Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Cicero said that “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.” Confronting death at every turn, I have been exercising my memory this past week, as I suppose a good poet should.
Last Monday while hosting the Pub Quiz I received word that a longtime colleague and an important figure to the cultural life UC Davis and the City of Davis had passed away unexpectedly from the cancer that she had been battling over the last year. UC Davis web editor and Sunrise Rotary stalwart Susanne Rockwell brought encouragement and cheer with her wherever she went, as well as a discerning intellect. Looking over emails and social media messages from Susanne and her husband Brian, I find statements of appreciation for the various Rotary events that I had hosted or contributed to over the years. No doubt many people benefitted from her goodwill, for over 400 friends, colleagues and admirers attended her celebration of life Saturday. Hers is a great loss to our city. At the end of this newsletter, I will share the poem that I wrote and performed for Susanne’s service.
While I was listening to the eloquent speakers at that service, I received word that venerable local poet and retired Sacramento City College Professor Jerry Fishman had died. Jerry came often to the Poetry Night Reading Series that I run on first and third Thursday nights, challenging listeners with long poems that were delightfully informed by urban and radical sensibilities.
I celebrate the lives of these friends, but in the newsletter today I am going to take a moment to remember my Uncle Roy Meachum, a veteran columnist and broadcast journalist who contributed mightily to my life in over five decades, and who died on Wednesday, the 21st of February. He is notable for what he did – he was a script-writer for First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, he was a TV and radio broadcaster in Washington D.C., and he was a thoughtfully-progressive columnist for a number of paper and online newspapers, most notably for 20+ years at the Frederick News Post. But Uncle Roy was also famous for the people he knew. He had a close friendship with, among many others, Duke Ellington and with Jack Valenti, the man who brought us the actual movie rating system we use today when he was president of the Motion Picture Association of America.
If you are curious, you could review this column, one of hundreds, on time that Uncle Roy spent with Bob Hope and Danny Kaye during World War II. Here’s another favorite, titled “White House Days,” in which Uncle Roy recounts his conversations with Mamie Eisenhower, Jessica Tandy, Helen Hayes, and Marian Anderson. My mom even appears in this one, as Roy accompanied her to a Ford White House function when my father was out of town. Although Roy recognized friends on the White House staff, the post-Watergate tone was much different from what he had remembered in that same building when Johnson was in charge.
Having been born in 1926 in New Orleans, Roy once told me that a kindly and impossibly old African-American man named Joseph who took care of him when he was a little boy. Also from New Orleans, Joseph had been born into slavery. I tell that story to my students whenever I make the point that slavery in America and the War Between the States are not as distant as we would like to think. I typically finish that anecdote by saying, “And my Uncle Roy is still alive!” Now I will need to give that story a new ending.
Rest in Peace, Roy Meachum. Thanks for being a kind and intellectually energetic uncle for decades before you actually married my Aunt Sharon. In Frederick, Davis, and St. Petersburg, you will be missed.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will touch upon topics raised above, and also pose questions on the following: Rivets, authors named Emily, the Winter Olympics, toast, U.S. News and World Report, world capitals, names with seemingly too many vowels, mythical creatures, other newspapers, best-selling authors of the 19th century, bodies of water, rejected heroes, the futility of quietness, big cities, congress people, ice baby, notable professions, name changes, China and the definition of “east,” exports, blowing winds, notable playwrights, Yolo County, Russian favorites, girls who deserve a shout-out, the south, Canada harbors, popular TV, people named Hamilton, late animators, Redding, successful Republicans, a few topics I haven’t chosen yet, and Shakespeare.
Poetry Night offers a wide-open mic this coming Thursday, March 1st. Bring a musical instrument or a poem to the John Natsoulas Gallery at 8 P.M. We would love to see you on stage.
See you tonight!
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Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans: California Edition. The new slogan of the home county of Disneyland is “Around the Corner, Ahead of the Curve.” Name the county.
- Internet Culture. The acronym PDF most commonly stands for what?
- Newspaper Headlines. Finish this recent headline with a proper name that starts with S. “Apple Shipped More Watches than BLANK in Q4 2017.” Hint: 11 letters.
P.S. Here’s the poem I read for Susanne Rockwell on Saturday:
Susanne’s Smile
(for Susanne Rockwell, 1952-2018)
Bathed in California sunshine,
a book in her hand,
a smiling ginger traveler sits on the dock,
her feet submerged
in the waters of a still pond.
She is surrounded by family,
some of them also her relatives.
“Families” sprouted around her,
whether they be international young tourists visiting her home,
her Friday morning Rotary buddies,
charged with incrementally saving the world,
or the coworkers whom she mentored atop the administrative building.
They were all drawn to her automatic smile.
The pond that submerged the feet of the ginger traveler
a book in her hand,
is filled with the still waters of compassion.
Look how she kicks with glee, how she roils the pond’s waters,
creating wave upon wave of benevolence, of kind-heartedness.
The waves splash upon the ankles of members of her family,
some in Spain, some in Maine, some on nearby shores.
She’s gone now,
but the ginger traveler’s waves in the still waters,
fueled by kindness, attention, and memory,
still roll outward in ever-growing concentric circles.
The traveler’s waves of compassion continue to comfort,
continue to inspire smiles almost as wide as hers,
continue to envelop us all.