Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

William Cowper’s poem “The Task” (1785) reminds us that “Variety’s the very spice of life, / That gives it all flavors.” One way to ensure variety is to invite surprises. This past Friday, four different past players of the Pub Quiz added significant welcome variety to the first face-to-face class that I have taught in over a year. I shall tell you how.

Like judicious college students around the country, UC Davis students have been sheltering at home or in their single dorm rooms, keeping a healthy distance from their similarly unvaccinated classmates. Most of them see each other’s unmasked faces only on Zoom. Like the rest of us, they ache to return to their communities of peers, whether in restaurants, pubs, or classrooms.

With this in mind, this quarter I’m offering an outdoor class called “Journaling Our Long Walk Together.” As the title suggests, the class has my students and me meeting in different locations on campus and in the city of Davis, walking around while I share context, wisdom, and information about the sites we are visiting, and then sitting down to write in our hardback journals for an hour or more. Walking and writing are how I spend my leisure and mental health time, so, I wondered, why not introduce a group of new students to a couple of the habits that have been so good to me?

The class filled immediately. And then the emails started coming in from first-year students desperate to get out of the house (or the dorm), and into my class. Here’s an example from a UC Davis freshman: “I was wondering if there is any chance to be able to get into the class, as I don’t have the ability to even waitlist until Thursday. I feel like it would be very beneficial to my mental and physical health as it is challenging for me to leave my dorm room and have stomach inflammation that is often relieved from taking walks (I just currently do not have a walking buddy). Please let me know as I would love to be a part of your seminar and will be adding to the waitlist as soon as I can!”

Now, I’ve taught first-year seminars on The Borg, Buddhism and Film, Jazz and Literature, and Poetry Marketing that have attracted interest from single-digit numbers of students. This class, by contrast, soon had a waiting list almost as large as the capped enrollment. Rashly, I offered to teach a second section of the class, meaning that I would be meeting with my students at both 9 AM and 2 PM for our walks and talks. Like my students, I know that I would relish the chance to connect with a new group of people. Plus, as I told my students on at our first meeting, they don’t need to worry about infecting me, for I’m vaccinated!

We met on the first day in the T. Elliot Weier Redwood Grove near Old Davis Road and discussed how odd it was to find a grove of coastal redwoods on a creek in the Sacramento Valley. Soon, though, the welcome interruptions began. One of the passersby revealed that beneath his mask he was Sinisa Novakovic, owner of the Davis cultural hotspots Mishka’s Café and (currently dark) Varsity Theatre. I promised him that I’d introduce my students to his businesses on one of our subsequent perambulations. All smiles, Sinisa said he would look for us in the woods on the subsequent Friday morning.

About 20 minutes later I spotted Eileen Rendahl, the Davis author of more than a dozen novels in several genres. So prolific and talented, Eileen would have to be using the redwood grove walking time to compose, I thought, but she was walking and chatting with a friend, so I didn’t interrupt her conversation or my class to thank her again for being one of the sustaining sponsors of my online pub quizzes. Eileen has made such an investment in the Pub Quiz that her team gets a book from me every month, and just this week I ordered her team some pro-science pins from Dissent Pins. Thanks, Eileen!

When Brian Sway came through the redwoods soon after Eileen, he also had a walking buddy, so I didn’t stop him to meet my students. I did tell my students about Brian’s Peace Corps work helping 350 South African health clinics reorganize in order to address the sort of epidemiological challenges that are now somewhat familiar to all of us. When asked about his work in the Davis Enterprise, Brian talked up his team. “I may be a change agent and pushing people, but I’ve not done this by myself,” Sway said. “I work with great people at CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), good people at Peace Corps and definitely in the South African government and the health clinics. If I don’t have a strong partner in the facility, manager of a health clinic, I can’t do anything. It’s their willingness to bring their people to the table and to be flexible and to collaborate that makes it happen.” In 2019, The State Department gave Sway the Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy, the same year that UC Davis gave him the Emil M. Mrak International Award for his work overseas. What a hero! I am grateful to call Brian a friend, and delighted in seeing him at so many Pub Quizzes in 2019, our last year of normalcy.

While my first three friends who strolled through our impromptu classroom had walking buddies, Heidi Bekebrede was walking solo, so I did stop her and present her to my students, telling her that I’m planning to introduce them to her public artwork when we took our art walk in our penultimate class. She asked if I planned to show them to the lyrics of the official City of Davis song, for she knows that I attended the 2013 unveiling of her grand ceramic tile mosaic masterpiece on permanent display in Central Park (also called Farmers Market Park). I asked Heidi if she herself would like to sing the song to my students. This was her response:

The Davis Song

16 miles from Sacramento, heading west on 80.

You will find an oasis where avenues are shady.

Laid out on a grid of alphabets and ordinal numbers,

You’ll find merchants selling pizza, cars, groceries and lumber.

Folks go ped’ling to and fro, to work, to shop, to classes. 

Others sit and chat at cafes, clinking ice–chilled glasses. 

Some would rather jog about, or do some skateboard jive. 

Yes I guess, I really must admit, some people drive.

The city I sing of is DAVIS.

It’s the place the UC Regents gave us,

Over hundred summers are the norm I better warn ya. 

D–A–V–I–S C–A Spells Davis California.

Aggies, bikes, tomatoes, Picnic Day, green belts and vet school, 

Farmers Market and the Rec Pool

Amtrak stops here umpteen times a day,

What more could a person ask for, what more can I say? Oh!

Pu-tah Creek, the Ar–bor–ee–tum, 

Cen–tral Park, you just can’t beat um. 

Solar homes and a sloooow freight train through town,

I don’t understand how any one can put it down.

The city I sing of is DAVIS. Where the peace of mind I crave is 

If I ever move I know I’m gonna mourn ya,

D–A–V–I–S C–A Spells Davis California

Some may claim we’re in the sticks…please write 95616

…And now that we are oh so great, we’ve added 95618.

I can still hear the echoes of my students’ applause (the echoes of their cheers were muffled by masks). After Heidi the singer-songwriter finished her song, took a bow, and continued walking the few blocks to her nearby home, two of my students raised their hands to say that they were born and raised in Davis, and that as children they had learned ceramics from Heidi at Davis Arts Center, meaning that a decade or more earlier, Heidi had actually prepared her students for her 2021 performance in the forest. As Henry Adams says, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”

Walking home after class (my commute to my two classes about walking was on foot, and I took my son Jukie for a walk that evening, for a total that say of 13.4 miles, longer than a half-marathon), I reflected on how much fun it is to engage with actual people once again. That great walking poet Wallace Stevens once wrote this in his own journal: “Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!” I welcome spring surprises such as these encounters, these experiences, and I look forward to encountering more admired friends as we all start to emerge from our year-long cocoons. 

In addition to the topics raised above, tonight’s quiz will feature questions about faraway places and the languages they speak, National Poetry Month, eastern states, red roses, happiness, electronic capitulation, royals, singular crabs, 12-page laments, insiders’ guides, invertebrates, California counties, Davis institutions, hybridity, involuntary dancing, Australia, bruins, patriotic songs, imposing doorways, foreigners playing Americans, birds and bees, San Francisco legends, the letter V, the crown, current events, and Shakespeare.

I’m hosting a free, synchronous Pub Quiz for Bay Area writers in support of the San Francisco Writers Conference this coming Friday night at 7. To say thanks to all my subscribers, I would like to include you, if you are interested and available. Would you like to gather a team and crash this Zoom event? If so, visit https://ucdavis.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwrdOyvqj4iEtyBoZEJw9M7NgsEwhAUmchz. Expect a lot of book questions.

I hope you get to see tonight’s Pub Quiz. It about two-thirds the length of this newsletter. Easy reading.

Be well,

Dr. Andy

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

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

1. What poet wrote the books The Bell Jar and Ariel?  

2. Container Ship Culture. In what country does one find the Suez Canal?  

3. Puppet Movies. Released in 2011, the highest-grossing puppet film of all time featured songs originally performed by Paul Simon, Cee Lo Green, and Nirvana. Name the film.  

4. Science. What do we call an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Musa?  

5. Books and Authors. First composed over 3000 years ago, the title of what divination text is a translation from the Chinese of “Book of Changes”? 

P.P.S. If you are enjoying the Pub Quiz, please consider upgrading your membership to get more of the Pub Quiz experience, or consider inviting a friend to join us. As Joyce Carol Oates says, “A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise.”

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

As I write this newsletter, I see gentle California hills on the left of me, along with the setting sun, and seemingly endless prairie on the right, interrupted on occasion with signs that ask me to “Build More Dams: Stop Man-Made Droughts,” to “Make California Safe Again,” to “Stop Dumping 78% of Our Water in the Ocean,” and to “RECALL NEWSOM.” As someone who has raised over $100,000 for Friends of the River to dismantle destructive dams, who favors gun control, and who voted for Gavin Newsom, I don’t think that I am the target demographic of these imperatives. Deep in the Central Valley, we are headed home, but we are still a long way from Davis.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that Davis and Los Angeles are in the same state. This past (long) weekend my family and I got to drive down to LA to see my mom who, like many 85-year-olds, has been facing some significant health issues. Realizing that no octogenarian should weather a global pandemic by herself, my brother Oliver insisted that mom fly out west to spend the many pandemic months in his LA home with his wife, Sarah, and their daughter, Clementine. These beloveds exemplify the heroism and self-sacrifice which so many people have shown since March of 2020, the sort of heroism that I see locally in people who volunteer at the Yolo Food Bank, who spearhead an activist or political campaign that seeks to confront racism and other forms of injustice, or who create opportunities for children in a faraway village in Zimbabwe.

Oh, sometimes I get a good feeling, or so says the song I’m listening to right now. Sorry for the interruption.

We really like the variety of homes in my brother Oliver’s West Adams neighborhood. Check out this Harry Potter house, one of us said to another. It’s difficult to approximate the majesty of Hogwarts with 1,200 square feet, but somebody pulled it off. More exciting than that is the new bookstore that just opened a block from Oliver’s house: The Reparations Club. Containing almost exclusively books by African-American authors, the store is Black-owned and woman-owned. My mom and I each bought a book (an Octavia Butler novel for mom, and a Selected Works of Audre Lorde for me), and the two owners each introduced themselves to us by name as we were checking out. One of the owners was sure she has met another customer with my eyes, so I told her that she must mean my brother Oliver, who has started ordering his books through The Reparations Club instead of Amazon. She made me smile when she asked if my brother and I were twins, even though Oliver was born more than four years after me. You can’t see my grey beard under this mask, I told her.

Celebrate. Don’t wait until it’s too late, Daft Punk says. Celebrate, and dance so free. One more time. One more interruption.

My son Truman and I met a delightful woman in the checkout line at Ralphs Thursday night. Like Flash, the sloth cashier working the customer service counter at the Zootopia DMV, this 70-soemthing diminutive African-American woman was much more interested in unhurried conversations than in getting her frozen bacon bagged. As the conversation continued, I inched a bit closer to put my quarts of non-fat and full-fat milk on the counter, when she promptly asked me if I wouldn’t mind moving back “about two feet.”

With regard to social distancing, she was in the right, and I was in the wrong, but she could not see the smile on my masked face, so she started to deescalate what might otherwise be a moment of contention. She pointed out that this “young man” was almost as tall as his daddy, and that she was sure he was going places in this world. She asked him what he planned to do for a career once he graduated from college. When he replied “I will be an author,” she said, “That sounds real nice. What’s your backup?” He said that he might be an architect or start a business. “You always gotta have a backup. Your daddy knows that, because he knows what’s best. Ain’t that right?” “Yes, Ma’am,” I responded. I wanted to add that we wanted to adopt this woman as Truman’s backup grandma, but I kept that part to myself.

“If you gave me a chance, I’d take it. . . . As long as we’re together, there’s no place I would rather be,” he interrupted, quoting another song filling my ears. It pained me to leave the misused subjunctive in that first lyric, but as a journalist, I must quote accurately.

Speaking of tragic interruptions of life as we know it, my friend Dzokerayi Mukome and her family of five (three young children) lost much of their and possessions to a housefire on Friday. I know Dzokerayi from about ten different contexts, including her work with Sunrise Rotary, with the Tese Foundation that she created to support over 100 girls who are staying in school in Zimbabwe, and with the anti-racist marches that she organized in Davis this past summer (and which Jukie and I participated in). Just last week I wrote a 1022 word response to a long poem she had sent me. This is how I finished the email I sent to her the morning we left for LA, just a day before she lost her home:

“I wonder if you would be interested in the poems of Audre Lorde. Her poem “Coal” does an interesting job of exploring Blackness, while her poem “A Woman Speaks” reflects on the imagery that could contextualize a particular woman’s rhetorical stance and message. The Poetry Foundation has a small collection of her works, but I would encourage you to pick up a copy of one of her books.

Thanks again for sharing your work with me. I invite you to join us at my twice-monthly Poetry Night on Zoom. If you look over our webpage at Poetry In Davis, you will see that we have been featuring a great diversity of poets in the last year (and for years). Our next event is next Thursday, April 1^st at 8 PM.”

The Mukome family has done so much for all of us in Davis. I hope you will join me in supporting these folks in their hour of need. I just donated to the GoFundMe effort from my phone, and I hope every author, architect, business owner and newsletter reader out there will help out, as well. Let’s see how generous we can be, for as the poet Khalil Gibran says, “Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.”

Thanks to the patrons of the Pub Quiz who support this effort so generously. Teams such as The Outside Agitators, Quizimodo, The Original Vincibles, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos make extra investments in this enterprise, and are rewarded weekly with audio and video versions of the Quiz. If you are a regular reader who is considering starting or upgrading a Patreon membership to support these newsletters and the quizzes that they presage, please let me know. I will send you the video quiz so you can get a sense of the bonus fun.

“We are never, ever going home,” sings Rani on this Post Malone song. Actually, the sun is kissing the western hills, and we just passed Tracy. We will be home before 9PM, thanks to helmswoman Kate, and thanks to the music that has fueled our road trip.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on issues raised above, as well as on the following: duplicity, Washington DC, stolen balls, divinations, world capitals, famous songs, botanical berries, Nirvana covers, Pearl Harbor, Catholic families, the new book by Julia Levine, jazz musicians, changes, Webby Awards, tourist destinations, famous thunder storms, bodyguards, animals, things to do on a ship, hipness, the most famous practitioner of a sport, Rolling Stone magazine, hello to tranquility, civil liberty concerns, derivations of five, current events, and Shakespeare. I wrote most of tonight’s Pub Quiz without internet access, so I have some serious fact-checking to do before this one is ready to be published. Luckily, as Kate did all the driving, I got a head start.

Best,

Dr. Andy

https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s Pub Quiz (and different ones from those you can find in the Davis Enterprise every Sunday).

1. Science. What food has only 75 calories but 7 grams of high-quality protein, 5 grams of fat, and 1.6 grams of saturated fat? An egg

2. Books and Authors. In what decade did Fyodor Dostoevsky die? Was it the 1880s, the 1910s, or the 1940s? Answer: He died in 1881 at the age of 59

3. Current Events – Names in the News. Today, the House Oversight Committee is holding a hearing entitled H.R. 51: Making BLANK the 51st State. Fill in the blank. D.C.

P.P.S. Thursday night, April 1^st, is the first day of National Poetry Month. It’s also the night (at 8 PM via Zoom) that Davisite Julia Levine will be reading from her new book, Ordinary Psalms. Julia is the author of four previous poetry collections, including Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight, winner of the Northern California Book Award for Poetry. She is also a recipient of the Discovery/The Nation Award and the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry from Nimrod. Her work has been widely published in journals such as Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner,and the Southern Review. Julia will be reading with Joseph Millar, whose poems have won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, as well as the Pushcart Prize. Please plan to join us via Zoom!

P.P.S. It was David Bailey who said that “Anybody can be a great photographer if they zoom in enough on what they love.”

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

At candlelight vigils, no matter how rousing the speaker, people can’t applaud to show their approval because they have lit candles in their hands.

Such was the case this past Friday when my son Jukie and I walked to Central Park in downtown Davis to participate in the Vigil for the victims of the Atlanta Shootings. As is the case for the many (usually mournful) events that Jukie and I have attended at the area now called “Solidarity Space” before the grand old oak tree, we opted not to accept a candle (we like to keep everyone safe), so my applause was often the loudest. Hosted by the Davis Phoenix Coalition and many other organizations, the event featured talks by local civic leaders and activists, including former California Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, and the Renetta Tull, the UC Davis first Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

I’ve known Yamada for years, having welcomed her to our driveway when she was campaigning door-to-door for her seat in the California Assembly, and later for the State Senate. I so enjoyed our long conversation when she came to my house, in part because I got to surprise Yamada that I actually knew something of important local issues and local political leaders. Also, she and I had a lot in common. A social worker like my wife Kate, Yamada and I had both lived in Washington DC, we both have hosted public radio shows (I might even have listened to her Jazz and information radio on DC the Pacifica station WPFW), and we both care dearly for people with disabilities.

Yamada spoke with such authority and eloquence at the Vigil Friday night that one could hear in her voice her years of experience arguing for compassionate policies in the California legislature. As she pointed out, anti-Asian and anti-Asian-American violence has been unfortunately prominent for decades, and has become more egregious, widespread, and deadly during and now after the Trump years. I myself love living in America’s most diverse state, but still in many parts of our state, and more so in parts of other states, any kind of difference is confronted with suspicion, and increasingly, with harassment, persecution, and violence. Joining more than 200 others at the candlelight vigil Friday night made me grateful for the perspectives and clear thinking of local leaders such as Mariko Yamada, Anoosh Jorjorian from the Davis Phoenix Coalition, and our Davis Mayor Gloria Partida.

A recent article introducing a reading list on Asian-American political and human rights concerns, published by the website Electric Lit, points out that “Anti-Asian violence and discrimination has increased precipitously, but it has a long history in the United States.” The article, titled “A Literary Guide to Combat Anti-Asian Racism in America,” lists a number of important titles, about half of which I have heard of, but few of which I have read. I am thinking of starting with Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong. I have followed Hong on Twitter for a long time, so I figure that it’s time for me to read her most recent book. If more people are being shakened awake by the terrible events of March 16^th, then perhaps more will read book lists like this one as a first step to learning more and broadening their circle of understanding and compassion. As Maya Angelou says at the end of her poem “Human Family,” We are more alike, my friends, / than we are unalike.”

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the country of turkey, proper names, home runs, great Russians, quality proteins, runaways, films with male leads, the 17^th century, alternatives to Philadelphia, conversations in Hebrew and other languages, kindergarten orientations, British poet, notable siblings, fears, unlucky protagonists, dirty rooms, unlikely instrument, favorite locations, endearing nicknames, northern California cities, mysteries of Canada, Jack Canfield, godfathers, places of worship, famous rocks, the long origins of short words, smart guys, current events, and Shakespeare.

Special thanks to our new subscribers for March, as well as to the teams that sustain this enterprise: Quizimodo, The Original Vincibles (who will receive a book this week), The Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, The Outside Agitators, and Bono’s Bro Bono Oboe Bonobos. There will be a musical instrument question on tonight’s quiz, but the correct answer will regrettably not be “Oboes.” If I had been on that team, we would have inserted the word “Hobos” somewhere in the title of the team name. My favorite hobo is the late U. Utah Phillips, the last performer at the old Palms Playhouse, once located just a couple blocks from my house. Remember live performances? I walked 12 miles yesterday, so I could easily have walked two blocks to see Mumbo Gumbo or Odetta perform at The Palms. Those were the days!

If you haven’t done so already, please consider supporting the Pub Quiz with a subscription. Depending on your level of support, you will receive weekly print versions of the Pub Quiz, as well as the bonus questions (over 50 so far) that are asked on Patreon. Thanks!

Dr. Andy

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

1. Mottos and Slogans. What soft drink uses the slogan “Be More Than One Flavor”?  

2. Internet Culture. What app is going to start offering background checks on would-be dates? 

3. Newspaper Headlines. As we learned this morning, what film with a monosyllabic film title garnered the most Oscar nominations with ten? 

P.P.S. “I don’t think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.” Arthur Golden

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

When you have smart friends, you receive smart texts. Here is an example from Michael Bisch, Executive Director of the Yolo Food Bank:

“Good afternoon, Andy! I took a break from my normal Neanderthal existence yesterday by listening to a Hidden Brain podcast regarding complex contagion for leading social change. It left me thinking of a current Food Bank initiative, but also of you and your weekly radio program. What, if anything, do you know about complex contagion?”

I like how Michael tucked in the politically-current adjective “Neanderthal,” remembering to capitalize the extinct human sub-species to show full respect. Secondly, he referenced the show of a radio journalist, Shankar Vedantam, knowing that I am a big fan of journalism, NPR in particular, and intellectual authors who seek to understand human behavior (Daniel Pink is another favorite). Thirdly, Michael brought up contagion – something we are all concerned about, as we seek out vaccinations for ourselves and our family members – but framed it positively, referencing the 2007 article “Complex Contagion and the Weakness of Long Ties” by Damon Centola and Michael Macy.

In this article in American Journal of Sociology, Centola and Macy suggest that information and viruses are simple contagions, but that behaviors are complex contagions, and therefore are more difficult to spread. Faculty members know this from our ongoing quests to get students in our classes to read the syllabus.

This was my texted response to Michael: “One of my jobs on [the UC Davis] campus is to encourage innovative faculty use of instructional technology tools. I host a number of faculty forums in which I feature faculty who use widespread tools, such as our learning management system, in creative ways, and who make any effective use unusual tools, such as a tool that allows batch-grading of scanned paper exams. As you may be able to guess, the principle of complex contagion informs all this work, because we are hoping to change / improve faculty behaviors so that their students will benefit from proven approaches to teaching. We focus on faculty presentations, rather than staff presentations, because faculty will more likely adopt or adapt an approach that has been used by a peer, including peers in different academic disciplines.”

I followed up with this: “Have you read James Clear’s book ATOMIC HABITS? It is the best-selling book right now on adopting favorable habits or breaking unhelpful habits. This month at work I am leading a weekly book group reviewing the book and its applicability to our professional goals. Highly recommended.”

Michael Bisch responded this way: “No, I’ve not read ATOMIC HABITS. Yesterday was the first I ever heard of complex contagion. I immediately recognized we at the Food Bank needed to course correct on some critical initiatives. Even a Neanderthal can have an epiphany! 😁”

I told Michael that “Positive change is built on epiphanies.”

By the way, I am enjoying this “viewer mail” approach to writing newsletters that I am trying out this week. Bob Dunning, my favorite Davis Enterprise columnist, has been using this approach in his daily column for decades (a record-breaking five decades, in fact), and it certainly saves a lot of time from the point of view of the journalist. I welcome your emails, comments, and (inner circle) texts, loyal readers!

Anyway, speaking of epiphanies, I typically turn to literary classics when I am looking for wisdom, even about understanding behaviors. Keeping that in mind, consider this bit of dialogue from The Sun Also Rises that has led to what some people call “The Hemingway Law of Motion”:

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. 

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

We could all think of examples of what Hemingway is exploring here, such as with the rapid change in national attitudes about gay marriage, especially during the time period between 2004, when same-sex marriages became legal in Massachusetts, and 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all same-sex marriage bans in the U.S. in deciding the case Obergefell v. Hodges. Consider also the nationwide soul-searching that came about after the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd, a Minnesota citizen who, like many of us, had lost his job because of the Covid-19 pandemic that we are still experiencing every day. While we would like to believe that attitudes towards equality and civil rights had been moving in more humane directions for many years (or gradually), the death of Floyd (and of Breonna Taylor, and of many others) moved the country rapidly, with regard to our attitudes and our behaviors, or so we would hope. Many people finally came to understand that, as Dr. King says, “The time is always right to do what is right.”

This week, we commemorate the one-year anniversary of the death of Breonna Taylor, and the one-year anniversary of the shutdown of most American businesses and schools. Both Covid-19 and the widespread outrage about fatal police shootings of unarmed African-Americans came to us gradually, and then suddenly. 

As complex contagion theorists would predict, when it came to responding to the pandemic, it took a while for us all to change our behavior (complex contagion) when confronted with the bracing information about the virus (simple contagion). When it comes to civil rights and human rights in the United States, I look forward to seeing continued awareness and evolution when it comes to changes in behavior by our police, and by all of us, in the coming months and years. 

Meanwhile, all of us would advance the causes of compassion and equity by making a cash contribution to the Yolo Food Bank during this difficult and ongoing season of need. Thanks to Michael Bisch for all his work in our community, and for his contributions to this week’s newsletter.

And thanks to all of you who support these efforts by becoming sponsors on Patreon. New sponsors for March include Lori Raineri and Doug DeSalles, new friends and old who appreciate the efforts I invest every week in keeping you intrigued and entertained with fresh trivia. Thanks also to the regular sustaining sponsors, The Original Vincibles (the folks who receive a copy of almost every book mentioned in the newsletter), The Outside Agitators, Quizimodo, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos. Please join us with a new or upgraded membership on Patreon to see your name or your team’s name in the newsletter every week.

Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions on issues raised above, as well as the following: muscles and fitness, birthdays and such, the qualities of mercy, research funding, extended stays, Democratic challengers, understanding sets, basketball, musical groupings, numbers of wings, the U.S. Supreme Court, brackish water, prominent conflicts, post-colonial commemorations, countries that start with R, droids, literary fires, Harvard’s School of Public Health, unkind anagram links, Mark Twain, flavors of the day, background checks, subtitles, diagrams, and Shakespeare.

Thanks. See you tonight, virtually, perhaps, and for sure next week, in print.

Dr. Andy

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

1. Science. What H word is the greatest threat to chimpanzees in the wild?  

2. Eye Color. A study released by the U.K.’s Centre for Advanced Facial Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery has determined that what former member of One Direction has the greenest eyes of any Hollywood A-Lister? 

3. Current Events – Names in the News. What is the four-syllable name of the rover that recently landed on Mars? 

P.P.S. “Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

P.P.P.S. As we consider the one-year anniversary of both the pandemic lockdown and the death of Breonna Taylor, join me in turning to poetry, that we may find some uplift and a moment for deeper reflection courtesy of the artistry of two fine poets. At 8 PM on Thursday, March 18th, otherwise largely isolated friends and readers will gather together virtually for a poetry reading via ZOOM. To participate, visit https://ucdavisdss.zoom.us/my/andyojones at 8 PM, or a few minutes before if you wish to chat with the host and the other attendees.

This short (30ish-minute) reading will feature poetry by Aaron Poochigian and Simply E The Poetess. Please join us Thursday for the particular pleasures of poetry: as the poet Andrew Motion advises, “Think big and stay particular.” 

Aaron Poochigian earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His first book of poetry, The Cosmic Purr (Able Muse Press), was published in 2012, and his second book Manhattanite, which won the Able Muse Poetry Prize, came out in 2017. His thriller in verse, Mr. Either/Or, was released by Etruscan Press in the fall of 2017. He has published numerous translations from Ancient Greek for Penguin Classics and W.W. Norton. His work has appeared in such publications as Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, and POETRY.

Poochigian’s new book, American Divine (March 20, 2021), has won the 2020 Richard Wilbur Award. Recent Poetry Night feature Dana Gioia said this about Poochigian’s new publication: “If any doubts remain that a splendidly original poet has arrived, American Divine should settle the matter. The book confirms Poochigian’s status as one of the most arresting poets of his generation. The poems are strong, individual, and unusually accessible despite their capacious erudition. The real critical question is more complicated, namely how does one describe the singular poet Poochigian has become? How does one characterize the potent and omnivorous style he has created? Poochigian is at once a traditional, indeed even classical, and yet his work is idiosyncratic, disruptive, and often disturbing — not the qualities usually associated with a classical sensibility.”

Simply E, the Poetess, will open for Aaron Poochigian. Simply E is a spoken word artist, singer / songwriter, recording artist, and voice actress. She’s currently working on a book of poems set to be released in 2022. Simply E opened for the award-winning, international megastar DaVido, at the Africa Muzik Festival in Atlanta, and has appeared in music videos by BET award-nominated rapper Big KRIT, and by the violinist Demola, featuring DaVido. Simply E graduated from the University of Memphis with a degree in Social Sciences, and is a candidate in the Georgia State University Executive MBA program. An artist and mentor active on Clubhouse and elsewhere, E divides her time between Atlanta and Memphis. Find out more about Simply E, the Poetess, at https://linktr.ee/ethepoetess.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Once a knock came on my office door, and when I answered it, one of the heads of Strategic Communications at UC Davis wanted to know if I would be willing to appear on televised panel that was starting in five minutes? I said yes.

Evidently a panel of VIPs was missing an important alumnus who had to cancel because of car trouble. I was being asked to stand in for him, to be interviewed alongside then Provost Ralph Hexter and a number of other faculty and administrators. As the mic was being attached to a orange necktie that I thought well complemented my black shirt (this taping took place on Halloween), one of my colleagues looked at my outfit and said, “Somebody didn’t read the memo.” Evidently everyone else on the panel was told what sort of clothes to wear and not wear. As you can tell from the photographs, back then I had a jet-black beard and bright orange pants. If it were not for the tie, I would have looked like a pirate who had recently escaped from the brig / county lockup.

Just before we started taping, I asked one question of our moderator: “What is our topic?” He responded, “The future of the student experience at UC Davis.” Great, I said, I’m ready to go. As you can tell from the transcriptof the 2013 interview, at least the moderator did me the courtesy of asking me the second question, instead of the first. The first thing Provost Hexter said when the director finally yelled “cut” was that he was especially impressed with the only one of us who was not given time to prepare. I replay those kind remarks when I’m having a hard day.

Unlike most people (one thinks of the Seinfeld line: “To the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy”), I love public speaking, and I actually love being put on the spot the way that I was that day in October. Just as I enjoy playing cards with friends, but not doing card tricks, I enjoy making jokes, but I don’t know if I could ever write a joke. 

This is why, even though I am a writer, I believe I do a better job when I don’t script out every word when I give talks and presentations, than when I do. When actress and comedian Bonnie Hunt was recruited to join the cast of Saturday Night Live, she was asked if there would be any room for improvisation, and Lorne Michaels told her “Absolutely not.” As a performer, I’m more in the Hunt camp than the Michaels camp.

This past Saturday night, I did work from a script. I performed a fifteen-minute Pub Quiz at the Davis Chamber of Commerce Installation Gala, their biggest event of the year. Such a short allotment of time meant seven questions and a tiebreaker before I sent teams to confer in their Zoom rooms. By the time we determined the winners (not surprisingly, the team with Mayor Partida and Vice-Mayor Frerichs came in first), and I thanked everyone, we were hauled back into the main Zoom room to hear speeches from the prizewinners. I “finished” about five seconds after we ran out of time. Perhaps a spare moment of improvisation caused the discrepancy, but I immediately forgave myself, knowing how much I relished working a live crowd again!

The Chamber event was as well run as the three-camera shoot back in 2013, but this time, instead of a crew of camera operators and a seasoned director, the entire evening was supported by Tim Kerbavaz, the founder of Talon Audio-Visual, and something called Zoom OSC. It was remarkable how much Tim could do from one control room. I was reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quotation: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Although we won’t have the advantage of the Kerbavaz magic, I am available to run synchronous Zoom Pub Quizzes for special events. If you are supporting the Pub Quiz on Patreon at the Adamantium Tier (I’m looking at you, Original Vincibles), you can schedule your bonus event now at no extra charge. For the rest of you, I look forward to seeing how I can add a bit of televised trivia to your lives. If you always suspected that you were smarter than most people you know, including your distant cousins in Chicago or Edinburgh, now is a good time to arrange a family or group competition and have it confirmed.

I appreciate all my subscribers. If you support the Quiz on Patreon and would like to see the bonus quizzes I wrote last week for the Davis Chamber of Commerce or the Unitarian Church of Davis (new supporters!), please let me know. Thanks especially to the teams known as The Mavens, Quizimodo, Quizzers with Attitude, Portraits, The Outside Agitators, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos. Let’s add your name or team name to the list for next time.

Here are the hints for tonight’s quiz: Expect questions on International Day of the Woman, pairs of cities, Chico, the U.K.’s Centre for Advanced Facial Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery, cartoonists, off-road vehicles, primates, minerals, puck locations, fashion, educated populations, former communists, goodbye stories, closet racialists, high-earners, musicians, cranes, rights, internet silver bullets, shades and shutters, doses, superheroes, unusual hobbies, announcements, grapplers, logical last names, colorful delimiters, fabulous girls, book statistics, and Shakespeare.

Stay healthy! I am vaccinated, and soon you will be, too! look forward to returning to the Pub later this year and returning to all the scripted and unscripted hilarity that we have waiting for us. I had better start exercising my lungs now!

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

1. Books and Authors. According to Lewis Carroll, what kind of rabbit is crazy?  

2. Current Events – Names in the News. What former European leader was recently sentenced to three years in prison for corruption?  

3. Sports. When Hank Aaron broke the home run record, whose record was it?  

P.P.S. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” Soren Kierkegaard

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I had so much grading to do this past weekend that I almost considered having my wife Kate serve as this week’s guest blogger, for she has written an excellent little essay about our son Jukie in commemoration of National Rare Disease Day, which was yesterday.

Moments after I posted a picture of Jukie on Instagram, I got a notification on my phone informing me that Chris Brogan was inviting me to join a Clubhouse room on the topic of brevity. If you don’t know of Chris Brogan, he is a compassionate and eloquent marketing and communications expert who has written nine books, most of which I have read. And Clubhouse is a new audio social medium, an experiment in communal podcasting that gives people with iPhones opportunities to talk with others who share their backgrounds or enthusiasms.  Anyway, because we were the first two people in the room, he said, “Well if it isn’t Dr. Andy!” He remembers me from being interviewed on my radio show a few times, and from our occasional correspondence over the last decade. I took a moment to tell him about the special day, about my son Jukie, and about Smith Lemli Opitz Syndrome. He lamented that people who live with especially rare syndromes can’t count on the federal government or foundations funding research into the possible causes and treatments of such syndromes.

Soon the Clubhouse room was full. People flocked to the conversation not because they wanted to hear about Jukie, but because they wanted to hear some Brogan insights about the topics he knows best: connecting with others, telling stories, and making online communications valuable and meaningful. They also wanted to learn a lesson or two about brevity, which Cicero called “a great charm of eloquence” and which, as you probably know, Shakespeare called “the soul of wit.” 

I had much to say on the subject, including lessons on “cutting” as the First C of Style according to Ann Raimes, on the importance of brevity in poetry (which Gwendolyn Brooks once called “life distilled”), and on the delightful training that the entire twitterverse has undergone in order to pare down their messages in 280 characters or fewer. But I chose not to share any of these fascinating lessons, because soon Chris was bringing others up to the stage, and I reminded myself that I find the Clubhouse experience much more engaging as a listener than I would if I were to “profess” longwindedly, perhaps even tediously, to everyone in the room, as professors sometimes do. As I learned more and more from Chris, from Mitch Joel, and from Kerry O’Shea Gorgone, among others, I recalled what the cynical Greek philosopher Diogenes said, “We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.” 

Nevertheless, I have made contacts and perhaps some future friends on Clubhouse. Sometimes people I chat with there end up following me in other social media, and we have more of a chance to connect. When I return to live airings of my radio show (I got my second vaccination shot this past weekend!), I know that Clubhouse will be an excellent place to recruit guests. So many people in this new social medium seem eager to self-promote, and KDVS on a Wednesday afternoon reaches more people than even the most populated Clubhouse rooms (such as the ones that featured recent conversations with Bill Gates or Tiffany Haddish), so I should be able to attract a steady stream of new voices. People will they be excited to talk, to tell us how what they have to offer will change the world for the better, but will they be willing to be brief? Or will I? As the poet Rumi says, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

I have a few Clubhouse invitations. So far you can participate only if you have an iPhone, and only if you have an invitation. Reach out to me at yourquizmaster@gmail.com if you want to check it out, and I will share an invitation with you if I have any left. As I wrote about last week, many of us have more time to reflect, to create, and perhaps to talk with strangers during the ongoing, if possibly loosening, lockdown than before. I don’t want you to waste your time as you try to figure out how it works; that said, after you give it a chance, you might find something of value in Clubhouse.

And eventually I will try to add some value myself. While later this month I will be Zoom- hosting live Pub Quizzes at the Installation Gala for the Davis Chamber of Commerce and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, I might reach even more people, including new people, if I were to host a pub quiz-style trivia contest on Clubhouse. Would you be interested in participating in a Clubhouse Pub Quiz, competing against people who might not follow the rules? The novelty of providing answers to real-time questions might appeal to you, but the prizes will be about the same as those who have participated in the quarantine quizzes that many of you have subscribed to. 

Speaking of which, I really appreciate all the subscribers to the Pub Quiz, including one person who upgraded his membership last week, and someone else who subscribed at the Mithril Tier today. You subscribers make this weekly event happen, and you get to take advantage of the 50 or so bonus questions on Patreon, some of which appear in different forms on the weekly quiz. The sustaining subscribers also receive bonus goodies, which last week included a copy of the new Sanjay Gupta book, Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age. Sharp brains would be one of the fringe benefits of listening to conversations with smart people, or participating in a weekly pub quiz. I look forward to doing more of both in 2021.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, and on the following: The state of Oregon, the wisdom of James Clear, centers, first films, Vietnam, people transported to California who are named Ricardo, scaffolds, broken records, skateboards, cavities, dystopias, heads of state, crazy rabbits, flowers, current events, family size pizzas, what countries are named after, the Golden Globes, an anorak, numbers in the future, sequels, the Sacramento Kings, atmospheres, words that end with the letter X, inventors, U.S. Senators, beverages, and Shakespeare.

Thursday night at 8 Pacific Time is Poetry Night in Davis. This time we are featuring Sacramento poet laureate emeritus Indigo Moor and local memoirist and poet Andrea Ross. Both have new books out. Find out more at the Poetry in Davis website, or just plan to join us every first and third Thursday of the month at 8 PM. If Clubhouse teaches us anything, it’s that we need more synchronous community while we are staying safe in our homes.

Some of you will see the quiz in your mailboxes later today, some will see the link to the audio or video quiz tonight before 7, and all of the rest of you are invited to subscribe to the Pub Quiz via Patreon. Thanks!

Dr. Andy

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

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

1. Mottos and Slogans and Nicknames. What U.S. President had the nickname The American Cincinnatus?     

2. Internet Culture. As of 2021, what is the second most-popular desktop operating system, after Windows?  

3. Animated Films. In what 2012 animated film does the hotel chef Quasimodo and his pet rat Esmeralda learn that the film’s protagonist, Johnny, is a human and then kidnap him in order to cook him? 

P.S. Please add Poetry Night to your calendar for Thursday. Here is the Facebook event page.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

500,000 is a huge number. It’s about the population of Sacramento, or the combined populations of Barbados and Guam.

Even though recent trends are favorable rather than calamitous, epidemiologically speaking, we nevertheless mourn today the deaths of half a million Americans, or about as many combat deaths as what we suffered in the Civil War and World War II, combined. The current war against a disease has visited every community in America. We all know someone who has lost an elderly relative to Covid. For example, you know me.

Unlike faraway wars, to which the brave and perhaps the unlucky are dispatched, the pandemic affects all of us, our daily habits as well as our attitudes. But are we taking full advantage of the perhaps extra time we have been allotted by our home-bound isolation, what for many of us might be called an early and temporary semi-retirement? I wonder if thought workers and creatives will look back on the Covid era the way that partisans look back on a time when they controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency, thinking that they should have done more when they had the chance.

As a writer, in some ways I have appreciated the shift towards reflection and time savings that comes with relative seclusion. Rather than rushing off to the movies, to retail stores, to dinner, or even to host a Pub Quiz, I try to live the life of the modern literary recluse: I’m reading books, participating in conversations with thought leaders on Clubhouse, and taking long walks. This past weekend, I walked 30 miles (if you include Friday). Today my legs are complaining about the treatment.

When I told a friend that I aspire to walk 2000 miles this year, he said that a related impressive feat would be to drive fewer than 2,000 miles this year, that is, to walk more than one drives. I might just be able to pull that off. While Kate and I used to take monthly trips to Sacramento to see plays at the B Street Theatre (where Dave Pierini is one of our favorite director / performers), this year my only trip to my former hometown has been to get a vaccination shot at The MIND Institute. The mileage on our new (used) minivan is pretty close to where it was when we bought it this spring. We thought we would use that van to visit family in Los Angeles, but in the garage it stays as we try creative alternatives – Zoom and Marco Polo, for example – as alternatives to actual family reunions. As Erich Fromm says, “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” 

If we are working on creative or writing projects, this past year of Covid requires that we call upon our strengths, and consider what discipline we can call upon to make progress despite the indeterminate boundaries of our strange and potentially immobile commute-free lives. We need systems of rigor in order not to give in to what James Clear calls “the ease of distraction,” or to what Toni Morrison calls a “time for despair.” As my vaccinated centenarian UC Davis colleague Wayne Thiebaud says, “Discipline is not a restriction but an aid to freedom.” 

The day, the year, is shrouded in loss. We have all lost something, but as G.K. Chesterton says, “How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.” While I have lost opportunities to travel or to spend time with friends, I’ve gained some time to work on book projects. For example, I’ve been researching and curating a collection of bite-size advice from and for writers. It could be said that I’ve been gaining inspiration from the encouraging thoughts of great writers while compiling what I research into a book that presents such advice. Consider these 14 examples that focus on a writer’s determination, perseverance, and courage:

“Most men fail, not through lack of education, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will.” Orison Swett Marden

“It is not brilliance or facility that is necessary, but the determination to bear and even enjoy the dull process of wading into one’s own bad prose again, and one more time, and then once again, with the utmost concentration and taste, looking for opportunities to mine deeper.” Stewart O’Nan

“I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it.” Vincent Van Gogh

“Inspiration may sometimes fail to show up for work in the morning, but determination never does.” K.M. Weiland

“It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.” Virginia Woolf

“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” James Baldwin

“A deadline is, simply put, optimism in its most kick-ass form. It’s a potent force that, when wielded with respect, will level any obstacle in its path. This is especially true when it comes to creative pursuits.” Chris Baty

“Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline.” Peter Benchley

“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time.” Leonard Bernstein

“Greatness is more than potential. It is the execution of that potential. Beyond the raw talent. You need the appropriate training. You need the discipline. You need the inspiration. You need the drive.” Eric Burns

“Success usually comes down to choosing the pain of discipline over the ease of distraction.” James Clear

“Writing requires more than anything else, tremendous discipline. At the end of the day, whilst there are times when it is wonderfully creative and fun, a lot of the time it is just a job. And that means showing up whether you feel like it or not. It also means you write, whether you are inspired or not, and the only way to unlock your creativity is to start writing.” Jane Green

“Take a chance on making mistakes to create something you haven’t created before.” Dave Brubeck

“To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It’s sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it in you or not. Everyday. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour to writing. In fact, it’s heartbreak most of the time” Harper Lee

I will close with some words from Toni Morrison, whose birthday many people celebrated last Thursday. She passed away a few months before Covid 19 was discovered, but her wise words, about the necessity and resilience of art and artists, can offer us guidance with regard to the difficulties we have been facing, and that we face today, as we all take a moment to remember the half-million who have died: “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” Let the healing begin.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on Paris streets, Quasimodo, musical contests on black and white television, biological branches, famous years in baseball, princes, Nebulas, algorithms, populated countries, operating systems, nicknames, Paul Cézanne, Sicilia, champions, TV icons, new parties, Hugos, old people, famous captains,  film adaptations, golden friends, national herbs, Thai carnage cruises (so to speak), Oscar nominees Harrison Ford and Barbara Hershey, regrets, linguistic wasps in Harry Potter, current events, and Shakespeare.

What a joy it was to run into a member of The Outside Agitators while I was on one of my walks yesterday. The Agitators recently upgraded their membership, as they share Pub Quiz content with their entire team. If you have more than one person benefitting from your sponsorship of the Pub Quiz, I recommend you also consider upgrading your membership. Then you could join Quizimodo, The Mavens, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos. If you are a member of The Original Vincibles, your curated book choice for February should arrive at the songbird neighborhood tomorrow.

See below for three sample questions from last week’s quiz. Stay healthy and creative!

Dr. Andy

https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster

1. Books and Authors. Who wrote the books V, Gravity’s Rainbow, and The Crying of Lot 49?  

2. Current Events – Names in the News. What actor and fighter has been dropped from the Disney+ TV show The Mandalorian because of her posts on social media?   

3. Sports. Born in South Africa, what Canadian former point guard and two-time NBA MVP is now the coach of the Brooklyn Nets?  

P.S. Our next poetry event, featuring Davis author Andrea Ross and former Sacramento poet laureate Indigo Moor (both of whom have new books out) will take place on March 4^th at 8 PM. Plan to join us! Details to come at https://poetryindavis.com.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Valentine’s Day is a time for poets to shine. 

Recently I taught a series of online poetry workshops for members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, with the objective of each participant writing a love poem to share with a lucky recipient. In an age where the internet is flooded with advertisements for inexpensive consumer goods, a personalized gift of creativity – one thinks of a piece of art, a video message or montage, or a poem – finds its value in its uniqueness, and often in its transience: nobody has to make room in a closet or a garage for a poem.

Many people are exploring their creative sides because they finally have some time to do so. One can binge only so much Netflix or like so many Facebook posts before one feels called out to create, to connect, or to experience something momentous or magical. With so many connections or experiences remaining inadvisable for the unvaccinated, we are left to create. One of my journalism students submitted an article last month for which she interviewed three different musicians who had created new albums in 2020 (as Paul McCartney did) because of the absence of typical occupations and interruptions. I love to imagine people all over the world starting new creative habits. Albert Einstein once said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

When I asked a friend about how she was handling the personal isolation, she responded that meeting “on zoom is a great connection style for me. I may even prefer it to in-person meetings. It’s easier for me to manage energies somehow…whatever that means!” I agree, finding sanctuary in the stillness of my home – the French bulldog in my lap, the grove of trees out our western windows, my headphones resonating with the playlist my daughter made for me – a collection of tiny comforts that await me mere seconds after I close the Zoom window. The long interruption of our former busyness gives us all an opportunity to reflect on how we manage and use our energies.

Even on a day like this past Wednesday when I ticked eight zoom meetings off my to-do list, I still found time to dine on a gourmet tofu egg scramble courtesy of my wife Kate, take a long walk with Jukie, and work on a love poem. Arthur Koestler says that “Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.” With that in mind, we writing teachers often respond to our own assignments, and so it was for me this Valentine’s Day, when I presented this to my beloved:

Valentine’s Day Morning with Kate

Breaking-morning gifts, your eyes, your meals, take me back, and aback,

Elongating the languor of our morning off, aromatic Eierspeisen synesthesia

Meandering through our tilting home like the ghost of an unforgotten cat

Yearning for the someone who answers every question with love, whether it be

Valentine love, maternal love, or spousal love: the sparks that conclude with confetti.

Amorous arms entangle me entrancingly, with skin as soft as an alpine chamois,

Long legs, saucer eyes, and slender waist: you are my elegance encyclopedia,

Effervescent center of our family, the centripetal domestic magnet, our hub,

Never more exquisite than when producing breakfasts for Geneva, Truman, and Jukie,

The chef for our every catered meal, and every fancy coffee drink’s barista.

I couldn’t imagine raising our nutty, joy-filled family with anyone but you,

Nor could I imagine another who could sustain my lifetime of grateful amazement.

Every day, my Valentine, I am nourished by your kiss, a pinpoint of your beauty.

I live in a family full of writers. Each of us but Jukie is working on a significant writing project or two, so we sometimes have conversations that one might expect to hear around an MFA workshop table than around a typical dinner table. Such was the case last night when Kate overheard the kids and me discussing the fact that this near-sonnet I wrote is a “double-acrostic.” Mishearing that Geneva had called the poem was “caustic,” Kate quickly corrected her, saying that it is a sweet love poem, and that it isn’t caustic at all. 

At least she didn’t think we were using the word “xenodiagnostic.” As you may already know, because likely you have taken more science classes than I have, xenodiagnosis can document the presence of infectious disease microorganisms by exposing possibly infected tissue to a vector and then examining the vector for the presence of the microorganisms or pathogens it may have ingested. Vectors have so many meanings, depending on whether you are an airplane pilot, a graphic designer, or a Euclidian mathematician, but I for one didn’t know that vectors could “ingest,” even if the vector is ingesting something as small as a microorganism. Clearly there’s a poem (or a monster movie) in there somewhere.

With regard to my valentine poem for Kate, which I share here with perhaps more transparency than is warranted, the secret messages I stuck in there are also full of love, as you may be able to decipher. In his most recent album, Elvis Costello insists that “Love is the one thing we can save.” Memories of love will be primarily what I am saving from this Valentine’s Day, and from this past plague year. I wish the same for you.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will include questions about countries of origin, invented slogans, famous athletes, classifications of canines, rappers, animated TV shows, anagrams with the initials HC, sweet names, generic names, MVPs, missiles and unexpected tears, paladins in love, pairings of arms, cultural capitals, vote totals, palindromes, brown moss and smith, Oscar-winners with Irish names, Mediterranean destinations, cocky elves, degrees in physical education, hills, missing letters, economic shrinkages, Romance languages, expensive kilograms, animals and video games, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to new Pub Quiz patron Alex Hovan, who opted for the discounted yearlong subscription option. I rewarded Alex with some bonus digital Pub Quiz goodies when he subscribed, and I will continue to do so today. Like Alex, you should check out the yearlong subscription option on Patreon, if only to unlock access to the photography pub quiz questions I add a few times a week on the Patreon website. One of you guessed “Natalie Wood” as a response to one 1950s starlet’s photograph and list of best films, but that was a bit off. I await your guess. Thanks also to the sustaining sponsors of the Pub Quiz: The Original Vincibles, Quizimodo, The Outside Agitators, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos. I would love to add your name or team name to this list next week.

Be well.

Dr. Andy

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

1. Books and Authors. What German-born American political theorist published her influential study The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951?   

2. Current Events – Names in the News. What Wyoming Republican recently survived a challenge to her leadership position in the House of Representatives?  

3. Sports. In what U.S. state was seven-time Superbowl champion Tom Brady born?  

P.P.S. “The things we fear most in organizations — fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances — are the primary sources of creativity.” Margaret J. Wheatley

P.P.P.S. Poetry Night this coming Thursday at 8 PM will feature short readings by Patrick Grizzell, Traci Gourdine, and Jeanne Wagner. Set your reminder now, and then join us in my Zoom room at that hour to be revivified by these three masters of creativity!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I got my first vaccine shot Friday. Because my wife Kate and I are caretakers of a son with autism, we were moved up in the eligibility line. Ironically, because of California policies, so far our adult son himself remains ineligible. Because of our age and other factors, in our household Kate and I are the most susceptible to long-term ill effects from contracting Covid, but two of our three kids also have significant health issues. Like all of us, we look forward to seeing the second vaccine shot jab the arms of all family members, more for our safety than because we need to travel or attend parties. 

Today’s bright sunshine that is visiting Davis, and I hope wherever you are, makes us naturally more optimistic. With regard to vaccinations, we will learn in the coming weeks and months if that optimism is warranted. From what I read in the news, and from what I see on social media of my older friends getting vaccinated, we are moving in the right direction. When I talked to my 91 year-old friend Hannah Stein last week (she’s one of my favorite local poets, and she has a new book out!), she told me that the shot didn’t hurt, as if I were one of the ones who was afraid of vaccines. Let it hurt, I said to myself, for then I know it’s working.

Believe it or not, as of February 7^th, 2021, 12.45 doses have been administered per 100 people in the United States. We are far behind Israel, which has administered an impressive 64.3 Covid-19 vaccine doses per 100 people, but we are taking positive steps. As Colin Powell says, “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.” 

We know that the pain is felt by individuals, rather than in the aggregate, and I myself can think of people close to me who have succumbed to that pain, and who are wrestling with it right now. We all know someone whose circle has been touched by Covid-19, but that doesn’t mean that the difficulties have been evenly distributed. Reflecting on interviews for a first assignment in my journalism class this quarter, one of my students wrote this astounding sentence about one of her interviewees: “Many people in Garcia’s family have caught the virus, including herself, her mother, her brother, her cousins, her aunts, and uncles.” My student argues correctly that people with front-line jobs, whether working in the health care industry or even in a grocery store, are repeatedly exposed to the virus, and then they bring that exposure home to share, sometimes with families who live in close quarters. As the death toll grows, those of us who have dodged the Covid bullet should always remember those who hear “gunfire” every day.

I recognize how lucky I am. People like me interact with colleagues and students only via Zoom. One of my students from a class I taught last spring impressed me so much that this quarter I hired him, and we have been working on writing and organizational projects twice a week since. Even though this student lives about two blocks from me, and I meet with him regularly, collaborating with him on my bonus work of 2021, I have actually not “met” him in person. Depending on how we define terms, we don’t really “meet” with people anymore. For example, I give and get hugs in this household all the time, but likely the last time I hugged someone other than these four was not this February, but last February.

I did meet someone new for a brief conversation on the street yesterday. As I was walking to Sunday morning meditation in Chestnut Park, I encountered a man in his early 70s who seemed perplexed and amused that his dachshund had left his yard to walk across the street to say hello to me, showing the sort of fickleness that we typically ascribe to cats. I asked the man if  he wanted me to scoop up his little dog and return him, but the man said no, the dog just wanted to sniff around, and that soon he would come back home (this was a cul-de-sac side street with no car traffic). I told him that his dog was cute, and that I hoped he would have a good Sunday. And then, speaking of Sunday, with a detectible tinge of loneliness in his eyes, the man asked me if I was going to watch “The Game.”

Sporting events for many people, especially men, function in many ways: the spectacle, the competition, the statistics, the heroic players, the mystery about the outcome, the athleticism, etc. But I suspect for many people, again especially men, sports teams and events provide a ready topic of discussion, a way to connect, and an excuse to socialize. I felt instant sympathy for this elderly sports fan. Was the dachshund this man’s only company over the last year? How much did he crave a man-to-man talk about sports? Perhaps he watches ESPN the way that many people I know in 2020 watched MSNBC. 

Either way, I was not the sports fan he was looking for. When he asked if I planned to watch the game, I told him that I would check in with the family. When I checked in with Jukie Sunday afternoon, he indicated that he was eager for a walk, so walk we did, passing through neighborhood after neighborhood where we overheard many blaring TVs, but not much laughter or cheering. In Davis, I suspect, we keep our distance so that we survive our parties, and for most of us, that means another season of isolation, another season of patience. The vaccination numbers should give us hope, and reason to be optimistic. Let’s hope our patience pays off! For you and your families, may the future reunions – as well as the plays, the comedy nights, and the pub quizzes – be all the more sweet because of the past year full of distracting delays that compete for our many available hours.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following: Disney films, deflations, stones, movie screens, cemeteries in New York, prodigies, World War II vets, Kamala Harris, continents, British buildings, the behavior of empirical phenomena, Jennifer Lopez, Europeans, comedies of errors, elderly actors, food in China, notable churches, silver sluggers, things that cling, economics, Wyoming, minor Greek gods, political theory, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. One team recently upgraded their membership, so I awarded them two months of video pub quizzes. Perhaps you would like to sign up for a cheap ($1 a week) or premium Pub Quiz membership? I would love to share all of this top-notch content with more people! Thanks especially to The Original Vincibles, Quizimodo, The Outside Agitators, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos for their extra support of this weekly endeavor. Please visit Patreon to learn more. 

Be well!

Dr. Andy

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

1. Wonder Women. The character of Wonder Woman appeared in comic books in the same year that Helen Reddy and Ann Margaret were born. Name the decade.  

2. Name the Bob. First name Bob, who said the following? “I’ve never been able to understand the seriousness of it all, the seriousness of pride. People talk, act, live as if they’re never going to die. And what do they leave behind? Nothing. Nothing but a mask.”  

3. Pop Culture – Music. Introduced by Leonard Bernstein, what still-living cellist played for President Kennedy in 1963, accompanied by his sister on piano?   

4. Science. The CO in the word COVID stands for “Coronavirus.” What does the D stand for?  

P.P.S. Good advice from Tennessee Williams: “My work is emotionally autobiographical. It has no relationship to the actual events of my life, but it reflects the emotional currents of my life. I try to work every day because you have no refuge but writing. When you’re going through a period of unhappiness, a broken love affair, the death of someone you love, or some other disorder in your life, then you have no refuge but writing.”