Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

 

I have time only for two sets of nouns. The first would have been the topics that should have appeared in this newsletter.

Power tools, trucks over the side of the Causeway, three-hour delays on i-80, Lake Tahoe, Martians, four speaking gigs in one day, the Beat Generation, Sasha Abramsky, peanut allergic reactions, school nurses, Benadryl, sleeping beauties, Republicans, elevation, bulldogs on the loose, hobos, Russians, cords that have no purpose, land lines, returns, and reunions.

And now the hints: Danish princes, French anger management, weight concerns, crooners who sing about strangers, Barbara Norrander, worms Roxanne, duels, people who died with $10 million to their names, countries that once started with the letter B, owners of diners, prime numbers, fiery redheads, fictional loner makers, fifth in a series, websites with short URLs, Hillary Clinton, actual mathematics, secretaries, presidential politics, people who live in tawny places, Shia LaBeouf, people named Josh, where the magic happens, tricks and deceptions, one of Truman’s favorite presidents, 11-letter words that start with T, Paris, chimpanzees and their friends, the ideal man, and Shakespeare.

Now I want you to imagine how great this newsletter might have been.

 

See you tonight.

 

Your Quizmaster

 

Here are three questions from last week:

 

1. Mottos and Slogans.    What County’s fair uses the slogan “the longest running free gate fair in northern California”?

 

1. Internet Culture. What is the max duration for Instagram videos? Is it six, 15, 30, or 90 seconds?

 

1. Newspaper Headlines.   Last week Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill met for more than two hours and signed a joint declaration, marking the first meeting between the heads of the Roman Catholic and the Russian Orthodox churches in nearly 1,000 years. In what country did the two religious leaders meet?

 

P.S. The next Poetry Night is March 3. My birthday party, to which you are invited, will be March 7^th, right after our weekly get-together. My new poetry book comes out on March 13, in a cemetery. Details to come.

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

During a long and exhilarating concert in Wooster, Massachusetts, in 1986, I got to see Billy Joel play many of his best hits, including his first, “Piano Man.” My favorite sections from this song details the variety of characters that the fictional piano player would encounter at the Executive Room bar in Los Angeles.

 

Now Paul is a real estate novelist

Who never had time for a wife

And he’s talkin’ with Davy, who’s still in the Navy

And probably will be for life

 

And the waitress is practicing politics

As the businessmen slowly get stoned

Yes, they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness

But it’s better than drinkin’ alone

 

Sometimes the lyrics of this song return to me as I walk the hallways of the International Mark Hopkins Hotel for a weekend every February. Having presented and participated in the San Francisco Writers Conference in the same hotel every year for the last 12 years, I’ve become friends and collaborators with most of the regulars.

Vicki is a retired lieutenant colonel novelist, who finally did make time for her wife. She and her wife just celebrated their anniversary (as so many do) on Valentine’s Day, and are doing a great job parenting their two children. Brian is a CEO poet who ensures that everyone is having a good time at the after party. Saima is a mystical poet who has a black belt in Brazilian ju-jitsu, while Dawn is a Canadian born now Baja surfer who volunteers at the conference while finishing a memoir. Retired professor Mary publishes a book of poetry or fiction every other year, and should be out with her 22^nd book at next year’s conference. A leader in social media and content marketing, Rusty is taking a break from the conference this year to welcome home his third child and first daughter, sharing photos with all of us of a wife who looked remarkably composed and fit while loading their little one into the SUV for the first ride home. Lissa has written a book about using book fairs as fundraisers, and has been selling out copies of her illustrated chapbook about her children.

Unlike the barflies that congregated around Billy Joel’s Piano Man, these folks are creative, vibrant, evolving, and full of direction and projects. When I first started attending this conference in 2005, I most looked forward to my presentations and talks (and over that time I have given over 50 talks at the conference alone). Soon thereafter I most anticipated learning about writing, publishing, and publicity from the other speakers. While all of these still sustain me, now I most anticipate the reunions with my friends, and getting them to sign the books that seemed lofty and impractical dreams when we first started sharing at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. And this year and last, my wife Kate joined me at the top of Nob Hill, an added Valentine’s Day bonus. February is always a highlight of my year, as I hope is the case for you.

Today is Presidents’ Day! Today I overheard some of the following dialogue between my ten-year-old Truman and his mom.

 

Truman: Hey, Mommy, I thought of a good Pub Quiz question for Daddy to use for Presidents’ Day: what was John F. Kennedy’s mother’s father’s nickname? Is that too easy?

Kate: Uh, definitely not too easy….

Truman: And here’s another one: how many square feet was the schoolhouse where President James K. Polk sent his children?

Kate: So, I don’t know if many people…

Truman: The answer is this: trick question! James K. Polk didn’t have any children.

Kate: Haha – that would stump the entire pub!

Truman: Yeah, you’re right. Maybe he should ask about the First Ladies. I read that Betty Ford once admitted she drank too much.

 

I don’t know if you could consider these suggested questions from Truman to be hints, but they might trigger some relevant research.

Expect also questions on the following: Reptiles and amphibians of southern Africa, the pastoral, members of the Football Hall of Fame, reclusive novelists, cute nicknames for people that are otherwise not cute, villains, benzodiazepines, Solano County and other counties, Oscars, the example of Job, embryonic stem cell research, bachelors, prolific authors, people with the same last name, big audiences, free gate fairs, Africa, speakers of the House, the hose, thumbing, unpronounceable names, the place of joy, the Olympics, knights, the act of understanding, Texas laws, things that should be said, congressmen, things that start with K, lotion, and Shakespeare.

We have some guests visiting from out of state tonight, so our table may be even louder than usual. I hope you can also join us this evening for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz. Some of the Swag will come from the San Francisco Writers Conference!

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. Mottos and Slogans.    Starting with the letter R, what website uses the slogan “The Front Page of the Internet”?

 

1. Internet Culture. Steve Ballmer was the CEO for what tech company for more than 14 years?

 

1. Newspaper Headlines.  Yesterday in an interview, President and Michelle Obama said that their daughters are annoyed with something about the White House, and that Obama hopes to have it fixed before his successor takes over. What’s annoying the first daughters?

 

P.S. Thursday night at 7, we will celebrate the life of Francisco X. Alarcon. Join us at the Natsoulas Gallery on February 18^th for this important event.

 

 

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

The first class I ever taught took place in the first week of October, 1990. Before walking into the classroom, I had to find a quiet and remote place on campus to sit by myself and convince myself that I could do what must be done. An introvert in my early 20s, as I got up to head towards Everson Hall, I noticed that my legs were shaking.

A decade later, I prepared to do my first radio show on KDVS. Although I had an audio engineer to help me run the board of sliders and dials, and coordinate the intro and outro music, I was still nervous and unprepared, droning on and on as if the entire show could be an impromptu Scott Simon NPR monologue. The next day I ran into my Medieval Studies colleague Kevin Roddy and expressed concern about the quality of my “news and comment” show about the world of poetry (Gwendolyn Brooks had just passed away, so there was plenty to discuss). Kevin shared my concerns and helpfully offered that “it will get better.” At least I knew I had had one listener!

A few years later I hosted my first poetry reading before a crowd of 100 in the E Street Plaza. A few years after that, I released my first book of poetry, and promoted it on Sacramento TV during Valentine’s Day week. Soon thereafter I started hosting a pub quiz, and didn’t do a very good job, asking unfairly difficult questions about Donny and Marie and Billy Preston. Luckily, as with the first radio show, only friends were participating. Soon after that I gave my first series of teaching talks in Japan.

For each of these experiences, I was wholly unqualified, I stumbled awkwardly, and I was subsequently mortified. But the mortification lessened with each new involvement, and I taught myself not to be cowed by my inevitable fear and discomfort. Often in such situations I would recall a (now famous) Eleanor Roosevelt quotation that my wife Kate sent me, taken from the Roosevelt book You Learn by Living:

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

I’ve used these wise words in class, and some of my most talented and accomplished former students have sent them back to me, with evidence of their ongoing bravery and determination. When it comes to our various illustrations of bravery, such as public speaking, the rewards are always worth the risks.

This past Friday I had another wrestling match with imposter syndrome, though not for the reasons recounted above. Friday night I gave the first of four readings of a commissioned poem about active-duty servicemen and veterans re-acclimating to life in California after serving overseas. Attended by 100 or more people, the event at the Gallery 625 on Court Street in Woodland highlighted the artistic accomplishments of veterans, and featured a poem by the Poet Laureate of Davis.

As the son of a Quaker, I had never considered military service. But while talking to the many artists and musicians who had so sacrificed for their country, for the first time I felt pangs of regret over this choice. Talking with such noble volunteers, I felt insufficient, inadequate. Fortunately, the commissioned poem resonated with the audience, as did a few of the others I performed for those gathered. People shared kind remarks afterwards, I got to chat with current students and treasured friends, such as the first couple of public service and the arts, Lucas and Stacie Frerichs. I also made some new friends among local veterans’ groups and the hoi polloi of the Yolo County arts scene.

During and after my poems, I was still left wondering how I might speak for these men and women who have sacrificed so much at the same time that I was merely struggling through my bonus decade of schooling as I marched steadily towards earning a PhD. In the end, I realized that I cannot speak for these heroes, but only to them and with them, and with an open heart and imagination, hoping to expose and honor some of their concerns and their ongoing resolution to serve.

Having invested so much in researching the concerns of re-acclimating veterans, as I struggled with ways that I might approach that one commissioned poem, I ended up writing so many other poems that now I have enough for a small book, one that will be published before my next “Positive Reflections: From Combat to Community” event at the Davis Cemetery and Arboretum on March 13. I might even have copies to share at my March 7 birthday party, to which you will be invited. I plan to use proceeds from book sales to set up a “Creativity Prize” for veteran students at UC Davis, and thus continue to honor in my way those young people who have made sacrifices that I continue to respect and admire.

This paragraph contains the hints. Harry S Truman once said, “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.” Tonight’s Pub Quiz will include a few questions about America, but none about Harry Truman. Expect also questions about dramatic hunger, The Beatles, names in the news, art and art history, food and drink in Latin America, same-sex marriage, the future, author and humorist David Sedaris, populated areas, Republicans, US states, buff dudes on TV, outworn wickets, blockbuster films, unwelcome amnesia, unpleasant invitations, medical science, what football coaches and painters have in common, eponymous companies, internet culture, and Shakespeare. I haven’t written all the questions yet. Evidently some sporting event was going on yesterday, so I decided to finish the quiz on game day (our game, not Cam Newton’s).

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to seeing you tonight. Soon it will be warm enough to sit outside again, so feel free to grab your noisiest friends, and make plans to join us for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. Hollywood Gossip. Miley Cyrus reportedly has been re-engaged to what actor over the weekend?   

 

1. Pop Culture – Music. The stage name of the musician George Alan O’Dowd is an anagram of the phrase BOGEY OGRE. Name him.

 

1. Sports.   Was Rugby primarily named after an animal, a city, a person, or a school?

 

 

P.S. There will be a remembrance of Francisco X. Alarcón at Poetry Night at 7pm (new time) on February 18^th. I hope you can attend.

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Although I try to keep the Pub Quiz and these newsletters light, sometimes a question or two will cover a substantive or darker subject. Tonight’s pub quiz, for instance, will ask a question about obesity, a topic of concern, especially for everyone who is not among the 31.2% of American adults age 20 or older who are normal weight or underweight.

That exception aside, I prefer for the Pub Quiz to be a blithe and casual affair. I see the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz as an escape just as much as I hope you do. My plan is to provide you the right sort of challenge, an opportunity to put your phones away for a couple hours, and enough humor and discovery sprinkled in to help you connect with your teammates and reflect upon what we all understand about the world.

Sometimes we desperately need such an escape, or so my son Jukie reminded me recently. As you may know from my book Where’s Jukie? and from seeing me on the streets of Davis, I have a son with a significant disability, one that is manifested in Jukie’s unusual appearance, his excitable behavior, and his extreme laconism: He hasn’t spoken a word in more than a decade.

As Kate has written about recently, we see Jukie as a blessing, as our reminder of how brave, compassionate, and loving we should try to be. The challenges that Jukie faces, and those he brings to our family, have strengthened our familiar unit, and taught our “bookend” kids some of those same lessons about humanity and empathy. As is the case with everyone in our home, we also love him like crazy.

Because I usually focus on Jukie while Kate attends to the needs of the other two kids, and because I have taken him on all his medical trips (to the NIH and Oregon Health and Science University, for example), Jukie usually behaves better for me than he does for anyone else. After years of interpreting his needs and providing him the right kinds of rewards, I have come to expect excellent behavior when I take Jukie out on adventures, such as to poetry readings, movies, and even plays. He usually obliges both his parents with excellent behavior.

This past Friday, however, Jukie was having none of it. Puberty has been strengthening the boy’s frame, his will, and his excitability. As Jukie became more and more agitated over dinner at our favorite Davis restaurant, I took it upon myself to take him out for a walk so he could calm down and not disturb the meal of the other six of us who were enjoying our veggie burgers, Dr. Andy salads, and other de Vere’s delicacies.

I’m glad I trusted my instincts. Jukie did need to be removed, for as soon as we got to the parking lot across the street, he tried to bite me, he scratched up my arms, scratched up my face while ripping my glasses off, and then purposefully broke the glasses in half. In such a situation, my job is to keep Jukie from hurting me, himself, or others, while also restraining him in such a way that he remains unharmed from our tussle. I must have done a good job, for my unscathed beloved boy eventually calmed down, choosing to clap his hands together as loud as he could, instead of continuing to clap me with his furious blows.

One of Jukie’s teachers happened to be walking by, asked if I needed any help, and then asked if she could fetch me some napkins at Baskin Robbins to help absorb the blood that was running down my face. Isn’t that a nice way to start the weekend?

I thanked the kind woman and told her that I would be fine, but that it was time for Jukie and me to walk home. Like almost everyone else, Jukie doesn’t get enough exercise, and I knew that a three mile walk home would ensure that he would be too fatigued to attack anyone else at the end of the day.

The moral of the story was actually explored back at the Pub during my blind hike home. Kate pointed out to one of our favorite servers, Pedro, that I had to leave because I was helping Jukie deal with his aggression and pent-up energy. With more candor than she usually shares with a server in a restaurant, Kate explained that our many visits to de Vere’s Irish Pub represent a respite from our chaotic and challenging life with an unpredictable kid with special needs. We appreciate the chance to step away from our responsibilities, to have someone take care of us, and to converse over healthy and delicious salads, and a glass of wine.

Shakespeare’s King Henry in Henry VI, part 3 says, “Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.” We have followed the king’s advice, even though our life with Jukie has always been more sweet than sour. But sometimes one wishes for an escape from such adversity, an interval of liquid culture and gustatory delight such as what one can enjoy at the Irish Pub.

And our regular server Pedro makes this reprieve possible. Perhaps it is because we are such regulars, but never before have I met a restaurant employee who does such an expert and prescient job of anticipating our needs, noticing empty glasses that need refills, or suggesting exactly the new food or beverage that would delight Kate’s palate. What’s more, Pedro always approaches us with the sort of humor, patience, and attentiveness that we might expect from a close friend. A patient and smiling listener, Pedro was the perfect audience for Kate’s unloading of the heavy story of this newsletter.

I’m deeply grateful to the exemplary service that we receive from all the servers and barkeeps at de Vere’s Irish Pub, Davis, but I hope that tonight you will join me in following the imperative espoused by Napoleon Dynamite: Vote for Pedro.

In addition to something mentioned above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will include questions on the following topics: office furniture, tofu, names other than Raphael or Clarence, penguins, old pipes, alleles, stadia, a long trip to China (sp?), fishermen, Greek singles, Iowa, international transparency, dense tropical foliage, hunger, U.S. presidents, short conversations with mountains, Chicago, disavowing racism, people born with a bell, uniting with do-gooders, nuns that are uncharted, African-American culture, celebrities whom I would not recognize in a police lineup, televised hats, films that are unwatchable (if not unwatched), mirrors and waterskis, Sacramento heroes, old sports, ogres that score bogeys in bonus anagrams, Davis, shades, changing minds back, cannabis, little angels, gardens, people not known by the middle name of Alan, football, and Shakespeare.

Speaking of shades, shades come up in a poem I published this morning titled “The Polls” in the People’s Vanguard of Davis. Indirectly, one can find a clue there, as well. Tomorrow night I get to read an original love poem / blues lyric at the Davis City Council. What fun!

I hope you can join us this evening for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz. We will have one New York Times best-selling author there, and perhaps more than one.

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. World Deserts. The Atacama Desert is the driest non-polar desert in the world. On what continent is it found?

 

1. American Cities that Share a Name with Streets in East Davis. About a ten-hour drive from Davis, California, the city of Layton is found in Davis County. Name the state.

 

1. Pop Culture – Music. Who had big hits in 2015 with the songs “Cool for the Summer” and “Confident”?

 

P.S. This coming Thursday is Poetry Night in the city of Davis. I hope you will join me at 8 that night for Marit MacArthur and Matthew Woodman. Find details at http://www.poetryindavis.com. The after-party will take place Thursday at 10 at the Pub, the “third space” of Davis.

 

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

People are talking about America again. I don’t mean the country, though I’m sure that’s true, but rather the song “America” by Simon and Garfunkel. The Bernie Sanders campaign has used the beginning and end of the song, expertly edited, as the backdrop of his new political advertisement, also titled “America,” in which he highlights Sanders’ supporters: Iowans who walk though their fields, carrying hay or a calf, and the huge crowds who have come to Sanders’ rallies. Like the song, the ad says that all these (predominantly white and rural) Iowans have “come to look for America.” At the end of the ad that skillfully communicates many people’s enthusiasm for the Sanders campaign, we hear Bernie say, “I’m Bernie Sanders, and I approve this message.” As the ad is what we in poetry class would call a “paean” to America, I think that everyone from Marco Rubio to Hillary Clinton would “approve” the uplifting message of the ad.

Piqued by this engaging video, and especially by my wife Kate’s support for Sanders and love for Simon and Garfunkel, I have been listening anew to the duo’s music. Interestingly, as is the case with many of Simon’s great lyrics, the words to the actual song “America” are more complex and even dark than would be appropriate for a political campaign. Just before one of the lines that the Sanders ad quotes, about “Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike,” Simon’s speaker expressed existential anguish:

 

“Kathy, I’m lost,” I said, though I knew she was sleeping.

“I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.”

 

One can guess why the Sanders audio editors left that bit out.

I left in some of the darkness, and added some of my own, when I recently wrote a satirical take on that poem. Some of you know that I have been assigned to write about the hopes and concerns of war veterans returning to Yolo County. Having previously written a book about 20^th century poetry called Mad Men (and this was long before the AMC TV show), I found myself writing poems about veterans’ struggles with posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. How different is the alienation of Paul Simon’s speaker, who like me is always pursuing his “Kathy,” from that of the young recruit serving overseas?

Well that is what I explored in a poem that I wrote and performed yesterday in Sacramento, “The Recruiting Station.”

 

“The Recruiting Station” (With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel)

 

“Let us be soldiers, we’ll invade some small countries together

I’ve got some armaments here in my bag”

So we bought some hand grenades, and meals ready to eat

And walked off to look for the recruiting station.

 

“Martin,” I said, as we boarded a Greyhound in Augusta

“The Georgia Dome seems like a dream to me now

It took us four hours to hitch-hike from Valdosta

I’ve come to look for the recruiting station”

 

Laughing in the tank,

Playing games with the knobs and dials

Martin said the captain in fatigues was a Bolshevik

I said, “Be careful, He’s friends with Boris Yeltsin”

 

“Toss me a needle, I keep an extra there in my holster”

“We used the last one an artery ago”

So I looked at the barbed wire, as Martin reviewed the field manual

And the coordinates came in over the radio

 

“Martin, I’ve lost my drone”, I said, though I know he was unconscious

“I keep pulling the trigger and I don’t know why”

Counting the boys who used to play football in high school

They’ve all come to look for the recruiting station

All come to look for the recruiting station

All come to look for the recruiting station

 

I hope you find what you are looking for. Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature a bunch of music questions. Expect also questions about cars, things that are purple, Cloners and Clonees, inline skates, kings and queens, warriors, book awards, halogens, California cities, the WWE, Irish air, Star Wars, young adult fiction, clashing princes, the ghostly noises made by the wealthy, Iowa, eponyms, birds, food and drink, refined polishing, three-syllable names of warriors, the extent to which no means no, confidence, continents, street names in east Davis, desiccation, sports, Irish culture, and Shakespeare.

Please join us tonight for the last Pub Quiz of January. As Hawthorne says, “Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.”

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

 

 

1. Mottos and Slogans.  What U company founded in 2009 uses the slogan “Where lifestyle meets logistics”?

 

1. Internet Culture. January 15 marks the birthday of Wikipedia. A number divisible by 5, how old is Wikipedia this year?

 

1. Jason Sudekis Films. The highest grossing Jason Sudekis and Emma Roberts film is the second-highest-grossing Jennifer Anniston film and the top-grossing Mexico travelogue film. Name this 2013 film.  

 

 

P.S. A remembrance of Francisco Alarcon has been planned for February 18^th at the John Natsoulas Gallery. I hope you can join us.

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

On Friday I came across a simple tweet from someone I follow: “Enjoy the long weekend. Don’t die.” One might see this as good advice for all of us, but also dark humor during a week when two beloved celebrities, David Bowie and Alan Rickman, had died at the age of 69. Those of us in the poetry world mourned the death of C.D. Wright in the same week, and a review of Friday’s Los Angeles Times reveals a host of other recognizable people – musicians, actors, and the prosecutor of Patty Hearst – passing from this world.

And then the startling news came Friday afternoon of the passing of Francisco X. Alarcon, the most prominent poet living in Davis.

Friends of Francisco – and he had so many – knew that he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer only a couple months ago, but his passing still felt untimely. I was due to host a celebration (now postponed) of Francisco’s life and poetry this coming Saturday. He has “featured” at my poetry series perhaps half a dozen times, and has shown up to support other poets perhaps another dozen times.

I first saw Francisco read more than 20 years ago, when I was a graduate student in my early 20s. From the 1990s up to the three times I saw him read in 2015, Francisco was always so full of exuberance and joy, despite taking on some heavy subjects, such as the effects of widespread discrimination and racism against people like himself who were Latino, Mestizo, Native American, or Aztec.

Francisco’s poetry and prose challenge of the basic premises of a “border,” of what it means to be American, about what it means to walk without papers on the streets of Arizona. Reflecting on Francisco’s activist work, I am reminded of Martin Luther King Jr.’s reflections on what it means to be “disinherited” because of one’s skin color, spoken during a Montgomery bus boycott speech at the Holt Street Baptist Church in December, 1955. King said, “We, the disinherited of this land, we who have been oppressed so long, are tired of going through the long night of captivity. And now we are reaching out for the daybreak of freedom and justice and equality.”

That “daybreak” that King speaks of informs all of Francisco’s poetry, and his demeanor. He was a font of encouragement for other poets, founding Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol, a mentorship and creative productivity group that has been meeting regularly for more than a decade. The inspiration and support that he provided other poets came in the classroom, in the meetings of Los Escritores, and at myriad readings of his students, former students, and the great varieties of people he inspired.

Francisco has read in the halls of our state capitol, beginning a meeting of the state senate with an exclamation to the four directions. He has read before huge rallies in Arizona, supported by a group he founded called Poets Responding to SB 1070, which encouraged law enforcement officers to detain and question people whom they think “look illegal.” I got to see Francisco read in churches, in community centers, in countless bookstores, in classrooms, and at many outdoor political events. I have seen him perform his work as a featured reader more often than any other poet.

When my daughter’s 5^th grade class at Montgomery Elementary School read and performed poetry, Francisco came to support them. When students from my freshman seminar helped to organize an open mic at the John Natsoulas Gallery, Francisco came to support them. When the Davis City Council held a ceremony naming me Poet Laureate of Davis, Francisco came to support me.

As you can read about if you look him up online, Francisco X. Alarcón was important as a scholar of Latino history, of the Spanish language and Spanish linguistics, of Aztec culture, and of poetry of protest and poetry of cultural celebration. He is widely known as a gay Latino icon, as an author of more than 20 books (including many bilingual illustrated poetry books for children), as a tireless advocate for poetry and other arts, and as a mentor and faculty member at UC Davis. But to me, he was mostly a friend.

I miss him, thank him, and celebrate him. I hope that tonight you will join me in toasting Francisco X. Alarcón.

Happy Martin Luther King Day. Tonight’s pub quiz will features questions on Dr. King, on Francisco Alarcón (note the spelling), and on the rest of the topics that you have come to expect from the Pub Quiz. This week those will include logistics, the ancestors of my bulldog, numbers divisible by 5 (math!), frequency in time and space, Oscar nominees, the common era, Mexico travelogues, Australian crops, names that end with Y, theatrical pastimes, Mike Wallace, presidential politics, best-sellers, tails, the Olympics, the pronunciation of “Caribbean,” centuries of difference in South Dakota, literary antagonists, neighbors below and especially above, favorite consonants, noncaloric fracases, central stones, sports cities, completed quotations, decorated spaces, forgotten films, people that cannot be removed, legal drama, Francisco X. Alarcón, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us this evening for the Pub Quiz.

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. Mottos and Slogans. What snack food uses the slogan “Dangerously Cheesy”?

 

1. Internet Culture. What company owns the first, third, and eighth most-popular smartphone apps used in 2015?

 

1. Current Events – Names in the News.   What was the birth name of the musician, artist and actor known as David Bowie?

 

P.S. This coming Thursday is Poetry Night in the city of Davis, this time featuring Phillip Barron and Karen Terrey. Barron’s new book of poetry, What Comes from a Thing, won the 2015 Michael Rubin Book Award, and was published by Fourteen Hills Press of San Francisco. He also authored the non-fiction book The Outspokin’ Cyclist (Avenida Books, 2010), a collection of his newspaper columns on bicycling. Karen Terrey teaches at Lake Tahoe Community College and Sierra College. Her book Bite and Blood was published by Finishing Line Press. I hope you will join us at the John Natsoulas Gallery on January 21^st at 8 PM.

 

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

My favorite John Ciardi poem is “Most Like an Arch This Marriage.” In the 1980s I used to hear Ciardi (1916-1986) comment on words and word histories on Morning Edition on National Public Radio. I’m sure many English majors were inspired by his wit and erudition found in the musings in a writer’s love of language.

Remembering this poem, I have used this idea of “most like an arch” in teaching writing at UC Davis since 1990. For advanced undergraduate writers, successful arguments will embrace necessary complexity and sometimes acknowledge the limitations and contradictions of those arguments. Some theorists believe that through writing we actually construct reality, and thus that challenging writing assignments will give students opportunities to practice constructing new methods of understanding the world, and of creating their own futures and value systems. As they do so, we would hope that their practice of acknowledging distinctions, limitations and contradictions will allow them to clarify and deepen their thinking.

As Ciardi puts it in his poem:

Most like an arch—two weaknesses that lean

into a strength. Two fallings become firm.

Two joined abeyances become a term

naming the fact that teaches fact to mean.
I remind my students often that they are obligated to disagree with me at least once a quarter, for in doing so they give me opportunities to strengthen and clarify my own thinking, as well as my goals for them as learners and writers. Together we can be like Ciardi’s arches, “two weaknesses that lean / into a strength.”

When a version of last week’s Pub Quiz newsletter was published in the Davis Enterprise Wednesday, it elicited a range of opinions, from the entrenched (“’White privilege’ is an overused cliche among white liberals who are doing nothing more than trying to congratulate themselves on their sensitivity”), to the dismissive (“For a place like Davisdorf [sic] to have a ‘poet laureate’ is pretentious, to say the least”), to the thoughtful (responses such as those from Elaine Musser and John Blue that I will encourage you read for yourself by visiting the Davis Enterprise website).

My favorite objection so far came from Tom Camden, a fellow south Davisite who phoned me at work Friday afternoon to discuss his concerns. He pointed out rightly that my article hadn’t represented the motivations of those who had occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Headquarters in eastern Oregon (not southern Oregon, as I had written). Camden pointed out the different ways that the Department of the Interior significantly inconveniences locals in that part of the country, and how the concerns and freedoms of those same locals are not taken into account when the US government makes decisions that affects all of them.

The protest that led to the occupation of the government building also concerned disproportionate sentencing for local ranchers and hunters who had, either inadvertently or advertently, set fire to government land that bordered property that they owned. Minimum sentencing guidelines stipulated that those found guilty of such an offense spend at least five years in prison. During a time of drought, everyone is anxious about wildfires.

Even though we only talked for about 15 minutes, I learned a lot from Tom Camden. I acknowledge the concerns of rural complainants, even though I have much deeper sympathies for residents of those urban neighborhoods who have been subjected to aggressive and sometimes lethal policing. No matter our differences, I appreciate Camden and others who disagree with me in a civil and thoughtful way, and who take the initiative to speak their minds. I try to teach similar rhetorical strategies and executive skills to my students (and my children) so that the next generation can be properly equipped to interconnect and communicate, and thus not be so easily swayed by what conservative columnist David Brooks last week called the “dark and satanic tones” of some of our prominent candidates for U.S. president.

Although in the pub the Quizmaster presents himself as infallible, in the opinion section of your local newspaper, no one has a monopoly on accuracy or the truth. As Walt Whitman says, “the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

Tonight at the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz we will review a variety of topics with light and cerebral tones. Although the Golden Globes took place last night, I will ask you a number of questions about the Oscars. Expect also questions about snack foods, roads in Davis, Ted Cruz, mathematics (yes, a real math question) carnivorous amphibians, cities that were incorporated in the year 1900, the changing articles of popular music, American leagues, “spout” as a verb, sports writers, princesses and other royalty, acids, rancor, tom toms, how much we miss Jon Stewart, Russian armaments, single digits, missed opportunities, famous dead poets, today’s headlines, fast ships, inversions, fragrances, huge industries, great films that I have only begun to watch, great American novels, wits, meager savings, college dropout criminals, Mount Zion, fighters’ inverted brows, angry percussion techniques, tank engines, and Shakespeare.

I had written this newsletter before learning of the death of David Bowie yesterday at the age of 69. The great music and fashion icon deserves his own newsletter, but for right now I will leave you with these words from our departed courage-teacher, taken from his final album’s first song, “Lazarus”:

Look up here, I’m in heaven

I’ve got scars that can’t be seen

I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen

Everybody knows me now

 

I hope you can join us this evening as we raise a toast to David Bowie.

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Unusual Words: Three-letter verbs that start with the letter T. What such verb refers to handcrafting a particularly durable lace from a series of knots and loops?

 

1. Star Wars Characters. What character in a Star Wars film speaks this famous line? “He’s no good to me dead”?

 

1. Name the Band. Dave Grohl, Pat Smear, Nate Mendel, Taylor Hawkins, and Chris Shiflett.

P.S. Congratulations to the Pub Quiz team Portraits – they earned a perfect score last week, the first time that has happened in the history of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz.

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

In the late spring of 2004 I returned to my onetime hometown of Washington DC, fondly remembered because of the the time I got to spend with Marcel Prather and Juan LaBarca, two of my closest friends from high school and the Tenley Circle Theatre. Upon my arrival, the three of us met for a late-late night glass of wine (it was three hours earlier for me), and then I convinced Marcel to drive me to some of our old haunts.

Marcel dutifully drove us through Georgetown, up Wisconsin Avenue, and finally to the North Georgetown neighborhood of my childhood home, a 1,300-foot row house on Tunlaw Road. I love that neighborhood, that street, and that home. Although my parents separated when I was young, and we didn’t have a lot of money, I associate my childhood with creativity, discovery, and joy, all the qualities I try to foster in my adult life today.

Camera in hand, I jumped out of the car and started photographing everything: the huge tree that shaded my lemonade stand when I was six years old, the shrubs that I had to trim at least three times a summer in order to earn an allowance, the brick walk where my brother and I played two-square, and the foreboding iron knocker on the front door, one that to me always resembled the late Jacob Marley.

At one point, my friend Marcel took me aside and asked me if I was familiar with white privilege. Stifling an uneasy laugh, Marcel suggested that if he were snapping photographs, or doing anything suspicious on Tunlaw Road in north Georgetown, the local police would a) be summoned by the locals, and b) not be amused by Marcel at all, and c) probably greet him with unholstered weapons.

As you might guess from his remarks, Marcel is African-American, and I am (as you may have noticed, mostly) Caucasian. Perhaps it was only the wine or the jet lag talking, but I felt no concern about gallivanting about my old neighborhood at two in the morning. Audacious and I’m sure unwelcome, I felt comfortable disturbing the peace the way I was doing in my old neighborhood; perhaps I felt it my birthright.

With some mortification, I have reflected on this episode twice in the last week. The first time came when we learned that the Cleveland officers who shot and killed the 12 year-old African-American boy Tamir Rice would not be indicted by a grand jury. Although Ohio is an “open carry” state that requires no permit or even registration of handguns, Rice was shot within two seconds of being approached by the police cruiser of the two officers involved. The police dispatcher had been told that the gun Rice was playing with was “probably fake” and that Tamir was “probably a juvenile.” Both assumptions turned out to be true.

Also last week we learned that a sizable group of armed men have taken over the Malheur National Wildlife Headquarters in southern Oregon. Backed by the members of local militias, one of the leaders of the armed takeover of government property, Ammon Bundy, said at a news conference that his group “had not heard from law enforcement.”

Had these armed men been African American or Americans of Middle Eastern descent, would they have “heard” from law enforcement by now? Instead, as the Washington Post reported Sunday morning, “Harney County Sheriff David M. Ward said authorities from several law enforcement organizations were monitoring the ongoing incident.” I can think of many violent incidents on the streets of American cities – one thinks of Chicago, Baltimore, or Cleveland – that would have been better remedied through this sort of “monitoring.”

Meanwhile for some guidance on how best to describe the antics of Ammon Bundy and his militia friends, consider the FBI’s “Definitions of Terrorism in the U.S. Code”:

“Domestic terrorism” means activities with the following three characteristics:

• Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
• Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination. or kidnapping; and
• Occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.

In this instance, I would follow the abductive reasoning definition best expressed idiomatically by the American poet James Whitcomb Riley: “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

Of course, worldwide there are many species of duck, from the Black East Indian Duck to the Ukrainian White Duck. I wonder which variety of duck would most likely to be hunted here in the U.S., and which sort would enjoy the privilege of flying and alighting on government land, unmolested.

Welcome to 2016! Tonight expect Pub Quiz questions on Point Reyes (which I got to visit yesterday), three-letter verbs, names that start with the letter C, Irish expats, traveling Scots, problem plays, penury, quick thinkers, hit songs with up and coming features, superheroes, successful films, meteors in southern California, the purposes of coffee, famous subjects, books that have sold more than 15 million copies, animation, Goldie Hawn, members of the band, creatures that are as tiny as a can, famous lines, glue, the Crimean War, favorite poets, Star Wars, little knots, senators, George and Johnny’s team, Compton, giants, art and art history, X-Men, AI, funny remarks by little old ladies, film and Shakespeare.

Have you made any resolutions for 2016? Let me know if you have resolved to miss no Pub Quizzes this year. With this bully pulpit, I will provide you some accountability. See you tonight.

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. Internet Culture: Instagram. Disneyland, last year’s most Instagrammed place, didn’t make the list this year, perhaps because of the magic kingdom’s ban on selfie sticks. Two California locales were in the top ten, with the Golden Gate Bridge at number 10, and what Los Angeles landmark (1000 Elysian Park Ave, in the Echo Park neighborhood) at number 5?

 

1. Flax. The names of the genus of flax, the oil made from flax, and the cloth made from flax all start with the same three letters. What DO we call textiles made from flax?

 

1. U.S. States. The capital of the Yellowhammer State starts with M, while the state’s largest city starts with B. Name the state.   

 

P.S. This coming Thursday, January 7^th, is Poetry Night in the city of Davis. A bunch of us will gather at 8 PM at the John Natsoulas Gallery (521 1^st Street) for some creative fun. This time Poetry Night offers an OPEN MIC to whomever would like to join us for poetry, prose, or song. Surely you are adept at one of these three, so plan to share your talents or sample others’ this coming Thursday night. Details to be had at http://www.poetryindavis.com.

Perhaps in one of the poems I present at Poetry Night this week I will REVEAL the ANSWER to one of the following Monday’s quiz questions. Perhaps it will be a hard one, such as the ANAGRAM. Would that be worth it? Also, the after party takes place at our familiar Pub. If you were to join us late Thursday night, you would find me to be much more hospitable and humane than that guy who walks around with the loud microphone Monday nights. Picture it!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

“Christmas is over when I say it is.” A lovely woman said that to me yesterday, turning up the volume of the holiday music. Pandora users, we can listen to Christmas music all year, if we want to. Every genre has its own station. Kate prefers the sort of choral music that she sang in Chicagoland and Japan rather than mid-century pop holiday hits, so our home continues to be filled with beautiful voices, lifted in harmony.

Kate’s Mom left for the Chicago airport early Saturday morning, and she arrived (34 hours later) in Sacramento International Airport well after sundown Sunday evening. The path of her flight aligned precisely with the path of the storm system that was moving slowly across a huge swath of the Midwest yesterday. As the second leg of her four-city plane tour touched down in Dallas, so did deadly tornadoes, tossing cars around like rejected Christmas presents, and damaging hundreds of buildings. Measured in dollars, the freak storms probably did more damage than was earned by The Force Awakens during the same time period, and that is saying a lot. Today, as I write, strong blizzards are descending upon New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, compelling governors to declare states of emergency throughout the southwest. And in Chicago, as a friend recently informed us on Facebook, it is “raining ice.”

We think of those afflicted by this awful weather as we gather for our second post-December 25^th Christmas here in south Davis. My early morning composing time remains calm. Grammy Jo has earned her sleep, and my son Truman is pacing the living room, eyeing the last remaining presents under the tree, those that Jo had sent before her trip, and which she will watch the kids open in a couple hours. I think this time of the year – Boxing Day, and then this peaceful interregnum between Christmas and New Year’s Eve – is one of the most peaceful and anticipated in our house. I need such peace if I am going to keep up with my poetry responsibilities, such as those featured on the front page of last Wednesday’s Davis Enterprise.

Also on this break I get to spend time deep-reading something other than student essays and reports on learning management systems, Kate and I consider whether the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD is appropriate for the children, and we greet other recovering families out walking the greenbelts of Davis, happy to have the consumerist intensity of Christmas morning behind us. Perhaps during this unhurried time with the family we will revisit the Arboretum, stop by the Pence Gallery (which celebrates its 40^th anniversary this year), and return to the Irish Pub for a huge salad with eggs and avocados. My email traffic drops to about 10% of normal during the holiday break, indicating that most of the people who need something from me are, as the Steve Miller Band says, “right here, right here, right here, right here at home.” I hope the same is true for you.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on The Golden Gate Bridge, the effect of Donald Trump in New Hampshire, The Labrador Peninsula, baseball, oils, influenza, birds with naming rights, Bruce Springsteen, continents, American potentates, Instagram, the habits of snakes, heroes from Connecticut, varnishes, shadows, horses, yellow hammers, defeats, Los Angeles neighborhoods, masks, remaining territories, unlikely bobsledders, the remaining splendor of departed princes, joyous employers, star-gazing, Polynesia, informal capitals, invented economic headlines, Star Wars, political thrillers, talking bears, stadiums, dark chocolate, the practices of avatar wing sororities, selfie sticks, listening devices, centripetal forces, rejected shadows, mobility in the south, and Shakespeare.

Typically the last Pub Quiz of the year contains “year-end” questions that help us reflect on the ending year. You might remember this one from last year: “What are the five letters in the name of the Russian city where the 2014 Winter Olympics took place?” I’m sure that many great things happened in 2015 – one thinks of marriage equality in the U.S., for example – but with the deaths of B.B. King and Philip Levine, the rise of our national “shock jock” of boorish xenophobia, and acts of terrorism here and abroad, I have forgone this annual tradition. Instead expect five questions on one of the topics mentioned above.

I’ve really enjoyed the time we have spent together this year. I hope you can join us tonight of the last Pub Quiz of 2015!

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. Actresses. Born in 1980, what actress and singer played the title roles in Veronica Mars and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, as well as the voice of Anna in the film Frozen?   

 

1. Sports.   Who was the NBA Rookie of the Year in 2004, the NBA scoring champion in 2008, and the AP Athlete of the Year in 2013?

 

1. Science.   The name of the fifth most common tree in the US is an anagram of the common phrase SQUEAKING PAN. Name the tree.

 

P.S. Thanks to Senator and Mayor Wolk and their team for joining us at the Pub Quiz last week. When local celebrities join us, whether it be Bob Dunning, John Lescroart, or the Wolk family, I always give them a hard time, joshing with them about their eminent status in the community or bringing up some mild controversy in local politics or public affairs. Does such treatment incentivize their Pub Quiz participation with just the attention that many celebrities crave, or do these mild and incidental roasts make them think twice before returning to de Vere’s on a Monday night? Time will tell.