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