a public man of letters, and as the winner of the National Book Critics Circle prize, and the National Medal of Arts. Hall died yesterday at age 89, but his acts of kindness and his poetry will live on in those who remember and read him, as I encourage you to do.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about the ephemeral nature of life and newspapers, as well as domestic birds, monks, the moon, lords and Lords, Pence’s challenges, Virginia disappointments, doves, appreciated portraits, fibers, strength against chaos, people caught on tape, The World Cup, wind whipping through valleys, fake dads, fine songs, immortal players, charcoalification, understanding the universe, electric countries, network TV, musical mathematics, stores for elites, really cute animals, Henry David Thoreau, controversial times that prompt leaders to step forward, serifs, military fashion, popular hotspots, tariffs, and Shakespeare.

See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Science.  The aardvark is native to what continent? 
2. Books and Authors.   Norton Juster’s most famous book is titled The Phantom WHAT?  
3. Current Events – Names in the News.     We learned today that Kim Jong Un is more popular than what prominent Democrat among the GOP?  

P.S. Please go find and read a Donald Hall poem today.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Once when my daughter Geneva was about three, we mentioned that she was due to see her pediatrician the next day, and she did not take the news well. Rather than wanting to get a check-up from the beloved and highly-respected Dr. Michael Reinhart, Geneva insisted that she be distracted by our telling her about the time we went to Fairytale Town. Geneva had imagined a safe space, sometimes called a “happy place,” where she could escape her fears, such as necessary vaccines and inoculations.

I was reminded of this 17-year-old conversation this morning when my 12-year-old son Truman was getting a blood draw this morning, not his favorite activity. Anticipating our August trip to Disneyland, Truman closed his eyes as the needle went in and explained to us what attractions we would visit, and in what order, when we first arrive at the theme park. His evocation of a happy place was somewhat more sophisticated, in that it benefited from his more complex understanding of architecture and theme-park strategies. For instance, evidently Americans automatically go right towards Tomorrowland when entering the attractions of Disneyland, meaning that early arrivers who amble in a counter-clockwise direction can have the westerly sections of the park to themselves, at least for a while.

When it comes to the frenetic crowds and lengthy lines of Disneyland, I myself am a fan of Café Orleans, where one can sometimes hear live jazz performed while looking across the “Rivers of America” to Tom Sawyer’s Island. In his book European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, German Romanticism scholar Ernst Robert Curtius posits that a true locus amoenus(Latin for “pleasant place”) must have trees, grass, and water. It seems odd to visit one of the most bustling cultural icons of America to find trees, grass, and water, but sometime one has to satisfy multiple audiences, the man who loves jazz and a locus amoenus, and the children of America who can’t wait to visit Marvel Landin 2020, a place to be known by many parents as the most crowded place on earth.

I hope you get to visit your happy place this summer!

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as on bonds, composers, football, Kim Jong Un, islands, magical heritage, Canadian alcohol, prime numbers, controversial films, big and little Dippers, the answer to everything, soy, plans, aisles, Darwin, adult contemporaries, wily people, phantoms, unusual animals, exclamation marks, California cities, Wayne Thiebaud, unusual gifts, spies, economics, presidents, movie stars, Pulitzer Prizes, and Shakespeare.

See you tonight at 7. Summer is here, so I expect a crowd.

Your Quizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Another Music Question.What current Post Malone hit song shares a title with a Hitchcock film?  
2. Anagram. What actor’s name is an anagram for the phrase “He’s a rich TV person”?   
3.  Annas.Which House Bunny Anna has a starring role in the 2018 film Overboard? 

P.S. Speaking of people named Anna, our own Anna Fenerty, a Pub Quiz regular who turned 21 last week, will be featured at Poetry Night Thursday. Come out to support here! Details at https://poetryindavis.com/archive/2018/06/poets-anna-fenerty-and-nick-leforce-will-read-in-davis-on-june-21st/

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

A dental visit delayed this morning’s newsletter. Kate and I have been seeing Dr. Howard Shempp for years, and have counted on him for much good advice and care over the years. The crown jewel of the Shempp dental practice is Therese, the star hygienist who has remembered our incidental family updates and vacation plans for the past decade. This morning she noticed that I had lost weight (on purpose). Little acts of kindness from people like Therese help to make Davis into a community. More on that later.

This morning in the waiting room I encountered Emily, a graduate student studying horticulture who was embarrassed that she didn’t know the answer to the guava question that I asked two weeks ago. I’m sure that she would have answered last week’s cellulose question correctly, and I told her that I hoped that her team would do well at the Pub Quiz this evening, with its many questions about female actors and authors, and its science questions about organic compounds and cute animals. I told her that many of the questions are easier in the summer, when we all feel less studious.

Speaking of school being out for summer, I am inordinately proud of my son, Truman, who graduated from Patwin Elementary School last Thursday, giving a commencement speech of sorts that his mother Kate and I had not heard or read beforehand. Although Truman doesn’t read most of my newsletters, his writing reminded me of my own, with a focus on kindness and a quotation providing the conclusion. His writing style is a bit more angsty than mine. With Truman’s accomplishment in mind, my youngest child will be given the last word before the hints this week. Congratulations, Truman!

I have been going to Patwin for three years now. But before I came here, I used to go to a school called Fairfield. And there, life presented me with a set of challenges. And on the worst days, I would ask myself the same question over and over again: “What. Is. The. Point?” What is the point of living?

This question echoed through my soul day after day. And then I came to Patwin, and I finally knew the answer.

We are here for simple acts of kindness.

To show compassion to everyone we meet.

To be the best people we can be.

To make the world have just a little bit more love.

The other purpose of the human race is to be ourselves. Don’t try to change who you are to be “cooler” or to be like your friends. And don’t worry what your peers think about you. If they don’t see what a great person you are, that’s their burden, not yours. Never be ashamed of something you cannot change.

Even on stressful days, I remember Feliks greeting everyone with “Hey, my brother!” Or I remember the schoolyard where I aged into a (pre)teenager. Then all the sadness was let out.

Because, in the words of Bill Withers, who wrote the song “Lean On Me:”

Sometimes in our lives,
We all have pain,
We all have sorrow,
But if we are wise,
Then we will know,
That there’s always tomorrow.

In addition to topics mentioned above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on rich TV actors, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Eva Longoria, people who need life vests, white pines, youngsters who hesitate before speaking, completions, prophesies of doom, travel pillow casualties, prime numbers, AWOL executives, Halle Berry, song and film titles, incomplete maps, cuteness exemplified, prominent films of yesteryear, Oprah Winfrey, domestic products, risings and sinkings, insects, categories of learning, publishing in the modern age, Jennifer Lopez, demanding bosses, US singles charts, refilled cups, solids of questionable solidity, antonyms to ledge safety, happy couples, seats, plane travel, Texas hold ’em, filial piety, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us tonight. Come early to claim a table, and listen carefully at the end to see if you (could possibly) beat Emily’s team. Horticulturalists rule.

Your Quizmaster
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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
 

1. Books and Authors.  George Milton and Lennie Small are the two primary characters in what 1937 John Steinbeck novel?  

2. A Bit of Latin. What does the word “dexter” mean in the phrase oculus dexter?   

3. Sports.  Zach Randolph, the top-scorer for the Sacramento Kings last season, scored closest to which of the following, on average? 15, 20, 25, or 30 points a game.  

P.S. Advice for graduates from Jon Stewart: “Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age.” See you tonight.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Often I take a week of vacation from my administrative duties during the tenth week of the academic quarter so that I can keep up with my teaching duties, all the grading of my students’ final papers. I take a “vacation” so that I have enough time to do my work. As one of my colleagues said recently, “I don’t think you understand this concept of a vacation.” Welcome to week ten.

In my advanced writing classes, I teach juniors and seniors, students who are thinking about the future rather than about the present, about writing for the job and for graduate school, rather than thinking only about writing to impress their current UC Davis professors. While I might encounter my freshman seminar students for years after our class, opportunities for professional mentorship with my advanced writers are necessarily compacted. Many visit office hours.

Some of those advanced writers will march across the commencement stage in a couple weeks, accompanied by my admiration and, in some ways, my envy. Despite what I see as the political darkness emanating from at least two buildings in Washington DC these days, students have reasons to be optimistic, to be buffeted by the hope and sanguinity that I hear in the ways they describe their next professional and vocational steps. UC Davis has prepared them well, with regards to the content, modes, and depth of their thinking; and Californians live in a land of opportunities, with important work being done in our state in computer networks, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and all the industries needed to support technological innovation and discovery. While the locus of all this industry is Silicon Valley, Southern California, Seattle, and other locations are also vying for opportunities to fashion the future.

I envy my students because of their opportunities to participate in such practical and (as yet) impractical innovations while they are still so young, to enter a new industry, say, cognitive computing and machine learning, on the “ground floor,” as it were. While I recognize the value of what I have built here in Davis, a couple of intellectually challenging careers, and a family whose company I treasure most of all, I also wonder what it would be like for to start a life, a career, in our current era, even though there are so few local newspapers left to write stories about the outrageous costs of housing our new workers. I will be enjoying my bike commute along Putah Creek greenbelts, grateful for Kate and the kids and the colleagues with whom I get to work, but I will also watch my students wistfully, eager to hear their eventual stories of innovation, meaning-making, and discovery.

If you are among this group, or if you could pass a message to a graduating college student in your life, I would say this: “Make us proud.” I would also say this: “Build our economy and protect our planet. Give the rest of us an innovative, sustainable, and kinder world to grow old in.” Also, “Keep writing, including an update email to me – will we still use email? – at least once a decade.”

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as the following: Pride month, bamboo, the irrelevance of the Sacramento Kings in early June, optometry (hello Dr. Helmus!), villainous blowhards not named Trump, small rivers in faraway places, fashion, authors with revealed names, people who reveal themselves in unwelcome ways, coffee, Latin terms, big purchases, Drew Barrymore, that new movie Solo: A Star Wars Story, Bay Area waterways, government acronyms, summer choices, revelations in Rolling Stone, polymers, delicious ingredients, Hollywood voice work, the nicest people ever, not counting cameos, cotton clothing, tears, juice in industrious countries, candidates, cruel cuts, tropicality on multiple continents, wishes, American literature, predictive statements about villainy, fruits and vegetables, and Shakespeare.

Poetry Night on Thursday will feature Susie Meserve, a talented Berkeley poet who has recently published her first full-length book, Little Prayers. Opening for Susie will be uber-talented actor and Davis Shakespeare Festival monologist Ian Hopps. Join us Thursday at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery.

Your Quizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Current Events –Dance Crazes that Start with F.  Started by a 15 year old wearing a backpack, name the latest dance craze that requires significant coordination to execute. 
2. Sports.  What center-fielder named after a fish had a career-high five hits against the Yankees Saturday, three of them doubles? 
3. Shakespeare. Which Shakespeare history features the infant Princess Elizabeth in a non-speaking role?  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

One of my favorite Robin Williams comedies is the 1984 film Moscow on the Hudson, and not only because I got to interview its director, the late Paul Mazursky, in person on my KDVS radio show more than a decade ago. The film lovingly depicts the immigrant’s experience, and represents New York City as a place where artists and dreamers can find their purpose. In the first scene of the film, Williams’ character Vladimir Ivanov gives directions to a tourist confused by New York City’s bus system. Soon the film flashes back to Vladimir’s first visit to New York, on the occasion of his defecting as a careworn and disoriented Russian saxophonist. Williams learned Russian and the saxophone for the role, as one does.

Last week I stood in front of my rather diminutive childhood home at 2454 Tunlaw Road, where I once displayed a Moscow on the Hudson movie poster on the wall of my basement bedroom. During my trip to my onetime hometown of Washington DC, I felt like I was living the two versions of Vladimir’s character, for on the first Saturday I was in DC I felt both annoyed and charmed that everyone but me knew that subway line repairs on the Red Line meant we had to take shuttle busses from the Van Ness station to the Dupont Circle station. On the bus, I was taking pictures madly, including of my son Jukie peering out the window as we passed the corner of Connecticut and Wyoming Avenues, the onetime site of my high school. Everyone could tell that I was a tourist.

On the subsequent Saturday, I saw a visitor from Germany who was similarly confused by the subway exodus for the shuttle busses, so I explained to her why the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority saved its subway repair work for weekends, and that the above-ground leg of her trip would afford her an opportunity to see the entrance of the National Zoo. She was grateful, and thought that her good Samaritan was a Metrorail veteran. What a difference a week can make.

All the time I spent on using public transportation gave me an opportunity to reflect on the ways that our transportation methods reveal elements of our identities. For instance, as I write this newsletter on a flight from DC to Seattle, I am discovering that although I have many songs in my iTunes library, I had actually downloaded only one to my phone: Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine.” While I myself have never tried cocaine, I am seeing to what extent the song “Cocaine” on endless loop will try my patience. What does this song have to do with transportation? I used to listen to it while engaged in a different endless loop, that of roller-skaters around the basketball courts of Jelleff Boys and Girls Club on Saturday nights in 1979 and 1980.

To adapt Clapton’s song, “When your day is done, and you want to run”: roller skating. The physical artistry, necessary balance, and speed of this pastime appealed to me, and the hours circulating counter-clockwise to late disco also provided me a way to meet girls, including the daughter of the president, Amy Carter. After looping Saturday nights from 7-11, I would roller skate the mile or so to my house past the still brightly-lit shops, bars, and restaurants of Wisconsin Avenue, sometimes wearing a cape. Is there any greater freedom? The rock and roll, disco, and rhythm and blues music, and the exhilaration of the acceleration, informed who I was, or at least who I wanted to be. With the help of a Donna Summer mix on Pandora, I sometimes recapture this feeling as a Davis bike commuter today.

I never owned a car in high school or college. I depended upon public transportation, on friends or my mom to transport me, or on walking or biking (I had hung up my skates by then). To me, the primary emotional satisfaction of owning a car came from delivering friends places, just as my French comrade Jean Gruss delivered me home in his 1973 baby blue Chevrolet Chevelle Laguna (make and model confirmed this morning via Facebook), most days after high school. Like Blanche DuBois, I depended upon the kindness of others (though not of strangers – I knew to be careful).

Yesterday I overheard that one of the presenters at the Computers and Writing Conference (where I presented a talk on the Digital Learning Environment at UC Davis) was about to drop $60 on a Lyft to get him from the Fairfax, Virginia site of the conference to Washington DC where his Florida-based nuclear family was waiting to begin touring one of the most museum-friendly cities in the world. Channeling my eminently kind friend Jean, I approached this Florida scholar named Dan and told him that I was heading to DC, and that I could facilitate the reunion with his family at the cut-rate price of nothing.

We see such an act of kindness as an everyday occasion in Davis, but in Central Florida, evidently, this just doesn’t happen. My new friend was effusive in his thanks, offering on three separate occasions to contribute towards the gas that was fueling my mom’s Chevy Trax (a peppy and comfortable compact SUV that I have never seen advertised – perhaps I should have asked Chevrolet to sponsor this week’s newsletter). I kept changing the subject to our families, our universities, and the sights around us. Ever the teacher, I professed on the history of the different monuments arrayed before us as we crossed Memorial Bridge into our grand capital city.

As Dan Martin’s effusive gratitude continued on Twitter that evening, Dan also pointed out that the Computers and Writing organizers had created a conference where people are engaged, friendly, and mutually supportive, which is true. As I read his complimentary words about me, I also realized that I didn’t quite feel like my 2010s self when I was spending so much of my DC trip waiting for or on busses and subway trains. But when I could do something kind for someone, as is expected of me as poet laureate, faculty member, or quizmaster, then I was enacting my best (Be best!) and most authentic self. Taking up the microphone and committing acts of kindness make me feel like I am still wearing that cape, fresh from holding hands with a pretty girl to the music of Eric Clapton, which for some reason I can still hear echoing in my ears today.

Happy Memorial Day! Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as on the following: toasts on Memorial Day, mighty Mikes, the measure of a gram, sweetness, battlefronts, streams and rivers, triple-doubles, franchises, roofs, generous plans, cinematic investments, payment options, big booms, Dulles Airport, infant princesses, the history option, Africa, possibly free of merits, Yankee shortcomings, unlikely backpack choices, regrettable mistakes, favorite fruits, she don’t lie, Susan B. Anthony, unread collaborations, old poems, women in charge, comic characters, football moves, pretty women, cities on rivers, scourges to tyrants, energy hogs, expensive revivals, a topic that I haven’t chosen yet, a bathrobe and a funny hat, and Shakespeare.

I am honored to read a poem at today’s 10 AM Memorial Day ceremony at the Davis Cemetery, and my introductory remarks will answer one of the easier questions on tonight’s quiz. Even though I have given you no notice, perhaps I will see you there. If you need more poetry than that, this coming Thursday night at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery, Berkeley poet Susie Meserve will read from her recently-published first book of poetry, Little Prayers. Opening for Meserve will be an actor/monologist from the Davis Shakespeare Festival, an opportunity not to be missed. I hope to see you at one or both these events, and tonight for a Memorial Day Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

Your Quizmaster

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http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster 

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster 

yourquizmaster@gmail.com 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Current Events – Names in the News. What is the name of the new president of the National Rifle Association?  
2. Sports.  What member of the Golden State Warriors was recently scolded by his mom for a profane outburst?  
3. Shakespeare.   Who speaks the following lines in Hamlet? “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”; “To thine own self be true,” and “Brevity is the soul of wit.”  

P.S. Typically I turn my longest Facebook posts into Quizmaster newsletters, or vice versa, but this week was full enough to warrant two posts, if not many more. Facebook-stalk my most recent post if you want to see how my son Jukie did during a week of tests and procedures at the NIH.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Why is the newsletter so late today? Because my morning has been filled up medical appointments in one of the most respected medical facilities in the world: The National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD.

I was driven past the NIH a great number of times when I was a kid, but, luckily I suppose, I never had a chance to visit until much later, when doctors and medical researchers expressed significant interest in my son, Jukie. We know so much more about Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome today than we did when Jukie started visiting this place as a three-year-old, but the procedures for the visits are largely the same: individual meetings with experts in audiology, anesthesia, neuro-psychology, ophthalmology, and physiatry. We also talk to some of the foremost researchers who study Jukie’s syndrome. Such knowledge! Such support!

I also get to see this lovely city of Washington that I called home for the first couple decades of my life. The air is thick with fecund humidity, and the bird songs and cricket and cicada symphonies sound absolutely tropical. This past weekend I took some pictures of the old home at 2454 Tunlaw Road, and got to explore some of the neighborhoods that I knew as a child. They have all shrunk.

I have more to share, but will have to save that for after I have done some reflecting on the passing of the years. As Helen Keller said, “So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.”

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will be hosted by Quizmaster James, for which I am grateful. Expect questions on the royal wedding, chastisement, periods of time, updated vision statements, research centers, shortened brevity, degrees, our golden state, Congressional testimony, hunger, various syndromes treated at the NIH, spelling words with a C or a K, fathers of things, official languages, Brexit, fictional countries, both a Hugh and a Hugo, medical topics, quotations from yesteryear, noodles and other foods, criminals, superheroes, sneaky entrances, dead wood, altitudinous greenery, soap operas, patents, lists that include beavers, valuable teams, and Shakespeare.

Have fun tonight at the Pub Quiz. I will return on Memorial Day for our next 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. Four for Four.  Which of the following animals, if any, were domesticated by 5,000 BCE? Cats, Dogs, Horses, Siamese Fighting Fish. 

1. Pop Culture – Television.    What Andy Samberg TV show was recently cancelled after five seasons?   

1. Another Music Question. Whom did Rolling Stone describe as “the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time”? 

P.S. “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” Mahatma Gandhi

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I hope you enjoyed Mother’s Day. I’ve been thinking about my own mom, who I get to see in DC later this week, and about my wife Kate, who I am seeing right now as I write this.

Because of her ailing knees, When Kate finds herself on a couch or in a restaurant booth, she feels most comfortable when she extends her legs over something sturdy to support her, and that usually means my legs. I’m grateful that Kate is quick to lean on me. I know she misses the constant pressure of our departed bulldog, for Dilly often rested her head on Kate’s feet while she cooked, or snuggled up next to or upon Kate when she would (rarely) sit down in a comfy chair or love seat.

Studies show that our pets make us happier and healthier. In class last week, one of my students nominated “minimize stress” as one of the five ways we can sustain good health. Everyone nodded, but some modified their perspectives on stress after my subsequent lesson on positive psychology and “flow.” I reminded my audience that our writing class and other UC Davis classes seek to strengthen students — strengthen their brains, their habits, their resolve — rather than to eliminate the stressors in their lives. Students who spend a lot of time playing intramural sports or exercising in our Activities and Recreation Center know that they must appropriately challenge and stress their bodies in order to become stronger.

Our family has been relearning this lesson in recent weeks and months, Kate in particular. For instance, while Kate’s knees look as cute as ever, X-rays and MRI imaging suggest possible reasons for her ongoing discomfort. Let’s just say that if Kate were drafted, she could use her two sets of under-kneecap Texas longhorn bone spurs to defer her military service, only legitimately!

But none of the knee issues or other ailments compares in intensity to the severe heartsickness that we all feel in our house, a house that has been without our bulldog for a long and lonely week. At home, Dilly had been Kate’s constant companion, and her absence has brought her and the rest of us unwelcome trials of sadness.

Of course, this mom has been responding heroically. Kate and a friend primed our living room and dining room on Dilly’s last full day on earth, and then painted both those rooms on the first full day that she was gone. On Thursday, the day of Kate’s double knee injections, with strict orders to rest, Kate instead painted two coats in the bathroom, solo. Kate has sought to bring order to the house at a time when we all feel chaotic and unmoored. The new bamboo floor will be installed tomorrow, with a couple Pub Quiz irregulars stopping by late tonight to help us move the heavier furniture off the carpet.

Times like these remind me what a powerful woman Kate is, and how beautiful she is while in action, whether it be spending hours on a tall ladder with funky knees, or walking slowly from the car to the Mondavi Center for our date night seeing David Sedaris. (As an aside, it was David’s sister Amy who said, rather sardonically, “Sometimes losing a pet is more painful than losing a human because in the case of the pet, you were not pretending to love it.”)

While I can quote many writers and humorists on grief or beauty, often at such times I turn to the poetic stylings of the Commodores when thinking of my strong and lovely wife. As we are told in “Brick House,” a song that could have been written for Kate herself, “she’s mighty-mighty.”

I commend my Kate, my mom, and all the mighty and marvelous moms out there who struggle for their families, and become stronger and even more beautiful because of it.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as the following: regal names, unforgettable images, karaoke for small audiences, untold wealth, noisy creatures, unwelcome love letters, the Appalachian Trail, shared authorship, vowel endings, domestication in Siam, the absence of vitality, the measure of a gram, states that start with A, hazards in New Zealand, oceanography, a million dollars, under covers, popular songs, calls and responses, statuary, the meaning of mountains, the Google effect, a defined period of time for comedy, quarter runs, puns with time and money, military service, multicultural authors, African animals, composers who are neither Rod Stewart nor Al Stewart nor Jimmy Stewart, fighting bellboys, the opinions of the writers of Rolling Stone, delightful colors, absent future presidents, ornithology, living where you work, slumping popularity, and Shakespeare.

This coming Thursday night we are featuring a memoirist at Poetry Night: Janelle Hanchett, author of the new book I’m Just Happy to Be Here. A former student of mine, Janelle has been building audiences with her blog for years, and now her book is selling madly. Check out the reviews on Amazon, and then join us Thursday night at 8 the Natsoulas Gallery. Because my son Jukie and I fly out of town early the next morning, I myself won’t be able to attend the after-party, but the reading and open mic will be memorable and well-attended. Next week’s pub quiz will be hosted by James Haven, the longtime player who did such a good job on April 30^th. I will 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. Yet another question about U.S. States. What is the only U.S. state to border the Canadian provinces Manitoba and Saskatchewan?      
2. Science.  According to an April 30th publication in Circulation magazine, Harvard researchers say five things will help you live longer, and the list isn’t all that surprising: 1) exercise, 2) eat a healthy diet, 3) maintain a healthy body weight, 4) don’t drink too much, and WHAT? 
3. Sports.  The LA Dodgers recently put what left-handed pitcher on the disabled list with biceps tendinitis? 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Usually when a dad returns to the site of the sleepover, the hosting parent has called with the news that the kid in question wants to sleep in his own bed, after all. This past Saturday afternoon, I returned to fetch our 12-year-old without being called. One of the assembled boys asked, “Why does Truman have to leave?” The eyes of the hosting mom were misty as we walked to the car.

During the drive to the South Davis Veterinary Center, we talked about illness and death. I reminded Truman that while all creatures die, some come to the point in their illness when they can or should be offered a “good death” (from the Greek: “Eu” for good, as in “euphoria,” and “Thanatos” for “death”). Euthanasia spares a pet unneeded suffering at the end of his or her life.

Truman endured the lesson unwillingly. From his perspective, the car couldn’t move fast enough along Covell Boulevard towards South Davis, and by the time we pulled up to the vet, he jumped out of the car and ran into the empty lobby of the veterinary office, not knowing in which direction to run to find and embrace his bulldog, Dilly.

Daffodil “Dilly” Jones joined our family in March of 2012, having been improbably discovered at a kill shelter in Modesto. Seeming full-pedigree English bulldogs are not often found in such shelters – we’ve often wondered if she had escaped from a puppy mill – for breeding bulldogs is an expensive and difficult enterprise. We were on a rescue list for a French bulldog, but the kindly woman who saved Dilly told us of this particular dog’s angelic disposition, a necessity for this family eager to meet her. We didn’t know if Dilly was one, two, or four years old, but we loved this wheezy and jowly gargoyle immediately, welcoming her to our home and into our hearts.

Although thinner and with a forlorn look in her eyes, the version of Dilly with whom Truman reunited Saturday afternoon looked not much different from the one we adopted all those years ago. Half in my wife Kate’s lap, and half comfortably stretched across her favorite maroon blanket, Dilly was repositioned into Truman’s arms as soon as he sat next to her on the floor of the examination room.

“Is today her last day?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

The four of us used up a box of Kleenex before Kate, Jukie, and Truman said their last goodbyes, reminding Dilly that she was the best dog our family could ever have hoped for, and that we would keep her alive in our hearts.

Then I alone was left to comfort our family’s first dog, and, as Truman told us, our only dog ever. Dr. Mueller and Angie the vet tech had stayed after closing hours to attend to Dilly, a longtime favorite patient, for the last time. She could not have asked for better care.

Dilly was already calm, so not much sedation was necessary to help her relax further and into sleep. I thought she had quickly fallen asleep when a distant and unanswered office phone began to ring. Hearing the fourth ring, Dilly looked up at me, seeming to ask, “Are you going to get that?” The ringing continued, echoing in empty offices, as she drifted away.

I told Dilly that she was loved, that we were grateful for the affection and devotion that she shared with our family. The last thing she heard in this world was that she was a good dog.

Afterwards, the darkness in the hallway of the South Davis Veterinary Center matched my demeanor as I clutched Dilly’s blanket and strode uncertainly towards the exit, and then stepped, blinking and diminished, into the late afternoon sun.

The next day I told my son Jukie that Dilly would not be coming home, that she was gone. Our non-verbal boy signed “all done” to me, and then fetched one of his favorite books, Elmo’s New Puppy, leafing through the pages while holding his plastic bulldog.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following: privacy laws, Avengers, words that end in Z, Katie Couric, great Americans, people in holes, skeletal calcium, Rolling Stones, Washington Post headlines, islands, private emptiness, authors with monosyllabic first names, Circulation magazine, Canada, variants, principal photography, the difference between micrograms and milligrams, Netflix and Uber, urchins that have been bitten by the Oscar bug, Gertrude Stein, actors who can’t help but work for Disney, 11% margins of error, prominent mothers, languages other than English, people named Washington, vitamins, karate, colds, abecedarians, not sake, transportation costs, people born in Germany, freedom, profound thanks, the age of Love’s loss, movies with short names, food science, a question of trust, subjects of Suzanne Vega songs, and Shakespeare. Sadly, “Be Best” came too late for today’s pub quiz. Sorry, Melania!

I hope you can join us tonight, for I look forward to catching up with some friends. Speaking of friends, if you and your team can convince the largest number of friends to sign up for this free newsletter, I will reward your team this evening with a bread pudding. Remember to bring this to my attention before the kitchen closes!

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. Classic horror movies. What movie franchise debuted in 1980 and went on to have nine sequels between 1981 through 2001, a cross over movie in 2003, and a reboot in 2009?  

1. Countries of the World.  Justin Trudeau is the Prime Minister of Canada, but who is its head of state? 

1. Actors and Actresses. First name Joan, what Chinese-born actress who now lives in San Francisco came to prominence for her work on the film The Last Emperor? 

P.S. Thanks to Quizmaster stand-in James, whom I hear did a spirited and effective job substitute-hosting the Pub Quiz last week. It helps to entertain such many talented people when one is looking for substitute quizmasters. Thanks also to the team Quizzers with Attitude for giving up one of their strongest players. See you this evening!