Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
I don’t know about you, but I have been so careful to keep my distance. Two of the five residents of my household have serious asthma, and now they are all back under one roof, so we have to stay coronavirus-free for as long as possible. (If you want to read about Kate’s adventure rescuing Geneva from Wisconsin, see her last four blog entries at http://kateduren.blogspot.com.)
Yesterday I biked to campus to pick up a lapel microphone that I will use when remotely teaching my classes starting next week. I went late yesterday afternoon because I figured that any remaining virus on doorknobs or other surfaces will likely have faded away over the weekend, but I still wore gloves in the office.
As I was arriving on campus at about 6 PM, I saw something I’ve never seen in 30 years of campus visits: a flock of ducks flying down Hutchison Drive, just a few feet above the pavement. Have they already grown used to the paucity of people walking or biking the streets of UC Davis? Soon they will stray from Putah Creek with impunity.
The re-emergence of wildlife is a well-known trope of post-apocalyptic literature. Will Smith hunts deer in Times Square in the beginning of I am Legend. In the novel I’m reading now, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, 20 years after a flu that wipes out 99.9% of humanity, two characters come across a pond at a former golf course and find it overflowing with fish. Sweeping a net across the top provides enough fish for an entire orchestra of musician-actors to dine well for once, that is, if they could be found.
All of us will have to take care of ourselves in different ways during the coronavirus lockdown. Memes are traveling about the internet concerning the look of various people’s self-inflicted haircuts that will take place in April and May of this year. Many women and men around my age will unwillingly reveal their natural hair color. Cars will go unrepaired and bicycle flats unfixed, with no Jump bikes available as alternatives. Lawns like mine will inch languidly towards their more natural state.
As the coronavirus crisis hits different communities, such as what has recently been announced in Texas, rudimentary doctor visits will be canceled or rescheduled. Just this morning my peanut-allergic daughter was exposed to some pea protein in the protein pancakes that she started to have for breakfast. A doctor friend ran over to our house to talk Geneva through her symptoms, and together we determined that this exposure is something that can be treated at home. Of course, not everyone has a world-class doctor within strolling distance at times like these, and our hospitals will soon be filled with others who also need help breathing.
Remote UC Davis classes start a week from today, and I have been recommending to my fellow faculty that they be kind to themselves and to their students by keeping the instruction as streamlined as possible. We will all get through this together, even if we cannot practice true togetherness for many more weeks or months.
There will be no pub quiz tonight, but I sent to newsletter subscribers an entire quiz from ten years and a day ago (with the answers). Before you read on, choose now who will be the Quizmaster in your home or for your group, for only that person should read below.
May you be well.
Your Quizmaster