Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Happy Black History Month! Originally, the national commemoration of Black History was limited to a mere week, but eventually, a month was considered more appropriate, even though, as Spike Lee has pointed out, February is our shortest month.

It’s hard for me, as a white guy, to know how best to talk about African-American history and culture, except carefully and appreciatively. As most of you know, I was born and raised in Washington DC, a city that was more than 50% African American when I lived there. As a result, I was exposed to a lot of Black culture, much of it via the radio. I loved funky and soul music from the 1970s, so in grade school and high school I had posters of The Commodores and Earth, Wind, and Fire up on my bedroom wall, and Stevie Wonder on my cassette deck.

While my dad was a theatre director and my mom was a city librarian, the Waldorf school I attended was populated mostly by suburban kids who didn’t get to spend time with African-American adults unless they came to a playdate at our house. I remember my friend Todd once pointing out to me that “your family sure knows a lot of Black people!” I didn’t know what to make of that odd remark, beyond acknowledging that he was right.

Yesterday I watched three minutes of raw video of President Obama taking a 2016 walk along the Mall, greeting tourists and locals who were gob-smacked to encounter such a charismatic and congenial U.S. President out for an unexpected stroll. I bet all the people who ran up to shake President Obama’s hand didn’t vote for him, but all of them knew that he felt he was doing his best for all citizens. In addition to being one of my heroes, President Obama seems to appear in many of the political ads of Democratic candidates for U.S. President.

For additional perspectives on Black History and steps we can all take to confront racism in our attitudes and in our country, I recommend two books that I read last year by Ibram X. Kendi: The National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, and the more recent How to Be an Antiracist. Both books are worth your time!

In addition to topics raised above, tonight at the Pub Quiz expect questions on the following: The World Bank, dialects, adaptations, finish lines, groups of voters, questions of value, rotten tomatoes, head injuries, notable feminists, common names, armies and navies, world capitals, superheroes, hilarious comedians, graduate student concerns, visitors to the western hemisphere, a pharaoh with cats and spoons, monkeys, really fast computers, indirect communication, the example of stop signs, little colonies, dangerous side hustles, planets, hard ages, the example of California, security rules, and Shakespeare.

I started this newsletter at 9:30 this morning, and then, twenty interruptions later, I am sending it out at 2:30. You should nevertheless still plan to join us at tonight’s Pub Quiz at 7. See you then!

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

Here are three questions from a quiz from February 17, 2014:

1. Pens and Sponges. A pen is like a sponge because both are involved in dispensing what L word?   
2. Greek Gods. Cupid is the son of what Greek goddess? 
3. Pop Culture – Music. When I asked my 16-year-old daughter if she knew the rapper who had a big hit with the song “Happy” from the Despicable Me 2 Soundtrack, she responded “Oh, do you mean the guy with the hat?” What is the name of the rapper?   

 P.S. “No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.” Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

This morning I woke to a dream that I found to be so hilarious and engaging that I said to myself, “There’s a book in that.” Of course, I can’t exactly remember it now, but there was something about a six-year-old girl unexpectedly taking the mic at a Mike Bloomberg rally to give her opinions on what should be changed about America.

“There’s a Book in That” might work as the motto of the 2020 San Francisco Writers Conference, where I have spent most of this long weekend (instead, the official motto is “A Celebration of Craft, Commerce, and Community”). Speaking of community, a little bit like summer camp, this conference has provided me a yearly opportunity to reunite with friends that I typically see in only one place (not counting Facebook), and an opportunity with them to “play” with the ideas of inspiration, writing systems and habits, and revision. In addition to these craft concerns, we also spend a lot of time talking about audiences, markets, marketing, and book cover designs.

On the one hand, lessons that I have learned from this conference have made me much more thoughtful, ambitious, and productive. I get to learn from great speakers such as Rusty Shelton, the founder of Zilker Media, and Walter Mosley, creator of the Easy Rawlins mysteries, such as Devil in a Blue Dress. And I learn strategies to improve my writing and my understanding of independent publishing in a rapidly-changing industry.

On the other hand, insofar as I have attended this conference every year for the last 15, I see how many of my friends and colleagues have lapped me in terms of their own productivity, processes of discovery, and book titles. Of course, many of these folks are full-time writers, while I have many irons in many fires. When strangers asked me what book I was working on, I have to decide which of the four to mention first (or solely). Like my writing projects, my days are chopped up into multiples. I should remember what Alexander Graham Bell’s advice: “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”

Even though you may be distracted by the remnants of San Francisco pillow fights at dawn, or by a jubilant City French bulldogs named “Marcello,” I hope 2020 is full of clear vision and bright focus for you. Meanwhile, as today is a holiday, I’m going to write you some hints and then dine on a holiday breakfast with my family.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following topics: Missouri, living languages, one-way radios, early Apple additions, Bay Area cities, notable marriages, art and art history, the 2010 Census, musical anniversaries, regrettable injuries, an offer of latitude, American cities, that which follows thievery, confederations, rules that are unknown to me, Pulitzer bookends, Silicon Valley, WS Merwin, Modern Library rankings, received signals, human anatomy, Abraham Lincoln, writers conference discoveries, comparisons to Delaware, neighborhoods in New York City, blue streaks, unread books, mail service, faddish demises,  and Shakespeare.

Thursday is Poetry Night in Davis. John Brantingham is our featured poet, and we would love to see you there. Check out the Facebook event! He is also running a workshop at the Davis Arts Center all morning and part of the afternoon on February 22^nd – what an opportunity!

Happy Presidents Day to you. See you tonight at 7!

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

Send Pub Quiz questions and recommended question topics to Dr. Andy at yourquizmaster@gmail.com

P.S. Here are three questions from last week.

1. Science.  True or False: Sharks can get cancer.  
2. Books and Authors.   In her book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, the American Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön writes that “We can use our personal suffering as the path to BLANK for all beings.” Fill in the blank with a three-syllable word.  
3. Current Events – Names in the News. What Democrats were the two top vote-getters in Iowa last week?  

P.P.S. “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” Calvin Coolidge

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I wrote the entire Pub Quiz between 8 and 9:30 this morning. Sure, people send me question ideas, and sometimes complete questions, and I collect ideas in a Google Doc over the course of a week, but most of what you enjoy this evening came from my head this morning. Let’s see if tonight’s experience suffers because of my attempt at quick-witted trivia velocity.

You see, I was up late last night watching the Academy Awards. I come from a film household (I read weekly Variety as a child), so we treat the Oscars the way that some American families treat the Super Bowl. We try to watch most of the nominated movies. Kate takes Truman to all the age-appropriate films, and I catch up where I can. For example, I finished Joker and The Irishman just last week, both streaming.

If you are waiting for my take, Parasite was my favorite film of 2019. 1917 was more impressive in many ways, but I don’t think it provokes as much thought as the Bong Joon-ho masterpiece that we were treated to last year. The World War I film made me wonder why biplanes were not used to drop messages, thus obviating much of the action of the story, but as with the eagles in Lord of the Rings, we find that the most logical strategy (having the lead eagle just fly the ring to where it needs to go) is not the one that would reward the filmgoers.

We were reminded of a Martin Scorsese quotation last night, “the most personal is the most creative,” and this is probably an important reason why Parasite took the top prize. That South Korean film introduces us to characters that we grow to care about, if perhaps not identify with, making personal Bong Joon-ho’s concerns about economic inequality, an important theme for both the films and the presidential race of 2000. I hope my family cheers as loudly on election night as we did as the end of Oscar night!

In addition to topics raised above, tonight expect questions about South America, fuel that is not gasoline, medieval leapers, bulldogs, things that are light and unstable, automobiles, the color “cerulean,” Yolo bypasses, crops, places to find gentlemen, heart advice for difficult times, sharks, kidnappings, differences between Alaskans and Californians, turnout, moving memoirs, winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, metals, value in the 1990s, unexpected additions, meanings of pool, birth decades, countries that border each other, runners-up to the energy sector, forests, beauty and lunacy underwater, new shows, onetime resort towns, Cole Porter, and Shakespeare.

I saw a few of you at Poetry Night on Thursday! Thanks for joining us. Our next event with John Brantingham is February 20th.

I hope you can join us this evening. Come early to secure a table inside so you can be safe from today’s blustery winds!

Your Quizmaster

P.S. Here are three questions from last week, this time with answers!

1. Newspaper Headlines. What State did Donald Trump use Twitter to congratulate after yesterday’s Super Bowl? Kansas

2. Four for Four. Which of the following countries, if any, border Ukraine? The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Uzbekistan. (NYYN)

3. Know Your U.S. Senators. Mark Warner is the richest U.S. senator, and the second and third-richest senators comes from Warner’s political party. Is Warner a Democrat or a Republican? Mark Warner, Diane Feinstein, and Richard Blumenthal are all Democrats

P. P.S. “Compassion is the basis of morality.” Arthur Schopenhauer

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Does anyone else miss Oliver Sacks? He seemed to me a uniquely likable fellow who sought to relieve suffering and the causes of suffering for everyone with whom he engaged. In his 2015 book Gratitude, published just after he died, he wrote this about his gratitude for having lived so long, and so richly:

At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, none disabling, I feel glad to be alive — “I’m glad I’m not dead!” sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect… I am grateful that I have experienced many things — some wonderful, some horrible — and that I have been able to write a dozen books, to receive innumerable letters from friends, colleagues and readers, and to enjoy what Nathaniel Hawthorne called “an intercourse with the world.”

Sacks also expressed some regrets:

I am sorry I have wasted (and still waste) so much time; I am sorry to be as agonizingly shy at 80 as I was at 20; I am sorry that I speak no languages but my mother tongue and that I have not traveled or experienced other cultures as widely as I should have done.

Last week my son Jukie’s favorite bus driver, named John, retired after serving and supporting Jukie for about a decade. John greeted us school mornings and afternoons for the last many years with patience, humor, and genuine warmth. As part of his job, John has had to establish and then unwillingly break heartfelt bonds with children who were medically fragile, who had moved to new school districts, or who had aged out of the system. Strong, determined, and buffeted by an indefatigable work ethic, John probably didn’t think often about the day that he himself would be breaking the bond with all the special children whom he had grown to love.

Like Oliver Sacks, perhaps like any of us, I feel like I could write my own book titled Gratitude. A couple months before he died, I asked my dad about the people for whom he was most grateful. In addition to his wife and his ex-wife (also known as my mom), he mentioned close friends from different stages in his life. It’s hard to feel pity for one’s self, or to maintain anger or resentment, when one is also feeling gratitude.

Via past newsletters, I’ve introduced you to people for whom I feel the most gratitude, including Kate, my children, my parents, and my brother Oliver. I would also include my closest friends (Hello Bob and Susi! Hello Evan!), my students who have kept in touch with me (Hello Melissa Skorka! We miss you! Hello Storm!), and especially the mentors who have guided me, including Jack Petrash, Will Layman, Roger Shattuck, Christopher Ricks, Harry Thomas, Sandra Gilbert, and Alan Williamson. These names won’t mean anything to most of you, but it’s gratifying for me to see them listed here.

Speaking of gratification, science indicates that expressing gratitude improves our mental health, even if we don’t share those expressions with their intended recipients, and that the positive effects of those expressions change our brains for the better with effects that last longer than you would expect. So, I will express here again my appreciation for John the bus driver and for all the people who have encouraged, helped, or buffeted me or my family, in large ways and small. For some of you, I will somehow return the kindness. For the rest, I will just do my best to pay it forward. One thinks of what John F. Kennedy said: “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” So, in closing, happy retirement, John!

Tonight’s Pub Quiz may touch upon topics raised above. Expect also questions on medical subspecialties, hurricanes, opaqueness, frictional verbs, islands, international cuisine, oldsters, economic threats and cushions, carriers of forces, South Central, train adventures, angry sisters, three-year margins of error, entire continents, fall announcements, named colors, fated rockers, American painters, soccer terms, distinguishing Republicans from Democrats, countries on wordless maps, the success of forges, international flights, and Shakespeare.

It was almost warm enough to sit outside last Monday. Today it’ll be rather blustery, so arrive early enough to claim a table tonight! And while you are making plans, plan to join us Thursday at 8 at the Natsoulas Gallery for a joint reading by Susan Browne (Oakland) and Julia Levine (Davis).

Best,

Your Quizmaster
yourquizmaster@gmail.com

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

1. Newspaper Headlines. Writing for Politico, Patrick McGinnis said yesterday that when it comes the Democratic caucuses, indecisive Iowans are suffering from FOBO: Fear of a better WHAT?

2. Four for Four. Which of the following is currently true of the late Kobe Bryant? He was the oldest player to score 60+ points in a single game, he was the youngest player ever to appear in an NBA game, he held the record for the most offensive rebounds in an All-Star Game, he won an Oscar.

3. Prime Numbers. The lowest prime centered pentagonal number (whatever that means) is also the number of hockey teams in the NHL and the number of states in Mexico. What is this number? Hint: Mexico has fewer states than we do in the U.S.

P.P.S. “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” Albert Schweitzer

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Like so much of America, I am thinking of the people who died in that Los Angeles helicopter crash yesterday morning:

Kobe Bryant, 41.
His 13-year-old daughter, Gianna “Gigi” Bryant.
Gianna’s basketball teammate Alyssa Altobelli.
Alyssa’s father, John Altobelli, 56, the baseball coach at Orange Coast College.
Alyssa’s mother, Keri Altobelli.
Christina Mauser, a basketball coach at the nearby Harbor Day School, where Gigi Bryant attended.
Payton Chester, a middle-school student.
Sarah Chester, Payton’s mother.
Ara Zobayan, the helicopter pilot.

I woke up this morning to texts from my college senior, Geneva. She has just seen a film, Rabbit-Proof Fence, that she recommended we show to her 14-year-old brother, Truman. In turn, I sent her a photograph taken from her brother Jukie’s room of the sun coming up over the trees of our cul-de-sac. She responded that the skies over Wisconsin this morning are all white, as if mirroring the snow on the ground.

Such everyday happenstances take on a greater resonance when one considers the families who woke up this morning to the same sudden and grim realization.

Because of Kobe Bryant’s prowess and prolific scoring on the basketball court, and his two-decade commitment to the Los Angeles Lakers, an entire generation of sports fans are feeling his loss profoundly. Not a Kobe fan because of some of his activities off the court, my brother Oliver still appreciated Bryant’s support for women’s basketball. Yesterday he sent me a November picture (see above) that he snapped of Kobe and his daughter Gianna talking with players and coaches after a game. One can see the love and enthusiasm in Kobe’s demeanor when talking basketball with his daughter, something noted by other sports stars who conversed with Kobe post-retirement.

Like the Bryant, Chester, and Altobelli children, my son had a playdate yesterday, only rather than being shuttled to a basketball game, he and a friend joined their moms at a showing of Gone with the Wind on the big screen. Unlike the junior-high students in Los Angeles, these two boys returned home to Davis without incident, full of images and stories from one of Hollywood’s greatest films, one that also highlights the tragic loss of a child.

Thinking last night about all the people I love, those in the house, those in faraway homes, and those who are even farther away than that, I hugged my teenage son a little tighter than usual before tucking him in for an evening of safe and restful sleep.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will cover some of the topics raised above, as well as the following: royal placements, bicycling, a year for frets, relabeled tribes, hockey, applications, place names, snakes, recent polls, Russian literature, broken ties, the letter R, church duties, ice barriers, Oscar-winners, comparisons to stones, role playing games, the distance between major cities, punching down, musical counterpoint, languages, alliterative names, suckers, baseball stars, racist neighbors, Mexico, caucuses, hurricanes, flowers, and Shakespeare. There will be no questions this week about John Bolton.

This afternoon I will be reading a poem on the same stage as Chancellor May and a few other notables. Relive the video of that experience here. This event might have to be the topic of next week’s newsletter. Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing you this evening.

Best,

Your Quizmaster
yourquizmaster@gmail.com
https://www.yourquizmaster.com

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

1. TV Stars. What TV star and comedian appeared in the films Diner, Beverly Hills Cop, and Aliens?

2. Pop Culture – Television. Henry Cavill plays Geralt of Rivia in what Netflix series?

3. Another Music Question. I will give you the first (stage) name of a rapper, and you tell me his last (stage) name: Busta.

P.P.S. “Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world you had to earn it.” Ann Brashares

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Watching Gene Kelly makes me want to learn to dance like him, while watching Oscar Levant makes me want to learn to play the piano while leading an orchestra. Watching Leslie Caron makes me want to pick up a book or take a yoga class.

I suppose that I am intended to feel this way. An Oscar-winning film like An American in Paris (which my family and I saw yesterday on the big screen) will typically introduce filmgoers to characters with which they can identify, or wish to emulate, even if outside of their fantasy worlds those filmgoers can’t carry a tune or walk across a ballroom without tripping.

I again confirmed yesterday what my mom once remarked to me: Gene Kelly is athletic and adorable. And as I remember my dad remarking to me, the music of George and Ira Gershwin sustains the film. It seems silly that I would share so many aesthetic heroes with my parents, but I continue to be influenced by a childhood home that was filled with a love of film and of the music of film and stage musicals. For example, we had an eight-track tape that had the soundtrack of Singin’ In the Rain on one “side,” and the Judy Garland / Fred Astaire film Easter Parade on the other “side.”

The beauty (or, for some people, horror) of the eight-track player is that any album started on this device would play continuously until it was ejected. Whether with dolls, blocks, or even pipe cleaners, I remember playing and playing to that music for hours, the eight-track continuing all the way until bedtime.

Those were simpler times. Today, we have so many choices in the products that we consume, whether they be the shampoos on Safeway shelves or the myriad video offerings from Netflix and other curators of online content. In his 2008 book A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink tells us that the world of abundance and prosperity provided by left-brain thinkers has led to thought-workers increasingly turning to something beyond consumer goods. Our world now places “a premium on less rational, more [right-brain-]Directed sensibilities — beauty, spirituality, emotion.”

Another lover of movies and music, Martin Luther King, Jr. also recognized a hierarchy of values that privileged the human over the material. He once said, “We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

While we reflect on Leslie Caron or Martin Luther King, Jr., let us hope to live in a world where not all our heroes have come of age in the 20th century or before.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on the wings of energy, rebuffed slaveholders, expensive conveniences, rubber, dogmatic haloes, things that are only metaphorically broken, determined practice, cross streets, Beverly Hills, young stocks and bonds, mammalian contexts, people named after farmers, details, big cities, public libraries, old and compassionate, economic inequality, hearts, railroads in the west, snakes, fancy dancers, DVD sales trends overseas, Bible stories, Irish culture, the lifetime of Willow Smith, the attributes of greatness, oddsmakers, unusual cars, a clock’s passage of time, vitamins, human pairings, stories in the Post and the Times, chocolate, teeth, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us at the Pub Quiz tonight. Happy Martin Luther King Day!

Your Quizmaster
yourquizmaster@gmail.com
https://www.yourquizmaster.com

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

1. Books and Authors. What is the best-selling novel ever published by the author Charles Dickens?

2. Irish Culture. Within five degrees Fahrenheit, what is the record high temperature for the island of Ireland?

3. Mascots. Steely McBeam is the mascot for whom?

P.P.S. “As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation — either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz

My grandfather was a taciturn man who loved his children and his many wives. Born in Oklahoma when it was still “Indian Territory,” my grandpa had to leave his home state in his 20s because his union activities endangered him. He ended up in Winchester, Indiana, which has about the same population today as it did when my father was born there in 1932. From this unlikely location, Davey Marlin-Jones launched his show-business career, entertaining Randolph County children and then eventually adults with his magic tricks. Grandpa Marlin became this magician’s manager, driving the phenom to all his bookings in Indiana in the 1930s and then also in neighboring states in the 1940s.

I got to “perform” with my dad only a few times, once in the 1970s and once in the 1980s; on both occasions, TV crews carried cable and huge cameras into our homes to give viewers a sense of the homelife of Washington D.C.’s wackiest film reviewer. A few decades later, during his last visit to Davis in the summer of 2002, I interviewed dad on my radio show. We shared a stage, as it were. Reflecting on that visit, I miss his flamboyant theatricality, and his stories. Now my own kids join me on the radio to read and tell me their stories, and one of them sometimes plays the saxophone.

Show business trailblazers share tips and sometimes the stage with their famous children. Think of the advantages that Rob Reiner, Marlo Thomas, and Kiefer Sutherland had when they were starting their TV careers, with such fathers to look up to. And for the viewers, a generation growing up enjoying performances by one member of the family are always curious to see how the torch is passed to the children.

We recognize this phenomenon in other fields, as well. This coming Thursday, for example, the retired Sacramento State professor Kathryn Hohlwein will read her poetry with her daughter Laura Hohlwein in an art gallery that is filled with the younger Hohlwein’s art. What a talented family! While the pair’s genius will be on full display, I’m most pleased that Poetry Night on Thursday can play a part in making memories that will last the rest of the lives of this mother and daughter duo.

I think of what memoirist Maya Angelou wrote this about her mom in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: “To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.” I hope you get to create some memories with your hurricanes and rainbows, whoever they are, and no matter what sort of art or performance you two create together.

In addition to issues raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on American states, days of the week, chocolate bars, images of grandparents, proud moms, Billboard charts, mispronounced French names, starches, the example of Monarch butterflies, wolves in strange places, big games, angular momentum, nicknames, popular beams, populous islands, high temperatures, pollinators, accomplished prospects, best-sellers, numbers of flags, states that are not Oklahoma, cities with basketball teams, people who don’t hole up with tycoons, predators, maladies, heavenly mistakes, beautifications, labor, beards, dangerous substances, monsters, foodstuffs, and Shakespeare.

I hope to see you tonight for Pub Quiz with some special guests, and Thursday night for an evening of Hohlwein artistry!

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

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

P.P.S. “I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore.”Amy Tan in The Joy Luck Club

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Having learned to read with the help of my mom the librarian and the daily arrival of The Washington Post, I remember well the Carter years when Post headlines lamented how difficult it was to take out any sort of loan. Around that time, Johnny Carson remarked that “Scientists have developed a powerful new weapon that destroys people but leaves buildings standing — it’s called the 17% interest rate.”

Compound interest is a powerful force, as Einstein reminds us. Most of us who buy houses pay more for the interest on our loans than the cost of our homes themselves. Because of this, many of us feel like that we work for the banks, even if we actually work for UC Davis or the local Irish Pub. Eventually, if you are lucky, compound interest also works in your interest, especially if you start saving early for retirement. Depending on how long we live, my wife Kate and I hope eventually for compound interest to benefit our children and our charities. Saving more than you owe is a marvelous feeling, I imagine, a feeling that comes to Americans later and later in their lives, if at all.

Many of us take years to try to control the deleterious effect of compound interest in our lives. Habits work that way, too. Many of us develop bad habits (especially when we are young), and then at the beginning of the year, we resolve to break all those habits. For example, I saw so many new faces gathered around me this past Sunday morning! I admire people who use time in the gym or time on the meditation cushion to reconnect with their best selves.

When we implement automatic plans to act on our best intentions, it could be said that the “flip” in our habits mirrors the “flip” in our (hoped for) relationship with interest and banks: our habits begin to work for us. Every January, we develop goals and resolve to check items off long lists. W.H. Auden once said that “Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.” [Editor’s Note: If he were writing today, Auden would surely note that this aphorism holds or should hold true for any person, regardless of gender or gender identity.]

Course syllabi, such as the ones that I’ve been revising over this holiday break, also represent a series of plans and promises. As a member of the professional writing faculty at UC Davis, I try in all my classes to remind my students of the relationship between clear and purposeful thinking, and clear writing. It takes many writers, such as myself, a lifetime (rather than the mere ten weeks of an academic quarter) to understand this dynamic meaningfully. The work towards a goal is usually more important than accomplishing the goal, for via the work, we grow.

We would all like to think and communicate more clearly, and to do so we form and implement our plans to open our eyes. With this wish in mind, some of us harness the power of mindfulness to interrupt all our routines, whether helpful or unhelpful, so that we might make purposeful decisions about our lives, rather than merely adhering unthinkingly to habits. Sometimes the most purposeful decision is to refrain from acting. Instead, we should more often take time to take notice, to reflect, and, at least once a week, to settle.

When Kate and I lived in London one long, dark, and stormy fall, we lamented the looming rainclouds and the constant rain. Kate remembers closing her umbrella on only a couple occasions during that entire semester, so that she might gaze with nostalgia and longing at a patch of blue sky. Meanwhile, a few decades later on the other side of the world we celebrate the rain, hoping for all our Californian sakes that precipitation would revisit us later than expected in the spring, and start earlier than expected in the fall, filling our mountaintops with deep snow. I wish such relief would visit all of us who need it. As I write this, an entire continent of people and animals are wishing in vain for rain.

You can’t always get what you want, Jagger and Richards promised us more than 50 years ago. When it comes to saving for a rainy day, the habits we make (or are told to make), or an entire season of rain, you might just find (if you take the time to notice) that what you need, what we all need from ourselves and from each other, is much different from what we wanted, and much more nourishing and sustaining than what we could have expected.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, and on the following: arrows, prime ministers, American dialects, equidistance, famous witches, actresses who dance like lank jogs, grand estates, musical genres, rules, x-rays, the question of symptoms, musical coaches, unexpected visitations at Christmastime, famous sisters, international gratitude, programmable memory, ways to live, tigers, exports, sequel exceptions, Texans, unlikely ideals, states of mind, fictional rude film critics, geographical inertia, transplanted oilmen, cut ties, cats, small dog comparisons, words that start with J, and Shakespeare.

I’m starting a new year with an experiment. If I send the newsletter out first thing in the morning, rather than on a Monday afternoon, will more subscribers open it, read it, and then resolve to attend the Quiz? I bet for the new year you would like to spend more time with friends, and away from your devices. If so, resolve to join us tonight. And happy new year!

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

Twitter: @yourquizmaster

P.S. Here are three questions from the last Pub Quiz of the last decade:

1. Mottos & Slogans. For about 30 years, what product promised “the pause that refreshes”?  
2. Internet Culture. The internet has been buzzing over the character from The Rise of Skywalker whom critics say had unfairly limited screen time and who shares a name with a flower. Name her.  
3. Newspaper Headlines. According to the Health section of today’s New York Times, “[t]he average American eats about [how many] teaspoons of added sugar a day”? Is the number closest to 7, 17, or 37?  

P.P.S. “The past is a great place and I don’t want to erase it or to regret it, but I don’t want to be its prisoner either.” Mick Jagger

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Trending this morning on Twitter was the phrase “page 364 of 365.” It’s almost time to turn the final page at the end of a long year, one which caps off a long decade. My mom, who was born in the 1930s, is about to enter her ninth decade. Kirk Douglas is about to enter his eleventh. In “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot tells us that “Life is very long.” Meanwhile, John Lennon tells us that “Life is very short, and there’s no time / For fussing and fighting, my friend.” With these opposed forms of wisdom, can we work it out?

To focus on the length or brevity of a life is to embrace a particular narrative, or, if you prefer, to adopt a particular attitude. Shakespeare said, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” a positive approach, while the aforementioned T.S. Eliot took a somewhat darker tone in The Waste Land:

I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only

We think of the key, each in his prison

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.

For some, the 2010s has been a dark decade. For example, we know that fewer Americans own stocks today than did at the beginning of the recession of 2007 and 2008. We all must decide what sort of practices, attitudes, or narratives might help us to leave the darkness behind us. Having read books this month by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Pema Chödrön, and the 14^th Dalai Lama, I feel obligated to share a sample of what I have learned.

In particular, I’ve been reading about tonglen, a Buddhist meditation practice that involves both the Tibetan term of tong, which means “giving” or “sending,” and the len, which means “receiving” or “taking.” I understand this to mean taking (or breathing) in another’s concern, worry, or suffering, and then sending (or breathing) out coolness, freshness, and discernment as a momentary stay against the suffering.

I think of this practice as having three stages. In the first stage, one acknowledges with appreciation that others are suffering in the same way, or from the same cause, that I am suffering. This makes one feel less isolated, and more connected to others outside the self. John Lennon said that reality is “a dream we dream together.”

The second stage involves wishing that the relief that one knows, even momentarily, resulting from one’s sitting or meditation practice may be felt by all who suffer as one does. The third stage involves actually seeking out and taking in the suffering of others, holding it for a moment, and then breathing it out while also breathing out freshness and healing to those who suffer.

This might be a lot to ask of a simple meditation session, but this practice of tonglen also substitutes a positive narrative for the sorts of narratives that anguish us, whether they be reliving difficulties of the past, or reliving difficulties yet to come. It has been said that worrying is like praying for what you don’t want. Mark Twain said, “There has been much tragedy in my life; [and] at least half of it actually happened.”

Twain’s folksy optimism is welcome, but as this decade comes to a close, we all know many people who are struggling and who are suffering. For myself, I know some who have chronic illnesses, and some who have deadly illnesses. Some are estranged from those they love, including their families and extended families. Some are finding their talents or labors insufficiently recognized or remunerated. Some see multiple forms of injustice, and wonder if what they do is enough.

By focusing our attention on the alleviation of the suffering of others, we may find that the practice of tonglen or another form of mindful meditation allows us to strengthen ourselves so that we can better support others, as well as to create different narratives from those that vex us. I hope you find yourself ever growing, with your eyes ever opening, in this coming decade, and that all of us can free ourselves from those recursive narratives that needlessly limit our awareness and our potential.

 In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following topics: title characters, sharks, lollypops, endangered newspapers, headphones, important signatures, rulers, the polls, centrifugal forces, matrimony, parents’ basements, attempts at equality, prime ministers, famous weddings, alternatives to insects and birds, refreshing pauses, flowers, teaspoons of sugar, Greek culture, contemporary inventions, our completed decade, addresses, hit singles, aces, acids, Oscar-winning producers, U.S. Presidents, big productions, powerful stars, science fiction films, beloved Americans, amazing names, classic novels, popular plays, Walt Disney, retrospective reflections, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us this evening for the final Pub Quiz of the 2010s! Thanks for spending so many Monday nights with me during this year, and this decade. I really appreciate it.

Your Quizmaster

Http://www.yourquizmaster.com

P.S. Poetry Night returns on January 16.

P.P.S. Here are five questions from our holiday quiz last week:

1. Science. What singular N word refers to the ability of the brain to change continuously throughout an individual’s life?  
2. Books and Authors. What is the name of the O. Henry story that tells of a young husband and wife and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money?  
3. Current Events – Star Wars.  Domestically, did the new Star Wars film take in closest to $80 million, $160 million, $240 million, or $320 million in its first weekend?  
4. Sports. What two CA sports teams will be competing against each other at the Staples Center on Christmas Day, 2019?  
5. Shakespeare.   Two of Shakespeare’s three mentions of Christmas appear in a play with three L’s in its title. Name the play.  

P.P.P.S. “Ring out the false, ring in the true.” Alfred Lord Tennyson