Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
“Christmas is over when I say it is.” A lovely woman said that to me yesterday, turning up the volume of the holiday music. Pandora users, we can listen to Christmas music all year, if we want to. Every genre has its own station. Kate prefers the sort of choral music that she sang in Chicagoland and Japan rather than mid-century pop holiday hits, so our home continues to be filled with beautiful voices, lifted in harmony.
Kate’s Mom left for the Chicago airport early Saturday morning, and she arrived (34 hours later) in Sacramento International Airport well after sundown Sunday evening. The path of her flight aligned precisely with the path of the storm system that was moving slowly across a huge swath of the Midwest yesterday. As the second leg of her four-city plane tour touched down in Dallas, so did deadly tornadoes, tossing cars around like rejected Christmas presents, and damaging hundreds of buildings. Measured in dollars, the freak storms probably did more damage than was earned by The Force Awakens during the same time period, and that is saying a lot. Today, as I write, strong blizzards are descending upon New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, compelling governors to declare states of emergency throughout the southwest. And in Chicago, as a friend recently informed us on Facebook, it is “raining ice.”
We think of those afflicted by this awful weather as we gather for our second post-December 25th Christmas here in south Davis. My early morning composing time remains calm. Grammy Jo has earned her sleep, and my son Truman is pacing the living room, eyeing the last remaining presents under the tree, those that Jo had sent before her trip, and which she will watch the kids open in a couple hours. I think this time of the year – Boxing Day, and then this peaceful interregnum between Christmas and New Year’s Eve – is one of the most peaceful and anticipated in our house. I need such peace if I am going to keep up with my poetry responsibilities, such as those featured on the front page of last Wednesday’s Davis Enterprise.
Also on this break I get to spend time deep-reading something other than student essays and reports on learning management systems, Kate and I consider whether the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD is appropriate for the children, and we greet other recovering families out walking the greenbelts of Davis, happy to have the consumerist intensity of Christmas morning behind us. Perhaps during this unhurried time with the family we will revisit the Arboretum, stop by the Pence Gallery (which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year), and return to the Irish Pub for a huge salad with eggs and avocados. My email traffic drops to about 10% of normal during the holiday break, indicating that most of the people who need something from me are, as the Steve Miller Band says, “right here, right here, right here, right here at home.” I hope the same is true for you.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on The Golden Gate Bridge, the effect of Donald Trump in New Hampshire, The Labrador Peninsula, baseball, oils, influenza, birds with naming rights, Bruce Springsteen, continents, American potentates, Instagram, the habits of snakes, heroes from Connecticut, varnishes, shadows, horses, yellow hammers, defeats, Los Angeles neighborhoods, masks, remaining territories, unlikely bobsledders, the remaining splendor of departed princes, joyous employers, star-gazing, Polynesia, informal capitals, invented economic headlines, Star Wars, political thrillers, talking bears, stadiums, dark chocolate, the practices of avatar wing sororities, selfie sticks, listening devices, centripetal forces, rejected shadows, mobility in the south, and Shakespeare.
Typically the last Pub Quiz of the year contains “year-end” questions that help us reflect on the ending year. You might remember this one from last year: “What are the five letters in the name of the Russian city where the 2014 Winter Olympics took place?” I’m sure that many great things happened in 2015 – one thinks of marriage equality in the U.S., for example – but with the deaths of B.B. King and Philip Levine, the rise of our national “shock jock” of boorish xenophobia, and acts of terrorism here and abroad, I have forgone this annual tradition. Instead expect five questions on one of the topics mentioned above.
I’ve really enjoyed the time we have spent together this year. I hope you can join us tonight of the last Pub Quiz of 2015!
Your Quizmaster
https://www.yourquizmaster.com
http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster
http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster
Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Actresses. Born in 1980, what actress and singer played the title roles in Veronica Mars and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, as well as the voice of Anna in the film Frozen?
- Sports. Who was the NBA Rookie of the Year in 2004, the NBA scoring champion in 2008, and the AP Athlete of the Year in 2013?
- Science. The name of the fifth most common tree in the US is an anagram of the common phrase SQUEAKING PAN. Name the tree.
P.S. Thanks to Senator and Mayor Wolk and their team for joining us at the Pub Quiz last week. When local celebrities join us, whether it be Bob Dunning, John Lescroart, or the Wolk family, I always give them a hard time, joshing with them about their eminent status in the community or bringing up some mild controversy in local politics or public affairs. Does such treatment incentivize their Pub Quiz participation with just the attention that many celebrities crave, or do these mild and incidental roasts make them think twice before returning to de Vere’s on a Monday night? Time will tell.