Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
An old friend with a strong, stentorian voice will join us this evening as the guest Quizmaster. Jason is a pop culture enthusiast, and a reader of great books and small, some of them with pictures. He has a penetrating acumen, a sharp wit, and an occasional flair for the dramatic. Captain of the Hall of Fame team “The Penetrators,” he is remembered well by teams who aspired to second place.
Once a year I take a Monday off in April to participate in the annual evening of poetry and art at the MIND Institute in Sacramento. Featuring poets and authors whose lives have been touched by autism, the event raises money for the research and outreach work of the Institute, through sales of art and books, and through donations made by people who are granted emotional highs and lows provided by the assembled poets, and who then want to help.
Regular readers of this newsletter know that my most recent book, written with my wife Kate, is part of our year-round effort to raise money for similar research. All proceeds from book sales of Where’s Jukie? are donated to the Smith Lemli Opitz Foundation to support research into this rare syndrome. As the volunteer Communications Director of the Foundation, Kate also counsels concerned parents around the world, many of whom are just learning of the syndrome after discussions with a doctor in the maternity ward. Tonight Kate will read a stirring essay about both time travel and living in the moment. If you can join us tonight at 7 in Sacramento, bring some Kleenex!
As it is National Poetry Month, I have been steeped in verse, even more than usual. Yesterday I wrote a poem about the time that Joseph Campbell helped me find my bicycle. It’s not about autism, except insofar that poems about children with autism are always adventure narratives. How will the young man with autism leave home to begin his quest? Is he not an expert at “living the questions,” as the poet Rilke teaches us to be? As a poet and dad, I am still fiddling with these ideas — they will have to addressed more thoroughly a year from tonight. The final reader at this event, I will read my long poem, “The Last Pterodactyl,” and a few poems from Where’s Jukie? As I might have said in the previous paragraph, you are welcome to join us.
If you wish not to leave Davis, but still want to do your part for poetry, tomorrow night at 7:30 Paul Breslin and Jeanne Foster will read at 126 Voorhies Hall (at 1st and A Streets). That event featuring accomplished poets and professors is sponsored by the UC Davis Department of English. And then Thursday the John Natsoulas Gallery and I will welcome Mary Zeppa, Bob Stanley, and Bob Stanley’s banjo. As Bob says in one poem, “the banjo was always ready to embrace the boy with its staccato tones.” Join us Thursday for the warm embrace of poetry.
Actually, a warm embrace is more than most of you want from poetry. Such people are encouraged to sit in the back of the Natsoulas Gallery on Thursday at 8, arms crossed, and resist. I wager that something you hear that night will woo you. And then the after-party starts at 10.
For tonight’s Quiz, Jason has written questions both tricky and tantalizing. Expect him to cover topics such as corporate sexism, emoji, celebrity painters, helpful robots, sweetness, space travel, middle names, champions, remedies, British singers, surnames, fan fiction, tetralogies, islands, cars, surprising continents, clothing, logos, honest stewards, California aspirations, railway traffic, pronunciations, deliberative bodies, scryers, the waters of the Caribbean, weak minds and strong, and Shakespeare.
I hope you can join Jason or me tonight for a different sorts of adventure. I will be back next week.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans. What is the most famous two-word commercial tagline of the California Milk Processor Board?
- Canada. Home to its capital and largest city, St. John’s, what is the most easterly province of Canada?
- Pop Culture – Music. What singer joined Boyz II Men for the 1995 single “One Sweet Day,” a song that spent a record 16 weeks at number one on the Hot 100 list?
- Sports. The first Westminster Kennel Club show was first held on May 8, 1877, making it the second-longest continuously held sporting event in the United States. What is the oldest, originally held in 1875?
- Great Americans. Who said “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”?