Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
“You can’t always get what you want,” the song says. Sometimes we just might find that we don’t want what we thought we wanted. We might find that we want, and were granted, something better.
Last night at the Davis Shakespeare Festival yearly “Bard-BQ,” I learned that Yolo was once a dry county, even though the campus University Club was technically in Solano County, meaning that faculty could order alcoholic beverages on campus at a “club” that barred non-faculty.
At one point, the one-mile buffer around the Davis city limits for alcohol purchases was lengthened to five miles. Why? Because students at the university “farm” were riding their horses – their HORSES – to the watering holes outside the city, and then ventured back towards town and campus with beverages for their friends. I assumed that the patient and stalwart horses involved drank only water at these watering holes.
Steve Jobs once had horses in mind when quoting Henry Ford:
Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!'” People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.
When a pair of close friends offered us their orchestra section tickets to see Béla Fleck at the Mondavi Center Friday night, Kate and I jumped at the chance. We had seen Fleck perform in the same venue in 2017, with that show called “The Real Nashville: The Del McCoury Band & Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn.” Although I prefer my real Nashville in moderation, both these groups were undeniably talented. And my wife Kate was in heaven. After all, she had given our youngest son the middle name of “Banjo.” The sound of the instrument makes her and most of us happy.
Always ready to support Kate, I had mild qualms that we’d be experiencing similar good ol’ boy twang that we so enjoyed during Fleck’s last visit. Luckily this time Béla Fleck was traveling with Zakir Hussain, one of India’s most celebrated performers of the tabla drum. I have long loved Indian music, probably ever since George Harrison introduced me and other listeners to the sitar more than 50 years ago. I have listened to many Ravi Shankar recordings without knowing that I was also listening to Zakir Hussain, and I loved the soundtrack to the Bernardo Bertolucci film Little Buddha, which I taught earlier this year in my “Buddhism and Film” class, without knowing that Hussain had performed on that, too.
To my mind, Zakir Hussain stole show, and I was grateful for the public act of larceny. Sitting on his elevated platform with four or more hand drums before and around him, this percussionist was witty, graceful, encouraging, and, as a performer, masterful. I’m listening to a record of his as I write this, grateful for the opportunity to broaden (and deepen) my repertoire of favorite musicians.
We discussed the night of music during intermission and during the drive home. Kate wanted more banjo and less of everything else – there was also a stand-up bass player and an Indian flutist, both of whom could keep up with the consummate headliners with whom they shared the stage – but I wanted more of what I discovered, tabla drumming and Indian-inflected music, and I got it.
As my favorite Russian novelist says, “It’s life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.” I wish for you many acts of discovery this week.
In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following: visual acuity, Indian solenoids, languages at home, feminists in their fields, actresses whose movies have grossed over a billion dollars, sleepers, royalty, veganism (even outside California), northern and southern idols, new freedoms, Kings with working-class jobs, Chardonnays, Irish settings without dogs, languages, underrated benches, Americans of German heritage, one-word titles, favorite drinks, American obsessions, the hurt of a smoldering burn that finally catches fire, curatorial identities, Pennsylvania, names that end with “O,” cultivated trees, mercenaries, midnight in Belfast, existentialism, and Shakespeare.
I hope you can join us this evening for the Pub Quiz!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are three questions from a 2013 quiz:
- Science. According to the website Biology-Online.Org, what H word could be defined as “The disappearance of responsiveness to accustomed stimulation”?
- Books and Authors. Of the 17 novels published by this author, the B novels are titled Breakfast of Champions and Bluebeard. Name the author.
- Current Events – Names in the News. When asked today to comment on the Nobel Peace Prize—which was awarded to the UN group currently working to dismantle chemical weapons arsenals—what Syrian ruler quipped that it “should have been mine”? For this one, I will provide you the answer: Bashar al-Assad
P.S. “Part of the problem with the word ‘disabilities’ is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can’t feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren’t able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.” Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember