Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
The Pub Quiz is back tonight after a brief hiatus to give the Pub waitstaff an opportunity to recover from the rush of graduation revelers. If I were graduating from UC Davis (again), I would make sure to invite my parents and other supporters to celebrate me at the most authentic pub in Davis (so I can see why de Vere’s has been so busy).
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature a special guest, the political consultant, guitarist, and rock historian Bobby Nord. Bob and his wife, Susi, a former Democratic member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, have been working tirelessly for progressive causes in the Granite State for many years. I would love to ask some pub quiz questions about New Hampshire tonight, such as about its State Wildflower (The Pink Ladyslipper), but that wouldn’t be fair to everyone else, for Bob and Susi will actually compete in the Quiz tonight.
One could say that Bob is partly responsible for the entire Pub Quiz, for during our freshman and sophomore years in college, Bob shared my wanderlust and love of the novels of Jack Kerouac, and helped me act on it. He agreed with Seneca, who believed that “Voyage, travel, and change of place impart vigor.” We loved that term “wanderlust,” but today in Germany some use the term “Fernweh,” a word that was coined as an antonym to Heimweh (or “homesickness”). Fernweh means “farsickness,” or a fondness for a place one has never seen. Bob and I decided that we shared a fondness for the unseen California, so one summer we drove here for a car deliver service, I found a “climate [that] suits my clothes,” and I resolved to return as soon as I was set free as a college-educated scholar and poet. And here I’ve stayed.
Speaking of travel, I’ve traveled to another country since I saw you last, by which of course I mean Utah. Situated in Park City, Utah, home to June snowstorms with significant accumulation, InstructureCon featured extensive discussions about teaching, instructional technology, and decentered learning. While at this august and serious scholarly event, I collected action figure swag for my children, and got to meet heroes such as Captain America, Wonder Woman, and Wolverine. Even more impressive a hero was Robert Reich, former U.S. Labor Secretary and the InstructureCon keynote speaker. The UC Berkeley professor and intellectual powerhouse shared these thoughts on education: “I teach because it’s the best way to have a positive impact on the future. As historian Henry Adams once wrote, ‘A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.’”
Eternity will stop for a couple hours at de Vere’s Irish Pub tonight at 7, and I hope you will be there to see it. Expect questions on a wide variety of topics, including geography, television, twins, Africa, shipwrecks, special correspondents, the dreams of animals, zoology, hilly towns and cities, ports, entrepreneurs, men, mononyms, congresses of electricity, the NFL, HBO, fictional restaurants where one can “enjoy” nachos with Mel Gibson, great musicians, not Volvo, articles in the LA Times, sesquipedalian and underprepared flashes of insight and discovery, famous people who were born and who died in Maryland, Hercules, Houston, Beethoven, Native American outrage, impressive Google+ numbers, tech-niche acronyms, and the power of choice, and Shakespeare.
If you were there, you know that our last Pub Quiz filled every chair in the Irish Pub. Should that happen again tonight, I hope my newsletter readers will come early enough to claim favorite tables. See you tonight at 7. And feel free to greet Bob Nord tonight, the diminutive man with the increasingly silver ponytail who (indirectly) made all of this happen. See you tonight!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from the last quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans: US States. What “Garden State” has the motto “Liberty and Prosperity”?
- Revolutions. The Hungarian Revolution was the name of a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People’s Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies. In what decade did it take place?
- Pop Culture – Music. According to the book Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, in 1967 one of the most famous singers in the world moved from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, California, to avoid the smog. Name this singer who moved from LA at the age of 52.
- Sports. The four Olympic disciplines in Figure Skating are men’s singles, ladies’ singles, pair skating, and ice WHAT?
- Great Americans Who Have Been Nominated for Five Oscars. Born in 1930, what retired actor and former Marine famous for playing villains won acting Academy Awards in 1971 and 1992?
Pink Lady Slipper
