Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I was just three blocks away from President Ronald Reagan when John Hinkley shot him and three others on March 30^th, 1981. The T Street exit of The Washington Hilton was directly across the street from the donut and bagel shop where I had lunch about two hours previously. At 2:27, when the shooting took place, I was in one of my final 9^th grade classes of the day on the second floor of The Field School, 2126 Wyoming Avenue. I took a DC Metrobus home that afternoon, not having heard about what had happened until I turned on the evening news that night.

No one that I knew in our inner circle had voted for Ronald Reagan, but we were all less partisan then, and more circumspect about our voting habits. Despite our political leanings (Reagan earned 13% of the vote in Washington DC in 1980, which might be compared to Trump’s 4% in 2016), we all felt deep sympathy for the president after the assassination attempt, and for the others who had been shot, especially Press Secretary James Brady. We recognized the symbolic importance of the office, and we all wished Reagan to be safe from harm.

Donald Trump has also been laid low, but under different circumstances that make it difficult to create parallels. Reagan was a staunch advocate of gun ownership; however, unlike, say, Vice Presidents Burr and Cheney, his firearm practices did not put others in danger. With all the times he had played cowboys in the movies, many Americans still likened Reagan’s interest in guns with a sheriff’s wish to keep order in a wild west full of outlaws. (In the America that some saw as “Reagan’s ranch,” many friends of my parents enjoyed seeing themselves as ideological outlaws.) Most Americans who didn’t own guns did not begrudge Reagan his love of hunting or his nostalgia for TV westerns.

Comparisons between Reagan’s attitudes towards gun safety and President Trump’s attitudes towards COVID-19 safety invite an absurd tone, but as a poet, I have been known to traffic in absurdity. Let’s give it a try.

Imagine a world where Reagan fired his gun up into the air during New Year’s Eve celebrations, not caring where the stray bullets might fall. Imagine Reagan inviting a dozen or so friends to go hunting in circular formations, so that one couldn’t tell if it was a deer or a wealthy businessman who was crouched in the brush. Imagine a world where Reagan mocked those hunting buddies who wore orange safety vests, suggesting that to do so was a sign of weakness. Imagine him forbidding the use of sunscreen or insect repellant, or insisting that no one get tetanus shots after being scraped up by rusty barbed wire on a hunting trip. Imagine Reagan encouraging secret service agents to play Russian roulette with his antique gun collection. Imagine if Reagan were to bring a frequently-misfiring gun to a fundraiser in New Jersey. Imagine President Ronald Reagan sending out a public memo that reads, in part, “DON’T FEAR BULLETS!!!”

More than 100 people die every day from firearms in the United States. Daily, COVID-19 kills more than ten times that in this country. As we all consider what President Trump’s illness might signify about him, his presidency, and our nation, the families of those 1,100 are too grief-stricken to interpret the trends, the statistics, or the symbolism. As bad as the gun violence epidemic and the AIDS epidemic were in the 1980s when I was growing up in Washington DC, today when we consider the lives lost, what Donald Trump in his inaugural address called “American carnage,” 2020 seems our darkest year yet. As I write this, the COVID-19 death count in our country is about that of the population of Salt Lake City, more than three times the entire population of Davis, California. As I try to fathom this, I look forward to a time in the future of greater clarity, greater transparency, greater honesty, and greater adherence to scientific recommendations.

I wish the President a steady recovery from the coronavirus that has felled so many. I also look forward to American democracy and our citizenry recovering from this dark period in American history. We would all benefit from some better news and, speaking personally, better leadership.

I hope you get to see tonight’s Pub Quiz, which our subscribers on Patreon will receive soon. I will gladly send you a copy. Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, and on binary choices, terabyte acronyms, regrettable consultations, anchors, old jobs, chemistry labs, the 2018 World Atlas, hammers, kiss frontmen, international visitors, Nobel Prizes in Literature, “debates,” athletics, French and German people, oceanography, witches, European countries, African singers, gangsters, working-class protagonists, Denzel Washington, U.S. presidents, Bible stories, organizations, Academy Awards, questions of Canadian citizenship, wrap-ups, Spartacus, timing with phones, happiness, and Shakespeare.

I’m grateful for all the friends that I’ve made from the Pub Quiz over the last decade, friends I would likely not have met in other circumstances. One family that I just adore is the Nedwin family, people who have brought great competitive exuberance and bonhomie to the pub over the years. I’m grateful to count the Nedwins among my most recent subscribers. 

Speaking of our Pub Quiz Patreon page, did you know that I frequently share individual quiz questions there for visitors to noodle over. Visit https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster a few times a week to see what I mean. Right now there’s a question about the Spanish Flu that I bet you will answer correctly. One thing I can tell you: The Original Vincibles will always be in the Winners’ Circle. Thanks, OV, for being the top sponsor of The Pub Quiz!

Stay safe, everyone!

Dr. Andy

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

1. Know Your Flags. The five oldest flags still in continuous use all have the same primary color in them. What is that color?  

2. Countries of the World.  Lemurs are the flagship conservation species of what country?  

3. California Cities. Starting with the letter M what South Bay city is found north of San Jose and south of Fremont, and is the 99^th most populous city in the state?   

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Walking the dog around the circumference of Laguna Del Rey in Monterey yesterday, I came across large chalked letters along one side of the parking lot. They said THANK YOU.

At first I thought this was a novel way for the Embassy Suites by Hilton Monterey Bay Seaside to welcome lodgers, perhaps an attempt to make up for the cancelled managers’ receptions, the disallowed visits from housekeeping, or the closed up fitness center, all due to Monterey County COVID-19 ordinances. The world is a dangerous place, but I think we did a good job of not breathing other people’s air or touching common surfaces. Only the elevators would have forced us into close quarters with strangers, but with our room on the second floor, we found it easy to take the stairs. 

The first time Kate and I visited Monterey, we could hear the surf from the open windows of our bed and breakfast. That was also in September, and we had just been married in Hinsdale, Illinois. The wedding had been a joyful reunion of our families and closest friends, some of whom we had not seen since. We saw our honeymoon trip to Carmel and Monterey as a consolation that our extended Labor Day weekend with all those delightful people had come to an end.

On that 1992 trip, we tandem-biked the entire 17 Mile Drive from Monterey to Carmel, where we had lunch, and then we biked back. Making that same drive yesterday in our minivan, we remarked on how narrow and twisty those roads are, with insufficient shoulders for bicycles. Perhaps we were too confident and naïve to be worried about the safety of the endeavor, especially with all the tourists looking to spot the famous Lone Cypress rather than looking out for bicycling honeymooners.

We are lucky to have so many beaches just a couple hours from Davis. Yesterday, as I looked out on the western horizon from Asilomar State Beach, I found myself wishing that I had taken classes with the world-famous UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources so I could better name and describe what I was seeing.

Then I remembered that my son Truman shares a September 26^th birthday with a favorite poet, T.S. Eliot, so we might remember Eliot at the same time that we celebrate Truman (with music, 15 candles on a cake, and a weekend away). This is how Eliot described the coast along Cape Ann, Massachusetts in his poem “The Dry Salvages”:

The river is within us, the sea is all about us; 

The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite

Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses 

Its hints of earlier and other creation:

The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale’s backbone; 

The pools where it offers to our curiosity

The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.

It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,

The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar

And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices, 

Many gods and many voices.

Sometimes a poet’s words can suffice when one lacks formal training in Marine & Coastal Science.

As we drove away from the hotel parking lot yesterday morning, I realized that this was once a staging area; our temporary home had housed some of the people who most deserved our thanks: Firefighters. This had been a staging area for the heroes who just a few weeks before had worked selflessly to protect homes and wildlands in Monterey County. The fact that no rain had washed away the chalked thanks reminds us that the threat persists, that our Golden State vacation hotspots remain hot, imperiled, and needful of our concern and protection.

I’m grateful for the firefighters, grateful for Truman on his birthday, and grateful for our first summer vacation, taken a good month after the schoolkids’ end of summer. School starts for UC Davis this week, giving us all a chance to see how we handle the coming threats and opportunities at home. We will see what heroes will step up for our community.

Thanks to all the subscribers to the Pub Quiz! Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions on the following: Nicknames, Ellen, groups of books, executive producers, flagship species, valuable horses, federal taxes, Shia, Kentucky, Yo-Yo, programming, David Bowie, prominent Native Americans, the King of France, moss, misinformation, novelistic output, Paris, five year margins of error, fibers, California cities, forgiving friends, Missouri exports, Thoreau, doorbell rice breeds, fierceness, nests, pipes, chess, founders, successful coaches, shoes, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to new Pub Quiz supporter Kristin Kameen. She subscribed to the Pub Quiz newsletter more than a decade ago, and now she will receive quizzes (via PDF) in her inbox on Mondays. Thanks, Kristin! The Original Vincibles support the Pub Quiz at the Adamantium Tier, and thus earn a mention in every newsletter. I invite you also to subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/yourquizmaster.

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

1. Name the Year. We first went for a walk with Pokemon Go, we laughed at the female Ghostbusters, and we watched the Chicago Cubs win the World Series all in the same year. Name the year.  

2. Famous Mountains. Found on the eastern edge of one particular Unitary presidential constitutional republic, Mount Ararat is the highest peak in what country?  

3. Famous Movies. What actor and director ad-libbed this famous line in the classic film The Third Man? “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”  

4. Science. According to NASA, what W phenomenon comes in the categories of longitudinal and transverse? 

“There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.” Nina Simone

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

It doesn’t do any good to think about what might have been. “Isn’t it pretty to think so,” Jake asks Brett, reminding us all that, had it not been for the war, the lives of the characters in The Sun Also Rises would have been more comfortable, more typical (and thus perhaps less worthy of the novel in which versions of Hemingway’s friends all appear).

My French bulldog Margot lounges about during the day, resting on an elbow on an arm of the divan like Édouard Manet’s Olympia before lulling back towards sleep, saving her strength for her 5 AM demands to be let out into the cool and healthier air. Insofar as six months is a quarter of her life, she may barely remember when people used to leave the house. Our animals have grown comfortable with our perpetual quarantine. Once when I was working in the garage, she had to exist for a few minutes without immediate companionship, so she expressed her displeasure by chewing up my second-favorite headphones. While the girl may make trouble, she never gets into trouble. She is our baby with canines.

I’m grateful for Margot, even if we cannot travel as easily as we could during those few months between dogs. And now there are so few places to go. I am grateful for our old house as it fills again with boxes, though sometimes I still imagine unpacking those same boxes in that other house. When a person dies, and she returns to us in our dreams, we live in two worlds, our brains not catching up so readily to the new absence, focusing almost unwillingly on what might have been.

America has been feeling a new absence since Friday with the loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Commentators on the news remind us how Ginsburg had radically improved the lives of women long before Hillary Clinton recommended to her husband that he choose her for the new job opportunity that made her even more widely known. Sometimes, such as when the current U.S. President asks the women at his maskless rally if their husbands “are OK with” their attendance at his event, we can imagine that alternate universe, a handmaid’s tale time when women had to ask permission, and were not present when important decisions were being made.

Writers know this sort of speculative double-consciousness well, for we spend so much of our time in other, private worlds of our own creation, interacting with or impersonating the characters who we have brought to life. Catherine Drinker Bowen said that “Writing is a kind of double living.” I hear an echo of Bowen’s idea in words spoken by Jennifer Egan, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad: “When I’m writing, especially if it’s going well, I’m living in two different dimensions: this life I’m living now, which I enjoy very much, and this completely other world I’m inhabiting that no one else knows about.”

Just as The Sun Also Rises makes me grateful for Paris in the 1920s, rereading Frank O’Hara’s book Lunch Poems as I did today makes me grateful for New York City in the 1950s. Creatives make distant places and times come alive, whether they be authors or musicians. African rhythms and tones had once transmogrified into the Blues, and strains of the Blues subsequently morphed (or matured) into Jazz. And Jazz, still tinged with the struggle of its practitioners, informed O’Hara’s poetry and the writing styles of many authors since, especially those who value invention and surprise. Whether we are American authors or musicians, we are inclined to rebel, to bristle when instructed by authorities to act properly, or to think or write in approved ways. As Oscar Wilde said, “A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.”

National Book Award winner and American statesman John Lewis called this sort of misbehavior “Good trouble.” As is the case with many mischief-makers, John Lewis became stronger because of the struggle that he helped to lead. Of the recent dark times, 2020 is the darkest of them all. The deaths of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis, and even The Black Panther lead us to lament the loss of so many heroes. The deaths of 200,000 Americans to Covid-19 remind us how widespread the unexpected losses are being felt. We should remember that people like Lewis and Ginsburg struggled to make our country more fair and just, but insofar as they transcend the times in which they lived, they represent ideals that deserve our continued support, and labor. Ginsburg once said, “Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say, ‘My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.’ But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.”

Speaking of hope, and of a wish for the future, I will close with some encouraging words that Lewis published online two years ago: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Yours in trouble,

Dr. Andy

 

In addition to the topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following topics: households, same-sex couples, ghostbusters, baseball teams, a Caribbean free of pirates, peace preferences, runners up to Cinderella, steals, detectives, speedy thieves, European culture, greetings, famous statues that no one wants to topple, Harry Potter, Zillow, The Avid Reader Bookstore in downtown Davis, hitchhiking, jurisdictions, racial diversity, central heat, certain people feeling hushed by throttlers, heavy metal, Joe Biden, first ingredients, uncertainty, NASA science, impressive clocks, World War I, constitutional republics, bad news, musclebound villains, notable mountains, Pokemon Go, matrices, filters, candy bars, and Shakespeare.

Thanks and welcome to the following individuals or teams who are new subscribers to the Pub Quiz on Patreon: The Mavens, Dana Ferris, Keltie Jones (of Canada!), Craig Lowe, June Gillam (who signed up mostly to receive a weekly essay from me), Portraits, Greg Miller, Richard Deneault, Quizimodo, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos.

Special thanks to our first Adamantium Tier subscribers, The Original Vincibles, one of whom will soon be mailed some swag: a hardback copy of the aforementioned Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara. Because of this team’s investment in this expanded enterprise, they now get video performances of the Quiz. Last week I purchased a new microphone, a new webcam, and even a green screen: today I shoot my first-ever video Pub Quiz. I suppose I will have to unpack one of my black shirts. Should that come together, everyone at the Gold or higher tier will receive a link to that video this week. Note: There will be less caterwauling in my house than there was in the Pub.

I invite you to join the fun over at Patreon. Even at the $4 a month level, subscribers are enjoying bonus Pub Quiz questions on most days, including some with visual hints. Expect also additional audio and video as I become more adept with the new equipment. I’m deeply grateful for all of you who subscribe.

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

1. Energy Fields. What “A” word do new-agers use for a human energy field?  
2. Pop Culture – Music. Nicknamed the “Father of Rock and Roll,” what rock pioneer was born in St Louis, Missouri in 1926?  
3. With its elongated body and fast swimming speeds, what fish from the family Istiophoridae is the name of a Major League Baseball team?  

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Now that Anthony Fauci has told us that we may not be back to normal until the end of next year, we are taking stock, wondering to what extent our homes can accommodate serving as our offices, gyms, and movie theatres for the foreseeable future. There is nothing inherently dangerous about those indoor places, but we must keep our distance from the people they attract. Like our souls, the coronavirus thrives when we socialize with friends and strangers. Keeping away from those communal activities will help to ensure that we stay safe, if perhaps lonely.

In preparation for our unsuccessful move to west Davis, my family and I started purging our household of items in June, and for us, that process continues. We continue to excavate, as it were, in our closets and garage, and If something sparks more exasperation than joy, it has to go. On Friday, despite the poor air quality, I dropped another 15 boxes by Goodwill, and a box of DVDs by Bizarro World, the comic book shop that has so kindly provided pub quiz swag for the last couple years. Some of these items would have made excellent swag, to be sure, but for right now we are happy to be unburdened. 

As I have already chronicled exhaustively, this summer we had planned to move into a larger home with a lot of built-in shelves, so we sold and gave away desks and shelves that we now miss. Moving much of our stuff back into the house from storage means that we are living out of boxes in a different way from what we anticipated. Kate’s heroic work of unpacking sometimes feel like an anti-climax: I find myself wishing that many items could just stay in storage. For instance, while I gave away more than half my pants (evidently pleats are out, as is the threadbare look I adopted as a graduate student), I still own too many shirts, including black ones for the Pub Quiz and flamboyant paisley ones for Poetry Night. All our important papers and photographs from the pre-digital era may necessitate that we acquire a (lockable) filing cabinet for Jukie’s room. He won’t mind. Although he had been handed down (or up) many toys from his siblings, these days Jukie’s needs are simple, and in that way, he is enviable.

With the air so bad, Jukie and I do miss our long walks together. While he and I averaged more than five miles a day in July, in September my phone indicates that on a typical day indoors I am not walking much more than 500 yards. Jukie peers out the window with a look of longing and forlorn, so we have had to find other ways to stay active. Sometimes we play disco in the morning – thank you, Donna Summer – so the resulting dancing gets us moving, and reminds me of the summer that I spent in roller skates. Rather than kneepads or a helmet, such as what I would wear today, back in 1980 I would often just don a cape.

Back to our choked and infectious dystopian future, much of our workout equipment is still in storage, and the stores have largely sold out of dumbbells, but at home we had left behind two kettlebells and a yoga mat, so I have been getting by with those and killer workout videos that I have purchased for streaming on demand. Even though I have been intermittently attempting Jillian Michaels’ “Six Weeks to a Six Pack” for about six years, I still don’t have a six pack. I’m sure Michaels would be disappointed in how I interpret “intermittent.” Yesterday I attempted “Raise Some Bell: The Ultimate Kettlebell Workout” with Amy Dixon, and was left with the impression that such videos are intended primarily to train teenage cheerleaders, Olympic decathletes, and professional dancers. Maybe I could have kept up back when I roller-skated every day. Let’s just say that last night the living room fans and air purifiers were working overtime, along with me. Nevertheless, I would call exercise to energetic music the best sort of work, the work we reserve for the weekend, when we get to play in our little castles like children stuck home on a sick day.

 

And now, on to the hints for the first full-length new quiz that I have written since March! ! In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following: New York City, exercise equipment, Harry Potter, idevices, St. Louis, your elders, queens and princes, Australians, the book projects of political candidates, regrettable diagnoses, double India pale ales, sweet tigers, narrow strips, cheesecake, baseball, film trilogies, free-form anger, total market capitalization, consumer video, transitions in power, sailing ships, famous addresses, panthers, laundered money, rung bells, nautical terms, generals, molecular formulae, fish, pioneers, energy fields, and Shakespeare.

If you would like something different to do on your day or evening stuck at home, perhaps you would like to see tonight’s Pub Quiz? There are a number of ways you can do that, most of which involve joining us on Patreon, as Gadi, Lynne, and Bruce (and their teams) have done, and as the Vocal Art Ensemble and Wallace-Everitt teams have done, mostly at the Gold or higher tier. Also, thanks so much to THE MAVENS for their ongoing support of the Quiz — they have attended almost every Monday for a decade! The gold tier ensures receipt of new pub quizzes every Monday, and as one team will be reminded today, the platinum tier comes with an audio performance of the Quiz. Thanks to my first patrons!

Pub Quiz fans who join us at Patreon at ANY tier (even the $4 a month bronze tier) will get that first week’s quiz immediately as a thank-you gift. On many days, I also send bonus questions to my patrons, just so they have something to noodle on if it happens to be a non-Monday. Patreon will also provide us a way to sustain the community of Pub Quiz regulars once we have more people joining.

If you just want to see any particular week’s quiz without any sort of monthly commitment, send a me PayPal or Venmo contribution of $5 or more (along with your email address), and then you will have it straightaway. As has been the case at the pub, each quiz is 31 questions long, divided into familiar categories, perfect to use to play with friends. You will receive a copy with no answers, and then one with, so you can test yourself. The contributions will go to paying my web hosting and newsletter service bills for the last year; eventually I will hire an assistant to help distribute all the goodies to the Patreon Patrons.

With thanks,

Dr. Andy

 

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

1. Science. What three-syllable plural word correctly fills in the blank? BLANKS are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth and are the most abundant type of biological entity.  
2. Current Events – Names in the News.  What celebrity tweeted this in 2014? “Guess what? @DavidBurtka and I got married over the weekend. In Italy. Yup, we put the ‘n’ and ‘d’ in ‘husband.'” Hint: Elton John performed at their wedding reception.  
3. Sports. Born in 1980, what former American football quarterback and sports analyst played in the National Football League for 14 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys? 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I have more immediately pressing matters that I would like to share with you, but last week I promised a revelation about my ancestry that I suggested would interest you. My most famous direct relative, my 13^thgreat-grandmother, lived from about 1499 to 1543. She knew two kings intimately, shall we say, and has been portrayed in film by an actress who in recent years has been nominated for two acting Oscars. Any guesses who this might be?

Anyone who claims to have a famous relative should be told to prove it, so please forgive me as I trace the lineage, backwards, from me to my famous great-grandmother. Let’s begin the begats!

My father was David Marlin Jones, born to Marlin Matthew Jones, who was one of eleven children born to Albert Newton Jones. Marlin was the only one born in Oklahoma when it was still “Indian Territory.” Albert’s mother’s maiden name was also Jones, so I’m sure that helped save money on stationery when she got married in 1860, the year Albert was born. Emily’s father was Thomas Bradford Jones, who was son of William Jones, born the same year as our country (if the United States is your country). Speaking of our country, William’s father Captain Samuel Jones, Jr. served with George Washington (and got in trouble for allegedly gambling and stealing a pair of gloves, but was granted clemency by the good General).

Captain Jones was married to Leah Jones, née Thomas, daughter of John Thomas, who himself was the son of Reverend William Elias Thomas, who (in the winter of 1712) brought this line of my family from Wales (he was born in Llanwenarth, Monmouthshire, in southeast Wales, near the River Usk) to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he bought six farms, one for each of his surviving American children, for a total of 1248 acres (or two square miles) of what was then “wilderness land.”

Also born in Wales, the Reverend Thomas’s wife, Ann (Griffith) Thomas, was the daughter of Captain Samuel Griffith I, who came to the colonies in 1651, being awarded a tract of land in Calvert County, west side of the Patuxent River. I’m wondering who might have been living there when the land was given to the Captain. Griffith’s father was Sir Henry Griffith II, a baronet, meaning that he was the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. Sir Griffith’s wife, and the Captain’s mother, was Lady Margaret Ann Willoughby, daughter of Elizabeth Knollys.

OK, we are getting close now. Elizabeth’s father was Henry Knollys, a member of Parliament representing Oxfordshire (he attended Magdalen College at Oxford, which I guess would be like a Yolo County student earning a degree at UC Davis, and then representing this part of California in the California State Senate). Knollys also consorted with pirates, so he must have lived an exciting life. He died in Amsterdam of either illness or wounds, we are not sure which.

The mother of Henry Knollys was Lady Catherine Carey, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, so much so that the Queen arranged for Lady Carey (who had the title of chief Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen) to be buried in Westminster Abbey when this Lady Carey, her first cousin, died in 1569. Here’s what the epitaph says, with the original spelling:

“The Right Honourable Lady Catherine Knollys, chief Lady of the Queen’s Majesty’s Bedchamber, and Wife to Sir Francis Knollys, Knight, Treasurer of Her Highnesses Houshold, departed this Life the Fifteenth of January, 1568, at Hampton-Court, and was honourably buried in the Floor of this Chapel. This Lady Knollys, and the Lord Hunsdon her Brother, were the Children of William Caree, Esq; and of the Lady Mary his Wife, one of the Daughters and Heirs to Thomas Bulleyne, Earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde; which Lady Mary was Sister to Anne Queen of England, Wife to K. Henry the Eighth, Father and Mother to Elizabeth Queen of England.”

If you have been reading closely, then you have figured out that my 13^th great-grandmother was Mary Boleyn, sister of Queen Anne Boleyn (who led to England’s break with the Pope and Catholicism), and, previously, consort (AKA mistress) to both King Francis I of France (who jump-started the Renaissance in France, “recruiting” Leonardo Da Vinci, who brought The Mona Lisa with him), and to Queen Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII of England. (Mary was played by Scarlett Johansson in the 2008 film The Other Boleyn Girl, while my 13^thgreat-grandfather, the courtier William Carey, was played by Benedict Cumberbatch). Today scholars think that my 12^th great-grandmother Catherine Knollys was so beloved by Elizabeth because the Queen knew that Catherine was not just her first cousin, but also her step-sister.

Does that make me illegitimate British royalty? I’m not going to press that case with the British Crown at this time. But it does mean that Elizabeth Tudor, Queen Elizabeth I, is my first cousin, 13 times removed.

When word about my royal connections gets out, I expect to be invited to a much higher class of society balls and cocktail parties, especially after we are all vaccinated from COVID-19. And when will that be? 2021? 2022? We will have to see, and we will have to wait. I for one am lucky that I can look to my cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, as an inspiring object lesson in regal patience. As her suitors knew well, Elizabeth did not make hasty decisions. Living through the plague gives one perspective!

Who’s in your ancestry?

Devotedly,

Dr. Andy

 

P.S. If  you want sample Quizzes, please sign up for the newsletter.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Having finished another book by and about the Dalai Lama yesterday (The Art of Happiness), I’ve been thinking about compassion, what some have called a “heart full of grace.”

With so many people having died before their time this year, and so many more sickened and filled with fear of this new plague that has descended upon the populations of the world, all of us have been called upon to see and imagine the struggles of others, especially grieving families, and thus we have been given opportunities to practice compassion. I’ve seen looks of kindness and of appreciation of the shared struggle in eyes and masked faces of the Davis citizens whom I’ve encountered while walking our greenbelts this spring.

As a community of states and a community of nations, we were primed, then, to feel the loss of George Floyd especially deeply. This is true because the footage from multiple smartphones permitted us to watch his last breaths escape him, despite his pleas, under that police officer’s knee, to be allowed to breathe. This is also true because Floyd symbolized the many African Americans who have been unaccountably killed by police, or whose deaths were not sufficiently investigated, reminding us of the usually unspoken hierarchy of the value of our lives, depending capriciously on skin color, class, LGBT status, nation of origin, or some other abhorrent justification of devaluation. And this is true because we were confronted with an inescapable moving image of a racist justice system in which these officers were raised, trained, and encouraged to wield power over Black bodies in the ways that they do.

With everything that has happened, and has been spoken, in the two weeks since Floyd’s death, many have argued that George Floyd functionally sacrificed his life so that citizens of the United States and of the world could be reminded of the systemic racism that still undergirds and, historically, has enabled the uneven prosperity of our American democracy. Eyes that were closed, or at least shaded, have been opened, and as a response, a multicultural and (one hopes) multi-generational population of activists has been galvanized into action.

I am encouraged by the energy, the ideals, the goals, the creativity, and the non-violent tactics of this new anti-racist movement. Long may it persist, with changes resulting everywhere from the small town to the city hall to the state house to the White House. We all have a part to play, whether it be by reading, listening, financially contributing, or taking to the streets with a sign and a mask-muffled chant. Your service is required.

“Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will be shared virtually again this week. You can receive one every week during lockdown by subscribing to the newsletter. I hope you are still finding use for my backlog, and that you will still purchase my future Pub Quiz books even if some of the questions look familiar from the stationary spring of 2020.

Stay safe.

Dr. Andy

 

Pub Quiz from June 6, 2016, with some updates for Monday, June 8, 2020

This version has no answers

1. Mottos and Slogans.  What company has used the commercial slogan “So easy a caveman could do it”?  
2. Internet Culture. The second most-popular website in the world is the third most-popular website in the U.S., after Facebook. What is the second most-popular website in the world?  
3. Newspaper Headlines.  With all the tropical storms visiting his state, Rick Scott must sometimes feel like a meteorologist. Of what state is Scott governor?  
4. Four for Four.  The routes of which of the following Unitrans bus lines, if any, include south Davis? E, F, P, W.  
5. Religious Groups. Known as Religious Society of Friends in Europe, this group is known by what two-syllable name here in the United States?   
6. Actors and Actresses. Who played Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series?   
7. Pop Culture – Music. You may know that “The Greatest Love of All” was written as the main theme of the 1977 film The Greatest, a biopic of Muhammad Ali. The song was a #1 hit for what singer who lived from 1963-2012?  
8. Sports. Shaquille O’Neal led the NBA in field goal percentage 10 times, breaking whose record of nine?  
9. Science. Found on a bottlenose dolphin, an assassin bug, or a goblin shark, a “rostrum” is a Latin word for what four-letter B word?  
10. Great Americans.  What great Americans are running for Davis City Council (and thus Davis Mayor) this November?
11. Unusual Words: Note that this is actually a long question. Meaning “repugnant,” what three-syllable A word is missing from this quotation by Winston Churchill? “Nothing can be more BLANK to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.”    
12. U.S. States. What is the second least densely populated of the 50 United States?  
13. Pop Culture – Television Shows about a goofy English guy who has forgiven $15 million in medical debt he bought for pennies on the dollar. What are the six words in the title of John Oliver’s TV show?  
14. Another Music Question. The 5^th highest-rated song of 2014 was titled “Counting Stars.” Name the band from Colorado.  
15. Anagram.     Raised on the upper east side of Manhattan, and educated at Exeter and Yale, what is the name of the disgraced former Merrill Lynch securities trader who is now the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of the news website Business Insider? Hint: His name, appropriately, is an anagram of the phrase BEHOLD: GENTRY.  
16. Muhammad Ali’s funeral service took place in the same city where he was born. Name the state.     
17. The reach of Muhammad Ali in inches is the same as the atomic number of platinum, the number of cards in a tarot deck, and the total number of gifts in the song The Twelve Days of Christmas. What is that number?   
18.  The middle name of Cassius Clay was the same as the first name of the Ving Rames character in the film Pulp Fiction. Name the name.    
19.   In what decade did Muhammad Ali retire from boxing?  
20.  In what year did Muhammad Ali light the torch to begin the summer Olympics in Atlanta?  
21. Books and Authors. What was the name of the titular dog in the children’s books authored by Norman Bridwell?  
22. Film.  Alexander Gould voiced the title character in the highest-grossing animated film, and second highest grossing film, of 2003. Name the film.  
23. Irish Culture. True or False: Muhammad Ali was part Irish. True.   
24. Countries of the World.  Located in the Horn of Africa, what country shares a border with Eritrea to the north and northeast, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, Sudan and South Sudan to the west, and Kenya to the south?  
25. Malaysia. One of Muhammad Ali’s 55 boxing victories took place in the national capital and most populous city in Malaysia. Name it.      
26. Science. The subject of many classes taught at UC Davis, “pedogenesis” refers to the formation of what?  
27. Books and Authors. What are the five letters in the last name of the author of Tuesdays with Morrie?  
28. Current Events – Names in the News. According to a Public Policy Polling poll released on June 5^th, 2020, which candidate for U.S. President currently leads in Texas? Biden, Trump, neither.  
29. Sports. Which Golden State Warrior is the son of former NBA player Mychal Thompson?  
30. Shakespeare. Created early in the 17^th century, what is the name of the Shakespeare character who accompanies her husband when he is deployed to Cyprus in the service of the Republic of Venice?  

Tie-breaker.  As you may know, the distance between the sun and the earth is 149,598,000 kilometers, something astronomers call an “astronomical unit” or AU. Here’s your question: Measured in AUs, what is the average distance between earth and the planet Neptune?  

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I don’t know about you, but I have been so careful to keep my distance. Two of the five residents of my household have serious asthma, and now they are all back under one roof, so we have to stay coronavirus-free for as long as possible. (If you want to read about Kate’s adventure rescuing Geneva from Wisconsin, see her last four blog entries at http://kateduren.blogspot.com.)

Yesterday I biked to campus to pick up a lapel microphone that I will use when remotely teaching my classes starting next week. I went late yesterday afternoon because I figured that any remaining virus on doorknobs or other surfaces will likely have faded away over the weekend, but I still wore gloves in the office.

As I was arriving on campus at about 6 PM, I saw something I’ve never seen in 30 years of campus visits: a flock of ducks flying down Hutchison Drive, just a few feet above the pavement. Have they already grown used to the paucity of people walking or biking the streets of UC Davis? Soon they will stray from Putah Creek with impunity.

The re-emergence of wildlife is a well-known trope of post-apocalyptic literature. Will Smith hunts deer in Times Square in the beginning of I am Legend. In the novel I’m reading now, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, 20 years after a flu that wipes out 99.9% of humanity, two characters come across a pond at a former golf course and find it overflowing with fish. Sweeping a net across the top provides enough fish for an entire orchestra of musician-actors to dine well for once, that is, if they could be found.

All of us will have to take care of ourselves in different ways during the coronavirus lockdown. Memes are traveling about the internet concerning the look of various people’s self-inflicted haircuts that will take place in April and May of this year. Many women and men around my age will unwillingly reveal their natural hair color. Cars will go unrepaired and bicycle flats unfixed, with no Jump bikes available as alternatives. Lawns like mine will inch languidly towards their more natural state.

As the coronavirus crisis hits different communities, such as what has recently been announced in Texas, rudimentary doctor visits will be canceled or rescheduled. Just this morning my peanut-allergic daughter was exposed to some pea protein in the protein pancakes that she started to have for breakfast. A doctor friend ran over to our house to talk Geneva through her symptoms, and together we determined that this exposure is something that can be treated at home. Of course, not everyone has a world-class doctor within strolling distance at times like these, and our hospitals will soon be filled with others who also need help breathing.

Remote UC Davis classes start a week from today, and I have been recommending to my fellow faculty that they be kind to themselves and to their students by keeping the instruction as streamlined as possible. We will all get through this together, even if we cannot practice true togetherness for many more weeks or months.

There will be no pub quiz tonight, but I sent to newsletter subscribers an entire quiz from ten years and a day ago (with the answers). Before you read on, choose now who will be the Quizmaster in your home or for your group, for only that person should read below.

May you be well.

Your Quizmaster

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

The White House today recommended that we limit our meetings to groups of ten or fewer. We average about fifteen times that at the Pub Quiz, so we will be suspending the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz until further notice.

Devoted Pub Quiz attendees have been asking for virtual means of participating in the (or a) quiz for us to have fun with until we get together again in person. I LOVE this idea, but don’t quite have the bandwidth for that this week. Why? Because I oversee the instructional designers charged with supporting faculty who were teaching online during week ten of the quarter, are giving exams this week, and who will be teaching remotely in the spring as the coronavirus era continues.

The result? An impressive (and brand new) website found at https://keepteaching.ucdavis.edu. Working with the amazing folks at the UC Davis Center for Educational Effectiveness, we at Academic Technology Services (where I am also the Academic Associate Director) tried our best to share our knowledge about teaching in a time of crisis. I’d be curious to know what you think of the product, even though it is continuing to grow and evolve to meet faculty changing needs.

So, you’d think holding a Pub Quiz online would be easy for me. But while Dr. Andy who works at UC Davis is a modest team player who forefronts his students in all his in-person learning opportunities, Your Quizmaster is a what William Butler Yeats would call “a vainglorious lout” who creates all his content days beforehand, and demands absolute compliance with his rules and processes.

I’m fond of the first guy, but people want more of the second. As a result, I had already begun work on a Patreon page for the Pub Quiz, and at one point had thought of launching a Pub Quiz podcast or even Pub Quiz YouTube channel. Who knows if those will come about anytime soon. Instead, I will merely promise you something by next Monday (March 23^rd) for you to look forward to.

Meanwhile, Happy St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow. Keep the Irish people and the people of all nations in your heart. As for me, tonight I will look forward to spending a quiet Monday night at home for the first time in more than a dozen years. It’s no wonder that the economy is reeling if we can’t even meet for a proper Pub Quiz.

I wish you and your families health and calm.

Sheltering in place,

Your Quizmaster

P.S. “We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” ― Pema Chödrön

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Just over 40 years ago, my mom took my brother and me to Colonial Williamsburg, the historical district in the (William and Mary) college town that was once capital of the state of Virginia. Sensible people would have checked the weather forecast first (by listening to the radio?) before making the two and a half hour long drive from Washington DC along 1-95, because as we increasingly discovered, the weather during our curious odyssey was awful.

We drove over inundating rivers, and at one point saw in the distance that the Atlantic Ocean was roiling. As Marvin Gaye would say a few years later, “the waves were rising and rising.” The torrents of rain that descended upon southeastern Virginia on that day would have dissuaded most of us from traveling, but the colonialists showed up to work in their period costumes, despite the downpour. Unlike the employees of that place (hearty blacksmiths, silversmiths, coopers, etc.), and unlike my mom and brother and me, all the tourists wisely decided to stay away from Colonial Williamsburg on that day. We had the place to ourselves.

Seeing the sheets of rain that would be a welcome blessing in northern California this month, and looking up and down the muddy streets that were being negotiated by horse-drawn carriages and wagons, I was reminded of that scene from a science fiction film that had been released only a few years before, Logan’s Run, in which the protagonists visit an abandoned post-nuclear Washington DC looking for answers to questions about the surface world that they were seeing for the first time. I found it strange to see a place I knew so well emptied of people.

So, what does one do with an important place that has been deserted? Often we delight in the perspective offered by such an opportunity. The UC Davis campus never seems more magical than on Christmas night when I finish my Wednesday evening radio show and then ascend the stairs from Lower Freeborn Hall onto North Quad Avenue, a street that is usually bustling with fast-moving bicyclists and texting pedestrians. On one holiday night, I instead saw nothing but the Tule fog and my own breath fogging up my glasses. I smiled to myself and then broke into song when I realized that I had the whole campus to myself.

My mom taught Oliver and me to embrace such fortuitous circumstances. It definitely wasn’t a disaster that we were getting soaked in Williamsburg, she told us. Instead, we made a game of counting women’s bonnets, jumping the enormous puddles, and walking in the soggy steps of the locally-shod horses in front of the reconstructed Raleigh Tavern on Duke of Gloucester Street. Williamsburg seemed to be free of constables on that day, so we acted as strangely as we pleased.

As the place was ours, we could interrupt the solitary work of any local craftsman. For example, after standing around in silence in one drafty workshop, I asked the cordwainer (leather-worker) if I could have a piece of scrap-leather from the basket at his feet. With the word “nae,” he denied my request, saying that those bits of leather would be valuable for the nearby thonger who could transform them into leather straps for saddles and laces for Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie’s riding boots.

I wanted to say, “Dinwiddle? Hey bub, drop the act. Your audience is two antsy boys and their mom who just drove to your insufficiently-refurbished and leaky 18^th century shack in a Checker Marathon. We don’t want a history lesson right now. Just give us some leather-worker swag, man.” But I didn’t say any of that. Back out in the rain, we just talked about the strange words used by the proud re-enactor, and then went to visit the blacksmithery, where at least it was warm.

Sitting in an empty Davis café on Sunday evening as I write these words, I am grateful all over again that my mom was brave or silly enough to take us out into the rain. What would you do if you were to have a place to yourself? Would you have feelings of delight, concern, or loneliness. Soon, in our era of social distancing, you may have a chance to find out.

 

Tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, and on the following: breakfast toasts, plusses and minuses, Bohemia, road trips, expired records, Sean Connery, promises, physics, the body parts of mammals, waltzes, resilient obstacles, the freshest of tomatoes, movies in which Tom Cruise runs, sorry states, equatorial differences, commemorations, fortuitous bathtubs, locations of coffee in South Davis, waterfalls, Italian tractors, Orson Welles, football clubs, people born in Canada, unfair trials, powerful claws, pouches, beautiful valleys, St Petersburg, spurned invitations, heartbreaking stories, science fiction, people named Rick, micro-peddlers, mathematics, and Shakespeare.

Take care of yourselves. As Thomas Carlyle said, “He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything.”

Perhaps I will see you this evening.

 

Best,

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

P.S. Here are three questions from a previous quiz:

 

1. Current Events – Names in the News.  General Electric’s most famous ever CEO died yesterday at the age of 84. Famous for having received the largest severance payment in history, what is his name?     
2. Sports.  Last name Williamson, what is the name of the Pelicans rookie who scored 35 points against the L.A. Lakers yesterday?  
3. Shakespeare.   How many Shakespeare plays have the name “Richard” in their titles?

 

P.P.S. I am coming up with some new ways for you to support the Pub Quiz. Stay tuned!