Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
What’s a summer for, anyway? Henry James says that “summer afternoon” are “the two most beautiful words in the English language.” If that’s true, we might each look to summer for different reasons.
Some look to the summer for what it doesn’t offer: ongoing responsibilities, the burden of ongoing productivity, all the open loops that we need to close in order to be making progress. Others define summer positively, as a chance to grow, to evolve. Remembering lessons from summer camp, we seek to develop new skills. We might spend time discovering or recommitting to a musical instrument (my son Truman practices his saxophone every morning), or learning a language (preferably in the faraway country where it is spoken), or taking a class in something creative (such as at our own Davis Arts Center).
Others prefer to learn, to grow in less social or structured settings. One can rent audiobooks online from our own Davis branch of the Yolo County Library – they make excellent company for a long nature walk. Just this morning, I signed our family up for Amazon Music Unlimited, meaning that each of our devices, and everything that answers to the name “Alexa” around our house, can play any song we can imagine or remember. We will see if any of us feel overwhelmed by having too many choices. Today I have been listening to Duke Ellington.
Others choose to socialize, to catch up with friends and relations whom we neglect during the past year of work. For example, this coming weekend I look forward to enjoying long conversations over wine with a best friend from college, and her Lithuanian-born husband. They open up their San Diego home to us every time we visit, and give us tours of the best sights of what some call the “City in Motion.” According to two new studies covered in the New York Times, we should all keep in motion this summer, at least by taking walking tours the areas that we drive to. As I say when I hear a new favorite book calling me, I need to earn that time of rest, usually with the kettlebell.
I bet that you have earned a break this summer. I will take mine in the coming week (thanks to James for guest-hosting the Pub Quiz in my absence next Monday), and it will reward me with new books and music, with time spent with old friends and treasured family members, and with stories that will fill my memories and future newsletters. I hope to see you tonight, and two weeks from tonight, so that we can make our own memories.
Until then,
Your Quizmaster
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Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
1. Books and Authors. The first woman to win two National Book Awards for fiction has MRS. JAN DEWY as an anagram of her name, not that you should need that. Who is this author of Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing?
2. Film. Who played the mom in the 2003 remake of the Disney film Freaky Friday? Jamie Lee Curtis
3. Countries of the World. The prime number of official languages in South Africa is the same number that appears on the first manned spacecraft to land on the moon. What is that number? (Apollo) 11
P.S. “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.” Natalie Babbitt
P.P.S. Do you mind finding the hints down here? I hope not. This evening expect questions on favorite colors, dating features, doomsdays, garden tools, famous sailors, neutralizations, natterings of compromise, signs, unusual boys, carpool options, stories by Lucas, consistent kicks, leather, whips without chains, trending kings, wakefulness, film debuts, ABC, massive numbers, Star Wars stories, descending waters, keeping the home fires burning, the benefits of chaos, household devices, dishonest words, British words, South American exports to America, ants, baseball teams, piano concertos, belts in America, imported K words, and Shakespeare. See you tonight!