Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
We are facing a darker Christmas than most. Inflation and omicron infection numbers are up. We look to legislators to come up with policies to address the problems we face as a nation, and as a world, but the stultifying conflicts continue, both within and between our political parties. The media coverage perseverates insatiably on scandal, conflict, and other forms of bad news.
Meanwhile, families are focusing on negotiating travel, visits, and potential covid exposure. The nationwide infighting about health education concerns has spilled into conversations at grandma’s house, where political differences are reflected in the political slogans affixed to the masks we wear, if we wear masks at all. I have heard it said that people with only two shots are not really vaccinated at all – some won’t let distant cousins in for Christmas dinner unless they have three stickers on their vaccination cards. I know a number of Davisites who “haven’t gotten around” to getting their booster shots, and now omicron a resulting better chance to take hold in our community. We have learned that this new variant, an expert at breakthroughs, will actually send more of us to our beleaguered hospitals, but at least it will kill a smaller percentage of us while we are there.
This is cold comfort, as Shakespeare’s Grumio says in The Taming of the Shrew when discussing hearths and fireplaces: “But wilt thou make a fire, or shall I complain on thee to our mistress, whose hand, she being now at hand, thou shalt soon feel, to thy cold comfort, for being slow in thy hot office?” On this, the darkest week of the year in the northern hemisphere, cold comfort is the only sort of comfort we can look forward to. Although Cleopatra spoke fluent Greek (to Antony, among others), Shakespeare likely knew almost no Greek. Meanwhile, as Shakespeare will do if you give him a chance, the pandemic has updated our vocabularies. Before this is done, even people outside fraternities and sororities will have learned all the letters of the Greek alphabet.
Of course, we don’t know when this will be done. We learned this week that what was once called an epidemic, and which we know as the ongoing pandemic, may soon be classified as an endemic, that is, with no end date predicted. As NBC News said this morning, “Covid is here for good, scientists say.” I wonder when lawyers, detectives, and gangsters on TV shows, and superheroes and couples on first dates in our movies, will be touching elbows and masking up, if only in an attempt for verisimilitude. Ours is a Zoom era.
Who knows if the topic of the coronavirus will be barred from holiday table conversations this week, as is sometimes the case with religion and politics. If you have read thus far, and were looking for something bright and cheery for my holiday newsletter, you might have wished that I banned the topic myself.
Consider this consolation. Maybe it’s easy for me to say this, for I have already seen the new Spider-Man movie (and which my brother Oliver reviewed with zero spoilers), but the simpler joys that await us this holiday season often end up being more meaningful and memorable than those that depend upon big screens and frenetic schedules. Go for a walk outside. Read a new book of poetry. Play a game (perhaps this week’s trivia game courtesy of Dr. Andy) with the people in your home. If omicron remains an obstacle, friends and family will forgive you for breaking your plans.
Broken plans may mean a moment of reflection, a feeling of freedom, and a sigh of relief. As the comedian John Mulaney said to a pre-covid crowd that gathered for one of this shows, it’s easy not to do things: “I really do appreciate you coming to a thing because you didn’t have to, and it’s really easy not to go to things. It is so much easier not to do things than to do them, that you would do anything is totally remarkable. Percentage-wise, it is 100% easier not to do things than to do them. And so much fun not to do them, especially when you are supposed to do them. In terms of, like, instant relief, cancelling plans is like heroin. It is an amazing feeling. Such instant joy.”
The weather forecasters promised cold rain all through the week, but I see that the sun has come out, and that the temperature is in the mid-50s. Depending on your attitude, and if you can step away from the (bad) news for a little while, today’s warmer temperatures might be a metaphor for the last week of our year. As Emily Brontë once said, “And from the midst of cheerless gloom / I passed to bright unclouded day.” To all of you who celebrate, Merry Christmas.
The people who support the Pub Quiz every month are a great gift to me, for they make these newsletters and the trivia contests possible. Please consider a Patreon sponsorship of the Pub Quiz as a last-minute gift for someone who loves trivia. $10 a month gets you 52 quizzes a year, over 1500 new questions about topics that are worth thinking about. Thanks especially to the members of Quizimodo, The Outside Agitators, and The Original Vincibles.
This week’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, and on the following: Days to read books, Tom Cruise, famous parks, supervillains, unusual holidays, enclosures, big data, winter starts, the Super Bowl era, non-fiction breakthroughs, literary sons, eardrums, little rivers, inconvenient oil wells, areas south of Mexico, languages, Sondheim compositions, the homes of hermit actresses, Cuban-Americans, look-alike wars, anti-racists, people named Stephen, figs, deans with lines, surprising natives, American counties, ducks, big companies, current events, and Shakespeare.
Be well.
Dr. Andy
P.S. Here are three question’s from last week’s quiz:
- Four for Four. Which two of the following four books were published in 1922: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Little House in the Big Woods (Little House, #1) by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot?
- Islands of the World. The third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia starts with the letter B. Name it.
- Baby Names. Of all the baby names chosen in 2020, almost twice as many began with the letter A, the most common baby name letter, as the letter J, the second most common. Next came M, E, and L. What letter came last, meaning that the fewest 2020 baby names started with this letter?