Dear Friends,

I am grateful to Bill Buchanan, host of the KDRT radio show and podcast, Davisville. In our fractured media landscape, we need shows like Buchanan’s to inform local listeners about their community and, in doing so, help the population of Davis feel more inter-connected, whether to each other or to local civic leaders and thought leaders.

Recently I binge-listened to a number of Bill Buchanan interviews, including interviews with former Davis mayor Brett Lee, now President of Downtown Davis (also known as the Downtown Davis Business Association), and with Bob Dunning and Wendy Weitzel, well-known Davis Enterprise columnists who left the newspaper to find financial success and a devoted following on Substack.

I was lucky to know Bill when he was head of communications for Information and Educational Technology. In fact, about 15 years ago I served on his hiring committee. I’ve joined him for many meetings and conversations, both in person before the pandemic and then via Zoom after March of 2020. A couple years ago, we also served in the same jury pool, taking time to catch up over lunch at a Woodland Indian restaurant. 

During jury selection, Bill was reading a Robert A. Caro Lyndon Johnson biography, indicative of the same abiding curiosity that informs the thoughtful questions he asks guests on his radio show (and that he has asked me during my Davisville appearances). One of the best parts of being an (paid or unpaid) journalist is that you have license to reach out to people, schedule a conversation, and then satisfy your curiosity through the asking of insistent questions.

One regrettable result of the fracturing of the media landscape, with so many of us gathering information about the topics that affect our lives from disparate (and sometimes distant) sources is that we have fewer shared experiences. I myself have been stepping back from political news over the last few months, a result from my feeling alienated from my country and the (mostly) men who run it, but I still know what’s going on. By contrast, I know some people who stay so uninformed that my every attempted conversation with them makes me feel like an mansplainer who must offer primers on the world in which we live just to have shared topics to discuss.

I hope that this widespread feeling of disconnect from national news topics would at least lead us to care deeply about our own local communities, communities that might benefit from our efforts to lead and contribute, or, in my case, distract us with a pub quiz, a poetry reading, or a local radio show. In such an environment, we (should) depend all the more on radio shows like Davisville, shrinking newspapers like The Davis Enterprise (where I have a small weekly column), and new initiatives like Wendy Weitzel’s Substack newsletter “Comings and Goings,” to which I am a paid subscriber. As playwright Arthur Miller said, “A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.”

If you would like to support one of my efforts to contribute to the community, I invite you to make a tax-deductible donation to KDVS during its yearly April fundraiser, happening this week. My radio show, Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour, airs every Wednesday at 5 PM, and this week during that hour my impressive producer Dyson and I will attempt to raise $500 for the station. With your help, we might reach our goal! 

Thanks for considering this request and for supporting local media and local reporters.

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The weather will be pleasant this evening, but not to warm, so I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset. Others feel the same way, for we had almost 50 teams compete last week. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, even though the quiz is 874 words long, if you exclude the answers. 

In addition to topics raised above, expect questions tonight on the following topics: artificial intelligence, man-made objects, hairspray, famous kings, infinite monkeys writing, neighbors, princes, birds, happy places, international game fish, old groups, federal funding, favorite poets, exhaust gasses, doves, world capitals, autobiographies, thin people, gifting, millionaires and billionaires, female athletes, spices, factories, booms, beats, new world leaders, philosophical happiness, Pixar films, lakes, memorable dahlias, infections, U.S. states geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 60 members now! Thanks especially to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

26.          Science. Keratitis in inflammation of what crucial part of the human body that starts with the letter C?  

27.          Books and Authors. Ernest Hemingway’s first (and some say his greatest) novel has been in print since its publication in 1926. Name the novel.  

28.          Current Events – Names in the News. Joko Widodo’s name is not in the news, but it does deserve a place in the pub quiz. From 2014-2024, he was the 7th president of what country found in Southeast Asia and Oceania?  

P.P.S. Our next Poetry Night on April 17 will feature fan favorite Julia Levine! Plan to join us at the Natsoulas Gallery! 

One of my favorite Boston University professors—and a British national treasure—is Sir Christopher Ricks. Though he graduated from Cambridge University, he now calls Cambridge, Massachusetts home. W.H. Auden once called Ricks “the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding,” and after four classes with him, I wholeheartedly agree.

In a T.S. Eliot seminar I took in 1988, Professor Ricks remarked, “I value cities according to the quality of their used bookstores.” That comment stuck with me. I had recently returned to Boston after a year in London, and I had also just read the epistolary novel 84 Charing Cross Road about an American author’s relationship with the staff at a famous bookstore. I was already primed to believe that a good bookstore could define a city.

Studying abroad in London, I spent countless hours in the antiquarian bookstores along Booksellers’ Row, especially the stretch of Charing Cross Road between Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road. At Foyles—once the largest bookstore in the world—I read through the entire Collected Letters of Dylan Thomas over a matter of weeks. I recall that most of those letters involved him asking friends or literary celebrities for money.

As much as I loved London booksellers, I have spent much more of my youthful years in American bookstores, especially these five:

1. Olsson’s Books and Records at 1239 Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. Because my mom was a librarian, most of the books I read as a child belonged to the D.C. Public Library system, but when I spent my allowance on books, it would be at Olsson’s, a long nearly 5000 square foot haven for books that was always a stop on any trip to Georgetown (about a 30 minute walk from my childhood home). Later I bought my first 45 RPM records there, including “Lay Down Sally” by Eric Clapton and “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas.
2. Second Story Books at 2000 P Street (Dupont Circle) in Washington DC. In high school, I caught the D2 bus to return to Glover Park from Dupont Circle where The Field School was back then. Sometimes I would miss my bus because of all the time I spent at Second Story Books which sold exclusively used books, including the hundreds of science fiction novels that I bought in the early 1980s. Sometimes I would encounter a favorite writing professor Marcia Clemmitt here. I was pleased to discover today that this bookstore (unlike most of the ones on this list) is still in business!
3. Crown Books (3040 M Street) in Georgetown. I worked at this bookstore (selling new and discounted books) during the summer before college, gaining an understanding of the book industry from the point of view of a salesman who had to find, categorize, and answer questions about books. I enjoyed making friends there with the sort of people (smokers and parolees) that I typically avoided in high school. I think these folks influenced my behavior, for during my break from work I would usually jog across the street to our favorite pizza and gyro place, once receiving two jaywalking tickets in quick succession (one there, and one back) from the same female police officer who told me, the second time, “we have to stop meeting like this.”
4. The Harvard Bookstore (1256 Massachusetts Avenue) in Cambridge, across the street from Harvard University. As I did in DC and London, I spent much of my available time and pocket money at favorite bookstores, especially this one. The poetry books were in the basement, and I was so familiar with the shelves that on the weekends I could usually identify books that had arrived during the previous week. 
   
   I continue to be grateful to Frederick Danker who sold SO many poetry books back to the Harvard Bookstore and which are now found in my collections, still stamped with “From the Library of Fred Danker.” I learned today that Danker was an English professor at U. Mass Boston.
5. Black Oak Books (1491 Shattuck Avenue) in Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto neighborhood. When I moved to California in 1989, I landed in a basement apartment in a beautiful home on San Mateo Road, just a few doors down from the famous Indian Rock, just a 20-minute walk from our local bookstore, Black Oak Books. 
   
   Around the bookstore, one saw large photographs of the giants of 20^th century literature who gave readings at Black Oak, including Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Alice Walker, Gore Vidal, Isabel Allende, Carlos Fuentes, Czesław Miłosz, Edna O’Brien, Edward Said, Tom Wolfe, Barry Lopez, Robert Pinsky (a former professor of mine), and Alice Waters. During the year that I lived in Berkeley, I saw Milosz, Anne Lamott, Maxine Hong Kingston, T.C. Boyle and Julian Barnes.
   
   Inspired by this Black Oak reading series, I resolved to create my own poetry series after I graduate school, something I did starting in 2006 and which continues now as the Poetry Night Reading Series at the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis.

These were my youthful favorites, meaning that I am excluding bookstores that I would haunt in Sacramento, San Francisco, and Davis, especially Bogey’s and The Avid Reader.

I remember feeling jealous when a friend told me about encountering John Updike in a Boylston Street (Boston) bookstore. I’m so grateful for the many meccas of book culture where I spent so much of my time as a student, as well as of the books of John Updike, who once said that “Bookstores are lonely forts, spilling light onto the sidewalk. They civilize their neighborhoods.” 

I am curious to know if you have any bookstore stories. Please share!

—

The weather will be especially pleasant this evening, so I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, even though the quiz is 927 words long, if you exclude the answers. 

In addition to topics raised above, expect questions tonight on the following topics: Oceania, greatest novels, genres of music, funny names, really awake people, hot tubs, televised bands, harsh sounds, U.S. presidents, leaders of troops, franchises, international visitors, believers,  eternal lines, people named Kate, inflammation, bad dad jokes, Easter colors, Sacramento area retailers, hungry characters, surgical procedures, ESPN research, teams whose names start with the letter C, dukes, Hawaii, beer gardens, electric cars, halls of fame, chips, shoes, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 60 members now! Thanks especially to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1. Canada. The easternmost province joined the confederation of Canada in 1949. Name it.  

2. Science. Starting with the letter E, what do we call animals that can maintain their internal body temperature regardless of the environmental temperature?  

3. Books and Authors. Which poet teaches us that “April is the cruelest month”?  

P.P.S. Our next Poetry Night on April 17 will feature fan favorite Julia Levine! Plan to join us at the Natsoulas Gallery!

Challenging Defeatism in the Parking Lot and Online

Dear Friends,

Davis is a beautiful city in a temperate part of the country, so I try to walk everywhere I go. I enjoy the time with my wordless walking buddy, with the forests and greenbelts of south Davis, and with books on tape that edify and delight me. The people my son Jukie and I encounter on our walks uniformly greet us with friendly smiles. 

Sometimes we end up in downtown Davis, stopping by the Davis Food Co-op or Upper Crust Bakery for a snack. The shoppers and especially the employees in these places are gracious and welcoming. Last week in the Co-op, a city leader saw that I was buying a mutual friend some necessities, and she quipped that “it takes a village” to extend the safety net to our fellow Davisites.

When I am driving, however, the other drivers in our village are not nearly as accommodating. Behind the wheel of a car, some of those kind people who might just have smiled while passing Jukie and me in the produce aisle will impatiently insist on exiting the parking lot before we do.

Somehow the time we spend behind the wheel can even change our personalities. As George Carlin says, “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

Social media can have a similar effect on people online. Recently my wife Kate commented on an acquaintance’s Facebook post that, despite the lamentations she was reading there and elsewhere about America (this Facebook friend had moved out of the country), Kate was not ready to give in to cynicism or defeatism, no matter how dark things seem for civic discourse and democracy in the United States. Furthermore, Kate said, Most Americans care deeply and actually are paying attention to the recent Signal-Gate scandal, and that Americans are organizing and mobilizing, such as with the Hands Off! Sacramento Fights Back rally that happens this coming Saturday. Kate pointed out that at a time like this, cynicism and defeatism are unhelpful at best.

Like an otherwise kind supermarket shopper who had packed up her groceries and wanted to escape the parking lot, this friend did not take kindly to this differing perspective. Two friends meeting in person over crepes could have discussed their differences with patience and understanding, but this friend responded in ways that reflected the stress that we all feel.

To represent the Facebook wall exchange fairly, I would like to quote this friend’s response to Kate’s expressions of hope, resolve, and resistance, but I cannot, for the friend unfriended and blocked Kate, unfriended and blocked me, and then unsubscribed from my weekly newsletter on Substack. 

When I searched for this friend’s name on Facebook, I came across my own post from a few years ago when I thanked her and others for contributing to Jukie Jones Duren Endowment in support of the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation. This friend also bought a copy of my first pub quiz book – feeling like Santa’s elves, Jukie and I delivered it to her Davis home just before Christmas. Her past kindness and care for us has manifested in many ways.

Now, I can see why this friend would feel dispirited and despairing about America. Social services programs of all sorts have been cut, thus alarming and traumatizing rural communities, low-income families, and the disabled. Public health and environmental safety have been threatened by the current administration’s deregulatory approach to governing, leaving billionaires and corporations to elevate financial concerns above the common good. Implemented and announced cuts to funding for scientific research, to colleges and universities, to library grants, and to the arts foundations represent an attack on American strengths and values. We have rapidly lost the respect of our allies, emboldened authoritarian regimes, and sowed discord at home, weakening trust in governmental and civic institutions.

About ten years ago, my youngest son Truman read his fortune cookie fortune to the family after dinner. It read, “How dark is dark?” The current answer: Opaque.

Nevertheless, I agree with Kate that we can still find cause for hope. Consider New Jersey Senator Cory Booker who, heroically, recently stood in the U.S. Senate chambers for 25 hours, speaking about the challenges I just listed, and including myriad examples from his constituents, many dealing with the challenges of caring for disabled children or parents.

Booker warned us about the erosion of democratic institutions, criticized the increasing influence of billionaires (and one billionaire in particular) in shaping American policy, and invoked the legacy and moral courage of civil rights leaders such as John Lewis, arguing that if he were alive today, Lewis would be making good trouble in response to the challenges caused by federal malfeasance and corruption. For 25 hours, without food or a bathroom break, Booker emphasized the need for all of us to practice vigilance to protect democracy, fairness, and the truth.

Like many in our cynical age, I found hope and encouragement in Booker’s earnest efforts to draw attention of distracted, apathetic, or forlorn Americans to these bedrock American values. Rather than giving into defeatism or dividing ourselves into camps according to our differing attitudes about or responses to our current slide towards dystopia, Booker offers himself and other American heroes whom he had platformed and amplified as embodiments of the spirit of resolve, resistance, and optimism that we and the world need.

I thank everyone who speaks out, mobilizes, organizes, and acts to confront authoritarianism, illiberalism, totalitarianism, censorship, and xenophobia in all their forms, including many local and faraway readers of this newsletter. May we find encouragement and resolve in our active and optimistic communities. 

I stand with Robert F. Kennedy (Sr.), who, in his 1966 “Day of Affirmation” address in South Africa, spoke about individual actions against injustice. He said, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.” 

May you feel those ripples of hope, and may they form an unstoppable wave that will wash away all our feelings of defeatism and despair.

---

The weather will be pleasant this evening, so I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, entirely possible because it is only 722 words long, if you exclude the answers. 

In addition to topics raised above, expect questions tonight on the following topics: Sacramento area retailers, switches, fresh water, rare onions, queens, painters, merchants, contracts, races, poets, warm animals, millionaires and billionaires, traps, space pilots, places that start with the letter B, simplistic months, second languages, mathematical spaces, parties likely to cause noise violations if they were to be held in Davis, counties with rivers, Moses, revelations from today’s newspaper, sizable paychecks, strategists, rich and poor countries, current events, and Shakespeare.

For more Pub Quiz fun please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 60 members now! Thanks especially to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1. Books and Authors. Born in New Hampshire, what living novelist won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his script of the 1999 film adaptation of his novel The Cider House Rules?  

• Film. Victor Fleming directed what 1939 fantasy film?  

• Youth Culture. What TV show made the phrase “Chrissy, wake up!” and Kate Bush’s song “Running Up That Hill” viral?  

P.P.S. Poetry Night on April 3^rd at 7 features Clarence Major!

Today during my morning routine, I encountered a performance of the Sondheim song “Being Alive” from the show Company. It came courtesy of the 2019 film Marriage Story. I didn’t see it—those contentious Oscar-nomination highlight clips made the film seem not quite right for me. But seeing Adam Driver walk up to the mic at a New York piano bar and sing this song intrigued me.

Films and songs give us a chance to imagine someone coming into his or her own, to flower right there on screen, the way the speaker does at the end of James Wright’s poem “A Blessing.” I won’t quote it here – you should read all 24 lines yourself.

In the film Before Sunset, Julie Delpy’s character Celine bravely and poignantly sings “A Waltz for a Night” to her paramour Jesse (played by Ethan Hawke), sharing, through an original song, what she couldn’t say during a day of walking through Paris. She admits that “I just want another try.” At least fans will get another film in the series.

In the last film my movie critic father ever saw, Lost in Translation, Bill Murray’s character sings “More Than This” by Roxy Music in a karaoke bar. In the mostly forgotten film Blue Valentine, Ryan Gosling sings “You Always Hurt the One You Love” (on ukulele). Songs give viewers a chance to uncover an emotionally rich side of characters that otherwise find it hard to emote.

My wife Kate and I met when we both rented the same room on the same day and decided to share it. Otherwise alone in London, we became instant friends and came to depend upon each other daily, rehearsing for the many years of married life that awaited us.

After we returned to the states, Kate sent me mix tapes, cassettes with songs by Odetta, Aretha Franklin, and Joan Armatrading, songs that proclaimed love and devotion in ways similar to how I did in a 100-poem book of love poems for Kate in celebration of our 30^th wedding anniversary. Aretha’s song “Call Me” helped to convince me that I wanted to call Kate from the next room instead of from halfway across the country.

If we don’t take the stage of the piano bar, we could have another singer stand in for us on a mix tape, the way John Cusack’s characters do in the films High Fidelity and Say Anything. Sometimes I wonder if Peter Gabriel can capture my wife’s haunting beauty better than I have.

But once I did take the mic. At my own wedding reception, I took a short break from all the dancing to ask my Michigan cousin Pete if he knew the song “Sea of Love” on the piano. He went downstairs to try it out on the second piano at the Katherine Legge Memorial Lodge in Hinsdale, Illinois, and I followed him while wearing, for the first day, the same wedding band that I am wearing as I type this.

Pete figured it out, we both went upstairs, I took the microphone and asked the DJ to pause spinning LPs for a few minutes. And then, right after I heard Kate say “uh-oh,” I serenaded my new bride in front of all our family and friends. My dad the award-winning director might have wished that I had followed him into theatre, for that sort of work automatically makes one more brave and confident when interacting with the world, but at least he got to see me perform on the biggest day of my life.

Whether in film or in real life, the ritual of the eye-contact love song, the solo serenade, can either strengthen a bond between two people, or surround the singer with the sort of poignancy that we have trouble accessing otherwise. As another character says in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, another Stephen Sondheim classic, “If I cannot fly, let me sing.”

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Tonight I believe we have the highest low temperature of 2025 so far, so join me outside at Sudwerk tonight. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, entirely possible because the completed quiz is only 798 words long. 

In addition to topics raised above, expect questions tonight on the following topics: horses, baseball, sopranos, inspiring dogs, Sacramento memories, celebrities, popular websites, retail stores, logjams, southern history, adorable puns, springtime, clothing choices, fantasy novels, African forests, student vintners, West Hollywood, dragons, Europe, favorite films, hills, eastern Europe, sox, notable athletes, Nobel Prize winners, friends, the MCU, belief systems, side gigs, predators, current events, and Shakespeare.

For more Pub Quiz fun please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 60 members now! Thanks especially to new subscribers Bill, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1. Science. What U word refers to the study of sound waves of very high frequency beyond the range of human hearing?  

2. Books and Authors. First name Sandra, who authored The House on Mango Street, a defining novel in Latina literature?  

3. Current Events –Drugs in the News. According to a recent edition of the Daily Mail newspaper, a NSAID, an anti-inflammatory drug such as ibuprofen, is the only effective treatment for acute low back pain. What does the NS of NSAID stand for?  

P.P.S. Our next Poetry Night will feature Clarence Major on April 3rd. Join us at the Natsoulas Gallery! 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

This past weekend I called someone who I haven’t talked to in about 25 years, and even though she is in her late 80s, she picked right up where we had left off in our previous conversation.

Joyce, whose last name I won’t use here so as not to blow her cover from Google, was the administrator of the English Department’s graduate program back in the 1990s when I was a graduate student. Staff members like Joyce hold together academic departments that are filled with faculty who have significant teaching loads and daunting research responsibilities. Also, the egos! Many faculty are (seen as) the most important people in any room they enter, so such people are not always eager to defer and compromise. Thus, staff members who elevate the success of the department above their personal concerns and goals make everyone seem functional.

Joyce had a steel-trap mind, meaning that she could call up the geographic, academic, and disciplinary backgrounds and qualifications of everyone who applied and was admitted to the MA, MFA, or PhD programs. Talking with her on Sunday, I found her to be just as sharp, reminding me of conversations she had with faculty decades ago.

Everyone she worked with and everyone who taught me in the 1990s has retired or passed away, four of them just last year, but because she and I have excellent memories of that era, we stepped right into that era, reflecting together on the remarkable scholars and writers who occupied Voorhies Hall back then. I reflected on how all of us have so many memories that are likely to be called up only by being triggered by the relevant people who participated in the remembered experiences. The deaths of our friends and beloveds affect us deeply not only because of the ways that we enriched our lives, but also because of all the fading memories that they no longer will be triggering for us. Some people write down their recollected experiences as a stay against such diminishment.

I also reflected on what Joyce and the English Department faculty envisioned for me, what I once hoped for myself, and how my actual path compares. I myself imagined a different trajectory for my life, but I know that my life is rich and meaningful, and suited for me, in ways that I would not have enjoyed if I had followed that trajectory.

So, I send thanks to Joyce and to everyone at UC Davis who guided and stood beside me during that era, from faculty and staff to my peers and students. I’ve relished my path of curiosity, discovery, laughs with family and friends, and occasional accomplishment. As Mae West said, “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”

---

The temperatures will be chilly this evening, so I invite you to dress in multiple layers and join me outside at Sudwerk tonight. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, entirely possible because it is only 971 words long, if you include the answers. 

In addition to topics raised above, expect questions tonight on parsimonious speakers, two-time Oscar winners, pilgrims, codes, back pain, staples, plummeting currencies, information, studio heads, experiences, the fermented juices of cherries, deserts, self-educated geniuses, basketball players, United Nations, feminist books, heroic girls and women, late deciders, singer-songwriters, valuable players, mixed drinks, watchmen, Canadian cubes, nuts, patents, the people named Sandra, big waves, Davis courts, California cities, invading forces, golfers, drugs, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

For more Pub Quiz fun please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 60 members now! Thanks especially to new subscribers Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1.             Mottos and Slogans. What ubiquitous organization invites us to “Customize Your Cup”?  

2.             Internet Culture. Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown, the co-creators of Snapchat, all attended what university together?  

3.             Newspaper Headlines. The tech-heavy NASDAQ stands for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations. By about how much has the NASDAQ dropped in 2025 so far? 1%, 5%, or 10%?  

P.P.S. Our next Poetry Night will feature storyteller Michael Gallowglas on March 20th. Join us at the Natsoulas Gallery! 

Dear Friends,

Today I taught my last writing class of the quarter at UC Davis. 

Using this prompt, I asked my juniors and seniors to reflect upon their writing plans moving forward: 1) How will writing function for you after UC Davis, whether on the job or in graduate school? 2) How might you additionally use writing to reflect upon or plan for other goals, whether they be creative, professional, contemplative?

While I don’t subscribe to the idea that shutting down the Department of Education would solve our educational challenges, I do worry about the diminishing appreciation for writing and literature—especially poetry—among some students. The act of writing, the consumption of writing, and the act of sharing one’s writing are all sustaining joys of mine.

I’m not alone. I’ve been collecting quotations from notable authors about writing and writing processes, and as you will see from the following list, many established writers also focus on the joy of writing.

“I write because writing is fun.” (Dorianne Laux)

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“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.” (James A. Michener)

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“Writing is a fine thing, because it combines the two pleasures of talking to yourself and talking to a crowd.” (Cesare Pavese)

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“I never feel more myself than when I’m writing; I never enjoy any day more than a good writing day.” (Anthony Minghella)

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“Well, I think it’s extraordinarily fun to write, and I look forward to it every day, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s easy. There’s a difference between the two. It’s fun in the way all worthwhile things are fun – there’s difficulty attached to it.” (David Guterson)

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“I love writing. I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going. I could not stop writing.” (P.G. Wodehouse)

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“The books I write because I want to read them, the games because I want to play them, and stories I tell because I find them exciting personally.” (Gary Gygax)

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“I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.” (Gwendolyn Brooks)

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“I’m just going to write because I cannot help it.” (Charlotte Bronte C5)

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“I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it.” (Jonathan Winters)

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“It is the moment I feel anything is possible, and I know the elation of being a writer.” (Patricia Reilly Giff)

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“Writing is its own reward.” (Henry Miller)

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“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” (Franklin D. Roosevelt) 

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“The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.” (Walter Bagehot)

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“Enter the writing process with a childlike sense of wonder and discovery. Let it surprise you.” (Charles Ghigna)

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“There is pleasure from learning the simple truth, and there is a pleasure from learning that the truth is not simple.” (Wayne Booth)

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“I love the work: the grind, the dreaming, the distracted not-sleep, all of it. It’s the one thing in the job that will always be there, and the real pleasure in the profession. Everything else is luck.” (Glen Hirshberg)

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“The only joy in the world is to begin.” (Cesar Pavese)

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“One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.” (Gertrude Stein)

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“A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter.” (E.B. White)

Perhaps inspired by some of these words of wisdom, I invite you to reflect on the questions I asked my students. Do you feel that your life is richer because of your own voluntary writing projects?

There will be a substitute Quizmaster running tonight’s pub quiz (which I wrote). I’m grateful to pub quiz regular James Raasch (and a member of last week’s championship team) for standing in today. A trained actor and singer, James will raise expectations for future quizzes hosted by merely me.

James has brought to life roles in The People in the Picture, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Man of La Mancha, A Spoonful of Sherman, Sunday in the Park With George, A Statue for Ballybunion, and Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, and Sondheim on Sondheim. Impressively, James served in the Navy band as conductor, staff composer/arranger, unit leader, vocalist, and instrumentalist (playing the trumpet, horn, trombone, and keyboards). He has performed around the globe.

Other favorite productions include playing the title role in Sweeney Todd, Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, and Bert in Mary Poppins. Music direction credits include West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, Little Women, Legally Blonde, My Fair Lady, and Annie.

We are lucky to have him sub for me at the Pub Quiz tonight.

The temperatures will be in the 50s this evening, but it will be rainy, so you may want to enjoy the quiz from indoors. James will keep the quiz moving—this week’s questions are succinct, totaling just 787 words.

In addition to topics raised above, expect questions tonight on the art genres, Matt Damon, princes, singer-songwriters, fuel, soccer, biggest hits, dog breeds, automated quotations, college-inspired projects, coffee, runners-up, American authors, Italian men, phantoms, basketball, American comedians, popular songs that are not sung, wetlands, groan worthy jokes, African countries, March happenstances, merry tasks, moles, UC Davis choices, presidential homes, science words that start with C, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

For more Pub Quiz fun please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 60 members now! Thanks especially to new subscribers Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to everyone who donated towards the Jukie Duren Endowment at the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1. Science. The fastest animal on the planet is a cosmopolitan bird of prey (raptor) in the family Falconidae. Name it.  

2. Books and Authors. What scientist’s last book, Radioactivity, was published posthumously in 1935? 

3. Sports. What primarily left fielder for the Boston Red Sox from 1939 to 1960 was the last player to bat over .400 in a season?  

P. P.P.S. Today on my 5 PM KDVS radio show I will be interviewing Grant Faulkner (starting at 5:30).

P.P.S. Our next Poetry Night will feature storytelling on National Storytelling Day, March 20^th.  

Dear Friends,

This past Friday, the 28^th of February, sometimes adjacent to what is the rarest day of the year, February 29^th, marks Rare Disease Day, a day when people with rare diseases and genetic conditions can be recognized and celebrated. Our son Jukie is one of few Californians with Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome, so we use this opportunity to inform people about SLO. 

My wife Kate is particularly active in these efforts. As the Director of Family Outreach for the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation, she reaches out several times a month to families who have just discovered Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome in the same week that they are bringing home a new baby from the hospital. Sadly, most of those babies get to know the hospital well.

Published on her social media on this past Friday, Today’s newsletter comes courtesy of my wife Kate. If you are curious about the syndrome or Foundation that has become a big part of our lives, please visit https://www.smithlemliopitz.org. 

Heartfelt thanks to Kate for her admirable advocacy and excellent writing!

---

Today we celebrate Rare Disease Day, a global initiative that raises awareness and support for the more than 300 million people worldwide who live with a rare disease, including our son Jukie. This international effort includes participation from 106 countries. This year’s theme is “More Than You Can Imagine.”

Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome is one of the over 7,000 identified rare diseases. A disease is classified as rare if it affects fewer than 1 in 2,000 people globally. Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome (SLO) is more than ten times rarer than that. For example, SLO only affects between 20,000 to 70,000 people born in the U.S. All parents of kids with SLO are carriers of the gene mutation that causes it — almost none of us knew that or had ever heard of Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome before our children were born. 

Reflecting on the words “More Than You Can Imagine,” I think of the overwhelming emotional, physical, and financial costs associated with rare diseases. People with SLO face many significant challenges. Many die at or before birth. Those who survive struggle to eat and to grow. Language comes slowly, if at all. Most fall somewhere on the autism spectrum. The vast majority have intellectual disability. We parents learn early on that we will spend much of our lives advocating for our children. We must often educate the health care providers our kids see, since most medical professionals will never encounter another child with Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome in their entire careers, leaving them unprepared for the unique challenges our children face. We advocate in our local schools for our kids to get the best education possible. All our work advocating for our kids is SO much more than anyone can imagine. 

As children with SLO grow, new challenges emerge — especially behavioral issues, as we see with our nonverbal son, Jukie. We can only imagine the frustration he feels when he cannot communicate his feelings, thoughts, needs and desires. This part of SLO is harder and more than anyone can imagine. 

And speaking of ‘More Than You Can Imagine,’ I cannot overstate the rage I feel toward the current administration and its Republican congressional allies, who are actively harming society’s most vulnerable. Their catastrophic Medicaid cuts will devastate our kids with Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome. Medi-Cal pays for our son Jukie’s regional center services, such as the behavioral intervention program that he participates in every weekday morning; a highly skilled and trained team work with him on decreasing his aggressive behaviors and increasing his functional communication skills. We are more grateful than anyone can imagine that he’s been accepted into this program, and we hope it will help him overcome these frightening outbursts. 

The current occupant(s) of the Oval Office are causing so much more horrific and devastating destruction of our government than anyone could have imagined. Think about an America without the Department of Education, including the loss of civil rights protections against discrimination based on disability (or race or gender). And imagine a world without IEPs (Individualized Education Programs) for our children with disabilities. Our Felon in Chief and the guy in the black hat holding the chainsaw seek to end the federal government’s commitment to ensuring equal educational opportunities for every child.

Many in the Rare Disease community live with compromised health and immune systems. When our family had the flu, only one of us (our sweet Jukie) ended up with pneumonia. While our son is much more vulnerable than most to infectious diseases, we have an antivax and anti-science nutjob running the Department of Health and Human Services, with plans to interfere with or even halt the development of next year’s flu and COVID vaccines, a serious concern for immunocompromised individuals and the rest of us.

And so, what do we DO on this Rare Disease Day, even as we watch our children’s lives becoming so much more difficult, as a result of the current administration’s draconian executive orders and proposed legislation? 

We must harness the power of resilience and connection with others in the Rare Disease community. We must fight for equal educational opportunities for all students. We must speak out, tell our stories, and let everyone know what the administration is doing to our kids and our communities. We must protest, call our legislators, show up at town hall meetings, and organize locally — not just for our rights, but for what is right. 

One thing I know for sure: alone, we are rare; together, we are strong.

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The temperatures will be in the 50s this evening, so I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight, as so many did last week, filling the patio. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, entirely possible because it is only 880 words long. 

In addition to topics raised above, expect questions tonight on the Academy Awards, keyboards, jazz, American plays, prisms, dad jokes, Oscar wakeup calls, anglophones, quavers, repetitions, global warming, astronauts, the Copper Age, dinosaurs, baseball players, asphalt, posthumous books, cosmopolitan animals, airports, musical villains, teenage monsters, female friendship, European authors, explosions, investigations, ABA and NBA players, ice babies, spices, police officers, gangsters, British naval slang, siblings, mating types, exponential math, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

For more Pub Quiz fun please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 60 members now! Thanks especially to new subscribers Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1.        Internet Culture. What does one take with Joplin, Notion, or Obsidian?  

2.        German Cities. Starting with the letter S, the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg is the sixth-largest city in Germany by population. Name the city.  

3.        American Rivers. At 444 miles long, the longest river on the East Coast of the United States crosses New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Name the river. 

P.P.S. Our next Poetry Night with new UC Davis poetry professor Cindy Ok is March 6.  

Dear Friends,

I encountered with such an unusual series of mishaps at the San Francisco Hyatt Regency earlier this month that a friend asked me to write about my adventure in this week’s newsletter.

For the last 20 years I have presented at the San Francisco Writers Conference. We did about 14 years at the Mark Hopkins International Hotel, and the last six at the Hyatt Regency. I typically travel with my family, and they prefer the Hyatt because of the proximity to restaurants and small urban parks where we can walk our French bulldog, Margot.

This year when I arrived on a Thursday morning to register at the Hyatt, I saw that an army of employees had been mobilized to attend to an unlikely flood in the lobby. Evidently an electrical short had sabotaged the fountain in the world-famous lobby (the largest in the world), so hundreds of gallons of water were pouring across the floor.

I saw bellhops with mops, maids with cleaning aids, and waiters tossing the nearby restaurant’s tablecloths onto the standing water like so many Indonesian penjala ikan (or net-throwing fishermen). I also saw black-vested employees with huge industrial cleaners that they hoped would soak up all the water before it reached the still-operating escalators and the elevator shafts. Because the staff had no sandbags, some of those tablecloths were also bunched into thick, rolled mounds, forming makeshift sandbags to slow or divert the flow. 

The electrical problems had just begun. Although they could keep the elevators working, a subsequent planned power cut (to repair the electrical problems) lasted not 20 minutes, as we were told, but the rest of the afternoon and evening. Managers with flashlights were handing out business cards and apologies, and a member of the staff handed out those phosphorescent sticks like the ones I used to buy at Rehoboth beach for 50 cents in the late 1970s.

We went to bed early in our dark hotel rooms. As I tried to fall asleep, I heard an impossibly-loud car stereo play “Like a G6” over and over again. I thought to myself that the rhythm (but not the content) of the song could be fruitfully adapted for a Dr. Andy poem.

The next morning, I performed a short breakfast pub quiz in a romantically-lit large ballroom. Like me, all of the attendees who had stayed in the hotel the previous night took cold showers Friday morning. Luckily, both the power and the heat came on later that afternoon in time for me to introduce keynote speaker Tommy Orange.

Saturday the director of the conference joked about the “Domino of Disasters” that had been the experience of the conference attendees, but all of us were in good spirits. Fifty-three people signed up for the marathon open mic Saturday night.

And then Sunday morning, as per the tradition, I performed a just-written occasional poem to close out the conference. I called it “A Domino of Disasters.” Find it below.

A Domino of Disasters –

The Poem for the 2025 San Francisco Writers Conference

By Dr. Andy Jones

Flippin’ pages in the dark, reading thrillers

When the lights flickered out, we got chiller

The dragons in my book, they wield magic

Writers reading in the dark, under glow sticks

Under glow sticks, under glow sticks

I’m practicing my pitch under glow sticks 

Under glow sticks, under glow sticks

I’m choosing stronger verbs under glow sticks 

All the linens in this place, they’ve gone missing

The plumber in the crawl space yells the fountain is a hissing

The lobby is a mire beset by dehumidifiers

There’s a poet on her knees helping with her hair dryer

Fire Drill, Fire Drill

Light it up, glow stick-light it up

When poets start recitin’, they be actin’ like they tough

The jazz night poets all be actin’ like they tough

And all the novelists around me, they be acting like they stuck 

Under glow sticks, under glow sticks

I can’t charge my phone with my glow sticks 

With my glow sticks, with my glow sticks

I’m taking a cold shower with my glow sticks

We have falling dominos of disaster

We need a working mic for the quizmaster

She’s from Ithaca, he’s from Madagascar

The basement engineer is staring up at the plaster

The writing that we do is worth the hardship

We come here for a lift, for the kinship

We’ll make our readers read, we’ll make them click

On our funny stories about writing under glow sticks

---

The temperatures will be in the 50s this evening, so I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, entirely possible because it is only 938 words long. 

In addition to topics raised above, expect questions tonight on the Academy Awards, short verbs, the colors of hip-hop, books about socks, quixotic quests, Olympians, patriotism, employers, popular sports, the English countryside, semiconductors, notions, bodies of water, anarchist fighters, back braces, sunshine, trees, the plurals of genus, basketball stars, younger brothers at the wheel, voters, restful sleeps, rainbows, gravity, biomass, endangered companies, criminals in Davis, exchange non-profits, rivers, cleaned-up lyrics, lagen, second places, trips via horse, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

For more Pub Quiz fun please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 60 members now! Thanks especially to new subscribers Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, who keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the dropping temperatures and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1.             Mottos and Slogans. Starting with the letter F, what insurance company uses the slogan “We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two”?   

2.             Internet Culture. At the 2018 Webby Awards, what then new game from Epic Games won the People’s Voice Award for Best Multiplayer/Competitive Game?  

3.             Newspaper Headlines. According to a February, 2025 headline in the New York Times, who has “Scrambled the California Governor’s Race Without Entering It”?  

P.P.S. Our next Poetry Night is March 6.  

Dear Friends,

Discovering new cultures is one of the best reasons to travel. In his travel narrative, The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain says “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

I love Twain’s use of the word “vegetate” here, especially in light of a conversation that my wife Kate had with a New Orleans shopkeeper this past weekend. When Kate wondered what mementos she should bring home to her kids, the proprietor said that she should purchase some Cajun alligator jerky.

When Kate revealed that (two thirds of) her kids are vegetarian, the vendor’s face soured. “Good luck with that,” she said with a smirk. Kate didn’t appreciate the uninvited derision, as if her family’s vegetarianism was a purposeful rebellion against Kate in particular.

A study reveals that in 2020, Louisiana had 16 vegan or vegetarian restaurants, or about three such restaurants for every million people in the state, tied with Alaska and Oklahoma. By contrast, California has 18 such restaurants for every million people in the state, for a total of 697 vegetarian restaurants.

As someone who has been a vegetarian for almost 45 years (surprise, Mom and Dad!), I frankly doubt that California, with its more than 300,000 restaurants total, has 697 vegetarian-only restaurants. Rather, I suspect that many of those are “vegetarian-friendly” rather than exclusively vegetarian. 

In the early 1980s, finding a “vegetarian-friendly” restaurant was sometimes challenging, even though, as of 2020, my hometown of Washington, D.C. had more vegetarian restaurants per thousand people (54) than any state in the union. When we ventured from DC to central Pennsylvania to visit my grandmother, we had much more trouble. Steak houses expect its customers to eat steak.

If I were to tell that New Orleans shopkeeper that I don’t eat fast food, she might be equally dismissive. I’m grateful for the vegetarian friendly eateries in my hometown of Davis, including Sudwerk, where I get an Impossible Burger with avocado and the delicious scarlet citrus salad. We Californians are lucky to live in the “Salad Bowl of the World,” and I plan to take full advantage of all the agricultural and cultural advantages of home. To use Twain’s verb, this Californian doesn’t have to ‘vegetate’ in one little corner of the culinary world—there’s always something fresh to discover.

The temperatures will be in the 50s at 7, 8, and 9 PM tonight. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, entirely possible because it is only 954 words long. 

In addition to topics raised above, expect questions tonight on daggers, titles with numbers, medieval engines, cabinets, atomic numbers, extensions, Rodney Dangerfield, sculptors, People’s Voice Award winners, farmers, world capitals, expensive art books, surveillance, police procedurals, young British singers, hallucinations, associations, crows, newish myths, intrusive topics, museums, countries of the world, sitcoms and their writers, shipwrecks, the looks of Hope, place names, Davis streets, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

For more Pub Quiz fun please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 60 members now! Thanks especially to new subscribers Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, who keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the dropping temperatures and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

6.             Moana. Starting with the letter P, what is the ancient setting for the 2016 film Moana?  

7.             Pop Culture – Music. Speaking of Moana and its music, Lin-Manuel Miranda has been nominated for nine Grammy Awards, winning five, but he is not an EGOT. Which award does he need to become an EGOT?  

8.             Sports. What is the sport of American Lindsey Vonn? 

P.P.S. Our next Poetry Night is February 20.