Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
One of my favorite quotations by the current Dalai Lama is a long one: “Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.”
Yesterday I came across someone who sought to benefit others. It seems that an entire high school robotics team was visiting Davis for a competition, and all 20 of them (including drivers and chaperones) got in line at the south Davis Guadalajara just before my son Jukie and I arrived at one of our favorite places to dine outside. We beheld the unusually long line and secured a table.
Jukie doesn’t mind waiting for me outside of Mexican restaurants while I go in to place our burrito order, especially during this era when I try to keep our little obsessive anti-masker out of all public buildings. Once while I was placing an order at Dos Coyotes, I came out to the patio and was told by four elderly women at a table close to Jukie’s that they so delighted in hearing the crooning sounds he was making, as if he were warming up for an operatic performance.
Like any of us, Jukie sings to bring himself pleasure. His inability to form actual words with his singing or speaking voice does not keep him from exercising his vocal cords, and on our long walks (we did about eight miles together yesterday), I let him sing as much as he wants.
In and outside restaurants, however, or when I am taking a particularly important phone call, I use sign language to tell Jukie that he needs to quiet down. Yesterday, however, while I was standing in line about 30 feet from my boy, I could not convince him to keep quiet, and diners at the other tables were noticing. Liberated by the physical distance between himself and his minder, Jukie was yodeling louder than Heidi.
That’s when a dad in line behind me told me that I should go sit with my boy, and that he would wave me down when it was time for me to order. So I thanked him and then walked right over to Jukie, giving him a kiss on the top of his head, and then texted to my wife Kate that our town is filled with such kind people, proclaiming “It’s like that dad just handed me a Disneyland fast pass!”
So today I salute this man, his parents, and even his out-of-town robotics team, all in their matching T-shirts. At a time when war is ravaging Ukraine, Yemen, and Ethiopia; when partisan divides escalate caustic rhetoric; and when judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is berated for a variety of issues and past events that have nothing to do with her or her work on the bench, we need more people like this “good and decent man” who, as Ted Kennedy said at his brother Robert’s funeral, “saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it.”
I bet you will have an opportunity to act compassionately towards a stranger, whether that person be a refugee on the other side of the world or a person you encounter in town who could use your help. I hope you will act on that opportunity, for, as Anne Frank wrote, “No one has ever become poor by giving.”
Thanks to new Patreon patron Brooke who will be enjoying weekly trivia questions in San Diego. Like my friend James Lee Jobe, I will sometimes use Patreon to share new poems. National Poetry Month starts in a few days, and all of us should feel invited to participate. I hope to write a poem a day next month, and I will be posting at least a poem a week for you and other subscribers to review. Join us there to enjoy all this sweet content!
This week’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as on the following: staying ahead, texts from a new widow, athletes named Michael, moral banks, California governors, sonnets, flames, the state of Virginia, neighbors, founding fathers and mothers, collateral, examples of rockabilly, poems for departed friends, push-ups, desalination projects, inadvertently destructive oafs, secret sharers, monarchs to cheer for, pilots, Academy Awards, big cities, citron dust storms, country music, people named Fred, underwater monsters, brackets, wedding receptions, foods and drinks, book collections, current events, and Shakespeare.
Stay safe, and welcome to springtime!
Dr. Andy
P.S. Find here three questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:
- Books and Authors. Zelda Fitzgerald, Erich Fromm, and Margaret Mitchell were all born in the same year ending with a zero. Name the year.
- Greek Mythology. In Greek mythology, what is the name of the Cretan princess who is best known for having helped Theseus escape the Minotaur?
- Science. What do we call baby peacocks and peahens?