Torino Christmas Lights
Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
My wife Kate and I were up late last night, for she was counseling an anxious dad in the Italian city of Turin. As the Communications Director of the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome Foundation, Kate has welcomed a great number of parents to the SLOS Family, a Facebook group she created to provide therapy and information to international and domestic parents of children with Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome. SLO, as we call it at home, has been a topic of research and thousands of conversations since our boy Jukie was diagnosed about 13 years ago. Using this Facebook forum, Kate has provided information and introductions to people who never knew that they had a “family” of friends who immediately stood ready to support them.
While Kate has become close friends with English speakers in Australia, Germany, and the UK, sometimes she encounters challenges when she gets to work with someone who doesn’t speak what Robert A. Heinlein once called a language marked by “variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity.” When Kate and I lived in London, we discovered why George Bernard Shaw said that “England and America are two countries separated by a common language,” but the separation between English and Italian is much broader.
This Italian dad reached out to Kate, saying “Scusami la mia impertinenza ma ho bisogno di informazioni! Siamo al buio!” We translate that to mean “Excuse my impertinence, but I need information! We are in the dark!”
This is how Kate described to me her conversation with “a dad of a newly diagnosed baby on the other side of the world”:
“He messaged me an adorable picture of this boy, and I immediately knew he was one of “ours.” (The babies all look pretty similar. He could be Jukie’s brother.) Seeing this little SLO face made feel me an instant connection — I wanted to help this family. Still reeling from the SLO diagnosis, we remember well these early days of terror, and we had no language barrier with the people who had the information we needed. Today there is so much more information, so obviously it frustrates me that I can’t communicate well to share it with him.”
Kate continues:
“It’s my job to be a support for people, direct them to other means of support, and give them information. The information is complex and scientific. It is difficult enough to communicate without a language barrier. This dad wants and needs a much more nuanced conversation then Google Translate will allow. But one thing we are communicating is a shared love for our kids born with the same rare syndrome. I hope I am giving him hope that there are people out there who can answer his questions and who do understand his plight.”
If you are curious about our story of raising a challenging, delightful and beloved boy with this rare syndrome, we will be bringing copies of our book Where’s Jukie? to the Pub Quiz tonight. We will gladly sign a copy for you. All funds raised from book sales go to the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome Foundation (and if you would like to send a check to the Foundation later, perhaps after your January paycheck, we will just give you a copy). Where’s Jukie? will even fit in most stockings!
On tonight’s Pub Quiz, expect questions about pandas, giant minds, LinkedIn, crazy dictators, Italian creativity, Stephen Colbert, Swedes, people who would “love to,” New York City distractions, gods and their books, Christmas carols, Presidents and sports teams, capitals, gratitude and its opposites, epiphany feasts, marble, New England, people named Farrow, counterfeits, an Anagram with two unknowns (the way Dianna likes it), David Letterman, words that are spelled the British way, holiday gift expectations, the Russian economy, presents, rankings, Nielsen, Jeb Bush, a number of films, secret stashes, people named Wes, the fun of four random letters, heteronormativity, Mandela, astronomical unions, business partners, humanitarians, fresh marriages, bleachers, and Shakespeare.
I look forward to the return of some Pub Quiz all stars tonight, including Robert Lipman and Mayor Dan Wolk and his family. I hope you will join us, too, on this warm Winter Solstice that we are enjoying. Happy holidays!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Internet Culture. Instagram was founded in the same year that the first iPad was released. With a one-year margin of error, tell me the year. My son Truman just submitted a report on his favorite invention: The iPad
- David Letterman. The name of what living 83-year old has appeared most often in the last 29 years of Top Ten lists written by the writing staff of David Letterman? You should expect another Letterman question on tonight’s quiz.
- Roman Numerals. Since the beginning of the common era, August 28th of what year is the longest date thus far in Roman Numerals? Hint available. The birth year of T.S. Eliot. I often try to sneak Eliot into conversations.
- Pop Culture – Music. There’s a red-headed singer-songwriter who has been the opening act for Taylor Swift’s Red tour, and who has three E’s in the nine letters in his first and last name. Who is he? By the way, my favorite redheads are named Kate and Jukie.
- Sports. Jerry Rice, lifetime leader in this category, caught how many touchdown passes? 108, 208, 308, or 408? I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know this.
P.S. Poetry Night returns on January 15th.