For thirty-six years, I have walked into UC Davis classrooms once carrying books, notes, and attendance sheets; now carrying less, and trusting discussion to carry the hour. I have taught poetry, essays, multimodal autobiography, writing across media, and the occasional class that threatened to become a graduate seminar because someone in the back row asked a smart question about a line in Yeats or Baldwin or Didion.

Like many faculty, I once imagined education as mostly forward-looking. Students arrived. We spent ten weeks together. They wrote papers, revised them, stared at me stone-faced when I made jokes, tolerated my enthusiasms, and eventually disappeared into careers, marriages, graduate schools, parenthood, and lives I could only partially imagine. New students replaced them the next quarter. The years began stacking like the boxes full of poetry books in my garage.

When I first began teaching, I did not understand that some classrooms continue echoing long after the quarter ends.

The echoes arrive unpredictably.

Some echoes arrive through email or Facebook Messenger. Sometimes I will encounter a familiar face at the Farmers Market or on campus on Picnic Day. If I am lucky, I encounter a former student standing unexpectedly in my office doorway twenty years later, smiling in a way that briefly collapses time.

About two decades after taking my T. S. Eliot class, Sarah Oliver Gordus, the student who trained me as a new public affairs host at KDVS in 2000, knocked on my office’s open door. I could still remember her from our Young Hall classroom years earlier: long red hair, intelligence mixed with seriousness, and the kind of attentiveness that makes discussions feel alive rather than merely procedural. Yet suddenly there she was not as a student frozen in memory, but as a fully formed adult carrying two additional decades of experience, disappointment, accomplishment, humor, and history. 

Students often remember versions of us that no longer exist, gone with the once black pigment of my beard. Somewhere in Sarah’s memory, I am still teaching Eliot to students carrying spiral notebooks instead of laptops, still standing at the front of a class before distracting smartphones adorned each desk. Meanwhile, she herself had continued making friends and discoveries through twenty years of life invisible to me. When such former students return, even briefly, one experiences the uncanny sensation of seeing both the past and present layered together like translucent pages in a Norton anthology.

Another student from that same Eliot class, Valerie Cullen Shepard, eventually headed to University of California, Los Angeles to pursue Milton studies and earn a PhD. At some point, I realized that my own Milton books had found their rightful future owner in Valerie. Books migrate toward the people who still hunger for them, and I had never met anyone so hungry for Milton. A professor’s shelves are less a permanent library than a way station. I still like imagining those volumes now being opened beneath different lamps, annotated in another hand. And now, photo holiday cards of Valerie and her family sit near those same bookshelves.

Some echoes take forms no syllabus could anticipate.

Years after taking a Writing across Media course I taught for Film and Digital Media students, a former student named Kevin contacted me with a request so unexpected I reread the message twice to make sure I understood. He wanted me to become a minister and officiate his wedding to Natalie, who years earlier had babysat for our family. Teaching already blurs categories. Students become colleagues, collaborators, fellow citizens, neighbors, and even friends.

I had spent years teaching students to find meaning in other people’s narratives; it had not occurred to me that one day I might be standing inside one of theirs, holding a microphone and trying not to cry.

We are present for many undergraduate transitions. We see students during heartbreaks, illnesses, intellectual awakenings, family crises, exhausted mornings, and artistic breakthroughs they often conceal from one another. Yet even faculty who get to know their students well rarely see the longer arc. If not for Facebook or familiar names in the UC Davis alumni magazine (where I am also an alumnus), I would rarely witness who they become afterward. When former students return years later, they bring fragments of that largely invisible future back with them.

I think often now about the hidden continuity beneath a teaching career. Outsiders sometimes imagine that professors primarily teach subjects. Milton. Eliot. Virginia Woolf. Composition. Media studies. Poetry. Yet after enough years, teaching stops feeling like the delivery of information and starts feeling like short-term participation in hundreds of human stories that occasionally circle back to my attention. You begin remembering faces attached to particular moments of intellectual courage: the student who risked sharing a difficult image in a poem, the student who stayed after class to keep talking, or the student who started attending Poetry Night and then returned as the author of award-winning novels.  

The richest rewards of teaching can arrive as applause at the end of the quarter, but they also can emerge decades later in the form of a knock on the door, an invitation, an email, a remembered classroom, a student who still carries part of the conversation forward long after both of you have changed.

These echoes that still ring for me like half-remembered lines of poetry have become some of the great sustaining surprises of my life at UC Davis.

What beautiful weather we are enjoying today! My wife Kate wants me to wear a short sleeve shirt to perform in tonight. Come sit outside at tonight’s Pub Quiz at Sudwerk!  Expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on small words and small devils. Today’s pub quiz comes in at 878 words.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: African nations, algorithms, Apples, arenas, avalanches, bags, bands, bearded elders, beloved leaders, Canadian politicians, celebrities, chemists, college degrees, comedians, cosmetics, crowns, educated populations, elements, enchanted forests, entertainers, ermine cousins, European languages, fantasy courts, flowering trees, guitar riffs, islands, journalists, kayaks, massive crowds, marine visitors, nicknames, novelists, outdoor gear, pioneers, planes, plastics, provinces, Saturday nights, splitters, streaming results, surprising species, thorns, tracks, train stations, unfortunate coincidences, unfortunate exits, U.S. states, wars, wildness, 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. Certain friends have upgraded their memberships recently, which I really appreciate.

We are now past 100 Patreon members, including people who have upgraded their paid memberships! You know who you are, and I salute you! I also incidentally salute Cathy, Christine, Bobby, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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. Hello to Bill and to Jude’s dad. Thanks in particular 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. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Michael, Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. Soon we will feature some of our best supporters on Patreon.

Best,

Dr. Andy

Recent trivia for you:

1. Youth Culture. What is Labubu: A Chinese furry monster, a K-Pop singer’s nickname, or a Japanese virtual pet?  

2. Hair Accessories. What common hair accessory shares its name with a small edible squid?  

3. Science. Commonly found in granite, what M mineral splits into thin elastic sheets because of its perfect basal cleavage?  

Today I walked halfway to Crepeville before Kate picked me up for brunch. Afterward, she dropped me off a mile and a half from home so she could rush to jury duty, and I walked the rest of the way back through another clear California morning. I owe these long walks much of my health. They pull me out of the mediated world of screens and back into physical space: trees shifting in the wind, the morning sun still gentle at the end of April, the rhythm of my own footsteps, a rusted bicycle leaning against a sycamore, the feeling that my mind can finally stretch out a little.

I often choose California’s weather over the pull of screens, especially as recent surveys suggest we Americans stare at screens for about seven hours a day. Over breakfast, Kate said that the numbers might be skewed by all the people who are scrolling past social media posts while watching TV. Still a fan of technological innovation, I nevertheless remain concerned about what happens when convenience replaces attention, contemplation, and the slow labor of making meaning. 

When we go to an orchestral performance, a rally by the ocean, a Poetry Night performance, or an outdoor farmers market, we remind ourselves how lucky we are to live here, even when reasons for optimism feel scarce.

The cognitive offloading that accompanies many people’s uses of generative AI runs the risk of making us feel even more disembodied. Not merely intellectual, human insight also emerges through embodied experience: moving through physical space, reading faces, hearing the intake of breath before a point is made, enduring silence, physically writing in a journal, and struggling against the resistant material of the world. 

I could spend pages on physical engagement with beauty, but as academic director at UC Davis, I also must engage with AI, even while my heart belongs to a world built by hand, word by word, and stroke by stroke.

This internal friction I feel intensifies when I text my children. Their lives revolve around the creation of original art and narrative (my daughter an artist, my son a filmmaker), so they view this technological shift with a justified chill. I suspect that they see the vast, unconsented scraping of human effort as a theft of the soul. Like the students I teach in my Writing in Fine Arts class this quarter, my kids understand that the struggle of artistic labor generates the meaning of the work. The solo recital must be rehearsed, and fingers darken with paint or ink. Bypassing the difficulty typically requires one to bypass the growth.

I teach my students to recognize writing as our most fundamental technology for thinking, as one of the best ways to create, deepen, and share complex thoughts. Yet, my administrative duties demand that I play with these digital prisms, examining how they might reflect or distort our academic missions. As I advise students, lead instructional designers, or consider my own future creative projects, I find myself caught in a liminal space between roles, needing to understand the framework of a tool that my own community of artists and researchers largely distrusts.

With regard to AI, those of us who grew up before such tools existed possess a “curator’s advantage,” a foundation of literacy built through decades of deep reading and exacting revision of our prose. When I ask a machine to contextualize a difficult book, asking about an author’s peers or influences (such as how Blake and Whitman influence Ginsberg), I do so with a mind already filled with the echoes of other texts. When examining a piece of writing, I recognize a shallow synthesis or a blatant hallucination because I spent my life marking up paperbacks and learning how to build a sentence from the ground up.

A person who masters the craft of language views technology as a lens, whereas a person dependent on the tool views it as a source, a crutch, or even a necessity. Sometimes I worry about those generations who grow up without the friction of the blank page. Educators must always consider how to model and cultivate human creativity, seeking to ensure it remains untamed by the homogenizing influence of a predictive model.

Nietzsche wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra that “Man muss noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können” –  “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

I plan to foster this chaos in me by staring into the eyes of my beloved, walking into a forest at dusk, or writing a poem whose wild pairings of images — a peacock feather caught in the spokes of that rusted bicycle on my morning walk — allow me to escape the confines of predictable prose. The best parts of life shouldn’t be outsourced.

What beautiful weather we are enjoying today! Come sit outside at tonight’s Pub Quiz at Sudwerk!  Expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on small words and small devils. Today’s pub quiz comes in at 895 words.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: Accessories, banknotes, behaviors, birds, dances, furniture, girls’ names, horror films, islands, minerals, muscles, Nobel Peace Prize winners, officials, Oscar-nominated actors, platinum-selling rock albums, poets, pop singers, puppets, redundancies, regimes, rivers, runners, Sacramento athletes, social media, spirits, squids, suspects, telecommunications firms, television broadcasts, toys, visionaries, wrestlers, 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. Certain friends have upgraded their memberships recently, which I really appreciate.

We are now past 100 Patreon members, including people who have upgraded their paid memberships! You know who you are, and I salute you! I also incidentally salute Cathy, Christine, Bobby, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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. Hello to Bill and to Jude’s dad. Thanks in particular 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. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Michael, Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. 

Best,

Dr. Andy

1. Three questions from last week: Mottos and Slogans. Known for its three-letter name, what organization and conference in 2024 changed their slogan from “Ideas Worth Spreading” to “Ideas Change Everything”?  

2. Internet Culture. John Ternus is replacing whom?  

3. Newspaper Headlines. According to a recent article in the New York Times, the new Netflix show featuring Zach Galifianakis concerns which of the following topics: gardening, jewelry, or muskets?  

Dear Friends,

This week I’m asking you to support KDVS by visiting http://kdvs.org/give or calling 530 752-0728. If you call that number during the 5 p.m. hour on Wednesday, April 22, I can give you a shout out on the air.

When I teach classes, host faculty forums for UC Davis, or speak at open mics or storytelling festivals, I rarely write scripts. I like to perform without a net, discovering where a spoken paragraph is headed while I am still inside it. A phrase might lead to a memory, that memory to an insight, and that insight to another sentence. Sometimes the connections surprise even me.

Abraham Lincoln understood this concept well. In his 1850 “Notes for a Law Lecture,” Lincoln writes, “Extemporaneous speaking should be practised and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public.”

My most consistent avenue to the public has been my KDVS radio show, Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour. A public service of mine for more than 25 years (the show is the same age as my son, Jukie), DAPATH has aired more than 1,000 episodes, during which time I have interviewed over 2,000 guests. And I run these shows conversationally, focusing on listening and engaging with guests. With the exceptions of my interviews with Ralph Nader and Margaret Atwood, I don’t even write out interview questions ahead of time when preparing a show.

My KDVS fundraiser show is April 22^nd at 5 p.m., and I could use your help. I am hoping to raise $500 for our campus and community radio station, a goal easily reachable with your help. 

Please visit http://kdvs.org/give or call (530) 752-0728. If you call that number during the 5 p.m. hour on Wednesday, April 22, I can give you a shout out on the air.

Please consider these ten reasons to support the station.

1. KDVS gives students and community members real broadcasting experience.
   Students and community members learn announcing, interviewing, audio production, journalism, engineering, and programming in a live public setting, and with volunteer opportunities around the clock.
2. KDVS preserves truly independent radio.
   Unlike algorithm-driven streaming platforms, or even your own smart speaker at home, KDVS allows human beings to make surprising, personal, and local programming choices. KDVS gives us all a chance to recognize and celebrate humanity and human programming choices.
3. KDVS exposes listeners to music they would never encounter elsewhere.
   College and community radio give first breaks to important new artists long before commercial stations notice them. I’m sure you would rather make discoveries rather than make peace with the repetitive pablum presented by corporate radio stations.
4. KDVS strengthens Davis cultural life.
   The station connects local musicians, writers, activists, artists, poets, and audiences. If you care about our community’s culture, you should support the outlet that platforms and amplifies the best part of that culture.
5. KDVS provides public-affairs and specialty programming commercial radio rarely airs.
   Community voices, niche music, experimental shows, and underrepresented perspectives still find airtime. For example, I believe I host the only poetry and technology radio show in the nation.
6. KDVS creates continuity between the university and the broader community.
   It serves both UC Davis and the surrounding region rather than functioning only as a campus outlet. Communities like that of Davis work best when town and gown share resources and opportunities.
7. KDVS supports curiosity and discovery.
   Listeners tune in not merely for familiar content, but for surprise, experimentation, and serendipity. As Marcel Proust said, “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
8. KDVS preserves a tradition of volunteer-driven broadcasting.
   The station depends on people who care enough to make radio for reasons beyond profit. In hosting a public affairs radio show for 25 years, I have not made a single dime, even though the experience has profoundly enriched my life.
9. Financial donations to KDVS help maintain the practical infrastructure of broadcasting.
   Equipment, licensing, streaming, archiving, and transmitter costs require ongoing financial support. We have a huge antenna about midway between north Davis and Woodland that requires upkeep and maintenance, an effort made possible by our donors.
10. Supporting KDVS helps preserve noncommercial public space.
    In a fragmented media environment crowded with distractions, community radio KDVS still creates shared listening experiences. 

Thanks for your support for my ongoing efforts to enrich our community with offbeat literary programming since the year 2000.

I think the rain is done for the day, so come sit outside at tonight’s Pub Quiz at Sudwerk!  Expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on small words and small devils. Today’s pub quiz comes in at a svelte 856 words, two words lighter than last week.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: associations, Australians, astronomy, categories, comedians, commanders, conferences, country songs, devils, disasters, donkeys, dragons, dragons, echolocation, entertainers, executives, fairies, flatterers, footsteps, fuel pumps, Germans, governors, heavy metal, hospitals, irritations, Massachusetts polls, measurements, memories, mountain nations, mythology, National Poetry Month, Oscar nominees and winners, patents, peaks, phonies, physics, polymers, pronouns, quarterbacks, soles, sonnets, Spanish-speaking countries, superheroes, television personalities, textiles, thrills, Yankees, 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. Certain friends have upgraded their memberships recently, which I really appreciate.

We are now past 100 Patreon members, including people who have upgraded their paid memberships! You know who you are, and I salute you! I also incidentally salute Cathy, Christine, Bobby, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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. Hello to Bill and to Jude’s dad. Thanks in particular 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. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Michael (thanks Michael!), Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Trivia Questions from Last Week:

1. The Hero’s Journey. The first of the 12 steps of the hero’s journey is The Call to Adventure. The second step is “The BLANK of the Call.” What R word fills in the blank.  
2. Taxes. What is the two-word term for the fixed amount that reduces your taxable income, effectively setting the floor below which most filers owe nothing?  
3. Sports. What NBA team, once home to Bob Lanier and Dave Bing, currently leads the Celtics, the Knicks, and the entire Eastern Conference with 60 wins?  

As a lifetime lover of the performing arts, I’ve sat through long orchestral performances and let my attention drift. 

Wearing a blue blazer and my first necktie, I was taken to performances by the National Symphony Orchestra that became the resident orchestra of the newly-opened Kennedy Center. Later I would see Boston Symphony Orchestra performances, though my $4 student price tickets often allowed only partial visibility of the performers. I remember the lights being dimmed and my being carried away by the music, and even sometimes carried towards slumber. 

Determined not to repeat my childhood lapses, I took a strategic nap before this Sunday’s festival. This time, the stakes were higher: I wasn’t in the back of the hall. I was sitting on stage at The Mondavi Center.  

The Wennberg Orchestra Festival gathers every level of student orchestra in Davis into a single afternoon, and this year, as the Master of Ceremonies, I got to welcome the audience of 400 or more and introduce each group. That meant sitting at a lectern just a few feet from the musicians, right behind the second violins.  

As I tried to communicate with my enthusiastic introductions, every entrance mattered. The tuning of all those instruments, led by the concertmaster, seemed to go on too long. One performer was recognized by the conductor taking the stage after the tuning had concluded; he made it to the performance just in time, despite a flat tire on his car. One could imagine him sprinting across town and then across campus, carrying his violin case like a misshapen football. I watched from the lectern as he slipped into his seat, breathless but almost ready,

Sitting so close to the action, I realized that I, too, was part of the set dressing. I remained visible, modeling an attentive silence for the audience without ever pulling their focus away from the sharply-dressed performers. I watched the student musicians tracking the conductor, bows rising together, eyes lifting and settling. 

I enjoy speaking into a microphone before 400 people, but I didn’t always know how to negotiate the silence after each piece ended. I could sense the audience looking at me, waiting for permission to clap. Meanwhile, I was looking at the conductor, waiting for a nod. For three or four seconds that felt much longer, nobody moved. As the MC, I felt like the bridge between the sacred silence of the stage and the eruptive energy of the audience.

From the perspective of the audience, an orchestra is a unified wall of sound. From eight feet behind the second violins, the sound is engulfing. From my seat, the orchestral balance vanished; I heard the gritty, intimate details of the violins rather than the polished “wall of sound.”  Perhaps only the performers and I could hear the audible breath of the woodwinds before a musical phrase. Under the stage lights, I could see the rosin dust rising from the bows.

The confidence, increasing complexity, and sustained excellence of the performances belied the youth of the performers. A familiar movement from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony appeared late in the program, and I reminisced about the well-worn cassettes that provided the orchestral soundtrack of my last two years of college. When that close to the performers, one actually feels the timbre of the orchestral pieces. The stringed instruments immersed me in sound. The kettledrums resonated in my chest cavity.

By the end of the afternoon, the stage belonged to the students and the conductors (especially Angelo Moreno) who had mentored them. The students carried the sound, held the tempo, and stayed with one another through the harder passages. Introducing the performers, and congratulating them after each rousing finale, I was filled with admiration and gratitude for their performances.   

Neither teacher nor parent of these musicians, I left the stage proud of a community that still finds value in the slow, disciplined alchemy of turning rosin and wood into art. After each performance, and especially during the encores, the musicians could hear applause before and behind them on the Mondavi stage.

It’ll be breezy tonight, so bring your paperweights and your friends with weighty knowledge. Expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on British heroes who died elsewhere. Today’s pub quiz comes in at a svelte 858 words, my slimmest quiz all year.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: albums, anthems, anxieties, apartments, arenas, Asian nations, athletes, astronomical bodies, bands, banks, bars, borders, capitals, capsules, characters, clothes, comedians, controllers, credits, dad jokes, decades, detectives, directors, disquietudes, dogs, dukes, economies, elements, epics, eras, forms, franchises, gambling halls, glass enclosures, Greeks, hearings, households, idols, journeys, kings, Koreans, long jokes, machines, magicians, merchants, metals, minerals, movies, novels, poems, presidents, quarterbacks, refusals, remotes, satirists, satellites, sidekicks, sitcoms, songs, sports, stones, taxes, tickets, tournaments, trousers, verbs, 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. Certain friends have upgraded their memberships recently, which I really appreciate.

We are now past 100 Patreon members, including people who have upgraded their paid memberships! You know who you are, and I salute you! I also incidentally salute Cathy, Christine, Bobby, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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. Hello to Bill and to Jude’s dad. Thanks in particular 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. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Michael, Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Three questions from last week:

1. Film and Film Critics. About what 2026 Pixar film was film critic William Bibbiani speaking when he wrote that the film “isn’t just James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) if it had feelings, it’s also James Cameron’s Avatar if it was good”? 

2. Youth Culture. Why has Bebe the parrot gone viral: Alerting Ukrainian soldiers to drones, exploring the Bahamas in a submarine, or accompanying Justin Bieber on stage at Coachella 2026?  

3. Countries of the World. How many European countries have a larger population than that of Iran: One, three, or five?  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

This Friday I have a 9:20 a.m. doctor’s appointment at 2660 West Covell Boulevard in Davis, approximately 4.7 miles from my south Davis home. My son’s van picks him up at 7:45, setting the schedule that shapes the rest of my morning. Google Maps estimates a one-hour and 47-minute trek. If the van pulls away at exactly 7:45, I’ll arrive with a razor-thin three-minute margin. It’s a gamble against the clock. Should I walk?

I want to, but a bicycle is also calling out to me. It reminds me of another weekday earlier this year when I met my wife at a north Davis medical appointment. I ended up biking past four different Davis public schools and was reminded what a bike-friendly town we live in.

From South Davis, I biked over Pole Line Road, past my favorite Davis brewery, and then through Chestnut Park where I meditate on Sunday mornings. I heard the familiar singers – the American robins, the northern mockingbirds, the house finches and the white-crowned sparrows – their chorus forming the soundtrack of my morning sit.

I encountered many other bicyclists, most of them ages 12–15, on Drexel Drive on the way to Holmes Junior High School, and was delighted to find a welcoming committee at all the nearby intersections. When I am driving (which happens rarely these days), I plot routes that avoid schools because of the stopped traffic. By contrast, on my bicycle, I was directed to breeze through all the stop signs by crossing guards in reflective vests, meaning that I sped through town. Even when I would slow down, these public servants would wave me through with big smiles on their faces, looking at me as if I had never biked in Davis before.

I have been treated like a VIP a few times in my life: When my theatre critic dad and I would show up to a sold-out play and be ushered to some of the best seats in the house just before the lights dimmed; when visiting Disneyland with my disabled son Jukie, and thus being guided past long lines and onto the amusement park rides that he could handle; or biking past Holmes Junior High or North Davis Elementary during the 8 a.m. hour. With my dad at the theatre, I felt important by association. With Jukie at Disneyland, I felt grateful that the world had made a little room for him. And on my bike in Davis, I felt prioritized by design, like a protagonist in a town built for two wheels.

Walking and biking entail different ways of taking in the city, with the walk a meditative slow -burn, and the bike ride a kinetic release. On foot, I can dictate emails, write drafts of poems, or see what Kate has posted on Instagram. My step count, once hovering around 18,000 a day, has dropped to about 15,000 since I developed plantar fasciitis last December and started supplementing my low intensity exercise regimen with time spent at Planet Fitness, trading circuitous greenbelts for stair-climbers and weight machines. Craving steps, I am inclined to walk.

But on a bike, I feel liberated, speedy, and empowered. Each straightaway invites acceleration and exhilaration. My bike eats up the miles, racing past pedestrians and slower bicycles as if they were stuck in place. Imagining wings, I create my own breezes, revisiting the joy that I first discovered at Stoddert Park in Washington D.C. when I first learned to bike in 1976. Speed sharpens the world, narrowing my focus to the line ahead and the rhythm of the pedals. The wind whistles through the ventilation slots of my helmet.

The question remains: Should I walk and stay present or bike and feel free? Which would you choose?

April is the cruelest month if you live in The Waste Land or if you owe a bunch of taxes yet, but in Davis, April seems kind, with warm temperatures cooling into the evening, and a sunset pub quiz waiting for all of us on this Beautiful Wednesday. Expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on British heroes who died elsewhere. Today’s pub quiz comes in at a svelte 856 words, my slimmest quiz all year.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: absurdist comedies, acts, animated films, anagrams, appreciated kings, backup careers, basic biology, blockbusters, calling codes, chains, championship firsts, colorful creatures, corporate timelines, country music notables, disappearing MCs, draft histories, electrical measurements, elite educations, European populations, fan fiction, genre crossover artists, skylines, housing statistics, hungry insects, independence movements, international visitors, lachrymose names, late-night luminaries, literary outputs, media personalities, multi-hyphenate performers, population comparisons, prison dramas, scenes, sports records, streaming features, surnames, tattoos, tourism patterns, video games, viral animals, vocabulary words, 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. Certain friends have upgraded their memberships recently, which I really appreciate.

We are now past 100 Patreon members, including people who have upgraded their paid memberships! You know who you are, and I salute you! I also incidentally salute Cathy, Christine, Bobby, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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. Hello to Bill and to Jude’s dad. Thanks in particular 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. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Michael (thanks Michael!), Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Three questions from last week:

1. Science. Starting with a P, what is the term for the open ocean zone that is not near the bottom or the shore?  

• Books and Authors. Happy National Poetry Month! Which young poet became nationally known after the 2021 U.S. presidential inauguration?  

• Current Events – Names in the News. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s 16-year grip on power may soon be coming to an end in what country?  

Rather than grappling with the danger of voter fraud, today instead we face the political use of its myth to undermine democracy.

The Brennan Center for Justice is clear on voter fraud in the United States: “[Every] legitimate study ever done on the question shows that voting by noncitizens in state and federal elections is vanishingly rare.” I love that use of the word “vanishingly.” Math people might call this a horizontal asymptote, a line a curve approaches but never meaningfully reaches.

Like that horizontal asymptote, the gap between the fear of voter fraud and its actual occurrence is something the numbers make plain — if you’re shown the numbers. As the Brennan Center puts it, “we must be careful not to undermine free and fair access to the ballot in the name of preventing phantom voter fraud.” 

Some would say this delegitimizing of elections is the goal, not the undesired by-product. In an era of increasing authoritarianism in the United States, citizens should recognize that manufacturing doubt about elections is intended to determine winners. This fear isn’t just a misunderstanding of math; for some, it is a deliberate tool of control. As Joseph Stalin is purported to have said, “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”

It’s important to count votes, but in an era of manufactured doubt, it is equally vital to count the bodies in the streets.

Sunday, The Guardian newspaper reported “More than 8 million people showed up across 3,300 No Kings protests on Saturday, calling for an end to the war in Iran, immigration agents in their communities and what they see as Trump’s creeping authoritarianism. Organizers say it’s the greatest number of protests in a single day in US history.”

My family and I were happy to have participated in No Kings 3 this past Saturday, but I think we might have also thrown off the official count.

Vacationing in the North Bay this past weekend, we followed a path towards a steady crescendo of dissent. We began Saturday morning in Bodega Bay, where a small, salt-aired rally felt intimate against the vast, quiet backdrop of the coast and along the busy State Route 1. As we moved inland from the coast, the energy began to thicken. In Petaluma, the mood was a communal hum, a few thousand of us marching past the Singing Resistance singers in front of Copperfield’s Books, and then gathering in Walnut Park like a massive, purposeful picnic.

By the time we reached Santa Rosa, the trickle had become a flood. We joined 12,000 marchers, and the atmosphere shifted from peaceful and determined to electric. The quiet determination of the coast was gone, replaced by a younger, louder, and more exuberant roar that filled Old Courthouse Square. The square vibrated as new waves of marchers arrived to diversify the energy.

At similar protests that I’ve attended in Davis, Woodland, and Sacramento, I’ve encountered many friends. So much hugging! I found myself scanning faces, looking for familiar ones, but finding none. Even without friends around me, I felt that I belonged. 

While I would never engage in voter fraud, I might be guilty of protester head count fraud. Instead of counting as four people and a dog, we somehow became twelve people and three dogs. Perhaps an executive order is in order.

One woman standing on a platform wearing an anti-MAGA shirt saw me marching hand in hand with my disabled son Jukie. Jukie’s shirt reminded everyone that BLACK LIVES MATTER, while mine said “Make Racism Wrong Again.” 

After we walked by, she called out to me: 

“Hey you! Hey Dad!” 

When I turned around, she said, 

“I see you and your son! We appreciate you!” 

Squeezing Jukie’s hand, I smiled to her and to Kate. 

The cooler temperatures may keep some folks inside today, but the heartiest of us will gather outside for some pub quiz fun.  Expect  31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on waterways. Today’s pub quiz comes in at a hefty 1008 words.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: ages in weeks, airports, American novels, amplifications, band names, California cities, chiefs, classic films, contemporary poets, dancers, emotions, European politics, experimental cinema, forgeries, geniuses, glasses, global cities, governors, Greek culture, indie bands, legislative math, marine biology, Mexican geography, mythical creatures, New York cities, opinion polls, poetic terms, political satires, punk rockers, quarterbacks, rodeos, sitcoms, surprise endings, tortillas, vitamins, war comedies, well-heeled tourists, wits, world capitals, 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. Certain friends have upgraded their memberships recently, which I really appreciate.

We are now past 100 Patreon members now, including people who have upgraded their paid memberships! You know who you are, and I salute you! I also incidentally salute Cathy, Christine, Bobby, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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. Hello to Bill and to Jude’s dad. Thanks in particular 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. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Michael (thanks Michael!), Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Questions from last week:

Countries of the World. Argentina is named after what metal? 

Science. What is the name of the fluid that lubricates joints?  

Books and Authors. Dorothea Brooke searched for purpose in what George Eliot novel published in 1871 and 1872? 

My step-great-grandmother Zillah used to say that we entertain in order to attend to our homes, and we travel in order to attend to our wardrobes. 

We prepare for the gaze of others and discover what no longer fits.

There is a story about Denis Diderot that haunts me any time I consider buying something for my home.

In a 1769 essay titled “Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown” (French: Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre), Diderot reflects upon the ways his life is upended by a gift.

He receives a beautiful new dressing gown, elegant and finely made, and suddenly everything else in his home looks shabby by comparison. The chair where he was once satisfied to sit and read? It no longer belongs. The desk where he writes his essays and his 28-volume Encyclopédie? It feels wrong. The humble room itself begins to accuse him. So he replaces one thing, then another, then another, until everything matches the robe. In doing so, he ruins himself. The gift did not elevate him. Instead, it rearranged his sense of what belonged.

When our friend Evan recently came for a visit, my wife Kate began to see the house as he might see it, rather than as we see it from within, accustomed to its compromises. She looked at the fraying dining room rug the dog had started chewing a few years ago, drawn to its thick weave. She looked at the ottoman we’d bought as a placeholder twenty years ago and never gotten around to replacing. She looked at the back yard recliners, worn down by weather and time and our indifference to both.

We bought much of this furniture twenty-two years ago, when we first moved into our Davis home, when pine and pressboard sufficed. Now, those pieces have become static artifacts of a household we’ve outgrown, though we hadn’t noticed the growth until the afternoon light hit the dust just right.

One replacement leads to another: the rug, then the end table, then the chairs. The house begins to shift.

I find myself looking forward to living in a slightly finer version of our home. Unlike Diderot, I will not be replacing my 34-year-old robe, a favorite wedding present from one of my first babysitters, the late novelist John Davenport, a gift I still use every day.

Of all the gifts I received on my wedding day, the only gift that gets more use than my terrycloth robe is the golden band that I haven’t removed since.

For me, the robe stays. The band stays. That is enough.

The city is empty because of spring break, so surely you will find a table this evening! Please join me tonight for an outdoor pub quiz (or you could sit inside), also known as the social event of the week. Expect  31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on waterways. Today’s pub quiz comes in at a svelte 839 words.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: AI tools, arsonists, capital cities, civil liberties, college basketball, college teams, debt scares, dental concerns, drainage systems, eavesdroppers, film reviews, helpers, inlets, interstate raiders, lubricants, metals, morning programs, mountainous Latin roots, novel heroines, numbers that are divisible by seven, nutrition comparisons, odds, pop artists, pop star birthplaces, powerhouses, progressive organization founders, reality shows, retail chains, roses, seed, state leadership categories, TV crimes, viewership scales, waterways, whips pop charts, 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. Certain friends have upgraded their memberships recently, which I really appreciate.

We are almost to 100 Patreon members now, including people who have upgraded their paid memberships! You know who you are, and I salute you! I also incidentally salute Cathy, Christine, Bobby, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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. Hello to Bill and to Jude’s dad. Thanks in particular 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. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Michael (thanks Michael!), Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Three questions from last week:

Books and Authors and Plays and Movies. Was Little Shop of Horrors originally a 1990 children’s picture book by William Steig, a film by Roger Corman, or an off-Broadway show with music by Alan Menken and lyrics and a book by Howard Ashman? Hint: Your guess is probably wrong.  

Film. One Battle After Another won six Oscars; Sinners won four. What 2025 film came in third with three Oscars? 

Youth Culture. To be released December 18^th of 2026, what cinematic space opera with a $200 million budget and five Oscar-nominees in its cast is likely to be one of the top-grossing films released in 2026? 

Once when I was going through a difficult time, my dad visited me with great concern on his face. He asked me why I hadn’t turned to him for advice and counsel. I told him that he had died 14 years previously and thus was unavailable. I thought he would be taken aback by this news, but he just nodded sagely, holding onto my shoulder the way he always did when I was a youth. When he did that, I couldn’t always tell if he was trying to communicate something telepathically (he was a magician), or if he was just holding me up.

My dad directed plays, so he was practiced at solving problems; he has brought that same attitude to our conversations in my dreams. My mom has visited a few times since she died, but mostly just to check up on me. Mom loved the company of her sons, and she supported us unreservedly, but rarely did she advise us on solving problems or tell us what to do, unless it was to ask for another Schlitz from the refrigerator. We miss her kindness, humor and irreverence.

Most of these visits take place at around 4:00 a.m. Sometimes living people visit me, but more often the dead. My best friend Tito is always 26 when he visits me. When he first started visiting my dreams in 1993, I kept telling him that I would miss him so much. Even asleep, I could not fathom the loss. During our reunions these days, Tito just smiles. 

Sometimes the discoveries are startlingly wonderful. My son Jukie sometimes talks to me in my dreams, as he did back at age two. By age three, he was done with words.

You see what stirs my 4:00 a.m. mind: visitation, memory, and whatever inward unrest keeps summoning both. Such visitations make a favorite Emily Dickinson poem feel not only metaphorical, but also diagnostic. The first couple stanzas of Dickinson’s “One Need not be a Chamber  — to be Haunted” anticipate ideas that subsequent philosophers, psychologists and neurologists discuss with clients: anxiety, intrusive thoughts, memory loops, and psychological fragmentation.

One need not be a chamber—to be haunted—
One need not be a House—
The Brain—has Corridors surpassing 
Material Place—

Far safer, of a Midnight—meeting 
External Ghost—
Than an Interior—confronting—
That cooler—Host—

Dickinson suggests that interior specters frighten us more than external ones, that we all carry around ghosts in our heads (or in our hearts).

Dana Gioia’s poem “Unsaid” also feels “haunted” to me, especially for those of us who have unfinished manuscripts. His poem concludes with these lines:

What we conceal 
Is always more than what we dare confide. 
Think of the letters that we write our dead.

I have often heard Gioia tell the story behind this six-line poem (you can watch him share the story and the poem on YouTube) before reciting it, and its message continues to resonate with me.

Monday morning at 4:00 a.m. I traced these thoughts that you are reading now, imagining metaphors, picking out poems by Dickinson and Gioia. Sometimes I worry, relive regrettable narratives, revisit open loops, remember rejections, and ponder people who have ghosted me. Sometimes I think I hear actual ghosts, the ones Dickinson calls “External Ghosts,” different ones from the arguably interior conversational specters that want to get caught up.

Am I being rude to these visitors when I insist on going back to sleep? They know when I start counting my own deep breaths that the time has come for them to pack up and see themselves out. As a meditator, I have learned to slow my unhelpful obsessions and instead practice calm and composed noticing. 

I also engage in cognitive shuffling, or what psychologist Luc Beaudoin calls “serial diverse imagining.” Are you familiar with this practice? I’m grateful to have found it. Instead of chatting with my departed childhood friend or wondering why a friend whom I supported steadfastly inexplicably ghosted me (I hope she’s happy, wherever she is), I start listing neutral nouns that start with the letters found in a random word. For the word “TABLE,” I think of taxicabs, aardvarks, banisters, lighthouses, and elbows. Then I start over with the word ELBOW.

I recognize the cold, necessary cruelty of cognitive shuffling. To get back to sleep, I choose a banister over my father. I prioritize the mental image of a neutral aardvark over the memory of Tito’s smile. This ghost-eviction exercise fills Dickinson’s “corridors” with so much clutter—lighthouses, taxicabs, elbows—that my mind leaves no room for the dead to stand.

During the day we might be reminded of the famous St. Augustine quotation: “The dead are not absent, they are only invisible.” Dreams manifest the invisible. At night, we may welcome visits from the dead, or, necessarily, we may bless them and send them on their way.

Summer has struck Davis even before spring has begun! Please join me tonight for an outdoor pub quiz (or you could sit inside). Come early to reserve a table. The regulars and irregulars will meet for the social event of the week featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on people who return to the arena. Today’s pub quiz comes in at a svelte 928 words, with 9/25 corresponding to the birthdate of Confucius, who said something that every pub quiz regular knows: “Is it not a pleasure, having learned something, to try it out at due intervals?”

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: local fashions, PCs, Midwest geography, Nobels, health statistics, colonial controversies, successful albums, pitching records, atomic structures, royal meals, foster cares, everyday verbs, keyboard designs, island competitions, Irish notables, kitchen objects, empowered women, returning leaders, late novels, sports returns, calculations, rattled windows, thinking tools, famous singers of yesteryear, classical performances, church songs, Texas heroes, generous cowls, carnivorous comedy, Oscars, third place tallies, desert futures, woven traditions, American folk culture, hive minds, modernist names, notable feminists, nicknames and cities, Italian laws, pop charts, 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. Certain friends have upgraded their memberships recently, which I really appreciate.

We are almost to 100 Patreon members now, including people who have upgraded their paid memberships! You know who you are, and I salute you! I also incidentally salute Cathy, Christine, Bobby, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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. Hello to Bill and to Jude’s dad. Thanks in particular 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. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Michael (thanks Michael!), Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Three questions from our last pub quiz:

1. Books and Authors. Born in 1946, what recently discredited alternative medicine doctor and new age guru wrote the books Quantum Healing and Ageless Body, Timeless Mind?  

2. Film. What was the subtitle of the most recent Avatar film?  

3. Youth Culture. Actress Kathryn Hahn recently announced she is officially playing Mother Gothel in the live action version of the most expensive animated feature film ever made. What was the title of this 2010 Disney film?  

Last night, Kate took me out for my birthday.

She chose a fine Italian restaurant and reserved a table for two in the courtyard, where tall trees framed our evening meal and outdoor fireplaces cast warmth upon nearby tables. The courtyard contained a small world of pleasures: shaded stone, soft light, and voices rising and falling. Friends were recognized across the way, and the wait staff, including our attentive new friend Mateo, carried plates that looked like works of art.

At the table beside us sat a couple from out of town (or so I learned as they talked to their waitress). They dressed elegantly, ordered with confidence, and seemed comfortable with the menu’s ambitious prices. Each had a new iPhone standing upright on a stand. Although they faced one another, both lowered their eyes toward separate screens. Through the length of our meal, I do not remember hearing a single sentence pass between them.

Across from me sat my wife of thirty-three years, smiling, attentive, fully present. Kate wore a necklace made by our daughter, one that complemented her lovely auburn hair. Happy to be treating me to a fancy dinner, Kate held my gaze through story after story. We talked about our children. We talked about her work with the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation. She had already spent the day answering dozens of emails from board members and vendors, and from parents struggling to understand a diagnosis that had suddenly altered their lives. She had already given much of herself before dinner began. Yet once we arrived, our phones stayed down. Masterful at the lost art of conversation, Kate made me laugh several times.

The meal rewarded our attention. Kate chose a salad, a bowl of soup, and risotto. I began with a beet salad and moved on to pasta with a mushroom sauce so rich and satisfying that I joked I could have eaten the same plate two more times and still welcomed another forkful. Whoever designed the portion understood both appetite and restraint; the plate looked modest when it arrived and was emptied almost at once.

I also drank my first glass of wine of the year. Kate recommended it. I accepted the suggestion gladly, tasted it slowly, and welcomed the rare realization that nothing and no one could distract me just then.

On the drive home, I thought about birthdays, about kind messages arriving through text, email, and social media, and, at home, about cards and presents. I appreciated all of them. Yet the gift I treasured most filled those two hours across a table for two, where conversation replaced screens and mutual attention filled the evening.

I was left with this question that birthdays tend to raise: How do we meet the best moments of our short lives with the attention they deserve?

Sometimes the answer arrives through pleasure: a good meal, a new taste, a voice across the table. Sometimes the answer comes when someone willingly takes on something they might reasonably avoid.

Last Friday I watched my friend Michael French do exactly that.

Michael has appeared on my radio program many times during his years at UC Davis. For decades, his salaried job of running arts administration and promotion there left little room for the stage work where he began. Then, after a hiatus of more than twenty years, he stepped back into rehearsal and accepted the lead role in a new production of the Tony Award-winning musical The Drowsy Chaperone.

Before opening night, he wrote to me about how far outside his comfort zone the experience had taken him. Younger actors, performing ambitious choreography, surrounded him, flying constructed planes, roller-skating while blindfolded, and singing impressive arias. Rehearsals demanded energy, memory, timing, and trust. Yet I could sense his thrill and exhilaration upon returning to the stage lights that he knew well in his youth.

That exhilaration reached the audience.

Michael anchored the production. His framing scenes revealed the confidence, wit, and timing of a veteran performer. He held the evening together, guided transitions, sometimes comically interrupted scenes, and drew the audience steadily into the show’s madcap hilarity. At curtain call he emerged last. Most of the audience had already risen, but several of us waited for that final entrance before standing fully, because we had come in part to witness his triumphant return.

Michael is even older than I am. He too will retire one day from university life. Yet long after titles and committee work fade, he will still carry the memory of that applause, the sight of a full room rising in recognition of his work in his final theatrical performance.

Late last night, as March 10 drew toward sleep, I thought of Michael and understood a small kinship: the theater’s fading warmth, Kate’s company still present.

He had his applause.

I had eye contact, clinked glasses, a shared meal, and the company of one person who still makes a date night feel memorable.

At moments like that, one attentive presence fills the room more completely than any crowd. On this birthday, I feel lucky that an audience of one often proves enough. 

If you want to recognize my birthday, add your name to the almost 100 treasured supporters on Patreon.

The weather seems perfect. Come out to stare into the eyes of friends and strangers at Sudwerk tonight. Keep your brain sharp by exercising it in public with no judgment until the end when I read out the scores of the teams. Laugh at the funny team names. Order via QR code or visit the overworked bartenders. Try a mocktail, as I do every Wednesday. If you are like me, you’ll add avocado to everything. We start at 7 p.m., but you might not get a table outside if you wait until then. Be a Californian by sitting outside. The pub quiz tonight is 1007 words long, which means that it is prime, like Optimus.

In addition to the topics raised above, expect tonight questions on the following largely alphabetized topics: acids, alphabetical endings, the Arabian Peninsula, band arithmetic, bank shots, blue dominance, broiled crowns, casino densities, cellular sets, crickets, dashboard chatter, the dead-ball era, despairs in candlelight, disco bars, Disney icons, Erics, fictional Italians, frontier bafflements, heroic machinery, inventors, knee problems, machine intelligence, Opie awards, pearls in Paris, plumber’s names, quantum promises, reformers, riverside beginnings, Russell Crowe confrontations, sequins and piledrivers, South American relationships, spinning kicks, survival stories, the tablet beside the spoon, thrice fingers picked, tower hairdos, vanishing feelings and squandered chances, current events, countries of the world, and Shakespeare.

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

We are almost to 100 Patreon members now, including people who have upgraded their paid memberships! You know who you are, and I salute you! I also incidentally salute Christine, Bobby, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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. Hello to Bill and to Jude’s dad. Thanks in particular 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. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Michael, Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Questions from last week:

1. Youth Culture. Who was born first (and in the 20^th century); Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, or Olivia Rodrigo?  
2. Countries of the World. Quito is the capital of what South American country?  
3. Books and Authors. What 2018 novel by Madeline Miller retells the story of the witch from Homer’s Odyssey and became a long-running bestseller?