Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
On this misty Monday morning, I just looked out the window and saw an elderly woman walking slowly across the park behind our house, using her cane for stability. About five yards behind her came her dog, dutiful and leashless; just now, the two of them turned onto the greenbelt to walk through the nearby woods. We have often encountered this kind woman when walking our own dog, or when strolling over to Safeway to buy some sunflower seeds. She always greets us with a smile, and with curious questions about our bulldog.
I much prefer this woman’s dog – quiet, loved and exercised – to our next-door neighbor’s dog. We get to hear that dog barking about its anguished isolation between 6 and 6:30 almost every morning. We have talked with the neighbor about our family’s strong preference for pre-dawn sleep, but to no avail. Now my 6:15 knocks on my neighbor’s door go unanswered. Let’s just say that we much prefer the first dog-lover, out on a silent stroll, to the second.
But during this week of Thanksgiving, perhaps I should be considering how I might express more wide-ranging gratitude, even for our unwelcome canine alarm clock. Sometimes the neighbor’s dog rouses me out of bed well before the sun, allowing me to get some writing done before I rouse my son Jukie and ready him for the school bus. Many people purposefully start their days with moments of solitary reflection, writing, or meditation. Thanks to our neighbor’s dog, such is the case for me. If I get some more solitary writing done before my family gets out of bed, then perhaps I should likewise be grateful to the neighbor who lets her dog out to bark at 6 AM, and then goes back to sleep.
Indeed, sometimes a disaster turns out to be a benefit. I remember reading somewhere that our evolution as a species was hastened by elephants knocking down the trees where our ancestors had been brachiating happily. Imagine the disruption! Whereas the anthropologist Stephen Jay Gould said that “Evolution is a process of constant branching and expansion,” the elephant theory holds that we couldn’t “expand” until we came down from our branches. This theory was referenced in my poem, “Cell Story,” part of which I excerpt here:
All the best predators
Had their fun before we got here, takings risks
And eating creatures with long memories
Who seemed eager to avenge the pain
Upon us, screaming brachiators,
Until the elephants knocked down our trees.
We stumbled blinking upon the savannah,
Many of us to be quickly eaten so that
A few, you know the ones, could
Express an analogous hunger, an urge
To imagine, to create, to make,
As they say, something out of our lives.
The elephants were an obvious disaster to the early hominids, except that our ancestors had to evolve more quickly to survive, growing our human brains so that we could outsmart predators, use tools, and communicate more effectively. Thinking long-term, we bipedal hominids should have been grateful to the elephants.
During the Thanksgiving holiday, many of us will be forced to address that other elephant in the room. We can expect that talk around the dinner table will turn to President-Elect Donald Trump, the self-congratulator in chief who, we have learned, plans to pack his White House with climate deniers and white supremacists, thus threatening the forward progress of our nation.
This past weekend Sacramento comedian Robert Berry tweeted this: “BREAKING NEWS: Donald Trump just appointed a new Secretary of Agriculture…locusts!” We joke, but the talk of Sarah Palin in any cabinet position might also have once seemed like a punch line. Now, many Americans silently worry, realizing that Steve Bannon’s plan for our country is all the more dangerous because of the vengeful and protean aimlessness of his Republican leader.
How might we respond to this seeming disaster? Will the nation somehow eventually benefit if it survives what many anticipate will be the coming bottomless basket of calamities? Australian author Helen Razer has said that “Perhaps it is only when America sees itself in all its cartoonish ugliness that it can begin to reform itself.” Confronting a force more destructive than a herd of elephants, some believe that Trump is just the “shock” that our democracy needs so that it, too, can evolve more quickly. I’m skeptical, but would like to hold out hope. As we gather with our families, our love for them unchanged, and perhaps even deepened, many are redefining gratitude with a shudder as we consider what has become of our nation.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about some of the topics raised above, as well as concert tours, sprites, badminton, national aspirations gone awry, inebriation, Colombia, underwater adventures, the end of candy, human similarities with other creatures, tiny fruits, famous Americans with Irish heritage, dresses, comic books, droplets, the metric system, associations with fronts, words with three o’s in them, counting tonsils, comedic pairings, the question of staying, a proper profile, space travel, wearable magic, American authors, time periods, champions, powerful women, rain, alternatives to “old,” Davis businesses, history lessons, pickles, internet schemes, and Shakespeare.
I hope you and your team can join us this evening. I love giving out prizes.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans. What General Mills product has used the slogan “I vant to eat your cereal!”?
- Internet Culture. The acronym DNS refers to the hierarchical decentralized naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. What does the D in DNS stand for?
- Newspaper Headlines. A top-notch news anchor has passed away today at the age of 61, one of the most prominent African-American women in the news. Name this host of the PBS News Hour whose last name starts with an I.
P.S. Happy Thanksgiving! Our next Poetry Night will feature Joshua Clover (Google him) on December 1st.