Over the past few weeks, I’ve been surprised by how many people have asked me about America’s Bicentennial in 1976. I was a child growing up in Washington, D.C., and many people assume I must have vivid memories of the celebration. I do. I remember the crowds, the flags, the fireworks, and the excitement as the entire country turned its attention to a single anniversary.

Yet thinking back on those conversations, I realize what people really wanted to know: What did it feel like?

That question reflects uncertainty about the present. Public life feels increasingly fragmented. Many people approach national celebrations with suspicion and unease. People asking me about the Bicentennial are likely wondering what it felt like to participate in a moment when millions of Americans gathered around a common civic occasion, an experience we rarely share now.

Such questions stayed with me this week as my son Truman and I went to see Citizen Kane on the big screen for its eighty-fifth anniversary. Film buffs regard this 1941 film with a respect bordering on awe, perhaps wishing that contemporary films were as artful and substantive. Thousands of movies have been released since the Orson Welles masterpiece, but most have faded from memory. 

Yet Citizen Kane still attracts viewers, including me. My father was a film critic, actor, and director, and I grew up hearing him lecture about Orson Welles’s masterpiece. I’ve now seen the film eight times, and every viewing reminds me of those conversations, just as Citizen Kane itself reminds us of the importance of simple and abiding memories.

As I summon up my memories of my dad introducing that film (as he did with a rented film projector at my third-grade birthday party), I realize that I miss my father’s optimism. People often remarked on my dad’s boundless cheery energy, his focus, and his readiness to engage on almost any topic. Trained as a magician, actor, and director, he approached every conversation as though he had just stepped onto a stage. If you have seen video of Orson Welles telling a story, you will see something they had in common.

In 1976, we hoped that we were putting our national darkness of Watergate and presidential corruption behind us. The celebrations were bipartisan, joyous, and widespread. I remember our parking near the Martin Luther King Memorial Library and then walking the mile or so to see the enormous crowds on the National Mall. I remember the patriotic bunting on the streetlights, the parade, the Smithsonian’s Bicentennial exhibits, the excitement surrounding the newly opened Air and Space Museum, and finally the fireworks exploding above the Washington Monument.

My mother worked as a librarian, and my father reviewed theater and film for WTOP (today’s WUSA) television. Books filled our house, the Post always lay open on the table, and the evening news presented my dad and his on-air colleagues. I wore Bicentennial buttons, completed Bicentennial school projects, and posted commemorative posters in my room. By the summer of 1976, I had thoroughly caught Bicentennial fever.

The Bicentennial and Citizen Kane have endured for the same reason: each offers a fixed point in a culture that feels constantly in motion. 

This week I sat beside Truman watching the same film that my father taught me to love, realizing that enduring memories can be gifts that one generation passes to the next.

Time filters our memories. We forget most movies, perhaps thankfully, and remember the masterpieces. We forget most public celebrations and remember the ones that endure. The past often appears richer than the present because time has already performed the work of selection.

We should devote as much attention to creating memorable experiences as we devote to admiring the memorable achievements of others. We might ask what we are creating today that people will still celebrate fifty years from now. What films from our era (such as Sinners, Oppenheimer, or The Odyssey) will we care about in 2076? Which of today’s most-discussed books will still be read or taught? What stories about acts of public generosity, civic imagination, or artistic courage will still be remembered when today’s obsessions with malfeasance and buffoonery have been forgotten? 

Perhaps if we can identify and celebrate what gave the Bicentennial its spirit or Citizen Kane its staying power, we can then cultivate those same qualities in our own communities, classrooms, neighborhoods, and creative work. 

Few of us will create works that people admire eighty-five years from now or organize celebrations remembered half a century later; we need not construct our own Xanadus. Instead, we can all enrich another person’s memories. A teacher may inspire a student, a mother’s encouragement may stay with her son for decades, or a neighbor may establish a local tradition that others carry forward. We seldom recognize those moments while we are living them, but we can recognize them with hindsight. 

As we reflect on the people and country we love, we should strive to fill our days with words and actions worthy of being remembered.

---

I look forward to seeing you and being seen tonight. I have yet another outrageous black shirt that should keep me cool as I pace and perplex. I look forward to seeing you and your teams this evening. Join us on the patio if you can get a reservation or arrive early enough. As for the quiz, expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on spices.  

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: Actresses, animation, anniversaries, apartments, apostles, authors, awards, basketball, bears, billionaires, board games, box office, broadcasters, buoyancy, businesses, carriers, chart-topping songs, chemistry, classic Hollywood, compounds, cooking, crystals, documentaries, epics, flowers, forests, forests, geography, islands, losing streaks, lyrics, mammals, marsupials, memories, minerals, musicals, obligations, oceans, olives, rankings, satires, seasonings, skyscrapers, streaming services, studios, suspects, television history, vocabulary, westerns, wildlife., 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! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Three questions from last week:

• Unusual Words. What four-letter P verb means to trim or reduce something?  
• Cars. According to J.D. Power and Associates, what is the most reliable car brand of 2026? It has five letters in its name and is not Honda.  
• Pop Culture – Television. Who had the title role in the Emmy-winning dramedy Nurse Jackie (2009–2015)?  

On July 1, 2027, after 37 years as a faculty member and academic administrator at UC Davis, I will retire from the university. As I thought about how I wanted to spend my final year on campus, one word kept returning to me: gratitude.

Thirty-six years ago, in the spring of 1990, UC Davis admitted me to its Ph.D. program in English, awarded me a fellowship that covered my tuition throughout graduate school, and offered me a teaching position. Those three gifts turned into 37 years of work I loved.

During those early years, generous mentors helped me helped me grow into the teacher I hoped to be. Ellen Lange (who co-taught my first class), Marlene Clark, Eric Schroder (who taught me how to lecture confidently), Alan Williamson (who directed my dissertation), Sandra Gilbert, and many others modeled intellectual rigor, kindness, and deep respect for students. They challenged me, encouraged me, and trusted me with important responsibilities. Every class I have taught since then carries traces of their influence.

I spent many years exploring how writing, instructional technology, and research-guided pedagogy could enrich teaching and learning. Those interests gradually expanded beyond my own classroom into administrative positions that allowed me to collaborate with colleagues across the University Writing Program, the English Department, and eventually every school and college at UC Davis. I have enjoyed helping faculty experiment with new teaching tools and pedagogical approaches while maintaining a focus on students.

I also appreciated having the opportunity to create and lead initiatives that encouraged faculty to share ideas about teaching and instructional technology, like with the faculty forums on topics such as generative AI and accessibility that I host twice a month during the school year. Yet, when I look back across nearly four decades of academic work, I find myself thinking less about programs, committees, publications, or administrative titles than about people.

Over the years, more than 5,000 students have passed through my classrooms. Some arrived bursting with confidence. Others discovered their voices and obsessions along the way. My students have become writers, teachers, physicians, therapists, nonprofit leaders, deans, parents, and thoughtful citizens. 

Every quarter they showed me new ways of seeing the world. They introduced me to books I had not read, bands I had not encountered, technologies that reshaped education, and questions that lingered long after grades had been submitted. They reminded me that every classroom is a community of learners, and that the professor gets to learn alongside everyone else. Looking back, I realize that one of the greatest gifts my students gave me was the permission to remain intellectually young, whether as a 23-year-old graduate student or, now, a seasoned (I almost wrote “wizened”) academic administrator.

That realization has inspired a project I want to pursue throughout my final year at UC Davis.

Over the next 365 days, I will write about 365 former students whose lives intersected with mine in memorable ways. Some stories will celebrate inspiring accomplishments. Others will capture a single classroom conversation, a surprising paper, an office-hour discussion, or a moment that changed how I think about teaching. Many of these stories extend well beyond a single quarter; some students became colleagues, collaborators, and friends. Together, I hope the essays and videos I create will become a portrait of the extraordinary people who have enriched my life through the ordinary rhythm of university classrooms.

Memory has its limits. I recently cleaned out my office and recycled boxes of papers that an earlier version of myself would have guarded forever. The most valuable artifacts of a teaching career do not fit into filing cabinets. Rather, the real record of my career lives in conversations, relationships, and moments that resurface every time a former student writes to me. As much as my memory lets me, those are the stories I want to preserve.

This year will be my Year of Gratitude. And although my time at UC Davis will be drawing to a close, my work as a writer, teacher, radio talk show host, interviewer, and poet will continue.

Fittingly, as I sat down this morning to write these words, I opened my email and found a message from a former student whom I recently contacted about the part he played in a pre-professional writing class for English majors that I created in 1998.  

Dear Dr. Andy,

Thank you for reaching out, and congratulations on your upcoming retirement. I certainly remember you and your class.

I consider my time in your course, along with a mentorship program at UC Berkeley, as pivotal moments in my career. Focusing on writing, revising, and crafting my statement of purpose and grad school application materials gave me immense confidence. I have frequently shared that positive experience with colleagues over the years.

Thank you for everything you did in that class.

Best,

Jeremy

Earlier this year, Jeremy became Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the university where he has taught for many years.

Jeremy’s note arrived at exactly the right moment. It reminded me why teaching has been such a privilege and why gratitude feels like the right theme for my final year at UC Davis. I look forward to sharing many more stories like his over the coming months.

---

July is here. Welcome to the start of a new fiscal year! 

Let’s see how you do with no hints this week. 

I look forward to seeing you tonight and every Wednesday at 7 for the Sudwerk Pub Quiz.

When I moved to London in 1987, everything I owned had to fit into a single rucksack. Somehow a Billy Joel cassette made the cut.

In London, I met and shared a room with a beautiful woman named Kate, who has now been my wife for almost 34 years. But before all that happened, before marriage and children and all the rest, I remember worrying that my Billy Joel cassette would not help my case

I actually remember thinking, “Should I have brought music by The Velvet Underground, or The Cure, or Hüsker Dü, even though I don’t listen to any of those bands, as if taste were something you could just swap out at customs?”

As a poet, I recognize the music of Billy Joel’s lines, the exactness of the characters, the humor and heartbreak. I recognize the craft hiding inside his popular ballads. 

The year before I moved to London, I saw Billy Joel in concert at the Worcester Centrum in Massachusetts. A friend and I loved the music so much that at some point we stood up to dance. 

Isn’t that what one does at a concert? Apparently not in our section; the man behind us told us that if we wanted to dance, we should go to a different part of the auditorium. We sat down.

Then Billy Joel started playing “Only the Good Die Young,” and everyone left their seats to dance. I remember looking over my shoulder and smiling at the man behind us, as if to say, “What are you going to do now, bub?”

One of the compensations of getting older is that we no longer have to pretend to like the music we think will impress other people.   

I listened to my LP of The Stranger over and over. I still listen to “Vienna,” “Only the Good Die Young,” and “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” even though these days I drink neither a bottle of red nor a bottle of white.

And the older I get, the sadder “Piano Man” sounds to me.

When I was younger, I heard the singalong. I heard the harmonica. I heard the crowd in Worcester roaring at the line, “Man, what are you doing here?” All of us were asking the same question: What was a songwriter that talented doing in a piano bar?

Now I hear the thwarted lives.

The regular crowd shuffles in. The old man makes love to his tonic and gin. John at the bar dreams of being a movie star. Davey is still in the Navy and probably will be for life. Paul never had time for a wife.

The song sounds cheerful because people are singing along, but almost everyone in it has become stuck in a past they can’t escape. This brings me to a certain hotel in Monterey.

Over Juneteenth weekend, Kate and I made our plans late, and so we were unable to stay at one of our favorite Monterey hotels, so we stayed at a sad little inn that had seen its glory days decades before.

I will not name it and thus perhaps hurt the feelings of the owners, who already know what the place needs. 

It needs paint, updated bathrooms, repaired mirrors, and a showerhead that struck me squarely at the breastbone. I am reasonably tall, but no grown adult should have to crouch to wash their hair.

I began thinking about the sadness of “Piano Man,” about people and places past their prime. Nostalgia can become a kind of deferred maintenance. The inn had its own chorus of regulars: the faucet, the wallpaper, the barricaded balconies, and the scarred mirror.

The New York Times may not consider Billy Joel one of the hundred greatest American songwriters, but I recognize that nearly forty years after I worried about bringing his cassette to London, I’m still learning from him.

Ridiculous premises sometimes make room for real affection. I still like the song. I still like Monterey. I even felt a little tenderness for the inn, just not enough to stay there again.

Here, then, with apologies to Billy Joel, is The Monterey Neglected Inn Blues.

The Monterey Neglected Inn Blues

It’s check-in time on a Saturday,
And the fog’s rolling in from the bay,
There’s a smile at the desk and a whiff of old must,
And a carpet that’s faded to gray.

Well, the brochure still talks about luxury,
And the photos are as bright as can be,
But the paint’s peeling off and the shutters all cough,
Like they’re begging for early release.

Sing us a sad song, you Neglected Inn,
Sing us a tune from your prime.
You were charming once, 
Maybe back when you launched,
But you’ve fallen behind with the times.

Now the bathroom’s a study in sadness,
With a faucet that drips through the night,
And the mirror’s so scarred that it’s hard to regard
If it’s me or a trick of the light.

There’s a shower that groans like a sea lion,
And a toilet that leans to one side,
And the grout in the tile had been crumbling a while
until it simply got tired and died.

Sing us a sad song, you Neglected Inn,
Sing us a tune from your prime.
Your towels are thin and your wallpaper’s grim,
And your glory has faded with time.

There’s a painting that hangs in the hallway,
Showing schooners and sunsets and cheer,
But the frame’s coming loose and the ice machine’s truce
With the cold ended sometime last year.

And the walls have the charm of old history,
Though the windows don’t open at all,
And the lamp by the bed sheds a flickering dread
On a crack running down through the wall.

Sing us a sad song, Neglected Inn,
You’ve been coasting on memories,
So a fresh coat of paint and some mirrors that ain’t
From the Hoover administration, please.

---

Every Pub Quiz is like a mid-week vacation for me — I look forward to seeing you and your teams this evening. Join us on the patio if you can get a reservation or arrive early enough. As for the quiz, expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on individual locations. My walking friend Bill suggested a number of topics that will come up tonight or on future Wednesdays. 

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: Action films, advertising slogans, American history, soccer, apples, beverages, blockbuster actors, box office stars, British politics, California history, calendar patterns, Captain America, children, comedians, conventions, East Coast education, exaltations, exits, fancy outfits, fans, farms, fish, French geography, girls, golf history, insurance, lights, major music releases, mothers, novelists, opening numbers, outer space, playwrights, pop singers, prestige television, rays, Shakespearean holidays, snivel, sob stories, South America, superheroes, Washington, D.C., wines, wordplay, work, 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! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Three questions from last week’s pub quiz:

1. Mottos and Slogans. Known as “The Voice of the West,” the San Francisco Chronicle’s weekday newsstand price is the same as that of The Sacramento Bee. Rounded off to the nearest dollar, what is that price? 

• Internet Culture. Starting with an R, what maker of streaming devices has Fox Corp. recently agreed to buy for $22 billion?  

• Newspaper Headlines. The new Obama Presidential Center is found in which south side of Chicago park: Garfield Park, Jackson Park, or Lincoln Park?

“Imagine a culture in which everything is geared toward helping all individuals become the best human beings they can be; in which individuals are driven to devoting their lives to becoming enlightened by the natural flood of compassion for others that arises from their wisdom.”

—Robert Thurman (August 3, 1941–June 16, 2026)

I don’t follow sports. My grandfather loved college basketball, and my father passed on to my brother Oliver a love of basketball and baseball. My dad worked with local football heroes Sonny Jurgensen and Joe Theismann at his TV station, and when I was about ten, he introduced me to Sugar Ray Leonard.

Even so, recently I’ve been paying close attention to a number of moments that are consoling during a political and historical era that might otherwise be called inconsolable.

We are living through a period that does not lend itself to easy consolation. Our country’s leaders have spent much of this year dismantling sources of international goodwill, defunding science, education, and the arts, and reminding us how quickly a nation can damage its reputation. As we welcome the world for the World Cup and prepare for the 2028 Olympics, I take comfort in knowing that strangers often treat one another with greater generosity than governments do.

While America has been squandering its previously earned goodwill, let me tell you what I saw at a baseball game.

This past Monday I attended my first Major League Baseball game in forty years. Invited by some old friends, I entered Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, the temporary home of the transitioning A’s, more as an anthropologist than as a baseball fan. I enjoyed watching the A’s score something like 11 runs, but I enjoyed even more the theater around it: the food vendors moving through the stands, calling out their wares in a kind of oral tradition I didn’t know still existed, and the fans, who apparently know this tradition well, calling back. While I didn’t understand the words they were yelling, or how those vendors could be so loud without the sort of electric amplification I depend upon, I didn’t need to. I saw the exchange as a liturgy, passed down through generations of stadium-goers, and everyone there but me knew their part. In my naïveté, I saw the shared ceremony as an occasion for joyful strangers to perform a ritual that had no purpose except to make everyone feel like they belonged there.

In my section of the baseball park sat a man nearby wearing an A’s baseball jersey, a baseball glove, and two hats simultaneously, one for the A’s, one for the Sacramento Kings, one facing forward, one backward. He cheered every positive development in the game with the gusto of a professional hype man, and he gave high-fives to people he’d never met after every run scored, sometimes with the actual baseball glove that he did not remove once.

The man in two hats would have felt at home in New York last week. After the Knickerbockers won the NBA championship last week, their first title in fifty-three years, the streets of New York City filled with revelers. This was expected. Less expected was what happened after the celebrations wound down: fans stayed, spontaneously, to help the sanitation workers clean up. Writing online, my friend Manuel Medeiros captured how a surge of local pride can give citizens the sense of belonging that distant institutions fail to provide: “This is what happens when people feel seen by their government.”

I also saw the Japanese World Cup fans. You may know that Japanese supporters bring trash bags to games and clean the stadium when their game is over, no matter who wins. I’ve seen this communal spirit on trips to Nara, a city about the population of Stockton in which seemingly everyone plays a part in tidying up. The Japanese national team, meanwhile, cleans its own locker room and leaves behind a thank-you note. 

Moving from civic virtue and shared labor to cross-cultural euphoria, consider the love of Mexican soccer fans for South Korean soccer fans. Because South Korea knocked Germany out of the 2018 World Cup, a result that was somehow good news for Mexico, when Mexican fans fill the streets to celebrate their soccer team, they find South Koreans, and then buy them drinks and hug and kiss them in the street. At first, they were celebrating together, two nations briefly aligned by the arithmetic of a soccer bracket, but then it became a habit, with Mexicans just looking for excuses to find and lift up Koreans.

I can’t fully explain it, but I love it.

When official institutions, such as governments, alliances, and administrations, fail to model the virtues that hold societies together, we everyday people don’t simply abandon those virtues. We practice them anyway, in the spaces we still control, with the strangers who happen to be nearby. Infused with joy and camaraderie, diverse strangers gather to clean stadiums, pick up trash in the streets, and exchange high-fives with people whose names they’ll never know. Some of them spread purposeful joy to visiting Koreans.

As global eyes turn toward our stadiums for the World Cup and the upcoming Olympic games, we have lessons to learn from these revelers. The fans cleaning the streets of New York, the Japanese supporters with their trash bags, the Mexicans kissing strangers from Seoul all make an important argument. We are not our government.

Even though I am not a sports fan, this week I have become a fan of sports fans. As they surf what the late Robert Thurman might call “a flood of compassion” at sporting events, I hope they squeeze out all the joy they can from this summer of athleticism, play and new friendship. And I hope they bring trash bags.

---

My wife Kate bought me a new Pub Quiz shirt yesterday, so I will be trying that out for the first time this evening. We have a pleasant evening in store for us, weather-wise. Will we break our record of 45 teams tonight? Join us to find out. Also, people will be curious to know if Menace to Sobriety will let us know if they plan not to join us this week. Expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on conveyances. 

Our first-place team last week was Quiz Me Like You Miss Me. They were followed by Portraits, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, and The Mavens, who won the swag tiebreaker with Coming in Hawt, Tutus, and The Crayons. Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks to all of our players. Thanks, also, to the top four teams for your support on Patreon.

Did you see that my silver and better patrons got to watch a video of last week’s quiz on Patreon?

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: action heroes, animal lovers, animation, blockbuster audiences, California newspapers, catalogs, changing light, city parks, desserts, dress shirts, drummers, early chemistry, English history, European culture, everyday purchases, fast food, forecasts, foul territory, golf swings, household wiring, house bands, human anatomy, lemons, lightning, literary prizes, live performances, local geography, laboratory surprises, maps, modern nostalgia, neighborhood maps, poetry, power pop, public spaces, questionable beauty advice, remote controls, repeated subjects, road trips, royal families, rural scenes, sidewalks, Silicon Valley, sitcom fathers, skeletons, social media, state names, street signs, suburban life, sunshine, television screens, theater stages, tom toms, touring bands, turning points, unexpected visitors, weather forecasts, young musicians, 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. Their cookies cannot be topped. 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 Elaine, Michael, Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion, especially this week

Best,

Dr. Andy

---

Three questions from last week’s pub quiz:

1. Current Events – Names in the News. In what country did Bad Bunny recently have an audience with visiting Pope Leo?  
2. Sports. A headline in yesterday’s Defector reads “Mike Babcock Is Proof That No One Is Too Weird To Get Hired In The NHL.” What Edmonton NHL team might hire Babcock?  
3. Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s most geographically wide-ranging tragedy shifts between Alexandria, Rome, Messina, and Athens. Name the play. 

In each newsletter, we recognize the causes of our gold supporters of the pub quiz on Patreon.

The Mavens support Meals on Wheels Yolo County

For over 50 years, Meals on Wheels Yolo County has prepared and delivered freshly cooked meals to seniors in Yolo County. in 2026, MOW Yolo County is providing approximately 1,200 aging adults in the region with the nutrition and social engagement they need to eat well and age well – safely and with dignity. Join the Mavens in supporting Meals on Wheels Yolo County!

www.mowyolo.org

Lynne Conrad-Forrest MD and Quizimodo support Planned Parenthood 

Both these institutions do a lot of good and are in need of financial support in these dangerous times. Planned Parenthood provides primary care including contraception, hormonal therapy and sexually transmitted infection screens and treatment, as well as pregnancy counseling.

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-mar-monte

Please upgrade your membership to gold to be recognized here!

Every department should have one person who says, “Wait a minute.”

Sometimes a meeting benefits from that person who hears nine people agree and proclaims that the tenth opinion deserves a hearing.

At work and at home, I get excited about new ideas, new approaches, and new tools. As the Academic Director of Academic Technology Services at UC Davis, I have spent part of my career encouraging faculty to create and use online resources, to teach hybrid or online classes, and to teach with images, audio, and video. Even when I read about the latest in artificial intelligence, I might ask “What could we build with this?”

My Religious Studies colleague Naomi Janowitz asks a different question.

“What might we lose?”

I have attended tech-centric faculty meetings where I have seen Naomi take notes with a Lamy fountain pen in a notebook. I have led discussions about efficiency while she steered us back toward attention and the needs of our students. Naomi asks what people should do with the time the new tools save. Read another book? Have another conversation? Think a little longer?

Years ago, I encountered a phrase from the Babylonian Talmud: ipkha mistabra, often translated as, “The opposite is more probable.” I have always liked the phrase, even if I have rarely practiced it except to challenge my students’ arguments and assumptions. Most of us prefer agreement. Agreement feels productive. Sometimes agreement gets us to lunch sooner.

Universities, however, also need people who delay lunch.

When a colleague retires, an office gets emptied. The books disappear. A favorite teacup remains unused in the departmental lounge. Someone else eventually inherits the furniture. 

Sometimes the real vacancy appears during a conversation when you suddenly realize that the person who would have challenged everyone’s assumptions is no longer in the room.

---

I got to read this poem at Naomi’s retirement party.

For Naomi Janowitz: The Start of Summer

ONE

I remember the first time I was brought to her office. 

I wanted to take the stairs. 

But no, my elderly guide, the chair of English,

Insisted on the elevator, telling me on the way to the 9^th floor,

 “I think you should really get to know Naomi Janowitz.” 

We arrived at the highest point on campus, the entire county her vista. 

She may have been the only weekday Davisite 

who could see both the Sacramento skyline

and all four surrounding mountain ranges.

Surrounded by all those canonical texts, 

I was struck by more analogues than I can process. 

From that elevation, I saw Zeus on his eagle,

I think of Hliðskjálf, the high seat of Odin,

or the Garuda upon which Vishnu would be mounted.

No matter the religious imagery, on that first visit to the office

I was both taken in and taken aback.

TWO

When I arrived in California a few years before, 

I noticed how deliberately our academics thought, 

how lugubriously they talked. 

But not Naomi. 

Quick-witted, quick-minded, quick-tongued,

She was more like Saraswati,

The Hindu goddess of learning, speech, poetry, music, and wisdom.

I felt compelled to bring a court stenographer with me 

on subsequent visits so that I could later consult an accurate record of what was said, 

to review the titles of the books that had been recommended, 

to consider the methodological insights into research and teaching.

THREE

When I started to teach with technology, 

Naomi continued to teach without technology. 

When I said, “Let’s embrace the tool,” she shook her head. 

“Ipkha mistabra” / EEP-khah miss-TAHV-rah

The Babylonian Talmud tell us,

 “The opposite is more probable.”

If nine people in a room agree to a course of action, 

let there be a 10th person who says no,

who says, “Put down the smartphone. 

Who says, “Put down the laptop.” 

Who says, “Put it down in your notebook. Or just listen. Listen and then think.” 

AI is not the path to Yahweh.

The newest freshman at UC Davis and the most veteran professor alike 

Are surrounded by distractions, delimited by temptations. 

What is the proper course of action, the most moral choice, when thus beset? 

Naomi has an opinion about that. 

Rather than a devil’s advocate, she appeals to the angels of our better natures. 

FOUR

So the books have been packed up, many of them given away. 

The teacups she donated to the ninth floor student lounge will remain. 

But what of that magical office, that intellectual throne room in the clouds? 

What function Olympus, when the gods are retiring to Berkeley? 

The KDVS Office Hours may be rebroadcast forever, 

but the office has still been emptied.

FIVE

After she escapes the samsara of faculty meetings, 

committee meetings, impromptu teacup meetings. 

After the classes and the grading and letters of recommendation,

all of them blessings. 

After the escape to the Parinirvana of a paid-off home in Berkeley, 

where does that leave the rest of us? 

After so many years of affection, of devotion,

What do we see when we look up to the ninth floor of Sproul Hall? 

A true believer, I’m ready to keep in my heart, 

to keep in my crowded soul, the image, the idea, the example 

of Naomi after she has departed. 

We will think of the conversations. 

And if we can think quickly enough, we will think of the insights —

sudden as raindrops amidst an endless Davis summer,

a summer that starts today.

---

What an unusually hot Wednesday evening we will enjoy again tonight, especially those who join us outside for the pub quiz under the misters at Sudwerk! I anticipate wearing shorts. Expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on conveyances. 

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: American literature, Beatles, birds’ nests, birthplaces, British singers, budgets, counties, defense spending, elementary schools, essays, gaming, Hall of Famers, hardware stores, horrors, international travel, jolly people, Kentucky, marches, Mediterranean locations, heroes, New Orleans, Oscar nominees, Oscar winners, plant science, power lines, pranks, recent audiences, Rebeccas, Revolutionary Era heroes, restaurant chains, rides, romances, scowls, seafood, Sharons, singer-songwriters, slip sliders, summer comforts, sunflowers, sunrises, thunderstorms, toys, 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! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Three questions from last week’s pub quiz:

1. Psychology. What phrase describes the mental discomfort experienced when one holds conflicting beliefs or attitudes?

2. Pop Culture – Television. On what television network did Outlander originally premiere in the United States? 

3. Another Music Question. Chrissie Hynde is the longtime lead singer of what band that was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005?

In each newsletter, we recognize the causes of our gold supporters of the pub quiz on Patreon.

The Mavens support Meals on Wheels Yolo County

For over 50 years, Meals on Wheels Yolo County has prepared and delivered freshly cooked meals to seniors in Yolo County. in 2026, MOW Yolo County is providing approximately 1,200 aging adults in the region with the nutrition and social engagement they need to eat well and age well – safely and with dignity. Join the Mavens in supporting Meals on Wheels Yolo County!

www.mowyolo.org

Lynne Conrad-Forrest MD and Quizimodo support Planned Parenthood 

Both these institutions do a lot of good and are in need of financial support in these dangerous times. Planned Parenthood provides primary care including contraception, hormonal therapy and sexually transmitted infection screens and treatment, as well as pregnancy counseling.

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-mar-monte

Please upgrade your membership to gold to be recognized here!

(If you enjoy these stories, please consider upgrading your membership on Patreon!)

I arrived at the UC Davis Medical Center on Sunday at about 11:45 a.m., still early enough to say good morning to everyone I met as I checked myself in.

My wife, Kate, and I were separated almost immediately when a nurse took me back to record my symptoms and vitals. Later, Kate said that she should have insisted on staying with me. I had my phone, but she had the backpack containing snacks and reading material. I wouldn’t be reading much; I was trying to rest my eyes.

Something strange had happened after I stepped out of the shower that morning. My left eye was suddenly filled by a Rorschach tangle of threads. Kate was about to head out for a walk with friends in the Arboretum, but when I described what I was seeing, she immediately changed plans.

“Get in the car,” she said. “We’re going to the medical center.”

Both Kate and my brother Oliver have experienced retinal detachments in recent years, so she recognized the symptoms more quickly than I did. Always reading about health, wellness, and longevity, Kate has become an expert who spots trouble before I do.

Thinking for a moment about my dad who was legally blind by the time he was my age, I fell asleep on the drive to Sacramento.

The first nurse who took my vital signs looked at the monitor and asked whether my heart rate was always so low.

I glanced over at the number.

Forty-eight.

“Usually,” I said. “Though not quite that low.”

I explained that I had meditated that morning and had just taken a nap in the car. She suggested that an EKG would be in order.

I was first brought to the eye room and then, I think, promptly forgotten. It was Sunday, after all. When a nurse later entered to retrieve some equipment, waking me from a nap in the examination chair, she stopped in surprise.

“Oh!”

She had not expected to find a patient sitting there.

Soon they moved me into an overflow waiting area because another patient needed the eye room. One might assume patients assigned to the eye room would eventually see an eye doctor. Yet I felt no real discomfort, and I had an audiobook and no wish to do any scrolling, so I settled in.

Eventually, a physician came by to explain that the ophthalmologist had been called into unexpected surgery and would be delayed for several hours. How different was I from the patient now in surgery?

I texted Kate and told her she should bring me the backpack and then head home.

Instead, she brought me vegetarian chili.

She later observed that she had grown used to airport prices and found medical center food surprisingly affordable. I suggested that perhaps we should return sometime for a lunch date.

As the afternoon wore on, I sat in a hallway away from a coughing eye-trauma patient, watching the Sunday parade of humanity pass by.

My favorite was a man in his thirties who walked the hall laughing and gesturing animatedly. He appeared to be carrying on a delightful conversation with absolutely no one. At first, I wondered whether he might be struggling with mental illness. Then he drew closer and I noticed the discreet earpiece tucked into one ear. He wasn’t talking to himself at all. He was enjoying a conversation I could hear only half of.

A little later, I watched an older man being wheeled down the hallway by a young orderly with cornrows. The patient had both an arm and a leg in fresh casts, yet he enthusiastically showed the orderly photographs of his motorcycle.

The orderly smiled politely, asked questions, and examined each picture.

I wondered whether he would ever ride that motorcycle again.

The longer I sat there, the more I realized that the medical center had become an accidental retreat.

Most Sundays I move from greenbelt to greenbelt, and from task to task. My weekends this quarter have been filled with papers to grade, emails to answer, and events to organize.

Instead, I had been given a chair, an audiobook, a bowl of chili, and nowhere I needed to be.

Every few hours another nurse would arrive to take my vital signs, and every few hours the same question would return.

“Is your heart rate always this low?”

By the fourth or fifth inquiry, I began to regard my heart rate with a certain affection. It seemed to be providing reassurance to everyone except the person whose heart it actually was.

Perhaps the meditation that morning had something to do with how calm I felt. Perhaps the audiobook helped. Perhaps I was reassured by the competence and kindness of the people caring for me. Perhaps Kate’s presence in the background of the day gave me permission to relax. Whatever the cause, I spent most of the afternoon observing rather than worrying.

I had come to the hospital because something was wrong with my vision, yet as the unhurried hours passed, I found myself paying closer attention than usual.

I noticed conversations, acts of kindness, and uneasy smiles. Watching the passersby, the patients with their medical wristbands, like mine, and their families, wearing their temporary badges, I noticed boredom, patience, humor, anxiety, resilience, and the thousand small dramas that unfold every day in a large public hospital.

I never learned whether that motorcyclist’s doctor told him if he could ever ride again, just as he never learned what I was doing in the hallway while transfixed by floating spiderwebs. We were both temporary residents of the same strange Sunday community.

My vision had become less reliable, but my attention had sharpened.

Finally, around dinner time, I received a thorough examination and some good news from the ophthalmologist: No retinal tear. No retinal detachment.

What I did have was a vitreous detachment, a condition common among people in their late fifties and sixties. It sounds alarming until you learn it’s a routine part of getting older.

Only doctors and small children are allowed to tell us that we are getting old.

Even so, somehow I had missed that chapter in the handbook on aging.

When it comes to aging, no one hands us a syllabus. New developments arrive without warning. One morning you discover that your knees have made other plans. Another morning you hear everything except your dinner date in crowded restaurants. On a Sunday in June, you step out of the shower and discover spiderwebs on the inside of your eye.

Doctors learn from their patients. Sunday visitors to medical centers learn patience.

As for me, I learned that an unexpected day spent waiting can become a day spent breathing slowly and paying attention.

---

What an unusually hot Wednesday evening we will enjoy tonight, especially those who join us outside for the pub quiz at Sudwerk! I anticipate wearing shorts. In addition to misters, expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on conveyances. 

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: Africa, alternatives, ancient history, aristocracy, audiobooks, batteries, beverages, bestselling books, black-and-white, bookmakers, botany, British performers, cable networks, champions, classic cinema, comebacks, comedy, coordinates, deadlines, efficiency, epic poetry, estimations, expansions, feathers, fossils, geometry, habits, Halls of Fame, headlines, Hollywood, independence, leadership, live performances, logistics, mall culture, medieval imagery, monarchs, mythology, new wave, nutrients, plant families, playwrights, presidents, priorities, privacy, procrastination, productivity, psychology, quadrants, rationalism, real estate, reconciliations, reformations, retail operations, role-playing games, romance, scheduling, schisms, strip malls, systems, television news, the 1980s, unity, vines, warehouses, workplace wisdom, workflows. 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 Elaine, Michael, Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion, especially this week

Best,

Dr. Andy

Three questions from last week’s pub quiz:

1. Mottos and Slogans. What product uses the slogan “You are not you when you are hungry”?   

2. Internet Culture. Sony recently launched the Reon Pocket Pro Plus. Is it a new type of headphone, audio recorder, or portable air conditioner?  

3. Newspaper Headlines. With fewer than 5% of its population made up of regular smokers, what country whose name starts with the letter S has recently been declared smoke-free? 

In each newsletter, we recognize the causes of our gold supporters of the pub quiz on Patreon.

The Mavens support Meals on Wheels Yolo County

For over 50 years, Meals on Wheels Yolo County has prepared and delivered freshly cooked meals to seniors in Yolo County. in 2026, MOW Yolo County is providing approximately 1,200 aging adults in the region with the nutrition and social engagement they need to eat well and age well – safely and with dignity. Join the Mavens in supporting Meals on Wheels Yolo County!

www.mowyolo.org

Lynne Conrad-Forrest MD and Quizimodo support Planned Parenthood 

Both these institutions do a lot of good and are in need of financial support in these dangerous times. Planned Parenthood provides primary care including contraception, hormonal therapy and sexually transmitted infection screens and treatment, as well as pregnancy counseling.

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-mar-monte

Please upgrade your membership to gold to be recognized here!

My son Truman visited the Strand Bookstore in New York City last week. An ambitious reader himself, Truman knew his bibliophilic adventures would pique my curiosity, so he texted me pictures of the storefront and the poetry shelves.

Looking at the rows of titles, I recalled my favorite quotation by philosopher Mortimer Adler: “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” Years ago, I treated books as relics of genius, believing that close reading would expand my ambitions and abilities.

As a thank-you gift for my wife Kate’s brother and his wife, Truman purchased a coffee table book about Broadway, both devoted theater fans. Truman recently watched Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf in Death of a Salesman, proof that New York still showcases extraordinary actors the way the Strand showcases great books. 

Something about those poetry shelves in Truman’s photos—the colorful spines and the scope of the collection—sent me straight back to the spring of 1988. That year, I took the train from Boston to New York City to meet my mother, who traveled up from Washington, D.C. My Uncle Alan and Aunt Barbara lived on the Upper West Side in a beautiful two-bedroom apartment overlooking Central Park. They possessed the finest view of anyone I knew, a panoramic vista that filled me with wonder and appreciation for America’s grandest city.

We visited the Natural History Museum, where my uncle served as director. We also strolled past the midtown public library, an institution whose grand lions and long history perhaps inspired my mother to become a librarian. We dined in small restaurants, where this Godfather fan kept his eyes open for gangsters, and eventually sought out the Strand Bookstore.

My mother and I walked the aisles together, she gravitating toward history and I toward poetry. I selected several titles, accumulating a stack almost too heavy to carry, including a massive tome of Allen Ginsberg’s collected poems. The next day, as I prepared to return to Boston, I realized the literary haul exceeded the capacity of my suitcase. To solve the dilemma, I donned two full layers of clothing to free up space for the books.

After bidding farewell to my mother at the 96th Street and Central Park West subway entrance, I descended to the platform and purchased a subway token. Eager to read, I found a secluded bench, sat down, and pulled out a fresh book of poetry.

A few minutes later, a man approached me. He claimed to have a gun in his pocket and demanded my wallet. Barely thinking, I stood up and locked eyes with him. In that moment, I realized I towered over him. Bulked up by layers of clothing, I looked larger and more formidable than I was. Sensing his hesitation, I spoke firmly: “Look, just cut it out, all right?”

I turned my back on the man and walked away, dragging my overweight rolling suitcase. I marched toward the nearest stranger and sat down uncomfortably close to him. Because the exit lay in that same direction, the would-be mugger had to run right past me to flee the station. My Allen Ginsberg collection remained secure.

In retrospect, I doubt the man possessed a weapon, and I certainly recognize that I lacked good sense. Typically, muggers injure those who resist, and my instinctive defiance came with serious risk. Yet, I successfully protected my wallet, an item that held virtually nothing anyway because I had spent my last dollar on books. The poetry had cleaned me out long before the mugger got the chance. My remaining funds covered only my MBTA train fare from South Station to my BU Central Green Line stop.

Sitting beside that stranger, with my mother only a few blocks away above ground, I felt the adrenaline fade. Burdened with literary ambitions and my heavy books, I felt a tremor starting in my hands. Soon I felt the entire world shake, and indeed it did, as the southbound C train finally roared into the station.

---

I hope you can join us for the pub quiz at Sudwerk tonight. Expect questions on these topics: African geography, airports, Arthurian legends, Baroque masterpieces, candy, cars, cartoons, Catholic hangouts, countries, dance halls, demolished buildings, extraterrestrial communication, geniuses, hiatus-takers, imaginary small towns, imports and exports, inquisitive people, internet embarrassments, inventors, languages, literary children, lovely cities, metals, Middle Eastern diplomacy, pitchers, proteins, rivals, scrambled religious folks, Sony, soul music, starship captains, universities, books and authors, science and technology, sports, and Shakespeare!

Dear Friends,

When I was growing up in Washington, D.C., I assumed that vibrant culture belonged mostly to large cities. Big cities like mine had the museums, the used bookstores, the music venues, repertory movie theaters, and the strange conversations in lobbies and on sidewalks. I loved all that, and when I first imagined living in a smaller city, I worried that I would have to give some of it up.

This past weekend proved me wrong.

On Friday evening at The Sofia in Sacramento, I attended an “In a Nutshell” storytelling event produced by my old friend the comedian and author Keith Lowell Jensen. Taking on the theme of “Cults, Crackpots, and Swindlers,” the four storytellers, Glynn Washington, Johnny Taylor Jr., JP Frary, and Holly James, shaped lived experience into timing, revelation, and surprise. They knew when to delay, when to interrupt a pattern, and when to let the audience complete the thought just before the punchline arrives. One story circled its ending so patiently that the punchline felt less delivered than discovered. My daughter and I left feeling we’d seen a master class in narrative economy.

On Saturday, I joined poets, musicians, and friends of the Sacramento Poetry Center for the Save the Press fundraiser in the park-like garden of Bob Stanley and Joyce Hsiao. The cause was wonderfully concrete: helping transport and restore an early 1900s Chandler & Price letterpress (the kind that needs to be painstakingly hand-fed paper, ink, and moveable type) so that SPC can make broadsides, posters, and fine poetry-art pieces. I performed a poem about this: poetry, often accused of floating too far above practical life, will soon have not only weight, but also gears, rollers, ink, and transport costs.

That afternoon featured a poetry pub quiz (Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson were cousins?), delicious food, about 100 poets, and the beloved Davis poet and dancer Allegra Silberstein. This 95-year-old Poet Laureate Emerita of the City of Davis has attended most of the nearly 500 readings I have hosted over the last two decades. At Poetry Night, the smiling nonagenarian always reads last at the open mic, and people clap for her the longest. Surrounded by poets and music in a Sacramento garden, she again reminded us that communities form around the people who return. As Walt Whitman said, “To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.” Allegra is both.

And then on Sunday, I hosted Stories on Stage Davis at Sudwerk. There, actors read fiction aloud in (or, in this case, outside) my favorite brewery, though literature has almost always needed rooms, venues, voices, food, and listeners. The printed story returns to the air, or, in Sunday’s case, the gale-force winds. The actor lends breath and timing to the author’s sentences. The audience, many of us with beverages nearby, receives fiction as a communal event rather than a private errand.

Across these three days, the categories kept crossing. Comedians became memoirists. Poets became fundraisers and preservationists. A garden became a literary salon, and a brewery courtyard became a theatre. I love these porous borders. A city’s cultural life grows stronger when people stop guarding their genres and start sharing their chairs, microphones, mailing lists, and Saturdays.

I grew up in Washington D.C., in the shadow of the National Mall, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the 9:30 Club. Now that I live in Davis and move often between Davis and Sacramento, I recognize that these communities are making the culture we live in. They ask us to attend, to host, to introduce, to clap, to buy the book, to fund and move the press, to pass the hat, to bring a friend or a daughter, and to thank the people who set up the chairs and stick around to stack them afterwards.

---

What an unusually warm Wednesday evening we will enjoy tonight, especially those who join us outside for the pub quiz at Sudwerk! Expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on conveyances. Today’s pub quiz reading copy comes in at 810 words, one of my slimmest.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: abducted fiancées, alien invasions, atomic numbers, beloved beaches, bells, bored boys, city councils, conflicted interiors, convicts, cookies, cooling towers, cowbells, cryogenic police states, disaster brinks, emotional songs, fashionistas, foster kids, international assassins, intermission distractions, jackals, jazz notables, limestone conflicts, literary addicts, London sights, magical buses, maritime provinces, new market pioneers, oranges, pet foods, piano movers, playfulness, political campaigns, prehistoric wanderers, practitioners, relocations, riots, San Francisco schools, schoolteachers, segmented classrooms, sensory nerves, slender transformations, sonar surveys, Southern California teenagers, stolen boxes, stripes, submariners, substitute teachers, suits, swamps, the European Union, underwater tunnels, unlikely twins, unwelcome weights, war games, watchdogs, 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 Elaine, Michael, Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. S 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Trivia from Last Week:

1. Current Events – Names in the News. Olympian Ryan Lochte has joined Missouri State as an assistant coach in what sport?  

2. Sports. The NFL has announced the two teams that will compete in this coming season’s Monday Night Footballopener. Name just one of them.  

3. Shakespeare. Hamlet contains the Bard’s best-known ghost. What play contains his second-best known ghost?  

In each newsletter, we recognize the causes of our gold supporters of the pub quiz on Patreon.

The Mavens support Meals on Wheels Yolo County

For over 50 years, Meals on Wheels Yolo County has prepared and delivered freshly cooked meals to seniors in Yolo County. in 2026, MOW Yolo County is providing approximately 1,200 aging adults in the region with the nutrition and social engagement they need to eat well and age well – safely and with dignity. Join the Mavens in supporting Meals on Wheels Yolo County!

www.mowyolo.org

Lynne Conrad-Forrest MD and Quizimodo support Planned Parenthood 

Both these institutions do a lot of good and are in need of financial support in these dangerous times. Planned Parenthood provides primary care including contraception, hormonal therapy and sexually transmitted infection screens and treatment, as well as pregnancy counseling.

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-mar-monte

Please upgrade your membership to gold to be recognized here!

Dear Friends,

Today I got to be the master of ceremonies at The UC Davis Information Security Symposium. The more than 100 attendees got to learn from experts from UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, and even the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I got to introduce guests, fill time with announcements about the Summer Institute on Teaching and Technology (which I also get to host), and, my favorite part, read an original poem about information security and the various topics, themes, and alerts raised at the conference.

Find my poem, below.

After the Alerts

The stewards of our systems speak of doors
most of us never see:
doors made of numbers,
doors that open when a tired hand
touches the blue blossom of a link.

Somewhere a classroom fills.
Somewhere a grant proposal
leans toward its deadline.
Somewhere a payroll file ripens,
and a student sends one true sentence
into the machinery of a course.

And beneath it all, 
the almost-invisible keepers
tend the rootwork underneath:
patch, permission, protocol,
the small liturgy of access,
the patient mending of the net
before the morning catches.

They know how danger arrives:
it speaks our jargon,
it borrows our names,
it wears our campus colors,
it polishes its teeth
with perfect grammar.

They understand the human system
inside the technical one:
the hurried professor,
the student wanting only
to solve one more problem set before dinner.

So they build more than barriers.
They build habits of looking twice,
rooms where questions can enter,
a table long enough
for the expert and the newcomer,
the analyst and the poet.


Collaboration becomes a kind of shelter
large enough to hold
all our whispered passwords,
all our bright mistakes.

And if the university is a body,
then this week we have named
some of its nerves,
some of its scars,
some of its sleeping alarms.


Do not snooze.

We leave with our pockets full
of ordinary instructions:
check the sender twice,
ask for help,
keep learning.

Carrying new cautions, 
we leave together,
which is the oldest security,
and the best beginning.

I was impressed with the speakers at this year’s event, especially Ed Cadena from the FBI Sacramento Cyber Squad and the UC Davis Chief Information and Digital Strategy Executive, Aisha Jackson. Thanks to the organizers of the symposium for involving me and for making room for poetry, a mode of expression that I think should open or conclude every major event or gathering.

Dr. Andy

---

What a pleasant Wednesday evening we will enjoy tonight, especially those who join us outside for the 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 810 words, one of my slimmest.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: Acting royalty, aggressive speeds, alpenstocks, Americans abroad, ancient weapons, arena champions, artificial intelligence, Australians, baseball records, borrowed blades, bulbs, circulatory systems, coded instructions, creators, downward patience, football, French culture, generational economics, German culture, Greek mythology, haunted houses, high places, immigration stories, influencers, laboratory borders, luxury travel, mechanical rhythm, media dynasties, military escalations, missed chances, nanotechnology, night lights, old passports, old-world manners, Olympic headliners, particle physics, perfume counters, poets and patron saints, polished armor, political leaders, Pittsburgh legends, regrettable speculation, relief flights, slow movement, social scandals, so many hints!, statistical imbalances, sweethearts, terrestrial slugs, tragic philanthropists, unfinished businesses, unexpected helmets, unrecognizable artists, winter headlines. 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. Bags. What do we call the watertight bags often used in kayaking, canoeing, rafting, canyoning?

2. World Universities. Found in a country whose name starts with the letter K, Moi University was named after Daniel arap Moi. Name the country.

3. Pop Culture – Music. What M.I.A. song includes these lyrics: “Sometimes I think sittin’ on trains / Every step I get to, I’m clockin’ that game / Everyone’s a winner, we’re making our fame / Bona fide hustler making my name”?

Today I will start setting aside some space in each newsletter to recognize the causes of our gold supporters of the pub quiz on Patreon.

The Mavens support Meals on Wheels Yolo County

For over 50 years, Meals on Wheels Yolo County has prepared and delivered freshly cooked meals to seniors in Yolo County. in 2026, MOW Yolo County is providing approximately 1,200 aging adults in the region with the nutrition and social engagement they need to eat well and age well – safely and with dignity. Join the Mavens in supporting Meals on Wheels Yolo County!

www.mowyolo.org

Lynne Conrad-Forrest MD and Quizimodo support Planned Parenthood 

Both these institutions do a lot of good and are in need of financial support in these dangerous times. Planned Parenthood provides primary care including contraception, hormonal therapy and sexually transmitted infection screens and treatment, as well as pregnancy counseling.

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-mar-monte

Please upgrade your membership to gold to be recognized here!