Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Word on the street is that today in Kyiv a woman knocked down a Russian drone from a balcony with a jar of cucumbers. Clearly we need to send the Ukrainian people more cucumbers!

One hopes these trends continue, that the people of Ukraine, depending upon antiquated technologies, guerrilla warfare, and home-court advantage, can stop, thwart, and functionally defeat one of the world’s largest and best-equipped military forces. Sadly, a desperate and internationally ostracized Vladimir Putin is now running a terror campaign, targeting civilian population centers in order to compel everyday Ukrainians to demand that their political and military leaders capitulate in order to halt the bloodshed of innocents.

I would like to think that even if Putin succeeds in his military campaign, his country will lose. US, UK, and EU sanctions are functionally disabling the Russian economy. The ruble has lost most of its value, Russian banks have been barred  from buying and selling goods and commodities, and tens of billions of dollars in accounts have been seized by authorities in the countries where Putin and his band of oligarchs have been storing the money that they have functionally embezzled from the Russian citizenry. It’s like everyone has been given simultaneous permission to respond to Russian corruption and aggression, rather than just going along with it.

I need to meditate on why I feel such glee when Russian oligarchs’ villas and yachts are sized by Italian authorities, as was the case in the last 24 hours. Alexei Mordashov, who Forbes calls the richest man in Europe, had one of his yachts impounded in the Italian city of Imperia. Over the last few decades, Mordashov, whose name almost sounds like that of a Harry Potter villain, has been buying up mining companies, banks, telecom companies, and even American steel companies. Even though he was worth almost $30 billion before the ruble crashed, a divorce court in St Petersburg revealed that he was paying only $620 a month to support his ex-wife and son. I’ve concluded that vengeful people with obscene wealth are not to be trusted.

When it comes to class issues, western journalists have highlighted the middle-class status and even the race of the Ukrainian refugees fleeing the country. One expert on the BBC, Ukraine’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze, said, “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed.” A senior foreign correspondent for CBS, Charlie D’Agata, said that Ukraine “isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades.” Instead, D’Agata said, “This is a relatively civilized, relatively European — I have to choose those words carefully, too — city, where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen.” 

To speak the obvious out loud, we would not “hope” that unprovoked shelling a civilian areas would not take place in any part of the world, even outside Europe. The value of people is not determined by their country of origin or the pigmentation in their skin or hair. Also, isn’t Mesopotamia, the area that is now Iraq, known as the “Cradle of Civilization”? As James Baldwin used to say on the lecture circuit, in the 1960s schoolchildren were taught about American patriots who took up arms to establish and defend their country during the American Revolutionary War, but politicians and the press simultaneously lamented that people of color, African-Americans and indigenous people here in the United States, would propose similarly protecting themselves from violence.

When I read someone on Twitter say that watching the war coverage in Ukraine is so unsettling because Americans have never been bombed in their own cities, I am reminded of watching TV news footage of the May 1985 bombing of an entire Philadelphia city block by the police in that city. The police thought it justified to use explosive demolition devices that are typically reserved for war combat, if even then. The goal was to bomb members of MOVE, a black liberation group. Eleven people were killed, including five children. Sixty-one homes were destroyed. And we did that to ourselves. So obviously if you ask the people of Philadelphia or Birmingham, Alabama, Americans have known the sort of violence that is taking lives, dividing families, and breaking hearts in Ukraine.

All these groups of people, like the technologically-outgunned but plucky Ewoks or Na’vi that we cheer for in our movie theatres, deserve our sympathy and support.

I hope you and your families continue to be safe and healthy.

Dr. Andy

I hope you get to see this week’s Pub Quiz. I welcome new subscribers and celebrate my sustaining supporters! Expect questions on topics raised above, and on American kingdoms, people named Clark, US capitols, mothers with two jobs, Ecuador, collaborations, double-doubles, boldness, significant plays, revolutions, Cuban anniversaries, farmlands, tarmac stays, noisemakers, problems with Texas, Canadian imports, apologist lamenters, superheroes, wind speeds, military installations, peninsula, musical groups, “Art” projects from 50 years ago, sunsets, people with white hair, blindfolds, The Beatles, baseball players who never got to meet particular presidents, folds, home games, first dances, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to all of you who came to fill up the Natsoulas Gallery on Poetry Night this week. I had to miss it because Covid. Our next event is on St. Patrick’s Day. I remember when that day was such a big deal around here.

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

1. Mottos and Slogans. What tire company uses the slogan “A Better Way Forward”?  

2. Internet Culture. What Apple product is being used to track people and cars? 

3. Newspaper Headlines. What mobile application will now let users share their real-time location with friends: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Friendster?  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Democracy dies in darkness, the newspaper motto tells us. 

I read today that The Kremlin is trying to keep secret its invasion of nearby Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe (with Russia being the largest). Imagine having such control over the media that one could keep such a secret from 150 million people in Russia. An exception would be the 150,000 Russians, most of them young men around the age of my UC Davis students, who make up the invading troops. When Ukrainians tell them to go home, the invaders will likely understand them, for 30% of Ukrainians speak Russian.

For the one percent of newsletter readers who speak Russian, that would be иди домой! For the record, Microsoft Word feels that I spelled both those words incorrectly.

Outside of Putin and Trump, I don’t know of any other notable people in the world who support the invasion of Ukraine that was launched this week. I do know that more and more people are learning the name of the increasingly notable Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, early favorite for the 2022 Time Person of the Year. Today Zelensky walks the streets of Kyiv with everyday militia members, giving them hope. The Los Angeles Times today asked if Zelensky is Ukraine’s George Washington. One imagines future generations will see his likeness not only on postage stamps, but represented in statues and murals in Ukraine, and perhaps elsewhere. I hope he writes a memoir at the end of a long life.

Meanwhile, Americans are doom-scrolling via social media, typically for more than two hours a day (some of our scrolling is less troubled), and the malaise they feel, encounter, or promulgate reflects growing cynicism about political discourse, the effectiveness of government to solve problems, or even facts themselves.

Gurwinder Bhogal provides some context for the sort of pessimism we sometimes feel in his 2019 article “How Progress Blinds People to Progress.” Bhogal says this:

“The Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has noted that there’s a tendency for people to become selectively blind to social progress, particularly in Western nations. Despite the West (and the world) making huge advances across almost all major metrics, from crime to poverty, many believe the world has made no progress, or is getting worse.

Pinker blames this phenomenon largely on what the media chooses to report. This affects judgement by exploiting two quirks of the human mind: the availability heuristic, which causes people to overestimate the explanatory power of recently received or frequently repeated information, and the negativity bias, which causes people to overweight pessimistic news stories.”

Even I succumb to negativity bias sometimes, prompting me to take a break from the news to meditate in the park, play a game of chess with a friend, or go for a long walk on Davis greenbelts. When I return to my computer, I will occasionally discover that someone has sent me some encouraging news, such as the fact that today the celebrity actors Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds are personally matching donations of up to a million dollars to the UN Refugee Agency that is supporting those fleeing a needless war in Ukraine.

While sometimes big-name celebrities will spend part of their Hollywood and Vancouver fortunes on desperate people being bombed 6,000 miles from California, more often we find our heroes locally. Perhaps not a Washington or Churchill, but our own Robb Davis once gave a stirring speech in Central Park at a vigil following senseless mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Then-Mayor Davis said that to confront gun violence and homophobia, we need to start in our own communities by reaching out to the people who need our help. 

Less prominent heroes right here on the cul-de-sac where I live in South Davis offered to bring my family food or other needed supplies when they heard that one of us is ill with that oft-discussed malady that all of us are so careful not to contract. I told him that we don’t need help yet, but if all the adults in our home fall ill, someone will have to fetch us some groceries. He volunteered.

Speaking of the good work that the UN does, upon hearing my neighbor Jim’s offer of help, I immediately thought of something UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Audrey Hepburn once said: “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands — one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” We live in a time when too much is expected from those brave and forthright souls who volunteer, whether in the cities of Ukraine or the streets of Davis, but I hope that spirit of community, democracy, and heroism will continue long after this era of war and sickness is behind us.

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I have already posted this week’s Pub Quiz on Patreon. Subscribe to check it out. This week’s Pub Quiz includes questions on topics raised above, as well as the following: The media, true colors, vitamin A, men in tights, trivial causes of important events, Super Bowl appearances, alternatives to escape, political prisoners, invertebrates, Muppets, olives, people with unusual names, California places, valley dividers, cooling butterfat, longbows, musical ensembles, dukes, things that knock, physicists, lab activities, MVP, interior feelings, current events, and Shakespeare. If you subscribe to the Pub Quiz, I will feel less isolated while I quarantine!

Thanks, and be well.

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

1. Film Directors. Who directed the films Play Misty for Me (1971), Firefox (1982), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and Invictus (2009)?  

2. Islands. Because of their location, what islands have historically been considered a link between the four continents of Africa, North America, South America, and Europe?  

3. Pop Culture – Music. Where does American musician Brendon Urie panic?  

P.S. Poetry Night is Thursday night at 7: The feature will be Michael Mlekoday with Spencer Rico and singer Gabby Battista as openers.

Note: If you enjoy these newsletters, please consider becoming a subscriber.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I’ve actually enjoyed the time that I have spent with my family over the last two years of relative confinement.

Many people COULDN’T WAIT to send their kids back to face-to-face school, or kick the older kids out of the house, but I’ve really relished this time. Our kids are 24, 21, and 16, and, like the rest of us, they have all faced different sorts of challenges caused by this odd era in which they live. (Seneca said, “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”) These challenges are of course caused or exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, whether because it was not safe to expose ourselves to others, or because, in these days of decreasing infection rates, we still act as if it is not safe to expose ourselves to others. Our attitude is, “If you have to ask, wear your mask.”

This week I wrote a poem for my wife Kate in which I imagined that we had raised as many children as our Catholic and Mormon friends get to do. As environmentalists, agree with Isaac Asimov: “Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.” As a dad who is crazy about his children, however, I sometimes wonder how much fuller our life would have been had we had an irresponsible dozen children, rather than “just” three.

Recently I changed the verb tense of this poem from the conditional to the present, for I like to live in the present, and the present tense is where my dreams (rather than my goals) spend their time.

Family Planning

For Kate, who has planned our parenthood

Catholics and Mormons 

are the lucky ones, 

for they populate 

their homes and neighborhoods 

with people who love them.

I’ve largely kept secret my wish 

to have had a dozen or more 

children with you.

In my full heart are rooms 

laden with bunk beds, 

and a master closet with a couple more kids 

in sleeping bags that need tucking in.

The insulated garage in my heart’s home 

Is crowded with cots.

At Homecoming, we lead

our own noisy parade, 

originating from 

a back yard replete with tents.

At present, every seat is taken.

To reserve private time and space, 

each bathroom, cleaned every four hours, 

has a calendar on the door.

Everyone’s clothes look familiar,

the increasingly threadbare 

patterns having appeared first

in blankets, and then coats,

and then hats, and then buttons,

passed down from sibling to sibling

along with tailoring skills.

In our fairy-tale house,

every day is labor day.

The teenagers are eager 

to head off to college, 

if only for a break 

from the perpetual vegetable garden duty. 

Necessarily chefs and storytellers,

they feed our bellies and our souls.

Surrounded by library sale books 

instead of screens,

all of the children raised in our house 

are be scholarship students 

or like apprentices of old,

they will be lifetime indentured 

to their schools and colleges, 

for we’d have no money left.

But oh, how rich I am,

my heart’s home so full, 

seeing your large eyes 

and healthy cheeks 

everywhere I look.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to Kate for being such an active and loving mom to our kids. This week’s pub quiz touches upon topics raised above, as well as the following: Ways forward, tracked cars, real-time locations, words in a document, productions of Hamlet, selection committees, casual presidents, character developments, regrettable prejudices, rocks of the ages, stones, vacuum cleaners, award-winners, leeches in the newspaper, snowbirds, solo projects, forgotten foxes, salesmen, pillow talk conversations, world capitals, loved leaders, famous daughters, French standbys, alphabetical place names, time spent alone, faraway islands, confederacies, remade donuts, underground music groups, singer-songwriters, radiated emissions, famous bridges, current events, and Shakespeare.

I hope you get to see the Quiz. If you are not yet a subscriber, drop me a note with your interest, and I will send you a free quiz. Meanwhile, teams like The Outside Agitators, The Original Vincibles, and Quizimodo are making this whole thing possible. Join them on Patreon!

Be well.

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are four questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

1. Internet Culture. Tux the Penguin is the mascot of what?  

2. Musical Plays and Movies. Amadeus is one of only four productions to win both a Tony Award for Best Play (1981) and the Best Picture Oscar (1984). The other three films were all released in the mid-1960s. Name one of them.  

3. Name the Commonality. What do a fellowship, a staff, and a sap all have in common?  

4. Pop Culture – Music. Born in 1950, what singer, songwriter, and actress referred to her family as “the Black Kennedys” and started singing on her father’s albums at age 6?   

P.S. I have never had a sister, but I like this quotation by the poet Christina Rossetti: “For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; to cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.”

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

A plastic bag has lodged itself securely to a limb of a tree that I can see from my bedroom window. It distracts me sometimes with its movement, with its simulacrum of agency.

The seeming randomness of this newsletter’s paragraphs symbolize that sort of distraction. It is a common ailment of the 2020s.

Walking though the “alley” between C and D Streets with my anti-racism class yesterday, my students and I came upon Bill Buchanan, the journalist and host of the KDRT radio show and podcast Davisville. I wonder if my students thought that encounter was staged.

I have learned that if you walk for enough hours on the streets of Davis, sooner or later you will encounter a friend (or stranger who would make a good friend candidate).

My wife Kate is really good at Wordle, but she shares her Wordle victories only with me and a few other close friends. My Pub Quiz anagrams are more difficult than the daily Wordle, so I give context clues.

Speaking of games and friends, when I played chess over the table with my close friend Joe Mills, I won only about 60% of the time. Now we are playing online, so I have time to think between moves. He comes close to beating me sometimes. I’m grateful for his company and what I imagine is his patience.

My dad taught me how to give hugs and to play chess, for which I am grateful. He never taught me how to change the oil of a car, so I hire others to do that and play chess with Joe on my phone while I wait. 

Of course, these days I also don’t drive the car. Instead of changing the oil, yesterday I stopped by Fleet Feet to replace my shoes. The salesman and I agreed that shoes with 2,000 miles on them deserve to be replaced.

I was a bit embarrassed not to have brought my shoes in earlier. My favorite BU professor, Christopher Ricks, wrote an entire book about embarrassment. It was titled Keats and Embarrassment. He was subsequently knighted by the Queen. Now he is Sir Christopher. He still teaches at Boston University, but he walks the streets of Cambridge, the Harvard University and MIT town that aspires to have as many bicyclists per capita as we do in Davis.

My dad loved to walk, and he loved the Muppets. He especially loved The Muppet Show because of the ways the show aspired (but usually failed) to approximate the success of the traveling vaudeville performers he got to see as a child. Such performers hooked him on show business. He would have been pleased that his grandson Jukie keeps asking for Muppet movies at home.

Jim Henson must have had an active imagination, as well as a team of puppet artisans to “materialize” that imagination. Poets like me don’t need a team of helpers to write a poem. 

Valentine’s Day weekend requires the married poet to pay better attention to the images in his head, for he will have to assemble a number of them in the coming days in order to write something for his audience of one. Sometimes the resulting creation is shared more broadly.

Looking it over, I see that this week’s newsletter is more a disassembly, rather than an assembly. It reflects centrifugal forces, rather than centripetal. Richard Paul Evans, author of The Christmas Box, said, “The law of centrifugal force seems to be as true for the human condition as it is for the Newtonian mechanics. The faster our lives spin, the more things tend to fly apart.”

Ecclesiastes 3:5 says that there is “a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.” 

We gather together in childhood – at my Waldorf school, we had “assemblies” – and we fly apart from those onetime friends as adults. Small children embrace all the time, and then those children take a brake from embracing, until, say in high school, the impulse to embrace returns with a vengeance.

February 12^th is the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, most people’s favorite Republican, and Jim Parmelee, a Virginia Republican activist who I knew at that Waldorf school. We attended each other’s birthday parties in the late 1970s, but I haven’t shaken his hand since 1981. I don’t remember if we ever embraced.

The last time I talked to Jim Parmelee, it was for a 2001 interview on my radio show. He wanted to know when Al Gore was going to move out of the Vice Presidential Residence at One Observatory Circle in my old neighborhood so that Dick Cheney could move in. Even that sort of contentiousness seems sedate by today’s standards.

Speaking of divisions, in his 1858 “House Divided” speech at the Illinois State Republican Convention, Abraham Lincoln said, “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”

Just the year before that speech, in 1857, Moby-Dick author Herman Melville published his novel The Confidence-Man, about a scam artist who repeatedly rooked people on a Mississippi River steamboat. Lincoln could spot a swindler.

Lincoln didn’t care for the sophistry of Stephen A. Douglas. In 1854, Lincoln said this: “It was a great trick among some public speakers to hurl a naked absurdity at his audience, with such confidence that they should be puzzled to know if the speaker didn’t see some point of great magnitude in it which entirely escaped their observation. A neatly varnished sophism would be readily penetrated, but a great, rough non sequitur was sometimes twice as dangerous as a well-polished fallacy.”

Too many of us have succumbed to well-polished fallacies when we should be standing firm with the truth. Once in 1862 President Lincoln was helping Civil War nurse Rebecca Pomeroy down from a carriage and onto the sidewalk. He said this to her, “All through life be sure you put your feet in the right place, and then stand firm.” Lincoln was always seeking an occasion to share aphorisms the way that a poet looks for occasions to share images.

Nurse Pomeroy was a first responder, an essential worker. She was the sort of citizen Lincoln would have had in mind when he tried to preserve the union, to challenge all the centrifugal forces that distract us or, at worst, drive us apart.

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I hope you get to see this week’s Pub Quiz. It will feature questions about the following: anodynes, records, penguins, the economies of space, ultra-short Shakespearean poems, favorites, tennis dramas, opinions and reminiscences, elements you know, famous south coast islands, people named Lucy, patient guests, singer-songwriters, best sellers, American states, chocolate, resorts, glories and freedoms, staves, seasons, Black Kennedys, shoulder-spans, mixed woodlands, architects, adjacencies, gold standards, title questions, pale blue eyes, pioneers working with Adobe online, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks as always to the regular and heroic support of my patrons on Patreon. I wouldn’t be able to do this without you. Special thanks to The Original Vincibles, Quizimodo, and the Outside Agitators. Let’s add your name to this list! Subscribe today.

Stay well. As Kit Ramsey says, “Keep it together.”

Dr. Andy

Here are four questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

1. Science. Starting with the letter C, what sort of fruit pits do North and South Americans know best?  

2. Books and Authors. Underground Books, the Sacramento region’s only Black-owned bookstore can be found in the heart of what neighborhood?  

3. Current Events – Names in the News. According to a recent KCRA headline, “UC Davis Library To House Legacy Archive Of [an] Internationally Acclaimed Chef.” Name this chef who donated his legacy archive and all his cookbooks to UC Davis.   

4. Sports. First name Nathan, who is the first figure skater to have landed five types of quadruple jumps in competition?  

P.S. Joe Wenderoth is our featured poet at the Natsoulas Gallery this coming Thursday night at 7. Find the details at Poetry in Davis.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

In a January, 2022 article in The New Yorker, Deep Work author Cal Newport suggested that we should work more slowly to get more done. That seems nonsensical at first, for we think that people who work slowly (I think of Flash, an actual sloth who works for the equivalent of the DMV in the animated film Zootopia) are naturally less productive. But I bet many of us have experienced days where spending time discussing the abundance of action items on our TO DO lists, if only with ourselves, has taken the place of actually doing the work.

Newport suggests that the overwhelm of having so many action items actually makes us less productive: “When you’re tackling too many . . . projects concurrently, . . .. the combined impact of all of the corresponding meetings and messages can take over most of your schedule, creating an overhead spiral of sorts in which you spend significantly more time talking about work than actually getting it done—a form of wheel-spinning freneticism that amplifies frustration and, ultimately, leads to burnout.”

Even though I’ve tried to take on less during the two years of the ongoing pandemic, now that we are teaching in person again, I see how the tasks are swallowing my days. To take stock of my responsibilities, I recently counted up the categories of work I do for which I could use support from an undergraduate assistant or two. I came up with 21 categories. Thankfully, many of the projects for which I need help are self-assigned. Unwritten books far outnumber even the written ones.

I share such opportunities with potential student helpers not only because I do too much and could use the help, but also because I enjoy mentoring students individually, helping them to discover and take advantage of resources made available by me, by the university, and by our city of Davis. I’ve helped students choose and prepare themselves for more ambitious goals than they originally thought possible, testing out what Stephen Covey says in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: “Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.” Covey uses gender-specific language, but over the years I have hired more women than men.

What can I offer them? As if holding magic binoculars, I try to look into a student’s future, with the hope of alerting them to what is coming around the corner. Sometimes the wisdom I impart upon students comes out of conversation, from readings that we share with one another, or from favorite comedians. Two quotations by Steve Martin, both making self-deprecating comparisons, come to mind: “Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.” Teaching students to value the work for its own sake, to make daily incremental progress towards their goals, and to keep submitting their projects for evaluation, despite the inevitable rejections, helps them to build the habits necessary to succeed. As a poet, I also remind the students I mentor to be creative. Steve Martin also said, “I have found that, just as in real life, imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.”

Persistence and imagination! As Steve Martin and Cal Newport could tell you, by setting big goals and then patiently working on them, we will likely get less done in an hour or a day, but accomplish more of what matters in a year, or a lifetime. I have found that I can do so especially when I benefit from the help, ingenuity, and imagination of California’s best undergraduates.

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Nobody, except perhaps the millions of contributors to Wikipedia, have helped me with the quiz I wrote this week. Some tasks we are uniquely qualified to do, no matter the talent of whose who offer their help. Expect questions on topics raised above, as well as the following: towels, apologies, retributions, Nashville distances, invasions, symbols, minerals, guitarists, textiles, light years, podcasts, late-night comedians, marmots, clutches, jumps, chefs, bookstores, beans, pans, vaccination providers, canyons, trials, nerds, dogs and other animals, bridges, ladies, centuries in Asia and Europe, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to all the players and teams who join us on Patreon and thus subscribe to these newsletters, and/or the pub quizzes. The Original Vincibles, The Outside Agitators, and Quizimodo deserve a special shout out for their sustaining support. Let me know if you would like to see your name or team name appear here. In addition to the money I already send to the Yolo Food Bank, I will make a $20 donation to this stellar local charity in the name of any first-time subscribers, even if you subscribe for only a month. I think you will value receiving the quizzes every week.

Thanks for reading to the bottom of this week’s newsletter. Stay safe!

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are five autograph questions from last week’s quiz:

1. In 2012, a librarian at a high school in Tupelo, Mississippi discovered a library card in the back of an old book signed in 1948. This is the oldest known autograph by what person?  

2. The earliest known autograph by a major historical is that of El Cid, Prince of Valencia (1098). Name the country.  

3. Who was the earliest U.S. president not to have signed the Declaration of Independence?     

4. An autographed first-edition copy of what James Joyce novel has the greatest value of any of his autographed books? 

5.  Queen Elizabeth II signs her name “Elizabeth R.” What does the R stand for?  

P.S. “True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity, before it is entitled to the appellation.” George Washington

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Years ago my brother left People magazine in part because he could see the writing on the wall: increasingly magazines had been substituting reporting on celebrities’ revelatory Twitter and Instagram posts rather than sending out reporters to cover people and events. 

Of course, the academy noted these changes first. Way back in 1996, my onetime neighborhood college, Georgetown University, launched what we think is the nation’s first Internet Studies master’s degree – the program is now called Communication, Culture & Technology. In that same year, I with my new PhD was a campus resource on such topics, but soon UC Davis would create its own undergraduate program in Technocultural Studies (now called Cinema and Digital Media Studies).

But back to Twitter for a moment: Did you know that linguists have been discovering and charting busy all the ways that Twitter users in March and April of 2020 were assigning the Coronavirus the names, monikers, and characteristics of women? Here are some examples, taken from the essay “COVID-19, the beer flu; or, the disease of many names” by Antonio Lillo in the October, 2020 journal Lebende Sprachen (which I just happened to have on my bedside table):

I omitted some of the tweets with language that was demeaning or that was too spicy for this newsletter. 

I wonder how soon Coronavirus Cultural Studies (Virus Studies?) will be a major, or at least a designated emphasis, at an American or British university. Universities are already leading the way in helping us understand and combat the coronavirus (a much catchier name than “SARS-CoV-2”), but who shall help us understand the ways that creative professionals will respond to the virus with art, books, and film? My domestic autodidact film studies enthusiast and son Truman has been lining up great American movies for us to see over the last 18 months, so we’ve been engaging in our own form of cultural studies, but as I watch these movies, I can’t help but wish that the films’ protagonists would stand farther away from one another and mask up.

Last night Kate, Truman, and I and some friends (happy birthday week, Kari!) went to see the Australian acrobatic troupe Circa perform their show Humans: 2.0. We loved it, Kate describing the show “mesmerizing, a bit terrifying, and so beautiful.” Throwing and catching each other, and spinning each their fellow circus actors around their bodies like lightweight props, the nine performers get to know (and trust) each other very well, and even they wore their masks on stage. Even though we stared at them intently for 70 minutes last night, if any one of those performers were to knock on my door today, I probably wouldn’t recognize them. Even Georgia Webb, the woman who can balance two stories of performers on her muscular shoulders, would get a blank look from Dr. Andy. I’ve never seen her face.

Interestingly, I have been “meeting” with my advanced writing students for a month this quarter, and we have another six weeks left to the quarter, but I may never “see” those students again, for this week we are pivoting from appearing unmasked in Zoom squares to thoroughly masked in the classroom.

I admire these hard workers that fill my virtual and actual class rooms. Perhaps these will be the very students whose eventual research, creativity, and writing will someday help us better understand the unevenly isolated and infected world and culture in which we live.

—

Thanks to all of you who subscribe to the Pub Quiz via Patreon. This week’s quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, and on the following: London in the 1960s, long lifetimes, Hawaiian exports, short titles, old titles, rooms and passages, founding fathers, famous princes, manic flights from the Midwest, mermaids, notable stones, four-syllable words that start with the letter P, roses, Tropical birds, babies of knowledge, population dips, Michael Jordan’s basketballs, Canadian warriors, Hungarian Roma, rediscovered books, light gasses, faster and more furious, the Black Sea, Stephen Breyer factoids, London in the 1960s, long lifetimes, Hawaiian exports, short titles, old titles, rooms and passages, founding fathers, famous princes, manic flights from the Midwest, mermaids, Mary had a Little Lamb, notable stones, four-syllable words that start with the letter P, roses, famous unions, surface areas, derailed painters, units and credits, hometown heroes, current events, and Shakespeare. If I were to repeat some of these clues, would you notice?

Poetry Night Thursday takes place at 5 PM on the ROOF of the John Natsoulas Gallery. You should join us.

Be well.

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Internet Culture. In what web-based word game do players attempt to guess a five-letter word in six attempts?  

2. Newspaper Headlines. What U.S. Senator was recently censured by the Arizona Democratic Party executive board?  

3. Four for Four. Of all American states, for which of the following fruits is California the largest (or top) producer: grapes, kiwifruit, peaches, strawberries?  

P.S. “You don’t have to be doing vocal acrobatics or singing all over the scale to have soul.” Mariah Carey

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Today I lament the passing of Thích Nhất Hạnh, the Vietnamese monk and author of more than 50 books, at least a half-dozen of which I have read. He founded what he coined “Engaged Buddhism,” as well as Plum Village in France, the largest Buddhist monastery in the west. When he nominated Hạnh for the Nobel Prize in 1967, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him “an Apostle of Peace and Nonviolence.”

Today the Dalai Lama of Tibet said this about Thích Nhất Hạnh: “In his peaceful opposition to the Vietnam war, his support for Martin Luther King and most of all his dedication to sharing with others not only how mindfulness and compassion contribute to inner peace, but also how individuals cultivating peace of mind contributes to genuine world peace, the Venerable lived a truly meaningful life.

“I have no doubt the best way we can pay tribute to him is to continue his work to promote peace in the world.”

In one of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s most famous books, titled Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, he teaches readers how to infuse everything we do with mindfulness and compassion, whether it is taking a walk – “Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet” – or planting lettuce:

“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.”

I have thought about this quotation often as a parent of a child with autism, a child who doesn’t always make wise choices. As Hạnh points out, it makes no more sense for me to blame my son Jukie for some odd or chancy behavior any more than it does to blame lettuce for not growing well. Perhaps there are some gardeners who swear at their harvests.

Whether we are people or lettuce leaves, during these winter months, we could probably all use more water and more sun. As Hạnh says, we could also use more understanding (for and from others) and more love. With regard to persuasion, I have often wondered how my own expressions (or personal example) of love might help people in my inner circles come to agree with me about some personal or political topic (such as the wisdom of protecting ourselves and our loved ones by vaccinating against harmful viruses, or the need to uphold just and democratic values) more so than any ingenious or self-righteous argument. 

On this beautiful sunny Saturday, I am grateful for compassion-teachers such as Thích Nhất Hạnh. His teachings and philosophies have helped me weather adversities with greater equanimity and hope. As Hạnh says, “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”

I hope that taking a moment to reflect on Hạnh’s kind words and his life of service helps to lighten some of your own burdens today.

Thanks to all my Pub Quiz subscribers, especially those who make significant investments in this enterprise, such as Quizimodo, The Outside agitators, and The Original Vincibles. I appreciate your support of my weekly trivia composition habit, and for these newsletters, and I’m glad to keep sharing the wealth with you on Patreon. This week’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics hinted at above, and on the following: gardening, cooking, tiny creatures, newspapers, six attempts, censures, California fruits, New Zealand monkey sanctuaries, histories, divisional opponents, short-term occupations, correspondents, world capitals, Star Wars facts, mysteries, cats, party blenders, fine mesh, cores, French inventors, uses, sisters, exasperations, launderers, gelato, weak tears, weather reports, seven seas, bat wielders, African nicknames, hospitals, stars who didn’t return, kiwifruits, web applications, current events, and Shakespeare.

Be well!

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Mottos and Slogans. Starting with the letter H, what is the name of the rowing machine company that uses the slogan “Live Outdoor Reality”?   

2. Internet Culture. In what decade did the video game character Mario first appear?  

3. Four for Four. Which three of the following are actual kinds of mint: American wild mint, corn mint, fox mint, watermint?   

P.S. “The wave does not need to die to become water. She is already water.” Thích Nhất Hạnh

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

The nation’s attention seems to be directed at our hospitals, though perhaps not enough of us are attending to the precautions we should take to stay out of hospitals.

A friend of mine had a heart attack this week. Younger even than me, he and his wife were surprised by his sudden heart pains. The paramedics wisely transported him to a hospital in Sacramento that had the sophisticated equipment necessary for doctors to diagnose and treat his heart.

I’m grateful that my friend’s medical procedures were successful, and now I have deepened my understanding of angioplasty and stents, miraculous technologies that save and lengthen lives. As I write this, my friend is already back at home resting comfortably. He said tonight that it was strange not to have buttons on the side of his bed. His sweet and enormous dog, with whom I got to spend several hours on Wednesday, is happy to have him home.

Any of us could imagine much worse outcomes for my friend. The New York Times revealed this week that the omicron variant of the coronavirus is so contagious that many people who go to the hospital for unrelated reasons, such as to set a broken bone or to have a baby, are testing positive for the virus. Hospitals in wealthy and in economically depressed areas of the country are overrun, with the staff shortages causing even more problems than the overflow of covid patients.

I’m no health educator or epidemiologist, but I believe that it is time again to flatten the curve, primarily by staying out of buildings where people can be found. A friend re-shared this dark poem online today:

2019: avoid negative people

2020: avoid positive people

2021: avoid people

2022: a void

Another friend reminded me of a statement by the Canadian health educator Joyce Sunada: “If you don’t take time for your wellness, you will be forced to take time for your illness.”

Do such memes console us in a time of such widespread anxiety and grief? Even the healthiest among us who attend to the best wellness advice (typically that means eat lots of greens and healthy fats, exercise and sleep regularly, and avoid even the most popular toxins) will one day have to take time to attend to our illnesses. 

We grow the most from mistakes and mishaps, either our own, or those that we see or read are being experienced by others. But for that growth to take place, we have to take important first courageous steps. As Maya Angelou said, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” 

I hope that 2022 is more an opportunity for courage, rather than a void, for all of us. January is a time of resolutions. I hope the results of your wellness resolutions include you staying out of crowded buildings, and staying healthy enough to support the people in your circles and in our community who need it most.

This week’s Pub Quiz will feature some topics raised above, as well as questions on the following: Snakes, quarters, illegal drugs, Nobel Prize winners, peninsulas, American cities, seeds, furtive words, McDonald’s, ersatz boats, big gorillas, mints, state history, jotters, messengers, champions, spoons, backup dancers, people born in Canada, babies, speeches, caps, important books, Oscar winners, somewhat recognizable flags, kilograms, assists, fairies, current events, and Shakespeare.

Poetry Night Thursday at 7 will feature Gabrielle Myers. Join us via Zoom. Find details at the website Poetry in Davis.

Be well!

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are five questions from last week’s quiz: 

1. Internet Culture. Divisible by eight, what is the number of bits in a byte?

2. Newspaper Headlines. What restaurant this week announced its $10 a month daily taco membership?  

3. Four for Four. Which of the following countries is among the top ten countries with the most comprehensive mobile network coverage in the world: Senegal, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden?  

4. Know Your States. How many US states does Idaho border?  

5. U.S. Presidents. When he was Secretary of State, the future sixth U.S. president negotiated the treaty which provided for the American acquisition of Florida. Name him.  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Part I: The Numbers

With your help, my fundraiser for the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation surpassed all my expectations. At the end of this newsletter, I will finally reveal how many walkathon miles I walked in 2021. I’m sure you are eager to know.

I have an ambivalent relationship with Facebook. The company has monetized our relationships, manipulated our attentions, made many of us into grudging stalkers, and sparked many jealousies and bouts of depression. As Mark Twain says, “Comparison is the death of joy.”

On the other hand, like an address book, Facebook keeps a record of who we know. I’ve always had an address book, and at one point in my life considered it to be one of my most valuable possessions. I remember that when I left London after studying abroad in 1987, I accidentally left my address book behind in the bedroom that I shared with my future wife, Kate. She put a bow on it and mailed it to me as a Christmas present, and that bow still sits on it today in the cabinet next to me as I write this.

Paul Simon famously asserted that “I know what I know,” and that was certainly true for me in 1987, but over the subsequent decades, Facebook has communicated to me that I actually don’t know what (or who) I know. Facebook reminds us of all the people who would otherwise have silently slipped from our lives. We’ve all had the realization that we haven’t seen or heard from an acquaintance who we used to incidentally encounter all the time. While sometimes such friends appear in the obituary pages of the Davis Enterprise, we know that if we have connected with such an acquaintance on Facebook, and if like Mamá Coco we keep in our hearts a secret picture of that otherwise forgotten person, we might still be able to summon them up on Facebook and, if we choose, review their vacation pictures.

This week I have another reason to appreciate Facebook: It has reminded me of the kindness and generosity of the people in my virtual community. Last week I announced that my son Jukie and I were raising money for the foundation that supports medical research into Jukie’s rare genetic syndrome: Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome. I set a modest goal of a couple thousand dollars, chose one of Kate’s more touching Jukie-Daddy photographs, announced that it was Jukie’s 21^st birthday, and invited anyone to participate who felt compelled.

The response was astounding. Roughly in chronological order, I heard from friends of my parents, friends I made in elementary school, friends from high school (with about ten percent of my graduating class participating, including a gift of $500 from a kind woman now living in San Diego), friends from college (including a donation from someone from the all-male floor of my freshman dorm), friends from graduate school, friends among my fellow UC Davis Writing Program faculty colleagues, former students from my writing and literature classes, first noble citizens of the City of Davis, friends made at the San Francisco Writers Conference, friends from Academic Technology Services at UC Davis, friends from the local poetry community, and friends made at community events that I’ve hosted over the last 15 years, such as pub quizzes. I also heard from a few representatives of campus leadership (thanks, Chancellor!).

I will name the 115 Facebook-using supporters of and numerous other donors to the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation, below, but for right now, I’d like to update you on the current totals. Via the Andy’s Fundraiser Facebook donation page, people like you have donated over seven thousand dollars, in fact, $7,260. (The amount actually just went up while I was writing this post.) In response to my earlier invitation, people also donated over $650 to the Foundation via the Giving Hearts Day webpage (taking advantage of some matching grants). Furthermore, some people just sent checks to the Foundation via its webpage. Others told me of their plans to give.

As the grand total raised in recognition of Jukie’s birthday continues to inch up towards $10,000, I am grateful for the support of the many medical researchers who are investigating treatments and potential cures of this rare syndrome, as well as the offered support of the families of children with SLO who don’t have the resources that Jukie’s family does. At a time like this, I almost feel like George Bailey, a man who has committed various forms of support to his community, and in reward is named (spoiler alert) “the richest man in Bedford Falls.” As my brother Oliver pointed out to me on my radio show this past Wednesday, George was rich because he had so many friends, rather than having so much money. You and Facebook reminded me this week that those are the sort of riches that matter. 

Part II: More Numbers 

As I wrote about last week, Jukie and I survived 2021 by taking long walks. Now I am ready to share how long.

Not counting any walking I did when I didn’t have my phone in my pocket, in 2021 I averaged seven miles a day, and thus I walked 2,555 miles from January 1 to December 31, 2021. If you count steps instead of miles, that’s 16,186 steps a day, or 5,907,890 steps.

Seven miles a day is a feat I didn’t realize I could accomplish until the fall when I started walking back and forth to the UC Davis campus on most weekdays. As you can see from the attached image, I averaged closer to a mere six or six and a half miles a day for most of the year, but then when I walked 7.5 miles a day in September and 8.7 miles a day in October, I knew that if I pushed it (to 9.2 miles a day in November), I could reach my new goal.

The more I walked, the more I developed other unreasonable goals, such as 2,600 miles last year, so that I could say that I walked 50 miles a week. You can also see, above, how the number 5,907,890 is tantalizingly close to six million steps. Even though I tapped the brakes a bit in December, I’m pleased with the result. If you are curious about the benefits of this consistent regimen of ultra-low-impact exercise, I can tell that my legs and core are stronger. In addition to keeping from going crazy, I also lost about five pounds last year, though I attribute much of that to the enormous and healthy egg and tofu vegetable scrambles that Kate makes me for brunch every day. If it’s the right meal (like the right spouse), sometimes one meal a day is all you need.

Part III: The Donors

I’m going to thank here everyone who supported the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation in celebration of my son Jukie’s 21^st birthday. Unless you are looking for additional candidates for prayers, silent thanks, or other forms of private celebration and merit, or if you want to make sure that I didn’t forget you, you are invited to skip this next paragraph.

Andrew Newman, Ann Michaele Miller, Anne Seitz Da Vigo, Barbara Saunders, Ben Robideaux, Bill Roe, Brad Harding, Brian Sway, Brooke Sarkaria, Brooke Tabs, Cass Sylvia, Catherine Olvera, Cathy Haskell, Charlie Alpers, Chris Reynolds, Christina Hopkins Hooke, Cindy Katz Williams, Claire Tauzer, Crilly Butler, Dana Ferris, Dana Topousis, Danny Fisher, Dave Pierini, David Webb, Dominic Triglia, Don Saylor, Don Yee, Douglas DeSalles, Eavan Leigh, Elizabeth Freeman, Erika Kreger, Chancellor Gary May, Gretchen Noah, Guneet Bajwa, Isabel Ward, Jacqueline Dabadie Radin, Jan Coss, Jane Beal, Janet Sivori Berry, Jared Hippler, Jean Gruss, Jeff Smithson, Jeffrey Day, Jenae Cohn, Jennifer Larsen, Jesse Drew, Jim Grellas, John Boe, John Lescroart, John Mounier, Jonathan London, Joseph Zeccola, Josh Chapman, Josh Livni, Joy Cohan, JP Cahn, Julia Levine, Julian Elias, June Augusta Gillam, Karen Pulasky Karoly, Kathleen Holder, Kathryn Ray, Katrina Knighton, Katy Brown, Keith David Watenpaugh, Laura Lacy, Lauren Holzgrafe Kahn, Lauren Liz (who came up with the idea of yelling “Science!”), Laurie Downing Loving, Laurie San Martin, Linda Scheller, Lisa Goldberg, Lorin Kalisky, Lucas Frerichs, Lynda Morlan Jones, Lynette Hart, Lyra Halprin, Manuel Medeiros, Marisa Stoller Brandt, Mark Edry, Martha Kight, Mary Zeppa, Meggan Levitt, Merissa Leamy, Michael Bisch, Michelle McKim, Mike Coleman, Miles Miniaci, Mimi Kusch, Minh Huy Ly, Mitchell Mysliwiec, Mo Lynn Stoycoff, Monique van den Berg, Patricia Turner, Peter Dudley, Peter G Blando, Rebecca Calisi Rodriguez, Rita Parisi, Rob Heckman, Rochelle Swanson, Roger White, Roxanna Deane, Roy Bridgman, Sadia Adnan, Sally Madden, Samantha Tate, Sandra Borgerson, Sara Ashley Watterson, Sasha Slocombe, Shannon Henry Kleiber, Stanley Zumbiel, Stephen Briggs, Stephen Magagnini, Susan Browne, Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Teri Thorpe Greenfield, Todd Van Zandt, Vanessa Rapatz, Vicki Smith, Wayne Ginsburg, Wendy Silk. Wow! 

Some of these people gave with their spouses or significant others, so I also thank those unnamed people. Some sent a check to the SLO Foundation, so I also thank them. Some will be inspired by seeing the names of all these amazing people I hold all these people in my heart. Because the global SLO Foundation is run by volunteers, and the syndrome is so rare, donations to fundraisers like this one make up a significant part of the budget of the entire enterprise. These donors are funding new scientific studies, spreading awareness of this rare syndrome, and making possible the biennial conference. If you would still like to donate to this ongoing fundraiser, I will add your name to this pantheon of benefactors!

This week’s Pub Quiz is filled with intrigue and delightful challenges. I hope you will get to see it. Expect questions on diets, kingdoms, internet users, baseball players, unions, northern Europe, fancy restaurants, Nobel laureates, classical music, Tanzania, alcoholic beverages, memberships, countries whose names start with S, Idaho, dragons, famous schools, big movies, proper names, people who famously wore one glove, Oscars, lanterns made of oak, infamous lakes, balls, country music awards, broken records, digits, earnest requests, people named Stanley, sugar beets, Revolutionary War heroes, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to my subscribers on Patreon. If you need more joy and intellectual challenge in your life, I hope you, too, will consider subscribing. Thanks especially to the teams Quizimodo, The Outside Agitators, and The Original Vincibles. Until next week, stay safe!

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

1. Film. At the end of Toy Story 2, Jessie finds herself needing to be rescued from a plane bound for what country?  

2. Countries of the World. Now with a robust economy and a population of 126 million, what Asian country joined the First World War on the side of Britain and her allies, gaining some Pacific islands from Germany?  

3. Amazon Films. What 1954 American black-and-white 3D monster horror film depicts a group of scientists who encounter a piscine amphibious humanoid in the waters of the Amazon?  

P.P.S. “Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.” Albert Camus.