Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
For some reason, I was thinking this morning that I know what I was doing 30 years ago this month, but not necessarily 20 years or ten years ago this month. Regular Facebook users get reminders as to what they were posting on this date in years past, and I suppose some of us keep diaries or really detailed calendars. Unless you have the eidetic memory of Marilu Henner, only a big change will remind you definitively of the details surrounding a particular time in your distant past.
For example, I remember well my first week wearing a polyester tuxedo to my usher job at the Tenley Circle Theatre (at 16), my first week exploring Boston as a new college student (18), my first trip driving with my friend smoker Bob from Washington DC to the coastal redwoods of California (20), or my first week living with my future wife Kate at 45 England’s Lane, NW3 (also 20). We pay such close attention during times of change, times of novelty, times of discovery.
Sometimes remembering a particular month so clearly is no blessing. In the same month that my father passed away, my son Jukie underwent double eyelid reconstruction surgery, and I was told that one of my positions on campus was coming to an end. I remember the details of particular days during that month too well, but I also recognize that often we learn and grow the most during time of great difficulty. While no one could ever replace my dad, or erase the heartache I feel from his loss, at least Jukie’s eyes haven’t needed touch-up surgery (as we told would be the case for his ptosis repair). And I have accepted a succession of even more rewarding positions at UC Davis since that fateful month in 2004.
30 years ago this month I was beginning my final semester as an undergraduate at Boston University, and as I told myself and anyone who would listen, it would also be the first semester that I would approach with the intensity of a graduate student. I was taking four classes for credit, and four others, including a graduate course, for my own edification. I remember being so enamored with what I was learning from the books I was reading then. As Fahrenheit 451 teaches us, “The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”
Thirty years ago this month, I would head to the library every night to read the books that would appear on the GRE Literature in English Test (I eventually earned a score in the 99th percentile, and I still remember some of the questions I was asked). And every day I took some time to write Kate a letter, an even more important investment in my future than the GREs. In May of 1989, Presidents Bush and Mitterrand spoke at my graduation ceremony, and then I filled my pumpkin-orange Datsun B210 with books, pointed it west, and stopped only when I reached North Berkeley, my new home.
Mark Twain says that an education is what you have left over after you’ve forgotten everything you learned in school. I am grateful for everything I learned in school, for I find it still to be relevant today, either on the job, or Monday evenings with friends and a microphone. I’m also grateful for the education provided by memorable moments, and the friends and now family members who have filled them. A life is made not from the details of what we remember, though as a poet I am grateful for all the imagery that I can continue to call upon, but from the intensity of the love and the laughter we can spark, and participate in. For you, I wish that your February turns out to be intense and memorable for all the right reasons.
Tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on some topics raised above, as well as the following: women with brothers and fathers, the backstroke, dragons, made-up slogans, liberators, small margins, televised simulcasts, blowhards, cell phone addicts, eye doctors, state capitals, Scottish exports, the state of our union, Canadian imports, an expected topic, esteemed British poets, opening ceremonies, odds and chances, fetched sandwiches that allow one to keep writing, firework finales, the names of popular musical groups, destination bridges, traditional meals, George Takei, finding water, ship captains, truths and falsities coming from Donald Trump, CNN scoops, squares with four corners, scientific patent holders who are pitchers in Arabia, elopements, too many zoos, prejudicial support, final quartiles, early aspirin, baseball, and Shakespeare.
See you tonight!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Books and Authors. In his most important essay, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” What is the title of this essay?
- Sports. Recently elected unanimously to the Baseball Hall of Fame, what New York Yankee pitcher’s 652 career saves is considered by baseball statisticians to be an unbreakable record?
- Shakespeare. What proper name appears in the largest number of Shakespeare plays, at six?
And here’s a question that was recommended by a friend of the Pub Quiz, but which I decided was too hard: “Of the people who claim Assyrian heritage, a majority live in Syria and what other country?” Answer: Iraq
P.S. Poetry Night is Thursday. You should attend! 8 PM at the Natsoulas Gallery.