Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Where does courage come from? In part, from those who inspire us. March finds me thinking about mentors the way that supermarkets find Ginsberg thinking about Whitman.
Have your read Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California”? It’s the most famous of his Berkeley poems from when he lived on Milvia Street, not far from my own Berkeley neighborhood when I moved there 35 years after the poem’s composition.
The poem begins this way.
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles
full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! — and you,
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the
meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
Later in the poem, Ginsberg’s speaker calls Walt Whitman his “lonely old courage-teacher.” On March 2nd I think always of my own (young) courage teacher, and my closest childhood friend, a boy named Tito.
My constant companion, Tito taught me about not only courage, but also about curiosity, audacity, humor, and action. Tito had a bias towards action, moving always towards some goal or another: a girl he was courting, a running goal he was achieving, an artistic goal he was exploring, a philosophical goal that he was considering. I remember visiting him in his Hartford dorm-room, and answering his questions about T.S. Eliot (whom I was studying that semester). I remember wondering how, as a double major in philosophy and physics, Tito knew so much about poetry.
Incessantly curious, Tito never limited himself to any particular subject. He studied Native American culture, and was welcomed into tribal conversations that I, being part Cherokee, never experienced. He studied aeronautics, and then flew solo across the country to visit Kate and me in Sacramento. Was he my angel? Picking him up at Sacramento International Airport, I felt like I knew Lindberg! He studied art and illustration, and published his drawings of an archeological dig on the cover of the Science section of the New York Times.
When we were children, Tito reminded me every March that he would always be eight days older than me. Tito could do so much, but my courage-teacher could not predict the future. As another poem put it, Tito has “slipped the surly bonds of earth, / And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings,” leaving me to smile at our inside jokes, and to celebrate his birthdays without him.
Happy birthday, Tito.
Tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions about Apple computers, conquerors, well-being, people named Chris, Chicago music, the Olympics, wizards, ganglia, the value of debt, Ordinary People, the greatest of all triumphs, Jupiter, bantamweights, familiar soundtracks, Leonard Nimoy, that which is common, Chinese culinary plays titled The Wonton, sage, years ending in zero, midwestern masters, cockroaches, mislabeled catwomen, Variety, hunger, the European Union, austerity and other topics, Geography, American states, and Shakespeare.
As you might have surmised from my discussion of Tito, above, my birthday is coming up, and I expect that the Pub will help me throw a party after next week’s Pub Quiz (March 9). Will you join us? The complimentary finger food and singing will begin at about 9:30. Can you believe that some of my friends don’t even know that I host our Pub Quiz? I hope you will meet some of those folks on March 9. Rather than considering gifts, please consider making a donation to your community radio station, KDVS.
A Wide Open Open Mic takes place on March 5th at the Natsoulas Gallery. This means that even you could perform something, if you arrive early enough to add your name to the list. I hope you do. We start at 8. Music and prose will be performed, as well as poetry.
See you tonight!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans. What product completes this commercial slogan? “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s BLANK.”
- Internet Culture. In the US, as well as worldwide, the first two most-visited websites are Google and Facebook. What is the third?
- Newspaper Headlines. Takanobu Ito will step down from his post as the CEO of what automaker in June?
- Mountains. What white mountain is the highest in the Alps and the highest peak in Europe outside of the Caucasus range?
- Sports. What Spanish tennis player, nicknamed “The King of Clay,” is regarded as the finest clay court player in history?