“They shall be a city upon a hill; the eyes of all people are upon us.” John Winthrop (1588–1649), First Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in his sermon A Model of Christian Charity (1630), imagining Boston even before his feet ever touched American soil.

My friend Sandra joined my son Jukie and me for a long walk around Boston last Thursday. I hadn’t seen my high school and college classmate for decades, so I appreciated the chance to share stories while exploring the city on foot.

We started our walk at the New England Aquarium, meandering through the Rose Kennedy Greenway with its fountains, public art, and a carousel that so intrigued Jukie. Then we lunched at Tia’s Waterfront Restaurant before picking up part of the Freedom Trail past the Copps Hill Burying Ground, where my 5^th cousin by marriage, the onetime Harvard College president Increase Mather, is buried. With the help of the website FamilySearch, we found many ancestors.

Then we walked past the Old North Church (one if by land, etc.), through the North End and then Beacon Hill until we finally made it back to Boston Common, the oldest public park in America, and the Boston Garden, where Robin Williams’ Sean Maguire sat on a park bench with Matt Damon’s Will Hunting.

My oldest and youngest kids were at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, so I proposed to Sandra that she accompany Jukie and me as we walk all the way there, even though we had been walking all day. She had the day (Juneteenth) off, and I suspect that she was enjoying catching up on all our old friends as much as I was, so that walk continued. We took the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, the shaded and tree-lined green axis of Boston’s Back Bay, the two miles all the way to Massachusetts Avenue.

As we walked, certain truths about Boston, and about myself, began to emerge.” I categorized them in my head so I could remember them for you here:

1. I did not know Boston as well as I thought I did, even though I spent almost four years there as an undergraduate. During my week in Beantown, our adventuresome navigator, my son Truman, introduced me to parts of the city that he had dutifully researched, and that I had not bothered to investigate when I lived there. For example, I relished (I almost said “revered”) the peaceful and shaded courtyard at the Paul Revere Mall. By contrast, when I was an BU undergraduate, I had my head in the books of my ever-growing library and my heart divided between my many Boston friends and the “beautiful London roommate” (as I kept describing Kate to anyone who would listen) who would later become my bride.
2. Boston wears its history on its sleeve. As I reflected upon last week, everywhere you go, you find a plaque or a statue reminding you who slept where or who walked that same thoroughfare. We saw six buildings where Ralph Waldo Emerson had spent some time, mostly talking to skeptics about abolitionism. At almost 200 years, the median age of buildings in the Beacon Street neighborhood is older than the state of California. Yesterday on the Black Heritage Trail we stopped by 66 Phillips Street, the Lewis and Harriet Hayden House (settled by them in 1846) that was Boston’s most active safe house for escaped enslaved Africans and African Americans. For many, it was the last stop on the Underground Railroad.
3. My companions and I took advantage of Boston’s walkability. Judged the third most walkable city in America (just behind New York City and San Francisco), Boston is tightly packed around neighborhoods that once benefitted from everyone walking who wasn’t riding a horse (or today, a bike). The numbers tell the story my feet already knew: Boston has 930 parks covering 17% of the city, which means that all residents live near a park. As was true for most of the time that I lived in Washington D.C. and Boston, 33.8% of Boston households have no car, compared to a 2016 national average of 8.7%. The MBTA and my shoes took me everywhere I wanted to go. Such a city empowers the walker and offers freedom to the carless. 
4. Jukie and I spent almost ten hours walking on Juneteenth, interrupted often for meals, chats with my friend Sandra, and sightseeing. Because he and I spend so much of our time walking (averaging over ten miles a day on weekends), he is a hearty traveling companion in cities as walkable as Boston. I get to fly east rarely (my last trip was in 2019), partly because Jukie’s disabilities and OCD can make him such a handful. If this trip is any indication, his training as a walker may make my perpetual companion particularly well-suited for walks in European cities. Someday!
5. The aforementioned parks allow meandering Bostonians and visitors to dwell in oases of wooded reverie that, to me, are just as inspirational as Winthrop’s imagined City upon a Hill. Walking with Jukie on busy city streets is anxiety-provoking, while stepping into one of Boston’s many parks, or the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, provides a respite from all that hubbub, traffic, and noise. As Wordsworth says in his “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” “Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her.”
6. I write to you around the time of the Summer Solstice, the longest days of the year, the very heart of summer. When I regard The Saint Francis of Assisi Garden next to the Old North Church; the 200-year-old Shaw Memorial Elms located near the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on the Boston Common, or even the aforementioned Commonwealth Avenue Mall, I wondered aloud why I never studied or wrote academic papers in such transcendent locations. Then I remember that as a college student I only spent the whole of one month a year in Boston, October, when the high temperature was over 60 degrees. I read all those books in Boston University’s Mugar Memorial Library in part because it was too cold to read outside. Summer in Boston is glorious and atypical, and now the home to new memories. Memories reshape places.

After Sandra, Jukie, and I walked all the way to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where my daughter Geneva and son Truman had spent the entire day, I got to introduce my kids to a friend whom I had made in ninth grade at The Field School, who I helped to get a job at the Tenley Circle Theatre in 1984, and who was a Boston University classmate for four years. As I listened to Geneva and Sandra compare food allergies, and as I took in that Truman and Sandra’s son Henry will be focusing on film and writing in college, I smiled at the connections that rewarded us much more than the impressive step count. I also realized that had spent more time with Sandra than with most of my other friends, and then I spent more years away from Boston and from good friends like Sandra than I should have.

As we rode the Green Line train back towards our hotel, I knew that Sandra had to exit one stop before us, at Park Street, to transfer to the Red Line and home to her family in Quincy. Having so enjoyed our day together, I wanted to stop time, or at least stop the train, and cover all the topics and people whom we might have missed. Even a full day of walking and laughter with a lifetime friend feels too short. 

I miss my friend Sandra, but I realized that day that I also miss those unfinished versions of ourselves that were raw, ridiculous, and gloriously unaware of what we didn’t yet know when we hung out together on high school trips, at senior prom, or at the movies we watched together as college students. 

I was both naive and book-zealous when I lived in Boston, and I didn’t mind that I was merely stumbling eagerly through life, asking every person and book Allen Ginsberg’s famous question: Are you my angel? It feels strange to say so, but I loved the incomplete, unreflective, and academically obsessive person I was back then when I walked the frozen streets of that city on a hill. As I have been bittersweetly remembering this week, I was so full of possibilities, so full of hope.

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Late June is upon us — how lucky we are to live in Davis! I invite you to join the regulars and the first-timers outside at Sudwerk tonight, perhaps in the shade, for a grand competition. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset as we all get to enjoy the cooling temperatures together. Others feel the same way, for we had almost 35 teams compete last week. We will have a substitute quizmaster tonight in Toby. Give him your patience and attention!

Speaking of the weather, here in New York, we’ve been instructed to stay indoors because the temperature is approaching what we enjoy every summer in Davis. Today we will see more waterfalls and Ithaca College and then dine at the Moosewood Restaurant. My mom cooked many recipes from the Moosewood Cookbook soon after I became a vegetarian in 1981.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: explosions, eastern Europe, helpful animals, Oscars, good leaders, champions, foxes, inventors, countries of origin, obscurity expeditions, personal income taxes, historical commissions, romantic confusion, social media personalities who change their names, the examples of brothers, dramatic home runs, missed games, intense greenhouse effects, journals, Romans, jokers, narrators, significant leads, charmers, migrations south, drummers, alternatives to Philadelphia, women’s shoes, astronomy, memories, bells,  U.S. cities, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

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

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Find here three questions on Katherine Hepburn!

1. Katharine Hepburn was born in a state that shares a name with the longest river in New England. Coincidentally, Dr. Andy drove across this river on June 24^th. Name the state.  

2. Katharine Hepburn holds the record for the most Academy Awards by a theatrical performer, at four, winning those Oscars in three different decades. Name just one of those decades.  

3. What actor was Katharine Hepburn’s romantic and professional partner in nine films? 

Dear Friends,

I’m in Boston, writing to you on June 17^th, 2025, the 250^th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. I’ve been thinking about both the original threats to the colonies and the ongoing threats to American principles. 

Low on ammunition, colonial militias at Bunker Hill built fortifications all through the night to prepare for the expected British assault. The British aimed to crush colonial resistance and secure control of Boston Harbor, while the plucky militias hoped to maintain pressure on British forces and disrupt their dominance in the region.

Rallying his men, Colonel William Prescott, seeking to conserve precious ammunition and to ensure accurate fire during the three British assaults on Bunker Hill (actually Breed’s Hill), allegedly gave this famous order to his troops : “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

While the eye-white story might be apocryphal, and while the British succeeded on their third assault during the Battle of Bunker Hill, their loss of over 1,000 soldiers, half their invading force, convinced Americans that the British monarchists could be resisted, and convinced the British that quelling the popular revolts against the locals would be costly and dispiriting. The colonists saw the invading forces as imperious, vindictive, and despotic, and thus they felt they had the moral upper hand.

Back in Boston as I reflect on all this history, I took the blue line train of the MBTA under that same Boston Harbor today and had lunch not far from the Freedom Trail that stretches from Boston Common to the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown.

This afternoon my son Jukie and I sat for 20 minutes on a park bench in the Boston Public Garden while listening to a jazz duo. Near us was a famous equestrian statue of George Washington that I remember gazing up at as an 18-year old Boston University freshman entering the park from Arlington Street. The statue was unveiled on July 3, 1869.

I have been of at least three minds about George Washington. First of all, I grew up in a city, Washington D.C., that was named after our first president, and my late mom, a Washingtoniana Department public librarian, was born on February 22, George Washington’s birthday. Growing up, I felt a special kinship with the American leader, the hero who had surprised and dismayed British troops and the British monarchy with his prowess as an under-resourced general.

On the other hand, Washington personally enslaved over 100 people at Mount Vernon, his estate a mere 13 miles from the Glover Park neighborhood where I was raised by civil rights advocates. General Washington also led campaigns against Native American populations by torching dozens of villages, displacing thousands, and breaking treaties. Among generations of the Iroquois, Washington was known as the “Town Destroyer.” I learned some of Washington’s activities from Howard Zinn in a Boston University history class.

With Boston’s long history of abolitionism and progressive governing policies, one might wonder how Bostonians could celebrate such a man.

I wonder, though, in the current climate, with millions of protestors recently gathering in hundreds of American cities to proclaim that we will accept “No Kings,” if Washington might be reassessed for some of the original reasons most of us were taught to admire him. Washington voluntarily gave up power, stepping down after two terms as president. He explicitly declined monarchial power when prompted to take control by the 1782 Newburgh Letter. Even Alexander Hamilton proposed that Washington serve for life in his executive role, which Hamilton thought should come with an absolute veto. 

Washington said no. Channeling the departing president, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote it this way: “If I say goodbye, the nation learns to move on. / It outlives me when I’m gone.”

Washington made a series of immoral decisions regarding his treatment of Blacks and indigenous people, but he also rejected monarchial invitations and provisions, thus helping to set the foundation for the democratic principles that undergird American society today.  Washington once said, “I rejoice in the belief that our government will prove a blessing to every people who shall adopt it.” Many of us thought that the example of George Washington should have concluded the conversation on American kings.

Yet we cannot let Washington’s democratic restraint overshadow the fundamental moral failures of his era and his personal choices. The enslaving of over 100 human beings (or more than 300 if we include Martha Washington’s estate) and the systematic destruction of Native American communities did not merely reflect the revolutionary era. Instead, Washington’s profound moral wrongs caused immeasurable suffering. 

As we grapple with what I see as the current misuse of American leadership and power, we must consider both truths: that Washington’s rejection of monarchy helped establish democratic precedent, and that his participation in systems of racial oppression betrayed the ideals of human dignity and equality that should underpin any just society. As I consider all the signs I saw at a recent Woodland march and rally, I see that the protesters calling for “No Kings” today understand something Washington himself seemed to grasp only partially: true democratic leadership requires not just the rejection of absolute power, but the recognition of the full humanity of all people.

---

June is upon us — how lucky we are to live in Davis! I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight, perhaps in the shade, for a grand competition. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset as we all get to enjoy the cooling temperatures together. Others feel the same way, for we had almost 35 teams compete last week. We will have a substitute quizmaster tonight. Give them your patience and attention!

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: homes, workout songs, big dogs,European countries, appendages, chambers, recipients of surprises, babies, professional partners, New England, menus from random restaurants, kings, thieves, charms, misnomers, quantum computing, efforts, Boston, musical instruments, baseball, superstars, missed opportunities, airports, romances, elements, beasts, big cats, Rob Lowe, U.S. cities, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

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

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Damian and Meebles! Thanks especially to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Dear Friends,

I write today with an expression of congratulations and farewell to an undergraduate student who has shone brightly at UC Davis, Dyson Smith.

One of the greatest benefits of teaching at UC Davis for the last 35 years is the caliber and spirit of the students I get to teach. They bring enthusiasm, discipline, and a willingness to work hard in my writing and literature classes. They learn quickly, thus inspiring me always to be learning.

I get to hire many of the best of these students who excel in my classes, or in other endeavors at UC Davis. I teach my paid interns to solve problems (sometimes my problems), to imagine big projects for themselves, and to engage with campus and Davis communities.

They have all impressed me, both while in my employ and thereafter. Students of mine have won Pulitzer Prizes, published multiple books, and earned tenure track faculty jobs. Among them: One of my former interns sold his company to Apple; another won the 2019 University Medal and is now the chief of staff to a member of the California Assembly; a third earned an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the most prestigious of all such programs in the country.  

My former interns’ and students’ purpose is not to stay in touch with me, but rather to succeed after they leave UC Davis. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.” Sometimes LinkedIn or Facebook allow me to keep up with the progress of my former pupils. Sometimes I instead reflect on fond memories of their work in my classes, or their roles as helpers with my reading series, radio show, or book projects.

I am lucky to work with one such intern now, someone who has recently graduated from UC Davis, and whom I will miss as the producer of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour (which you should subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts).

Dyson Smith brims with energy, encouragement, and the sort of quiet confidence that results from his aptitude at understanding workflows, working well with others, and solving problems.

Like my wife Kate, Dyson comes from Chicago, the city that Carl Sandburg correctly named “Stormy, husky, brawling, / City of the Big Shoulders.” He brings a diligent and humble demeanor that one might expect from a Midwesterner, and the disciplined work ethic of an amateur boxer, which he is. Dyson recently graduated UC Davis majoring in Statistics, English, and Sociology. Can you imagine taking on three majors at such a demanding university?

I have worked in the College of Letters and Science for most of my career, so you can imagine how proud I was when Dyson was awarded the Herbert A. Young Award as the College of Letters and Science’s Medalist, given to the graduating senior determined to be the most outstanding. 

As regulars at The Poetry Night Reading Series know, Dyson is also an accomplished poet. Earlier this year he and I performed together at the Sacramento Poetry Center. Dyson’s hungry imagination, nuanced emotions, and inventive wordplay were on display that night, as seen by many of his friends and classmates who drove across the Causeway to see him shine. He read close to the end of a recent Poetry Night open mic on the roof of the Natsoulas Gallery, bringing to the microphone the sort of humor and confidence of a veteran featured poet.

Our English department also recognized his preeminence, for last week Dyson’s honors thesis in poetry, Tomboy Ballet, won the Lois Ann Lattin prize for UC Davis’s Best Honors Creative Writing Project. Poems from that collection have been published in a number of local and distant prominent journals and anthologies, including Open Ceilings, Poet News, GTFO Poetry’s 2024 Anthology of Sacramento Poets, Euphemism andThe Madison Review.

The work to accrue so many honors and honorable accomplishments would exhaust most poets, but Dyson made room in his week for many ambitious projects. For example, in addition to his work as a poet, as a social statistician, Dyson wrote a research thesis on the association between social proximity to gun violence and chronic health conditions in California. He has also worked on other projects pertaining to housing insecurity in Davis and understanding the regrettable “deaths of despair” among formerly incarcerated persons. 

Like me, Dyson is a strong proponent for public and community radio, in this case, KDVS. Our campus and community radio station remains the preeminent local source for varied sources and genres of music, all of it chosen by the volunteer DJs themselves. KDVS also provides actionable and edifying information for our community through its public affairs and news shows, and acts as a hub for people in our community who support the values and practices of KDVS.

In the past school year, my radio show producer Dyson worked as a Community-Coordinator and DJ at KDVS, bringing together new and experienced DJs to learn from each other and from the experience of hosting one’s own radio show. In addition to all that, Dyson has been a researcher at the UC Davis Innovations and Research Lab, a data analyst for Davis’s Data Driven Change Club, and a submissions reader for the literary magazine Open Ceilings. 

Dyson is loved by those closest to him, such as his DC-based girlfriend who did me the grand favor of introducing me to Dyson, and his mom who for many years owned a bike shop in Chicago. He is also loved and admired by his peer groups, as I have had the pleasure to see on the poetry stage and in the basement studios of KDVS.

Like the most accomplished of those remarkable students and interns who have enriched my life in the past, Dyson will also impress his future colleagues, his employers, and his future onetime UC Davis and KDVS mentor. As the poet Mark Van Doren said, “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” Working with Dyson has reminded me how deeply rewarding it is to support a student’s discoveries and achievements.

Dyson Smith has already discovered so much, and the horizon is wide, ready to be further discerned by his keen senses. His successes will lift him up and lift up all those admirers, such as myself, who cheer him on in his communities of mutual support.

Congratulations, Dyson!

---

We are looking forward to a pleasant June evening with cooler than usual temperatures on this June 11. I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk for a grand competition. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset as we all get to enjoy the evening temperatures together. Others feel the same way, for we had about 35 teams compete last week. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, even though the quiz is longer than usual at over a thousand words. 

I am grateful to the two substitute quizmasters who will be hosting the Sudwerk Pub Quiz on June 18 and June 25. I will be hosting a scientific conference in Boston and then attending to family matters in New York and Pennsylvania. I don’t get to travel much, so I am looking forward to this break!

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: pilots, spiders, Abbeys, bears, inventors, farewell messages, items that are named after people named Justin, sealed souls, patrilineal employment influences, calories, soft textiles, bartender jokes, Mars comparisons, good times, flappers, explosions, coaches, meat sequels, heavy smokers, birds, blushers, atmospheric phenomena, goddesses, big bands, undead representatives, gameplay, revolutions, British arts, summertime, Nobel nominees, the example of manganese, Waltons, maps, U.S. cities, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

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

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks especially to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz with a paid subscription (almost 30) on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three atmospheric questions from last week’s quiz:

18.          When the five levels of the atmosphere are arranged alphabetically, the outermost comes first, more than 600 kilometers from earth, and where we find most satellites and the International Space Station. Name the outermost layer.  

19.          Born in San Francisco in 1874, one of America’s most famous poets, likely familiar to members of your team, published a poem “Atmosphere” that ends with this couplet: “Moisture and color and odor thicken here. / The hours of daylight gather atmosphere.” Name the poet.  

20.          Three different characters speak the following sentences in what 2019 film? “Friday, what are they firing at?” “Something just entered the upper atmosphere.” “Oh, yeah!” Name the film.  

P.S. If you would like to hear some poetry by Dyson Smith, tune into KDVS (90.3 FM) today / Wednesday at 5, or check out the podcast subsequently. I will also be joined by the France-based poet Nicolette Daskalakis.

Dear Friends,

As a child, I watched many horror films with my best friend Tito. On Saturday nights, we would end up at his house or mine, trying to stay up unusually late to watch either Saturday Night Live or Creature Feature, which presented “unearthed” horror movies from the 1930s to the 1960s. Often our enthusiasm for the SNL guest host would determine which we would watch, or try to watch, for sleep inevitably claimed us both before we could watch one of those horror movies all the way through.

Universal Pictures horror films taught us that we were right to fear large and seemingly abandoned burial places of mythic undead figures, and that we were much safer on Tito’s orange couch in the living room of his home on the 3600 block of Whitehaven Parkway in Washington, D.C., than we were exploring rural Transylvania or the what The Mummy called the “Hill of the Seven Jackals” near Thebes (now Luxor) in Egypt.

That part of Egypt is still revealing surprises. According to an Owen Jarus article published last month on the website Live Science, we continue to make discoveries near the onetime resting place of Boris Karloff’s titular villain, Imhotep: “Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered three New Kingdom tombs dating to more than 3,000 years ago. The burials were found within a cemetery now known as Dra Abu el-Naga, which is near modern-day Luxor (ancient Thebes).” I hope these tombs are not cursed!

One fascinating detail: “One [of the tombs] is of a man named Baki, who was a supervisor of grain silos.” This must have been an important job, for, like the other discovered non-royals that are featured in this article, each of their tombs had a courtyard and featured profile figures on murals that would be familiar to anyone who visited the King Tut exhibits that came to Washington D.C. in 1976, as I did.

Imagine a room that sits in stillness for 3,000 years, almost everything we know as history taking place before the return of even a hint (or a glint) of sunshine. Such places that stay undisturbed for ages fascinate me.

Consider, for instance, the “time capsule” apartment in Paris that was unsealed in 2010, after its owner died, having abandoned the place (while keeping up with the rent) back in 1942. Understandably, an influx of Nazis evidently convinced the owner of this apartment to look elsewhere. 

As we can see from the photographs in this extended blog entry on the blog Beautiful Buildings, the books, plateware, paintings and make-up case were found just as they had been left 70 years previously. There was even a Mickey Mouse doll in the apartment, further proof that none of us can escape Disney.

A contemporary of the owner of that Paris apartment, my grandmother saved money by reusing old calendars. During the summer of 1973, she showed me that that year’s calendar had all the same days of the month and year as 1962. I remember being amazed by this, and impressed by my grandmother’s frugality.

Vera Rosina Boush came from a distant era that required such thriftiness. My grandmother was born in the year 1900, the same year as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and England’s Queen Mother, so she witnessed much during her 91 years. She learned to mend clothes, rather than replacing them, in the 1910s and 1920s, and then made do with less during the 1930s when the Great Depression era auto industry layoffs in her hometown of Detroit affected everyone. One imagines that she bartered for eggs and other foodstuffs, walked when she could to conserve rubber, and repaired her family’s shoes that wore out because of all that walking.

I became eco-conscious in Berkeley in the late 1980s (thanks to Roy Bridgman and Steve Manning), but way back in the 1970s, in a rural cabin in Beavertown, Pennsylvania, my grandmother taught me about sustainable and minimalist living. We burned our paper trash in the fireplace to help start fires in the morning, composted our food scraps, and “packed out” our trash. We used lye in the outhouse.

My grandmother died almost 35 years ago (though I can still summon her voice and hear her stories in my head when I need to), and her youngest daughter, my mom, passed away last year. I miss them both. 

Meanwhile, the cabin stands, its own sort of time capsule, ready to reveal stories from a previous age. With my two sons, I return there later this month, eager to recapture some of that familial love and sentiment from a previous century. I wonder if I will find my grandma’s recycled calendars. For example, 1958 corresponds in the placement of months, weeks, and days to 2025.

More likely, all those weeks and days long ago went up in smoke to warm whoever perched expectantly before that ancient fireplace, contemplating the descendants who would fill the rooms of the family cabin in the future.

---

June is upon us — how lucky we are to live in Davis! I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight, perhaps in the shade, for a grand competition. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset as we all get to enjoy the cooling temperatures together. Others feel the same way, for we had almost 35 teams compete last week. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, even though the quiz is longer than usual at 920 words. 

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: creators named Tyler, rhythm nations, gasses, space stations, letter carriers, matrices, U.S. Presidents, American acronyms, many lines worth remembering, short names, greenery, pioneering godfathers, essayistic enigmas, atmospheric elements, rhyming poems, the Federal Reserve, college towns, watchful people, atomic teaspoons, cult tactics, coastal heads, young people who were injured in factories, historical dramas, Republicans in California, frogs, Friday messages, onetime San Franciscans, conquerors, college degrees, gripping dramas, countries worth visiting, short story experts, long voyages, cavities, Italian culture, favorite places in Australia, aardvarks, airports, U.S. cities, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

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

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have almost 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Damian and Meebles! Thanks also to subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious Broadway play viewership plans and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. So many thanks! I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Four Tom Cruise questions from last week:

17.          Tom Cruise was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award as Worst Actor for his work in what 2017 horror film?  

18.          At almost $1.5 billion dollars in worldwide box office, what was Tom Cruise’s highest grossing film?  

19.          In Tom Cruise’s highest-grossing film that was not a sequel (though it was a remake), he played a character named Ray Ferier. Name this 2005 Steven Spielberg film.  

20.          Released last month, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is what even number film in the franchise?  

P.P.S. Poetry Night takes place tomorrow at 7 at the Natsoulas Gallery! Join us June 5. Details at https://poetryindavis.com/archive/2025/05/heather-bourbeau-and-andrea-ross-read-poetry-and-prose-at-poetry-night-on-june-5/

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I take a walk with my son Jukie every day. Last year his walks with me averaged over six miles a day, while this year we have dropped down to a mere five miles a day.  For both of us, these walks provide most of our exercise.

Living with profound autism, our bearded explorer has been attending a therapeutic “boot camp” (as we nicknamed it) in Elk Grove this year to work on behavioral and communication concerns. As he spends more than four hours a day outside the house, this leaves less time for us to walk. We make up for it in the afternoon, including during my walking commute to the UC Davis campus, where I teach writing and literature classes.

Davis greenbelts can be traversed as a series of wide loops, the largest of these loops being in South Davis. As we live on such a greenbelt, I can let Jukie lead the way and pick our route when we head out of the house without our having to worry about car traffic. Every 20-something likes to express their agency by making undirected choices, and Jukie expresses his by insisting on frequent walks that start with a large, clockwise loop.

Jukie prunes even more than Chauncey Gardiner ever did, breaking off small branches from the trees and bushes that we pass on our walks. When Jukie and I try to walk more than 30 miles over a long weekend, we typically encounter the denuded branches and detritus of leaves that resulted from our previous walks over the same footpaths. My younger son Truman recently remarked that when he steps outside, he can easily follow Jukie’s most recent path, for he leaves behind leaves the way that Wall-E leaves behind rolling earthen footsteps on The Axiom.

I consider what lessons Jukie has to teach me, such as lessons about presence, about love of nature, and about quiet fortitude. From his tree-trimming obsession, I learn lessons about concentration and prioritization. Consider what Ralph Waldo Emerson shares in his essay “Power,” in which he advises “stopping off decisively our miscellaneous activity, and concentrating our force on one or a few points; as the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs.” It’s funny to think of Jukie strengthening all the reachable trees of Davis greenbelts, encouraging the concentration of all that sap.

Emerson is connected to Jukie via a direct intellectual influence lineage. Emerson mentored his godson William James, the father of American psychology, who taught and influenced Josiah Royce and George Santayana at Harvard. Royce taught T.S. Eliot, while George Santayana was a subject of Eliot’s undergraduate thesis at Harvard. Eliot, and his focus on poetic and literary ambiguity, directly influenced the British New Criticism critic and poet William Empson, author of Seven Types of Ambiguity, a book that quotes Eliot approvingly. At Cambridge University, Sir Christopher Ricks was deeply influenced by William Empson, whom he called “a genius” whose “prose is at least as well written as good poetry.” Even when he was chosen as the Oxford Professor of Poetry, Ricks continued to praise Empson. And Sir Christopher Ricks taught me classes on Beckett, Eliot, Shakespeare and Tennyson at Boston University, writing me a letter of support of my start at UC Davis as a graduate student. 

And I am my son Jukie’s most constant teacher, most often out on our nature walks. Sometimes during these walks, I return in thought to the writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson, reflecting on how his lessons might apply to our wordless boy. 

As Jukie pauses to behold fast moving clouds changing the light in a ring of trees where he has been happily pruning, I think of that quotation from Emerson’s essay “Nature”: “The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.”

As I wonder to myself what Jukie might be thinking on our long walks, I consider Emerson’s words again: “The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other.”

As I try not to lament to two-way conversations that Jukie and I will never share, at least using words, I remember what Emerson said, also in “Nature”: “In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.”

These daily walks—quiet, habitual, deliberate, and sometimes sparked by “wild delight”—prune away distraction for Jukie and me, thus letting the vital sap of communal presence rise.

---

The weather tonight will be warm for late May, so I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight, perhaps in the shade. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset as we all get to enjoy the cooling temperatures together. Others feel the same way, for we had almost 40 teams compete last week. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, even though the quiz is longer than usual. 

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: straps, vitality, drug companies, southern states, timeouts, musical seasons, targets, the warmth of Luke, inspiring and depressing writing, famous 19th century families, birth states, people named Ray, kings that we don’t resent, toys and birds, Oscar nominees, pickup games, body temperatures, the requested dog topic, outlaws, dad jokes, international scholars, medications, new additions to new collections, seals, words that are thirteen letters long, butlers, insurance reminders, remakes that are not sequels, female pioneers, pollinators, the founding of European cities, Turin discoveries, peanuts, raspberries, veterans, misremembered titles of Miles Davis albums, huge movie stars, Texan birds, U.S. cities, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

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

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

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three “original names” questions from last week:

18.          The city once known as Byzantium and later Constantinople is now called what?  

19.          What actor who was Oscar-nominated for Bugsy (1990), Sexy Beast (2000), and House of Sand and Fog (2003) was born in 1941 with the name Krishna Pandit Bhanji?  

20.          What breakfast cereal was originally named “Sugar Smacks”?  

P.P.S. “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” – John Muir

Favorable circumstances can make any day of the week feel like a Friday.

For instance, a week ago Tuesday one of my heroes, David Page, visited me in Davis for the first time in 25 years, and our long conversation brought me back to similar exuberant and carefree conversations that we had as high school students in Washington, D.C. in the 1980s. All of us were less beset and distracted back then, so we could focus on the friendships that meant everything to us.

Even in high school, Dave was working as an emergency medical technician and paramedic, a path he continued while studying at Brandeis University (where I visited him and met his college cohort) and later at Macalester College, where he met his wife Liz and near which the Pages and their three sons live today.

Today Dave is the Director of the Prehospital Care Research Forum at the UCLA Center for Prehospital Care as well as the Chair of the International Paramedic Registry. He expressed enthusiasm about a program he created that sends him to different locales in California where he teaches local instructors how to recruit EMT trainees from historically underserved and under-represented populations, including former foster children. A Trendsetter, Dave Page has likely saved more lives than anyone else I know.

Dave and I resolved to put on a mini-reunion for the other Trendsetters from our high school. Every time I see such friends, I am reminded what Cicero said: “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”

And then this past Monday my son Truman flew into Sacramento Airport. To arrive at the Ithaca Airport by 4 AM, he set his alarm at about 11:30 PM Sunday night, California time. He was bumped to first class for one of his three flights that day, and then by Monday night he was dining outdoors with us at one of our favorite downtown Mexican restaurants, telling us hilarious stories about his classes, his peers, and the Ithaca College graduation ceremony that he attended as an event manager. Disney CEO Bob Iger was the keynote speaker, and special guest David Muir, the anchor of ABC World News Tonight, also an Ithaca College graduate, surprised everyone by showing up to introduce his boss and mentor.

Truman was full of energy at dinner. Young people seemingly need far less sleep than the rest of us. In preparation for a radio interview, today I was messaging with Kevin Smokler, author of Break The Frame: Conversations with Women Filmmakers. Kevin tells me that he is an early riser and that he has dinner early, enjoying those early bird specials. No wonder he is such a productive “Hustler of Culture.”

Walking to that Monday dinner with Truman, Geneva, and my wife Kate, Jukie and I ran into our favorite Crepeville employee, Courtney, whom we have known for more than a decade. After catching up a bit, I told her that we had to press on to participate in the family reunion downtown.

Then I yelled this to Courtney: “Enjoy your weekend!” She laughed and told me she would try. I guess every Monday feels like the weekend when you spend it with the friends and family you love.

---

The weather tonight will be warm for May, so I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight, perhaps in the shade. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset. Others feel the same way, for we had almost 40 teams compete last week. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, likely possible because the quiz is 873 words long, if you include the answers. 

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: low incomes, Santa competitors, the letter I, cities in England, adventure boys, Eastern Europe, notable smiles, regrettable bruising, separatists,  UCLA accomplishments, mispronunciations for beautiful, unlikely winners, new names, California housing markets, jazz singers, stolen words, entomologists, expelled cities, seriousness, hello Dwingers, The American Film Institute, challenging locations, neurologists, German dishes, notable gangsters, rising oceans, ambitious mayors, former rulers, tabletop games, visor demands, percussion instruments, U.S. cities, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

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

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

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three duo questions from last week:

16.          Who was the American member of the comedy duo Laurel or Hardy?  

17.          Ike and Tina Turner were both born in America, but Tina Turner later became a citizen of what country?  

18.          Who moved to Brooklyn at age nine: Shakira or her musical partner, Wyclef Jean?  

P.P.S. “I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” Vincent van Gogh 

P.P.S. Our next Poetry Night on May 1 will feature Oswaldo Vargas and Patrick Grizzle, President of the Sacramento Poetry Center! Oswaldo was proposed by one of our Pub Quiz regulars! Plan to join us at the Natsoulas Gallery! 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Do retired people miss the meetings, waiting for their phones to chime a reminder to sit down to Zoom?

Tonight at 7 I host a pub quiz at Sudwerk. It will be my ninth meeting / obligation of the day.

Once at the 20^th anniversary celebration of the UC Davis journal on writing and the teaching of writing, titled Writing on the Edge, Chancellor Vanderhoef biked over to join us for the outdoor ceremony. He wasn’t obligated or even formally invited, but he wanted to show his support, standing in the back, his trouser-protecting bike clips in hand.

He joined us for only about half an hour, but everyone there remembers his consideration. Aesop reminds us that “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”

As I write this from an Elk Grove office building, two women about 30 feet from me have taken a break from their laughing to harmonize with a Reggae song on the loudspeakers. Like an act of kindness, singing out loud can be its own reward.

As has been pointed out to me, kindness is always invited, but that’s not always the case with singing.

When I have no time to write a newsletter, I look to a recent poem and quote it the way that columnist Bob Dunning quotes emails from his readers.

For instance, as you can see from what follows, every poem I write about my Kate, the super-mom to our three children, becomes a love poem, even if its prompting occasion was our most recent holiday, Mother’s Day. 

Let the Sun Rise on Us

A swatch of auburn rises,

visible even though the curtain’s drawn,

my eyes adjusted to the night,

but never may they adjust to this.

Let the sun rise on us.

How she pauses and stretches,

framed like a canvas in the doorway,

tall and drowsy, a whisper of fabric

moving as she moves, unhurried.

Let the sun rise on us.

See her big eyes, wide and wise,

still glinting from the night’s stars,

catch my glance in the morning hush,

her half-smile blooming like a secret.

Let the sun rise on us.

A horizontal lump, small as a shadow, 

the French bulldog snores

softly before the dawn, dreaming

of even more sleep against her side.

Let the sun rise on us.

I reach for her long frame,

but a finger to her lips casts a spell,

keeps me rooted under the covers

that, even in sleep, she is readjusting.

Let the sun rise on us.

We share the same dreams 

through the long hours of silence,

our synchronous breaths whispering

that love is made of listening.

Let the sun rise on us.

I wish for this simple night,

the best of all nights,

to linger in our earned stillness,

but still,

let the sun rise on us.

Happy belated Mother’s Day to all the mom readers of this newsletter, including Terry, Pat, Heghnar, Kris, Elaine, Kerry, Kate, Caitlin, Myra, Myrna, Peggy, Ellen, Leah, Diane, Angie, Carrie, Kathy, Niki, Kari, Lois, Sherri, Lisa, Yvonne, Lynne, Christine, Brook, Meagan, Donna, Michelle, Janet, Julie, Kim, Jennifer, Bridget, Amy, Ellen, Gena, and Kathy. Forgive me if I left off the names of any moms who regularly read this newsletter!

---

The weather will be pleasant this evening, but not as warm as it has been, so I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight, perhaps in layers. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset. Others feel the same way, for we had almost 40 teams compete last week. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, likely possible because the quiz is 835 words long, if you exclude the answers. 

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: TV networks, names that start with N and J, pianists, record companies, historians, the journal Nature, expensive robots, notable hotels, Spanish artists, elimination games, Jon Stewart, duos, Harlem, relevant dots, Chinese innovations, trickery, birds, bands, televised football, jests, presidents, skeletons, populous cities, people who were born in 1994, the costs of plus, suits, paraders, fans of metal, bluebooks, libraries, foxes, South Korea, U.S. cities, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

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

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

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three crop questions from last week:

1.             Is the 2021-dollar value of all crops grown worldwide closest to $100 billion, $1 trillion, $10 trillion, or $100 trillion? 

2.             Compared to wheat, is sorghum typically higher or lower in protein content?  

3.             What G word do we use for the sort of gardening that involves raising food, plants, or flowers on land that the gardeners do not have the legal rights to cultivate?  

P.P.S. Poetry Night on May 15 features Mary Mackey! Join us on the Natsoulas Gallery roof at 7 PM.

P.P.P.S. Find bonus hints hidden in this odd and experimental poem.

Transitions

Does any poet moving to Brooklyn at age nine

See the slumping and porous skeleton 

of a refugee in his every rhyme? 

Something waits in white silence,

The vanishing point of the slow march.

Scars mark the remembered wound.

Ask the wincing tailored Vaudeville son 

of the broken Confederate hero 

If Harlem is more than a state of mind.

A fruitless bird scratches in the desert sand,

Inches above a pyramid’s buried apex,

Its hieroglyphics still undecoded,

The last sandblown workers having long 

ago dotted one by last one across the desolation

like darkling beetles carving erasable sand angels.

Our overstuffed carry-ons packed,

Surrounded by clearcuts, we’ve forgotten the old games: 

A pox, a needle, a memory.

Everyone eyes the door.

According to family lore, my great Aunt Lilah used to sell pianos from the back of a horse-drawn wagon in Snyder County, Pennsylvania. She didn’t own the horses, the wagon, or the pianos. Instead, she had this job because of her prowess on the piano, something I saw in action at my childhood home in the 1970s and 1980s.

One strategy of any piano salesperson is to guess her potential customer’s age, do some math, and then play a song that was a hit the year the customer graduated from high school. The listener would be filled with such nostalgia and affection for the song that he might want to buy the piano right then, if only more easily to revisit that era when he was young, hopeful, and surrounded by friends who shared his musical tastes.

You might take a few minutes to review Wikipedia for the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of the relevant year to you. Having just looked over the top singles of 1983, for example, I now gratefully have David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” stuck in my head. Later I plan to listen to “Back on the Chain Gang” by The Pretenders.

Some of my wealthier friends from high school spent a lot of time and a lot of their parents’ money at concerts watching their favorite artists performing their top radio hits live. They had gripping stories to tell – about the majesty of arenas, about the impressive choreography. By contrast, I would see musical performances at small venues such as The 9:30 Club (because the drinking age in Washington, D.C. was 18 when I turned 18, which meant that I could start enjoying live music in clubs, even though I didn’t drink alcohol back then). That’s where I learned “What is Hip?” from Tower of Power.

In the summer of 1986, a bunch of my best friends and I saw Bob Dylan perform with The Grateful Dead and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, a memorable show. And to think that we thought Bob Dylan was old back then! My good friend Bob the Deadhead joined me for that show, so I got to learn the cultural and historical context of each song.

Because I was so enjoying the company of my fellow music-lovers, even though she was sitting in our nosebleed section of RFK Stadium, I did not approach my friend Margaret whom I had worked with three years previously at the Tenley Circle Movie Theatre. I figure I would have other opportunities to catch up. That was almost 40 years ago, and I haven’t seen Margaret since. Such fleeting moments flicker by us, sometimes sticking with us, and sometimes immediately freeing themselves of any future importance.

Fast forward to Davis, California, and this past Friday night I enjoyed a backyard concert by my favorite local musical duo, Misner and Smith. We had so enjoyed a similar concert about three years ago, but this time the songs were more artful, more tightly orchestrated, and with even more haunting and resonant melodies. The Davis musicians – Sam Misner on guitar and Megan Smith on stand-up bass – shared some favorites from their previous backyard performance, some songs from their new album, titled All is Song, and some recognizable covers, such as “America” by Simon and Garfunkel, a song that opens with the itinerant absurdist lyrics: “Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together / I’ve got some real estate here in my bag.”

As someone who has hosted almost 500 poetry readings, I especially appreciated the original tunes. Songs such as “Sadie’s Song,” “Anthem,” and “Silence of the Sun” featured simultaneously precise and complex melodies as well as lyrics that alluded to or echoed some of my favorite poets, such as Dylan Thomas. What’s more, the sound quality was perfect, almost studio quality. We are lucky to have such soulful consummate professional musicians in our hometown. 

Although I heard no covers of my favorite songs from the early 1980s, I felt like I was haunted by the salesman spirit of my Great Aunt Lilah. Rather than a piano, I immediately wanted to buy a guitar and start learning a few tunes. I felt joyful and grateful to have been present for such a performance.

Although Plato wanted to bar poets from his ideal republic, I do agree with him regarding the power of live music: “Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.”

---

The weather will be pleasant this evening, but not as warm as it has been, so I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight, perhaps in layers. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset. Others feel the same way, for we had almost 40 teams compete last week. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, even though the quiz is 886 words long, if you exclude the answers. 

In addition to topics raised above, expect questions tonight on the following: macros, sweetness, the American spelling of omelet, sketches, frogs, grasshoppers, English aristocrats, gulfs, video games, animated films, prisons, brine, expectations, carpenters, eight decades of TV, mountains, grunge rockers, bonanzas, unaided eyes, large animal selections, pianos, sad sacks, torque, actors n their 80s,  agreements, reactions, cultivars, crops, the letters DBMCSLFS, burgers, cosmetics, subscribers, dragnets, websites, New York City, witty feuds, famous thieves, mononyms, wheels, Germans, Scots, Joan of Arc, U.S. states, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

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

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

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three lamb questions from last week:

1. Did God instruct the Israelites to sacrifice a spotless lamb and mark their doorposts with its blood? 

2.             When people eat young sheep meat, the meat is called lamb. What is old sheep meat called?  

3.             The 1915 film The Lamb marked the screen debut of which actor, later called “The King of Hollywood,” who also co-founded United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and others and first played the vigilante Zorro?  

Photo of Joshua Clover by Elise Kane

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Joshua Clover was especially good at the Pub Quiz. Back when the English Department professor was living in Davis, he would sometimes come to Bistro 33 to write while sitting at the bar.

Amused (and perhaps a little perplexed) to see one of his Voorhies Hall colleagues hosting a pub quiz for a crowd of maybe 40, the first time Joshua “participated” in the quiz he tried to catch my eye after every question, primarily to roll his eyes at me over how unbearably easy all my questions were. 

Widely and deeply read, Joshua knew pop culture from his many years as a music writer for Spin Magazine, as well as the whole of world literature, current events, and the history of social and economic theory.

The next time I found Joshua at the bar late on a Monday evening (back then we started the PQ at 9 pm, if you can believe that), I insisted on adding the progressive firebrand to a team. And thereafter, any team he played on won the quiz, even back when a team called, coincidentally, “The Ice Cream Socialists” dominated the competition. 

---

Soon after he was hired, I visited Joshua’s office to welcome him and to talk about poetry. We were both studying at Boston University at the same time, him as an MFA student and I as an undergrad. I studied primarily with our more traditional professors, such as Sir Christopher Ricks, William Arrowsmith, and Roger Shattuck, while Joshua stuck close to the playful formalist George Starbuck.

Our most memorable shared professor at BU was Carolyn Williams, who had taught me a 20^th century fiction and non-fiction class that had introduced me to J.D. Salinger (especially “For Esme, with Love and Squalor”), Maxine Hong Kingston (whom I later met on several occasions in California) and Zora Neale Hurston (whom I later taught).

As I was listing influential professors and came to the name Carolyn Williams, Joshua stopped me. Professor Williams had also had a transformational and inspiring effect on Joshua’s work as a poet and scholar. We all can recall teachers who have benefitted us significantly, and Joshua got a kick out of the fact that he and I could both point to the same scholar who helped to shape our lives and inspire our careers.

---

Joshua got a kick out of every audience who attended one of his book talks or readings. I just checked Amazon to confirm the date of his event for his second book, The Totality for Kids, and I was reminded that “You purchased this edition on April 8, 2006,” two days before the book was released on April 10. He was so amused by his own allusions during his reading on the fourth floor of Hart Hall at UC Davis that he couldn’t help but laugh in places, so we laughed with him. His poems were a torrent of cleverness.

My mom visited Davis at the time of a Joshua reading, so we went. About halfway through the event, she volunteered that “I can’t tell when your poems start or end!” As I cringed down into my seat, Joshua responded with something like, “Mission Accomplished.” And then he and my mom shared a laugh.

I got to attend his book talks in 2004 for his book on The Matrix, in 2009 for his (non-fiction) book titled 1989: Bob Dylan Didn’t Have This to Sing About, and in 2016 for his book Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings. I got to host him for readings at Bistro 33 and, in 2015, for the release of his poetry book Red Epic. A hero to students because of his activism, Joshua always drew a crowd.

---

After the death of Joshua Clover this past Saturday, April 26^th at the age of 62, his friends and former students shared their love and appreciation.

Megan Kaminski, a poet I had known as she was earning her MFA at UC Davis, wrote this: “Deeply sad to hear of Joshua’s untimely death. He was my grad advisor at UC Davis and became a friend. I am forever grateful for what he taught me about being a poet through his example: an expansive and fierce intellectual curiosity inextricably devoted to creating real change in the world. Lots of memories over the 20 years that I’ve known him, sharing this one from a reading we gave together at KU when I was a new Assistant Professor. RIP, Joshua.”

Another poet I knew at UC Davis, Wendy Trevino, wrote this:

“Joshua Clover was one of the – if not *the* – most important mentors I’ve ever had. He was also a comrade & loyal friend. I’ve learned so much from & with him over the years, I don’t even know where to start. But this part of an email he sent me shortly after my first arrest (which he was there for) – I think about it a lot – more than anything b/c there is something really beautiful about it:

‘If we are reaching into history, I am still very fond of the very simple formula, ‘the truth is the whole.’ That’s Hegel. Of course, I never will know the whole (which I admit makes me sad; that sadness is my hubris), but it remains very uncertain that because the whole is unknowable, one shouldn’t try. ‘The whole’ is a kind of horizon, or limit. I am not so into giving up in the face of its great distance from us. I swim in that direction.’”

Someone posting under the name “Snax” wrote this on X: “[Joshua Clover’s] ideas have had a more powerful influence on me & the people closest to me than maybe anyone. He was a towering political & intellectual force. But he never stood above any of us; he stood alongside us & allowed himself to be transformed by struggle, with us. A true comrade.”

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I’ve seen Joshua outside cafes in downtown Davis in recent years, often deep in conversation, such as with Kim Stanley Robinson. Even when engaged with others, he always made a point to acknowledge me as he saw me walking somewhere with Jukie, sharing a wave and the wry smile that he was known for. I will always think of that smile as I fondly remember our friendship. Whether in a poetry reading or at a pub quiz, Joshua displayed the same brilliance, mischief, and moral clarity. I admire Joshua Clover’s work as a poet and scholar, and I honor his fierce advocacy for the intellectual, political, and economic lives and rights of our students.

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

In addition to topics raised above, expect questions tonight on the following: lambs, The San Diego Zoo, global trade turmoil, sabreteeth, superhero origins, ribbons, Olympians, album covers, famous generals, wooing in April, French cooking, disputed territories, frightening names, winds, unpleasantness, composers, more common words, baseball teams, musical hedonism, friends, rebellions, railroads, rare earth metals, radicals, wide receivers, California Kings, carnivore preferences, sacrifices, the absence of city dusts, U.S. states, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

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

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

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three Wildcat questions from last week:

1.             The DC Comics superhero known as Wildcat was a long-time member of the JSA. What does JSA stand for?   

2.             The Grumman F4F Wildcat was an American Navy fighter plane that was used primarily during what war?  

3.             What Bob Dylan song, which was an even bigger hit for Jimi Hendrix, concludes with these lines: “Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl / Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl”?  

P.P.S. Our next Poetry Night on May 1 at 7 PM will feature Oswaldo Vargas and Patrick Grizzle, President of the Sacramento Poetry Center! Oswaldo was proposed by one of our Pub Quiz regulars! Plan to join us on the roof (dress warmly) of the Natsoulas Gallery!