Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Joseph Campbell called a hero “someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” Some of the people in the public eye these days see nothing as bigger than themselves, so they see no need for heroism. As Irish poet William Butler Yeats famously put it in his poem “The Second Coming,” “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
I was talking with my sons about heroes for three reasons this past weekend. First, we desperately need some heroes. “Amoral pranksters” and others invent conspiracy theories that are picked up and shared by media outlets that are widely-watched, especially in the White House. The decision today to send 5,200 U.S. troops to our southern border suggests (to me) the lack of moral leadership in the three branches of the federal government. If you need another example, Justice Kavanaugh was recently “Hailed as a Hero” when he visited his high school alma mater, Georgetown Prep. Meanwhile, some people are removing “Georgetown Prep” from their LinkedIn pages.
The second reason was our discussion of the response of UC Davis Chancellor Gary May to the awful hate crime in Pittsburgh, which the Anti-Defamation League called “the deadliest attack on Jews in American history.” I did not hear inspiring or unifying words in response to this attack from Washington (except for from President Obama), but I thought May struck the right tone, while also alluding to the pipe bombs sent to former presidents and other media and political figures, saying, “UC Davis is a diverse community comprised of individuals having many perspectives and identities. As I’ve had to state too often recently, intolerance of others is abhorrent. Hate cannot and will not win.” As we drove past the Chancellor’s residence on 5th Street yesterday, I reminded my son Truman that one can still find heroes, but often one must look in one’s own community.
Finally, we’ve been thinking about heroes because we’ve been thinking about puppy names. For a while, we imagined that our new French Bulldog puppy would be named “Ellie,” short for Eleanor Roosevelt Jones. When we picked her up (in Weed, California, of all places), we weren’t convinced that she looked like an Ellie. Eventually, after throwing around the names of a great number of female heroes, we decided on Margo/Margot, named after Margo Jones, the stage director who launched the regional theatre movement here in the U.S. One of my biggest heroes, my late father, Davey Marlin-Jones, won the Margo Jones Award for the advancement of American theatre in 1968, so we also honor him by choosing Margo/Margot Blue Jones for the name of our new dog.
When she’s old enough, we will bring her for some patio meals at de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis, California, a city full of quiet heroes.
In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about shrieks and squeals, movie characters, robots, battle noises, average point differentials, Nobel Prize nominees, fearsome creatures, outrageous salaries, joyful tunes, geometry, Frankenstein, people named Claire, immaturity, shadow warriors, insurance salesmen, guitarists, notable Brits, heroes and villains, knives, Sonny and Cher, exciting annoyances, anti-Henrys, an atom that can make a difference, current leaders, apologies, saboteurs with vegetarian diets, New York mayors, fish, prickly spines, fewer likes, worldwide automation, current events, bankers, musical anagrams, repeated phrases, and Shakespeare.
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Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Name the Decade. Charles Ingalls of Little House on the Prairie fame and game developer Milton Bradley were both born the same year as the Battle of the Alamo and the death of Betsy Ross. Name the decade.
- Science: Astronomy. What S-word fills in the blank in this astronomical sentence? “The Crab Nebula was the first astronomical object identified with a historical BLANK explosion.”
- Books and Authors. Stephen Chbosky wrote a coming-of-age novel titled The Perks of Being a WHAT?
P.S. Speaking of heroes, thanks to EVAN WHITE, the good friend who drove Kate all the way to Weed to pick up our new dog. His name is EVAN. Also, Poetry Night is Thursday at the Natsoulas Gallery. Also, the dog is the reason the newsletter is so late.