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 13th. 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.
- 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.”
- 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.
- 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.”