Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Finding myself with a bit of extra time on my hands this Tuesday, I’ve decided to go on a nature walk.

All through this worldwide pandemic, I have found that the best way to keep a safe social distance while spending time with my nonverbal son Jukie has been to walk the greenbelts, streets, and arboretums (arboreta?) of Davis, California. Consistency has been our key to success. Whether or not I reach my goal of walking 2021 miles over the course of 2021 (I think I will), I have enjoyed setting aside part of every day to escape from the oversized office chair from which I am compelled to write essays, poems, and comments on students’ essays, and stepping outside to listen to an audiobook, talk through my ever-present headphones to my favorite new LA resident (my mom), or just notice the patterns of breezes, the sound of the laughter of our new neighbors’ children, or the distant plaintive croon of the Capitol Corridor train that is speeding towards the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. On these walks, moving much more patiently than the speedy bicycle of my onetime commute, Jukie and I have found many moments of quiet reflection.

Just yesterday, for example, as we were crossing a low footbridge across Putah Creek at the north end of Willowbank Road in unincorporated South Davis, Jukie stopped and stared up into the trees above us. Jukie has taught me how to slow down, or at least to double-back to give him a high five while gobbling up a few more steps towards my daily quota. Jukie’s pauses and serene observations determine our dawdling pace, turning every weekday afternoon into an unhurried Sunday. Down at ground-level, one finds ample evidence that this particular grove is populated at the treetops by turkey vultures, those huge foreboding birds that always reminded me of the malevolent Skeksis, the 18 vulture-dragon antagonists of the 1982 Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal.

Yesterday evening Jukie could tell that the turkey vultures were watching us from 40 or 50 feet above us, noting the slow and careful path we took through their territory. One could imagine the vultures making eye contact with Jukie and offering him a nod of recognition and of respect, for perhaps they know that Jukie will never yell at them, or aim a weapon in their direction. Because these creatures lack a syrinx, the equivalent of the voice box of birds, they can hiss or grunt, as Jukie does sometimes, but never sing. Both Jukie and the vultures must find atypical means to communicate.

Although not the best-smelling birds, those turkey vultures who watch us on our walks are gentle giants. This is not the case with all the birds overhead. The first week that our French bulldog puppy Margot joined us, one of our avian neighbors also came to visit to check out the addition to the family. This happened in the back yard in October of 2018. Margot stepped outside to frolic in our back yard, attracting the notice of a rather large red-tailed hawk who swooped down to land on our wooden play structure. In all the years that we had our 40-lb English bulldog, Dilly, no raptors came to watch her play in the back yard, but our 12-lb Margot made this hawk wonder if she were strong enough to carry away such a muscular little morsel. After taking the bird’s picture – no telephoto needed – I recommended that she go hunt elsewhere. She did.

Now weighing in at a hefty 20 lbs, Margot confidently patrols our neighborhood parks seeking to make friends with birds, squirrels, cats, dogs, and, her favorite species, humans. I get to walk her at various times of the week, and I appreciate all the locals whom she has “introduced” me to. With some extra time on my hands, now I can take her out to make friends (perhaps including you!) on Tuesday evenings, as well. I will keep one eye open for raptors.

—

If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to subscribe to my pub quiz. A few dozen fans of the quiz receive weekly trivia in their mailboxes and find the 31 questions posted on Patreon. Now even those pledging but $10 a week will receive more than 120 new questions every month. Some even save 15% by buying a year’s subscription. Now that we can’t meet weekly, I invite you to enjoy the fun with friends remotely. I will post on Patreon those the top scores that people report to me. Thanks especially to Kari and another anonymous patron for being my newest subscribers. I hope to add your name to this list!

This week’s (I almost wrote “tonight’s”) pub quiz will feature questions on the following topics: film taglines, videogames, China, Gene Autry, notable islands, Goths, Ireland exports, strong seasons, patrilinear successions, space travel, obsessions, African placenames, unusual heroes, punctuality and responsibility, well-read trials, Christmas gifts, alcoholic beverages, typicality, recognizable flower colors, actors who do accents, popular lights emphasizing “touch,” sitcoms, Egyptian blinds, US Senators, flight behaviors, all stars, Detroit comparisons, current events, and Shakespeare. 

We have some great questions tonight, so I hope you get to see them. If you are wondering whether or not to subscribe to the weekly quiz, just send me an email expressing your interest, and I will send you tonight’s quiz as a generous sample.

If you want to hang out, I am hosting a poetry reading Thursday night. You are invited! Details below. Be well.

Dr. Andy

Here are three questions from our last Pub Quiz at de Vere’s Irish Pub:

1. Mottos and Slogans. The Japanese company that uses the slogan “Revs Your Heart” started making harmonicas in 1914, motorcycles in 1955, and today is the world’s largest piano manufacturing company. Name the company, which shares a name with its founder.  

2. Newspaper Headlines. The Attorney General of what state said he will continue the his 2020 election investigation even though the “official” audit in his state was widely considered a big flop?  

3. Four for Four. Which of the following, if any, lasted as long as the time that de Vere’s Irish Pub has been found at 217 E Street in Davis? The American Revolutionary War, The Chunnel Construction Time, Mayor McCheese, The Reign of King Tut.  

P.P.S. Poetry Night is Thursday.

Join us at 7 PM on Thursday, October 7th, at the John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1^st Street in Davis. We will be joined by two standout Sacramento poets, Tom Goff and Aaron Bradford

Tom Goff is the winner of the 2021 Robinson Jeffers Tor House Poetry Prize. An instructional assistant in the Reading and Writing Center at Folsom Lake College, Goff has degrees in music performance from Sacramento State University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has written five chapbooks of poetry and one full-length collection, Twelve-Tone Row: Music in Words (I Street Press, 2018). He recently has been published in Spectral Realms #14 (Hippocampus Press, 2021), and is represented in Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California (Scarlet Tanager Press, 2018). 

Opening for Tom Goff will be Aaron Bradford.

Aaron Bradford teaches creative writing, argument, and literature courses at American River College. Bradford writes about being a father of daughters during the era of global climate change and pandemic, including the anxiety and the slivers of hope that can embed into daily life. His poems have appeared in Tule Review, Pearl, Chiron Review, and Nerve Cowboy and the anthologies Incidental Buildings & Accidental Beauty, Burning the Little Candle, and Late Peaches. 

The Poetry Night Reading Series, taking place on the first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM, is generously supported by the people and poets of the Sacramento Valley, and by John Natsoulas and the staff at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Find the Facebook event page for this event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/197469059125790 .

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Today is the day of the last de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz. As one friend texted me yesterday, it was a good run.

I’m so grateful to have had de Vere’s Irish Pub as a “third place” for the last decade. The pre-launch remodeling took so long in 2012 because of the craftsmanship of the interiors, including intricate ceilings, the overlay of faux-distressed hardwood floors, the highest-quality workmanship of the bar, and the authentic furnishings throughout. Entering the finished pub for the first time, I was reminded of the bars in Georgetown or Capitol Hill where my parents used to take me in the 1970s, or the restaurants where my wife Kate and I would occasionally dine when we lived in London together in 1987. Davis didn’t have any 100-year-old pubs, but when de Vere’s Irish Pub came to town, we could pretend that we did.

For running the quiz, I proposed being paid in credit rather than in cash, so Kate and I ate an average of two dinners a week at the pub for most of its long run. The staff kept our favorite booth available for us Friday afternoons at five, a booth from which I could scan the pub for friends, and one that would help to keep my excitable son Jukie contained. At this booth, I ate innumerable “Dr. Andy Salads,” concoctions that provided most of a day’s macronutrients, and that signaled to the kitchen staff that the pub’s most dependable heavy-tipper had arrived.

Because of all that pub credit, around here, I was more generous than I could afford to be. If I spotted a group of my former students dining together, or a group of young first-time quizzers, I would send over a bread pudding, compliments of Dr. Andy. If I spotted a couple colleagues sitting at the bar, I would sometimes secretly pay their tab on my way out the door. One time I encountered a university colleague on the quad a few days after one of these secret investments, and he joked that he and his friends had launched a stalking campaign so they could know when to accidentally encounter me in their favorite restaurant.

I got to be similarly generous at the Poetry Night after-party. After the poetry readings that I host on first and third Thursdays of the month, the diehard poetry-lovers and I would inevitably parade over to the Pub for salads, chips with mushroom gravy, and divided pitchers. Graduate students who were enticed by the absent entrance fee at Poetry Night were surprised (the first time) that they could keep their wallets in their pockets or purses if I were at the table. Especially generous friends (Hello Jim and Carol Lynn!) saw what I was doing and would leave a plentiful tip for the entire table. Servers such as Dani, Carlos, Paul, Jessica, and Tylor were always happy to see us fill the Snug on Thursday nights.

We made or strengthened many friendships at de Vere’s Irish Pub, including with two couples who met me (or Your Quizmaster) there for the first time, and later asked me to officiate their weddings. (It occurs to me that today is the birthday of my friend Natalie, half of the first couple I ever married, and a onetime pub quiz regular.) The pub gave my wife Kate and me a chance to be social. As people who don’t entertain often at home, we relished the opportunity to be placed in the care of de Vere’s staff, and then look forward to running into friends. Some of our closest friendships were made with the parents of our kids’ playmates at Davis Parent Nursery School or west Davis public schools. As a result, many of our closest friends live far from our south Davis home. As a result, the pub (and the farmers market) would be our socializing spaces, rather than our home. Every trip to the Pub reminded us how lucky we were to live in this community.

And this sort of love was returned to us 100-fold. Kate and I both held our 50^th birthday parties at the Pub. At mine, my friend Roy, an usher at our wedding almost 30 years ago, showed up to meet my friends from work and the community. Mayor Robb Davis, one of the most eloquent politicians I know (now an Impact and Innovation Officer at the Yolo Food Bank), spoke kindly about the work I had done for the city as Davis poet laureate. You can imagine how lucky I felt, to have so many of the Californians I know and love in one restaurant, some of them meeting each other for the first time, telling stories, and exchanging hugs. The next day I dined happily on leftover Dr. Andy salad and on the memories of some of my favorite people that were made possible because of a restaurant and family pub in Davis, California.

I send thanks and farewell to Simon and Henry de Vere White and to all the treasured staff they have hired and trained over the last decade. I feel lucky to have spent part of this last decade with you, and look forward to raising a glass with you in the future.

We poets, we traffic in images and memories. Years from now, when I reflect on my time at de Vere’s Irish Pub, I will surely recall the decade-long cascade of happy hours and family dinners, but I will especially remember the thrill of filling every seat inside and outside the pub, knowing that the microphone has fresh batteries and that my quizmasterly voice could be widely and clearly heard, gratefully accepting bonus swag from local authors such as Catriona McPherson, Eileen Rendahl, or John Lescroart, making eye contact with all my old and new trivia friends, and then finally yelling, as I will do one more time this evening, “Ladies and Gentlemen, It’s TIME for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!” 

After sharing almost 15,000 trivia questions in our pub, it has come to an end. I have treasured your company, so thank you for joining me. All the credit for our good, long run that we have enjoyed together goes to you.

—

I will continue to offer print quizzes remotely, so I hope you will consider joining me on Patreon for your weekly fix. I am lowering the subscription cost to $10 a month for the weekly quiz, so please do check that out if you are interested. I do so appreciate my supporters on Patreon. I will also be available to write and run a pub quiz for special one-off events for local business groups and nonprofits. Contact me for the details.

Tonight’s final de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, and on the following: alternatives to Lemmings, pianos, fractured leadership, your heart, cats and birds, country traces, team sports, morons, four-syllable foreign words, British sights, decibels, princes, unpleasant noodles, things that Stanley Kunitz would never explain, sleep and appetite, sterilized ceilings, allies, Irish laughter, Irish for a Miracle, birthplaces, drop-offs, California parks, unsuccessful cookbooks, successful Scots, fond farewells, baseball stadiums, current events, sweet sorrows, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to all of you. I shall keep in my heart the joy, intensity, and insight that you have brought to our every pub quiz.

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are five questions from the penultimate Pub Qui at de Vere’s Irish Pub.

1. Newspaper Headlines. Sears has announced that it is closing its last store in the state where it was founded. Name that state.  

2. Long Walks to the Coast. The closest sea coast to the states of Minnesota and North Dakota is a bay whose name starts with the letter H. Name it.  

3. Know Your California Counties. The name of the most populous California county that approved the recall of Governor Gavin Newsom starts with the letter F. Name it.  

4. Pop Culture – Music. Born in 1969 to an Irish-American mother and an African-American and Afro-Venezuelan father, what diva singer sang 19 #1 songs on Billboard’s Hot 100, and has won five Grammys, 10 American Music Awards, and 19 World Music Awards?  

5. Science. Sometimes called a “failed star,” which planet in our solar system, like our Sun, consists primarily of hydrogen and helium?  

P.P.S. “They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” Confucius

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Because I start teaching my fall class tomorrow, I suppose that today is my last day of summer. And as I start teaching in person tomorrow, today is arguably my last day of quarantine. My imagination has yet to catch up with our new reality.

Having read Shakti Gawain when her book Creative Visualization was first published in 1978, I’ve been visualizing success in this fall’s journalism class, but often I forget to update what my  imagination predicts for the face-to face era. Such visualization comes in two parts: Doing the research, and imagining the class activities. Because my journalism class concerns current events – we discuss and then decide what local stories are worth writing about – I’ve been conducting even more research than usual, considering what topics in politics, environmental law, social justice, technology, poverty, literacy, and economics are worth understanding thoroughly so that I can provide sufficient context for the articles that my students write this quarter. We will also focus on what filmmaker Ken Burns in an NPR interview earlier this year called the three viruses we face as a nation: Covid-19, white supremacy, and misinformation. 

So I am feeling increasingly ready when it comes to course content, but what about the act of teaching? I have to admit that when I’ve been imagining teaching this writing class, I’ve pictured myself sitting in my ergonomically-supportive office chair at our 19^th-century dining table at home, rather than standing in front of 25 students in a computer classroom in the basement of Olson Hall at UC Davis. Am I ready to make the transition back from abnormal to normal? Or will the new normal of perpetual mask-wearing and fortnightly testing soon seem automatic to us, with some sort of coronavirus mitigation protocol accompanying us throughout the rest of this decade?

One of my favorite colleagues, Distinguished Spanish and Portuguese Professor Emeritus Robert Blake, sent me this tweet from Spain this morning: “You may come to miss certain aspects of the Zoom culture.  :-).  Bob.” He has a pithy point. For example, I’ve enjoyed teaching barefoot for the last 18 months, as well as the other benefits of staying at home while working a 40+ hour a week job. During some of the classes I’ve taught, my French bulldog Margot remained in my lap, just off camera, leading one of my students to ask, during a lull in the conversation, “Do I hear snoring?” Feeling compelled to reveal the snorer to the class, I lifted my diminutive dog into the frame, at which point another student wrote this into the Zoom chat: “GREAT CONTENT.” That’ll never happen in Olson Hall (unless we buy Margot one of those GUIDE DOG vests, but the excitable pup will think that all the students have gathered merely to entertain her).

Even submitted student essays reveal how much what Professor Blake calls “Zoom culture” has permeated our lives: Students don’t bother to capitalize “Zoom.” From a professorial point of view, many of us will miss seeing names perpetually attached to our students’ faces, because we love to call on students by name, but we won’t miss seeing a white name on a black background instead of a student face. I taught a few students who, either because of insufficient hardware, unstable network connections, a chaotic or “embarrassing” learning environment, or perpetual shyness, never revealed their faces to me over a ten-week quarter. Teaching a room of such nametags is like hosting a call-in radio show (something I have also done).

On the other hand, some students were boldly familiar with their classmates and me, participating in class discussion in their pajamas, or even from bed. Some laughed uproariously with their roommates while eating breakfast cereal (only we could not hear the uproar because of the perpetual mute button), while others seemed to be arguing with their younger siblings about who got to take which synchronous classes from the best locations at home.

Speaking of familiarity, rather than emailing me, one journalism student would send me videos of herself explaining, in significant discursive detail, why this promised article would also be late. In one of these videos, the student’s three year-old nephew wanted to say goodbye to her before taking a long trip, so he climbed into her lap. My student “introduced” the toddler to Dr. Jones, even though he could see only himself being recorded on the screen of her laptop. I appreciated this child’s systematic narration of what he saw in the perpetual portal of Zoom, making me think that his aunt should have deployed similar use of detail in the body paragraphs of the articles she submitted that quarter.

Despite all these oddities of the era where we find ourselves, Professor Blake is right that I will miss some elements of teaching with Zoom. Calling on students when they unmute (a pandemic-era verb, if ever there was one) makes a professor feel like a mind-reader. The Zoom chat enabled students to share class resources with each other without interrupting the flow of a class. And the randomly-assigned breakout rooms gave students an opportunity to strengthen small communities of inquiry and support at a time when students felt isolated or even reclusive. 

Once this year, a student in our class showed us all the view across the Hangzhou Bay from his apartment balcony. Another time, during a break in a long summer class, a student played a song for us on her family’s grand piano. While I look forward to returning to the classroom tomorrow, to see if my students know how to properly wear a mask, or if I remember how to use a wall-length whiteboard, I will miss these opportunities to better know my students, their environments, and other aspects of their lives that are rarely shared in office hour visits. 

Although I will not see my students’ entire faces this quarter, I will hope to find clues in their expressive eyes. I hope to see in their eyes looks of comprehension, looks of realization, and perhaps even looks of gratification that they have come out of their homes and once again stepped bodily through a portal of connection and discovery.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the topics raised above, as well as on the following: publications with alliterative nicknames, the Gombe National Park, photographic innovations, famous buildings, Anthropology professors named Henry, California counties, efficiencies, world capitals, the color silver in nature, little darlings, small countries, cheeses, Oscar winners, acronyms and anagrams, elemental failures, local treasures, divisible numbers, vaccination leaps, Christopher Lee movies, bipedalism, UK bands, rough terrain pioneers, unusual occupations, astral resemblances, former titans, divas, sea coasts, closed stores, action heroes, flowers, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to all the teams that support this enterprise on Patreon, especially the Original Vincibles, Quasimodo, and the Outside Agitators for their ongoing extra support. Another regular newsletter reader, Lori, joined us for all the fun last Tuesday. I visualize these teams and the other regulars having a good time at Pub Quiz when I write questions on a Sunday afternoon. I hope to see you this evening.

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz, with some bonus commentary:

1. Energy. According to the International System of Units, what SI unit do we use to measure energy? I measure my own energy by miles covered in my walks. I covered 10.5 miles yesterday. I will miss being unhurried!

2. Books and Authors. First name Gustave, who wrote Madame Bovary? Many teams guessed “Gustave Bovary.” That’s incorrect.

3. Film. In what year was the film 1917 the second-highest grossing film of the year, domestically? Think this through before you guess the first answer that comes to mind. Only a few teams got this question right.

P.S. In honor of my friend Bobby Nord, to whom I have often gone for the answers, I offer a quotation by this newsletter’s now third Bob, Bob Dylan: “If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.” Happy birthday, Bobby!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Sometimes we tell ourselves stories that cycle through our own disappointments or even that portray imagined worse-case scenarios. Suffering awaits the traveler down that path. It’s the luckier storyteller who can use stories to make his beloved departed come back to life, thus relishing their presence one more time, and sharing their lives with others who never had the pleasure their company. 

In a recent Smartless podcast interview, the actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish said that she uses mind-mapping techniques to figure out how she will attach her amusing thoughts and outrageous punchlines to stories, for everyone loves to hear a story. She herself has powerful stories to tell about homelessness, faith, and persistence, the last being a requisite for any sort of sustained accomplishment. As a friend told me at a conference this past Friday, the “P” in PhD stands for “Persistence.”

Yesterday evening, after I returned home from my daily walk with Jukie, I sat down with my son Truman to talk about movies and to tell stories. When I asked him about his day at school, he told me that reading (and reading about) The Code of Hammurabi in his World Civilization class reminded him of a Mel Brooks interpretation of laws. I smiled at his reference, and told him that, speaking of Mel Brooks and world civilizations, my friends and I thought Brooks’ History of the World, Part I was hilarious when it was released in 1981 (when I was Truman’s age), even though it earned only a 47% Metacritic score.

Truman reminded me that we still have yet to watch the Brooks classic Blazing Saddles, which we own on DVD, so I reminded him that my late godfather, John Hillerman, appears in that film. Truman looked up Hillerman and then remarked with surprise that he also had fifth billing in the film Chinatown, and that he had early 1970s roles in films with Clint Eastwood, Sidney Poitier, Jeff Bridges, and Barbra Streisand.

Because John’s film and TV career took off soon after I was born, I saw him rarely. John never had to step in to perform any godfatherly duties, so I didn’t have many stories about him to share with Truman. But my brother Oliver’s godfather, Marvin Himmelfarb, came to the house all the time. In response to Truman’s questions, soon I was regaling my son with stories of Marvin and my dad getting louder and louder over the course of an evening as they would talk about writing, theatre, sports, and, rarely, politics. I even did my Marvin impersonation, filling our little Davis home with his voice the way he used to do for my even smaller DC home in the mid-1970s. While films make characters come alive, stories do the same for the people behind the camera, or, in the case of my godfather, behind the characters.

I’ll never be able to introduce Truman to my father, or to John or to Marvin, two of his best friends, but as we reflect on those whom we have lost (and we have all had additional occasions to do so over this last week’s September 11^th remembrances), we can delight in the opportunity to reanimate such vibrant, funny, and generous people with the stories that they have left behind. Doing so reminds the storyteller and the listener alike of the joy that inhabiting and reanimating such connections can hold for all of us.

Such familial narratives are rich with meaning, but do they console us, or remind us of our losses? Well, as Orson Welles, the narrator of the aforementioned History of the World, Part I, once said, “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” The actors in our life’s stories are necessarily ephemeral, but the stories they continue to participate in may never stop as long as someone is there to keep telling them.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will test your knowledge of stories, of esteemed musicians, and of supervillains. Tonight also expect questions on physics, Star Wars, rules that are broken, stunning victories, Apple products, The Wall Street Journal, the Mississippi River, American heroes, unusual rabbits, Siberia, acts of seclusion, identical five letters, alcoholic drinks, caves, hypotheticals, films that won two Oscars, dynamite sticks, SI units, classic novels, bicycles, recent cinematic history, fruits and wines, U.S. states, local victories, helmets, fathers, current events, and Shakespeare.

Special thanks to all the teams that support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. If you would like to join the Pub Quiz in person, perhaps I will see you this evening at 7 at de Vere’s Irish Pub.

Dr. Andy

Your Quizmaster

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

1. Books and Authors. What Russian master of the short story worked his entire short life as a doctor and as a playwright, penning Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard?  

2. Current Events – Trending Names in the News. What notable American in 1777 implemented the first mass military inoculation (in this case, of Smallpox)?  

3. Sports. What football team recently signed cornerback Josh Norman and released cornerback Dontae Johnson?   

P.P.S. Happy birthday to the Sacramento writer, professor, and musician David Merson, the man responsible for getting me hooked on Pub Quizzes about 20 years ago. He and I were texting about Dungeons and Dragons this morning, and this is what he said:

“Oh, I wrote a silly Dungeons and Dragons song for the Judge John Hodgman podcast. He challenged listeners to write a song about [Dungeons and Dragons creator] Gary Gygax entitled “Gygax Departed” that mentioned “an infestation of Bigfoot” and the Greyhawk planet Oerth, which no one knows how to pronounce:  https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/6AWrKkuowxzVn9Aj8 Happy birthday, David!

P.P.P.S. With the recent 20th anniversary of September 11th, we are thinking of you, Melissa Skorka!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

After hearing the story of how my wife Kate and I met, Oprah said it was “written in the stars.” We’ve had that going for us ever since we appeared on her TV show in November of 1992, just two months after we got married.

Today, September 7^th, 2021, is our 29^th wedding anniversary. 29 years seems almost a lifetime. Two of my favorite authors, Percy Shelley and Christopher Marlowe, died at age 29, as did Astrid of Sweden, the queen who died in a car accident when her husband, King Leopold III, looked away from the road for a moment, and drove himself and his wife over an embankment. Since reading the story of Astrid’s death, and thinking on Leopold’s guilt and grief, I’ve always driven with determined focus whenever Kate or the kids were in the car.

So many things have to go right for a happy marriage to last as many years as we’ve enjoyed so far. I give most of the credit to Kate, repaying her kindness minimally here and there with affectionate letters, texts, and, especially on important occasions, poems. I’ve been given permission to share this one publicly:

Doctor, Doctor, Give Me the News: 

On the Occasion of Kate and Andy’s 29^th Wedding Anniversary

The spicy love of your elegant constancy 

has vaccinated me against the world’s ills.

You co-shoulder our life’s weight, 

emanating love for me the way the sun 

emanates the light, the heat, for all of us. 

Your hand in mine, I squeeze, beholding 

you and our smoky and uneasy world 

through a rosy lens of gratitude. 

You are a balm, my personal miracle drug.

With affection, humor, style, and beauty, 

this Kate concoction, a welcome injection,

inoculates the two us against incompatibility.

The holistic medicine of your hug 

has provided me my daily ounce 

of prevention that staves off perturbation.

You advised against the word “chemoprophylaxis”

appearing in this poem, but that’s what your kiss is:

a vaccination against the week’s virulence. 

Each decade of our marriage boon

has profited from a dose of your love, 

and, hooked, I keep returning for more, 

like the dental patient intent on deeply 

breathing in the offered nitrous oxide, 

even on the occasion of a simple cleaning. 

My shoes are off: tilt me back in your chair.

I am the wrong sort of doctor to describe 

the physiological change in me 

instigated by your glance, my heart 

beating beckoning a reckless rhythm 

that syncopates with your slow smile.

Only this: what you bring to our marriage sustains us. 

Physician Kate, your favorite patient requests 

a house call, so warm up your stethoscope,

and heal both our needful selves once again 

with the salve of your affection. 

I benefit from your constant care.

Even in the refuge of our moonlit room, 

moments before sleep, you can read my hands: 

I sign YES. I sign PLEASE. I sign MORE. 

I look at you, my ageless bride of quietness,

eyes deeper than all wells,

and write only one name in my appointment book.

Let’s continue. I am ready for my booster.

That’s enough spicy oversharing for one newsletter. Happy anniversary, Kate! I look forward to spending the next 29 years (or 58 years, medical science-willing) with you.

—

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on films, romantic scenes form plays, famous doctors, prized gemstones, tofu egg scrambles, corners, internet shopping, stars, newspapers, selective muggers, media personalities, pool sharks, European countries, technology centers, Swedes not named Astrid, explorers, habits, people with long memories, Sherman Oaks, prime numbers, cats in the know, team nicknames, diseases, spooky robots, long drives from Kiev, superheroes, African adventures, heartfelt lands, current events, and Shakespeare.

Please, no gifts. If you would like to help us commemorate this special day, please consider making a donation to the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation, a shoestring organization that funds medical research into our son Jukie’s rare genetic syndrome. Because the organization depends entirely on volunteers (including Kate) to run it, every dollar donated goes directly to support the people who need it by funding research, holding conferences, and keeping the relevant world-scattered families connected as they face challenging decisions. I invite you to find out more about Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome.

Speaking of support, thanks especially to the sustaining supporters of these weekly newsletters and the weekly quiz on Patreon. Your kindness has allowed me to keep a virtual version of the Pub Quiz continuing through the pandemic, and I continue to send print versions of the Pub Quiz to supporters today (well, on Wednesdays). The Outside Agitators, The Original Vincibles, Quizimodo and others help us keep the virtual light on. Thanks!

The Pub Quiz starts at 7, though it is a good idea to arrive by 6:30 if you want a table inside, or 5:45 if you want a table outside. I hope to see you tonight! 

Dr. Andy

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

1. Science. Starting with the letter R, what are the macromolecular machines found within all living cells that perform biological protein synthesis?  

2. Sports. What football team recently released quarterback Cam Newton?  

3. Shakespeare. What Shakespeare romantic comedy centers on the twins Viola and Sebastian, who are separated in a shipwreck?  

P.S. “And we will sit upon the rocks, / Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, / By shallow rivers to whose falls / Melodious birds sing madrigals.” Christopher Marlowe

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

The twin calamities of the pandemic and the smoke-choked air force active and social people such as myself to try on other people’s lives. I found that while the inactivity makes me anxious, the time to reflect gives me more fodder for these newsletters.

My “sport” of walking does not require a lot of equipment; nevertheless, last week I visited our local athletic shoe store, Fleet Feet, to get fitted for new shoes. Not having spent a lot of time in this store since I was training for distance runs, I was surprised by how much had changed with the process of buying shoes. Gone are the slide-rule-like Brannock Devices invented by Charles F. Brannock in the 1920s, first used to measure my feet in the early 1970s at Lazarus Shoes on Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda, Maryland. (My mom knew that Lazarus provided the highest quality leather shoes, so we went shoe shopping there every fall throughout my childhood, even after the divorce when we had a lot less money.)

Today in the best shoe store in Davis feet are measured with lasers and heat maps, revealing, in my case, that my wide left foot is about 9.2 inches long, and my wide right foot is about 9.7 inches long. I wear size 10.5 (this I knew), and my arches could use some support. (Henry Adams said that “All experience is an arch, to build upon.”) Fascinating facts, but do any of these data help us find comfortable shoes? It turns out that the answer is yes.

Of course, as any journalist or therapist knows, data points alone are insufficient when one is seeking to understand; for this purchase, I was also interviewed about my activity habits. Fleet Feet employee Carlos and I were both surprised to realize that, at 6.5 miles a day, the current version of Dr. Andy covers more miles (about 45 miles a week) than the version of Dr. Andy who was a serious runner training for half marathons and listening to entire Kings games when out on runs (that guy ran about 25 miles a week, but he also didn’t wear an odometer around the house). I tried on some New Balance shoes and a HOKA ONE Bondi 7 (the coolest looking shoe I saw that day), but I decided on a Kahru Ikoni 2021 in glacier grey. Calling itself “The Finnish Sportsbear,” this Scandinavian company Karhu is allowed to use glacial motifs in their coloring schemes. I chose the subdued coloring because I will likely be teaching in these shoes this fall, rather than teaching barefoot, as I’ve done for the last 18 months.

While I was looking forward to trying out my new shoes in the days after my purchase, the world had other plans for me: I was effectively “benched” by the bad air. Saturday, for example, the day that my son Jukie and I will often walk ten miles or more to bring our step-count average up for the week, I walked a mere .67 of one mile, my poorest performance in the last two years. Checking on the result of all my late-August inactivity, I see that my average for the year has dropped from 6.4 to 6.4. The horror!

As we get older, we need to keep moving, socializing, and thinking. Scientific studies with titles such as “Early retirement can accelerate cognitive decline” show that active brains can ward off dementia. The problem solving nature of most jobs will provide the mental practice needed to stay sharp, but I suspect that people who write poems, do puzzles, take long walks, and play trivia games also have certain advantages over those who do not. Studies also recommend that we get enough sleep, eat unprocessed foods, get our hearing checked and (dare I say it?) limit our alcohol consumption in order to slow mental decline. We should all aspire to be like Ed Asner, the great actor and disability rights activist who was tweeting cogently right up until the time he passed away this week at the age of 91.

How many of us will be tweeting (or its futuristic equivalent) at 91 or older? And what will scientists discover in the coming decades that might lengthen our lives on our overheating planet? The physicist Richard P. Feynman once said that “There is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death. This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable and that it is only a matter of time before biologists discover what it is that is causing us the trouble.” Until we are confronting that sort of trouble, surely the best days of our best lives will be spent in the company of people who make us smile, laugh, or swoon as we challenge our brains, stretch our limbs, welcome new ideas, and extinguish our TV sets.

I am feeling lucky. As I write this Tuesday morning, the temperature is in the 50s, and the air is “green,” meaning that it is safe to take a walk. I hope you and yours are also surrounded by green, wherever you are, and that we all find occasional reasons for optimism and the taking of deep breaths.

—

Thanks to all of you (such as Quizimodo, The Original Vincibles, The Outside Agitators, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos) who support these newsletters and our pub quiz on Patreon. Other organizations that also deserve your support are working to comfort Californians who have been evacuated because of the rampaging forest fires, are working to help southerners weather Hurricane Ida, are working to provide medical supplies and other forms of relief to Haitians rocked by yet another devastating earthquake, and are working to ameliorate the lives of refugees displaced by wars and other challenges in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Closer to home, The Yolo Food Bank does heroic work every day to address food insecurity in our county, a problem exacerbated by the new insecurity surrounding covid. If you can, please give generously!

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above (though none on Brannock Devices), as well as on the following: The counting of seconds, famous diaries, Italian adventures, solitude, questions of density, heroic and comedic mariners, online gaming, Davis mosaics, unlikely pairings, street sweeping, attempts at royalty, tennis stars, birds, millionaires, terrific nicknames, people as old as my marriage to Kate, important colleges, beset twins, Olympic gold, Spock, governors of various sorts, Robin Williams, protein synthesis, Portugal, heritage sites, noir films, Hawaiian culture, Amazon Prime, translations, chess, shrubby monkeyflowers, current events, and Shakespeare.

Poetry Night Thursday at 7 at the John Natsoulas Gallery will be an open mic. Bring something short to read, or a musical instrument. Your bravery will be rewarded!

Speaking of rewards, anyone who sends me evidence of a donation to one of the organizations or causes mentioned above will get to choose the topic of a question on next week’s pub quiz (though if you choose something very obscure or niche, I may have to interpret what you meant).

Be well.

Dr. Andy

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

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

1. Books and Authors. First name Mary, what American nature poet’s fifth collection of poetry, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984? A hint for one team: the answer is not “Mary Angelou.”

2. Sports. Miguel Cabrera has recently hit his 500th home run. For what team does he play?  

3. Shakespeare. While King Lear is Shakespeare’s most famous play with the word “King” in its title, this word also appears in the short title of which of Shakespeare’s histories?

P.P.S. Speaking of those working to help Afghan refugees, check out the Article 26 Backpack Project by Pub Quiz regular Keith David Watenpaugh.

P.P.P.S. The 20-year war in Afghanistan is over. We hope you are safe, Melissa Skorka!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

On the way home from San Diego, I read my second-favorite book by Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse. It may be my new favorite.

People who love plots may not love this book, for less happens in To the Lighthouse than happens in most of Woolf’s other novels (at least according to me, but I’ve only read six of nine). In To the Lighthouse, a bunch of wealthy and highly literate people assemble to dine and talk at a Scottish beach house (on the Isle of Skye) in 1910, and then again in 1920. Do audiences hunger for such a tale? Well, while dozens of adaptations have been filmed of, say, the story of Cinderella, so far no adaptation of Woolf’s novel has been released in theaters.

We’ve covered this sort of ground before when considering the function (or absence) of plot. One classic episode of the TV show Seinfeld, for example, showed Jerry, George, and Elaine trying and failing to get a table at a Chinese restaurant. Not much to see there, one might think. We cared about that episode not because anything happens (NBC objected to the lack of plot, but Larry David threatened to quit if the network enforced changes to the script), but instead because the observations and foibles of the three protagonists were so entertaining. 

Rather than relying on comedy, To the Lighthouse emphasizes the philosophical and psychological responses of members of the Ramsay family, as well as their artistic and literary guests. The omniscient narrator spends most of book inside the heads of the various assembled characters, representing the poetic stream-of-consciousness thoughts of the various peeved and aching geniuses. As a poet myself, I relished the novel’s associative logic and ambitious use of words and allusions. 

Woolf was also a poet, though one who published no books of poetry, having once written in her diary that “Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.” Woolf kept 26 volumes (26 years’?) of diaries between the time she was 33 and when she took her own life at age 59. Her husband Leonard Woolf called these journals “a method of practicing or trying out the art of writing.”

Other scholars have explored the interrelationship between Woolf’s diaries and her novels. She cribbed liberally from herself, having her various characters reflect her own ingenious contemplations in their internal monologues. In doing so, with To the Lighthouse Woolf has written a modernist masterpiece, and a book that outsold all her previous books. With the proceeds, the Woolfs were able to buy a car!

I doubt that any of my books have sold enough copies to fund the purchasing of even a bicycle, but then again, I’ve never published a novel. In recent years, I have been reading, teaching and writing journalism, a genre of writing that seems as wholly different from a modernist novel as could be categorized. I’ve enjoyed creating prose that is accessible, rather than inscrutable, and that is current, rather than that which aspires to be literarily permanent.

Nevertheless, I’ve been inspired. Just back from Coronado Beach, I still hear the echoes of the surf in my ears and I still feel the moist seaside sand crunching beneath my bare feet. Maybe I, too, could write a novel about family reunions in a beach house, the way that Woolf has. Most of Woolf’s best work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1926. If I were to get to work on it now, the book might come out in time for the public’s rediscovery of To the Lighthouse, published in 1927. In that case, in the form of an homage, I could even imagine borrowing directly from the structure and choice phrases of Woolf herself, so that her genius could overtly rub off on my own attempts at fiction. I would welcome the influence. As Woolf once wrote, “I think writing, my writing, is a species of mediumship. I become the person.” 

After a long break from Woolf, I have been revived by returning to her fiction. I encourage you also to read To the Lighthouse or, another favorite, Mrs. Dalloway. Despite her recursive and esoteric 100-year-old prose, one need not be afraid of Virginia Woolf.

—

Tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions about topics raised above, as well as the following: home runs, kings, gustatory collaborations, tigers, casinos, cavemen, beach conflicts, virus abatement strategies, reindeer, new ways of thinking, the Bill Buchanan podcast Davisville, Chinese mittens, ghosts, hilarious dad jokes, great basins, princesses, Orwellian exports, reality games, red superstars, really valuable people, necessary systems, musical instruments, costumes, brothers, Italian towns, civil wars, land borders, numbers divisible by six, California counties, mutants, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to all of you who plan to join us at the pub this evening at 7, and thanks also to all of you who support the Pub Quiz (at any level) on Patreon. Here’s what one subscriber wrote me last week about the quiz: “[Team Name Redacted] in its current [Z]oom formation had 9 participants, including the Olympic Cottage contingent and me from Davis as well as my son in Reno, a [S]crabble buddy from Toronto, and a sister in Colorado. Thanks for giving us a safe way to socialize! We got 26 correct, so we  would almost have been in the winners’ circle in auditing status, of course.” I’m happy to contribute to the entertainment of sons in Reno and Scrabble buddies in Reno! So be like this lucky woman, who has subscribed to the Pub Quiz since we launched on Patreon, or like Branka, who just joined the mailing list yesterday!

See you this evening,

Dr. Andy

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

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

1. Cities in San Diego County. Starting with the letter C, the second most-populous city in San Diego County is found equidistant between downtown San Diego and downtown Tijuana. Name it.  

2. Pop Culture – Music. Of the five living individual performers who have sold over 250 million albums as individuals, the oldest released his first charted record in 1969. What is his name?  

3. Sports. Of the six highest-scoring basketball players in NBA history, only number six was born overseas. Name him.  

P.P.S. “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

P.P.P.S. We hope you are safe, wherever you are, Melissa Skorka. 

This week’s newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Lindsay Jaclyn Nedwin Gonzales, a 32-year old onetime Davisite who filled her home, the patient rooms of hospitals where she worked, and sometimes even our own Irish Pub with laughter and kindness. May her memory be a blessing to all who knew her and loved her. To find out more about Lindsay, and the good work being done and planned in her name, see her recent obituary in the Davis Enterprise.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Dog-owners who stay in hotels in the Gaslamp District of San Diego need a smartphone app to help them find grass, or even just dirt, where they can walk their dogs. 

Not every city has greenbelts and numerous public parks, as Davis does. Places like San Diego make me feel grateful both to have a chance to visit and to live where I do. When I asked Kate if she would like to retire on Coronado Island, home to some of our favorite beaches, she reminded me that we have too many friends in Davis to live anywhere else. There go my plans to move to Costa Rica or Thailand when I turn 67!

Speaking of time off, I am supposed to be vacationing, rather than writing newsletters, so I will repurpose here for your reading pleasure an essay about this part of California that I published on my blog on August 14, 2017, and that the Sacramento Bee published, with a color photo by Kate, about ten days later (If you want to look it up behind the SacBee paywall, search for “article169238542”). Enjoy.

As Jukie and I walked south along Coronado Beach, we could see Tijuana, Mexico on the horizon. Called the best beach in the world in 2012, Coronado Beach is home to the famous Hotel del Coronado, filming location for arguably the best film comedy, Some Like It Hot.

During our walk, Jukie and I passed a family of Frenchmen – a dad and three sons – who had made soccer goal markers out of the abundant seaweed. One of them had overshot the goal, sending the ball ten meters into the Pacific, which promptly gave it back. I could almost decipher some of their French exclamations. Perhaps ten years older than me and with a look of concentration, the father had better soccer skills but less gusto than his sons. He had opportunities to hone his skills when each new son came of age, perhaps preparing for this afternoon on Coronado Beach.

Soon we encountered three middle-aged Americans – a man and two women – digging ever deeper with juice pitchers. They were determined, but not frantic. Soon the man got out his metal detector again, and accepted the advice of the women as to where to place and how to angle the cumbersome machine. “We will just have to dig deeper,” one said. I expected that eventually they would find a metal bolt rather than a diamond ring.

Farther along the beach a Middle-Eastern couple in their 50s were walking with their daughter in her 20’s. Thinking of racial tensions in Charlottesville, I offered a friendly greeting, and they returned it. They might have been locals, or they might have been visiting from 8,000 miles away. I’m about as far from Davis as one can be and still be in California, but I still want people to know that we love and welcome strangers here. The most diverse state in the union, we depend upon the great mix of thinkers, inventors, and workers to power our state, and keep the ongoing dialogue lively and engaging.

The Middle-Eastern family had paused to take pictures, and I could see why. Well after 7 PM last night, we had reached that “magic time” for photographers when the sun’s light is diffused by the rising marine layer. It makes us all feel and look beautiful, especially on film. At that hour Jukie and I could see an engagement photographer, a family photographer, and many amateurs who wanted to take advantage of the incredible light.

Jukie lead the two of us for a mile or more on the wide beach. If it had not been getting darker, we might have walked for a few more miles until we heard the actual sounds of Tijuana nightclubs. We soon received a text from my wife Kate – I’m freezing, she said – so we started walking back, the setting sun filling our faces with light. By the time we returned to Kate, we saw the photographers packing up their equipment and nodding optimistically to their clients, we saw the French dad walking arm and arm towards the del Coronado Hotel, and we saw the middle-aged Americans climbing out of their hole to exchange a high five.

Perhaps, like Kate with her photography of Truman jumping over waves, and like Jukie and me on our walk, these three prospectors had finally found their diamond ring in the sand.

—

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will be guest-hosted by Schuyler (pronounced SKY-LAR), one of the friendliest and most erudite bartenders at de Vere’s Irish Pub. I’m so glad that Schuyler was one of the staff members to return after the long Covid hiatus of 2020 and 2021. He is ebullient, witty, and wry. He also proposed a handful of Pub Quiz questions that were too difficult even for me to consider including. I told him that he’d have to identify which questions he wrote so that the regulars know just whom to boo.

In addition to topics glancingly raised above, expect also questions on the following: toys, tech companies, fighters, U.S. presidents, unicorns, California cities, hurried meals, dishes unlikely to attract even the most committed carnivores, retirements, reservoirs, strangers, sinister butterflies, lances, spouses, open-world video games, carpenters, explorers, botanical varieties, Napa Valley pests, musical imperatives, fashion, adjacent bodies, accomplished foreigners, null points, departed legends, current events, and Shakespeare. If you would like to receive printed pub quizzes from me every week, please support these efforts on Patreon. 

Thanks in advance to Quizmaster Schuyler. Please give him your attention and your feedback during (or after) tonight’s performance. I will see you in the pub on the 24^th! Poetry Night returns to the Natsoulas Gallery on September 2^nd at 7 PM.

Best,

Dr. Andy

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

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

1. Actors and Actresses. Who played the female lead and love interest in the 1994 film Forrest Gump?  

2. Science. What five-syllable word do we use for the process of heat production in organisms?  

3. Books and Authors. Having replaced David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, what Princeton and Yale grad authored the 2019 book, Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You?  

P.P.S. “The purpose of a vacation is to have the time to rest. But many of us, even when we go on vacation, don’t know how to rest. We may even come back more tired than before we left.” Thich Nhat Hanh, with a warning to all of us

P.P.P.S. The family and I think of you often, Melissa Skorka. We hope you are safe.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I couldn’t go out for a walk on Friday because of the bad air, so I overdid it at home with the kettlebell, and then felt sore for days thereafter.

As I have written about in a previous newsletter, Jillian Michaels has been torturing me with her video workouts for about a decade. If you try one of her recorded workout routines after a long break, and then substitute a 15 lb kettlebell for the recommended 5 lb hand weight that she uses in her video Six Weeks to a Six-Pack, you will feel overextended, winded, and sore after about 15 minutes, at least if you are me.

Regular readers know that my reading of books such as Atomic Habits by James Clear and Deep Work by Cal Newport has led me to my daily regimen of ultra-low-impact exercise: every day I take long walks with my son Jukie. This has become such a regular part of our pandemic routine that I feel deprived or incomplete if we don’t walk for two hours, sometimes split over different sections of the day. Because of this consistency, he and I are on track to walk 2,000 miles this year, the equivalent of more than 75 marathons. As James Clear says, “Intensity makes a good story. Consistency makes progress.”

So I walk every day, but not this past Friday, a day when the air was choked with Dixie Fire smoke. I tried to make up for the unavailable outdoors by wearing my phone / steps-tracker indoors all day, including while running up and down the stairs as I attended to family needs (a big part of my day for the past 18 months), and as I was doing prisoner lunges and other cruel sounding (side planks?) exercises for Jillian Michaels. These incidental exercises, what exercise biologists call Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (or NEAT), were complemented minimally by the three-minute walk to the hotel where my daughter Geneva is a bartender. Despite these vain (in both senses of the word) indoor efforts, Friday I ended up walking less than half my quota – only about 6,000 steps!

Resolved to compensate for this perambulatory disappointment when the air had cleared, Jukie and I set out early on Saturday, starting with a long walk north, following Mace Ranch bike paths wherever they would take us. We ended up so far north that we circled the Wildhorse Golf Course, a beautiful part of Davis that I don’t get to explore often. 

In doing so, I returned to memories of a rainy winter afternoon more than ten years ago when I made that same golf course circumference walk with Jukie and his younger brother Truman. As is the case now, on that walk, Jukie wanted to explore every tree and shrub we passed by. There were also puddles to splash through. We enjoyed the added challenge of Truman being too young – maybe four years old? – to make such a long walk; back then, aimless and unhurried Jukie was also unaccustomed to such long jaunts. Soon they both asked to be carried.

So I would pick up Truman, who was as light as a feather compared to his nine-year-old brother, carry him 25 yards up the path, and then go back for Jukie, and carry him past his brother about 50 yards up the path, and then go back to get Truman. The success of this experiment depended on neither one of them stumbling into a drainage ditch while I was attending to the other “passenger.” The aerobic workout felt very much like what the Swedes call a fartlek, only with the added bonus of the ongoing fireman carry of my two boys. After a while, Truman would stroll forward on his little legs while I was carrying Jukie, and at least once Jukie thought it would be funny to start scampering off in the wrong direction, yodeling and laughing while he ran. At one point, I had to make sure that the dark stick in Jukie’s hand was not, in fact, a snake. That boy does not suffer from ophidiophobia, so back then I had to keep a close eye on him when we ventured into the wild areas of Davis.

Today my two boys and I are more hearty and adventuresome walkers. On agenda-free Saturdays, Jukie and I are like Springsteen’s “river that don’t know where it’s flowing,” for we often will take “a wrong turn and just [keep] going.” On such days, our hearts are hungry more for miles, rather than destinations: this past Saturday Jukie and I walked and walked until we were recalled by my wife Kate with the news that the air quality had again deteriorated.

We covered 11 miles on Saturday. That’s just a mile or two less than the distance between Davis and Winters, or between our house in South Davis and Sacramento’s Tower Bridge. In all the years that I lived in Sacramento (most of the 1990s), I never once biked or walked the distance between these two cities. If Jukie and I encounter an upcoming Saturday when both the temperature and the air quality appeal to us, my strong walker and I will cross that daylong feat from our bucket list. 

For me, the simplest exercise of walking has become the most satisfying, in part because it gives me time to think, as Forrest Gump does when he famously runs across the country a few times. I find there is something bracing and even dignified about a long walk. As Edward Abbey says, “Walking is the only form of transportation in which a man proceeds erect – like a man – on his own legs, under his own power. There is immense satisfaction in that.”

I hope you can join us in person for tonight’s Pub Quiz. The quiz will surely touch upon at least one topic raised above. Expect also questions about mileage totals, the differences between what’s inside and what’s purposeful, Hepatitis C, people named Jennifer, prize-winners, alphabets, Olympians, blanket answers, popular wood choices, monarchies, platinum albums, Apple products, more than three wishes, promised postcards, crime dramas, bitter fruits, heavy loads, dancers, testing regimens, female heroes, quarterbacks, asking questions in children’s books, what it means when the heat is on, actors and actresses, rivers, bonded loners, art and art history, increasing complexity, current events, and Shakespeare.

Special thanks to all the teams that support the Pub Quiz and these newsletters on Patreon. Over these last two weeks, I’ve enjoyed welcoming back to the pub people who that have sustained this effort, including, last week, members of the teams The Outside Agitators and Bono’s Pro Bono Obo Bonobos. If you would like to receive print versions of the Pub Quiz while on vacation, or if you’d rather just enjoy the fun from afar rather than congregating with teammates and other friends, please consider subscribing.

Stay safe, and I look forward to seeing you this evening!

Dr. Andy

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

P.S. Below please find five questions from last week’s quiz:

1. People That Were Born the Year Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was Released. LeBron James, Scarlett Johansson, and Mark Zuckerberg were all released the same year as Ghostbusters and Beverly Hills Cop. With a one year margin of error, name the year.  

2. Sports. Weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz won an Olympic gold medal for her home country of over 108 million people, ending her nation’s 97-year medal drought. Name the country.  

3. Great Italians. Starting with a V, what was the name of the Tuscany town where Leonardo da Vinci was born?    

4. Unusual Words. A nosegay is closest to which of the following: Flowers, a kennel, perfume, spectacles? 

5. Pop Culture – Television. Dunder Mifflin is a fictional paper company in what US state?  

P.P.S. “He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.” Friedrich Nietzsche