Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Do you ever wonder what people will say about you at your funeral? Yesterday I attended a celebration of life of France Kassing, a friend I made through KDVS, our Davis campus and community radio station. France had started her public affairs program a year or so before I began mine (at the end of the last century), and thus she was one of the veteran hosts who had welcomed me into the radio community of learned talkers with disparate interests.
France shared what would become appreciated and needed broadcasting advice with me back in 2000, but more notably, she shared with me and everyone who knew her a wide smile and a kind demeanor. Although France struggled with the multiple sclerosis that eventually took her life, moving from a cane to a walker to a wheelchair over the course of the first several years that I knew her, her smile never flagged.
While France had to figure out how to work with mobility challenges, her most important work was changing and expanding the minds of her listeners, infusing the progressive attitudes shared on her radio show with book-learning and sustaining compassion for her guests, her callers, and her KDVS colleagues. A commitment to engaged talk radio was evidenced by the patient and perceptive ear that she brought to every interaction. As I was often reminded at the Davis Farmers Market, France always remembered a friend’s previous conversation, whether from the previous week or the previous year, making you feel during your minutes with her that you were at the center of her awareness. Her show was aptly titled It’s About You.
At France’s funeral service, people repeated the words and concepts that I have exemplified above, speaking of France’s kindness, her attention, her compassion, her ready laughter and wit, her commitment to progressive ethics, and her smile. Neither wealthy nor famous, neither authoritarian nor intimidating, France lived a life of principle, service, and joy, and thus she was rich, indeed. We might all consider ways to emulate her example so our acts of kindness could be recharged and relived in the people who tell our stories at our funerals.
In addition to topics raised above, tonight expect questions on long words, zoology, Ace Hardware, valves, companies that care, lineages, French pastries, the youth of South America, chiefs, baseball greats, writers with high expectations, alkaline batteries, light slips and other categories, movies that tower over other films, life lessons, musicians working in nature, magical synonyms, negotiators, false Irish actors, science fiction TV with haircuts, goblets (not goblins), tutors, men or Muppets, musical instruments, Dungeons and Dragons adventurer professions, coffin nails, power shortages, and Shakespeare. Tonight we will have ten or more visitors from different Universities of California, so I added a couple questions just for them. Everyone should score in double digits tonight.
Poetry Night takes place Thursday night at 8 at the Natsoulas Gallery. Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas has a new book out from Finishing Line Press: Epitaph for the Beloved. Opening for Grellas will be former Sacramento poet laureate Bob Stanley. You should also join us.
Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing you tonight. If you are bringing new players, please let me know so I can meet and welcome them properly.
Your Quizmaster
P.S. Did you know that some of my pub quiz questions appear in the Davis Enterprise every Sunday? I hope you are supporting local journalists, whether they work in print or radio. Someone has to stand up for us, and often it will be them. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz.
- Mottos and Slogans. What brand of deodorant and body wash enticed men with the hilarious slogan “Smell Like a Man, Man”?
- Internet Culture. Launched in 2010, what social medium is currently floating the idea of removing the public visibility of likes on posts?
- Newspaper Headlines. As we were reminded by 50th-anniversary celebrations this week, what was the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon?
P.P.S. “Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.” George Sand