Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
As a child I found myself practicing grief in Paris, a city I have yet to visit.
At one time the saddest film I was allowed to see, and perhaps at times the most playful, was The Red Balloon by Albert Lamorisse. It presents a boy named Pascal who, at about the age I was when I first watched the film at summer camp, finds his only friend, a magical red balloon with a mind of its own. For 34 minutes of this short Oscar-winning 1956 film the red balloon follows Pascal through the Belleville neighborhood of Paris. Seemingly the boy’s only friend, the balloon joins the boy on many adventures before encountering a willful and violent end, as happens to many of our playthings. Sensitive and heartbroken for Pascal, I practiced grief while watching that film, exploring the pity and fear that Aristotle would come to warn me about.
Paris remained for me a city of beauty and magic that was marked by loss. An American in Paris, which I saw a year or two later, explored similar themes as the Lamorisse short, but with more dancing, and with kinder children. These films, and books with Paris settings that I had devoured during those years – I’m thinking of the Babar and Madeline book series – froze Paris for me at the mid-century, as if the city’s ancient cathedrals and majestic bridges would render it immune, and perhaps haughtily superior, to the noisy technologies of later eras. As was the case with my childhood hometown of Washington DC (which was modeled on Paris), citywide caps of tall buildings in the French capital would ensure that one could see the central Eiffel Tower, the sustaining symbol of an earlier age, from many distant Paris arrondissements.
Today the City of Lights, the city of cafes and art museums, of bridges and bookshops, this European mecca of culture, is wounded and reeling. We see the city and all of Europe just as we see our friends on social media, through our tears, and through the tricoleur flag of France. I remain grateful for the lessons our oldest ally taught our country’s founders about liberty, equality, and fraternity. In the spirit of all three, let us stand in solidarité with Paris during this dark hour. With candles in our windows, let every city be a city of lights.
At times of grief, we sometimes turn to the poets, those practiced at representing emotions deep and mixed. Here is a poem by the English poet and writer Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. It is titled “A New Pilgrimage: Sonnet VI”:
Away from sorrow! Yes, indeed, away!
Who said that care behind the horseman sits?
The train to Paris, as it flies to–day,
Whirls its bold rider clear of ague fits.
Who stops for sorrows? Who for his lost wits,
His vanished gold, his loves of yesterday,
His vexed ambitions? See, the landscape flits
Bright in his face, and fleeter far than they.
Away! away! Our mother Earth is wide;
And our poor lives and loves of what avail?
All life is here; and here we sit astride
On her broad back, with Hope’s white wings for sail,
In search of fortune and that glorious goal,
Paris, the golden city of our soul.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about honey, comedy, bank notes, towns in Kansas, second rounds, presidents on trains, our happier cousins, Avenger rankings, cinematic typecasting, protagonists of notable books, foreign languages, transportation (five questions), unsanctioned joy rides, the ends of kings and doctors, bicycling alternatives, mononyms, California’s Central Valley, ballroom dancing, lists that end with shrubbery, wallet stalwarts, Twitter followers, musical numbers, silver and gold, sequels, South African cooking, the dance charts, iPhone sales, Scrabble scores of 21, current events and Shakespeare. There will be no questions on Charlie Sheen.
Do come join us tonight at the Irish Pub. If you come early, you and your team will be given a table where you can sit to tell stories over a refreshing beverage. Raise a toast to the people of Paris.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Internet Culture. What does the fashion hash tag #OOTD stand for?
- U.S. States. The home state of the longest-serving US Congressman, John Conyers, is also the Cherry Capital of the United States and home to the largest limestone quarry in the world. Above the Mason-Dixon Line, what is this state of almost 10 million people?
- California Counties. The northwestern-most county in California has the largest percentage of residents living in economic distress. What is this county whose name starts with the letter D? Hint: Its name is the shortened Spanish nickname for “the land of the north.”
P.S. This coming Thursday I myself will be giving a poetry reading at the John Natsoulas Gallery. My old buddy Brad Henderson will join me. He and I, and I hope you, will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of our first poetry reading in downtown Davis, held in the E Street Plaza and sponsored by the Downtown Davis Business Association. Ten years of poetry readings, and it’s finally my turn! We start at 8, and it would be fun to see you there.