Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

How do I love the Pub Quiz? Let me count the ways.

I love the Monday afternoon writing prompts, the delicious mix of protein and healthy fat in the Dr. Andy Salad, the tasty cocktails, the time spent with Kate and often one or more of our kids at the pre-PQ meal, the reading I get to do while preparing quizzes, my necessary attentiveness to world events, the simplicity of the Monday evening wardrobe, the opportunity to clean out my home two swag items at a time, the brief chats with the proprietors of Bizarro World (appreciated donors of weekly swag), the building thrum of revelers waiting for the chime to ring, the vainglorious buffoonery of the opening spiel, and the sight of the slow early-meal eaters skedaddling out the door once the boisterous and near-deafening welcome begins.

But most of all I appreciate the friendships I have made at the Irish Pub, and at the other events where I have hosted pub quizzes at charity, school, or corporate events. I have dined (even outside the pub) with pub quiz friends, helped them move furniture, delivered books to their homes, met them for Hollywood movies, attended their yard sales, attended their readings at The Avid Reader, consulted with them during my public office hours, attended pool parties at their homes, met them at a Sacramento nightclub (that was years ago), written them letters of recommendation, visited their art openings, donated to their charity events and fundraisers, thanked them for attending my own head-sheering events for children’s cancer research, greeted them at poetry readings, sang for their birthdays, and even, on a couple occasions, joined them at a competing trivia night. Isn’t that scandalous!?

Sometimes our activities together have transcended the incidental. Pub Quiz participants have counseled my daughter at Davis Senior High School, visited the house during times of family injury of illness, and babysat my children. I have even officiated the marriage of two couples who got to hear my voice first at a Pub Quiz. Imagine that!

These days, I typically stay up past one in the morning only when grading my student essays, when I am working on a writing project, or when I can’t put down an inspiring book. But this past Saturday, I stayed up talking past that hour with friends whom I have encountered at many different events, restaurants, and street corners here in the city of Davis. After much interrupted planning, Kate and I got to dine at the home of local friends whom we would not know so well, or feel so endeared to, were it not for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz. I’m grateful for that, and for them.

I once encountered a memorable tweet by a Mormon comedian and commentator. It read simply, “Nobody talks about Jesus’ miracle of having 12 close friends in his 30s.” I know thousands of people, but close friends are a modern miracle, I think, one that I am celebrating and expressing thanks for right here at the end of the personal essay portion of the weekly Pub Quiz newsletter. I hope that you can sustain such miracles in your own personal life, no matter your age or proximity to affectionate, note-taking religious acolytes.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz may touch on topics raised above, but it will certainly take on the following this evening: twins with secrets, the Beyoncé trajectory, the airport problems with hamburger, press conferences, shipwrecks, hidden hotspots, chickens, unlikely landslides, obstructions, places to drink juice, gun rights and wrongs, the really rich, the question of metabolism, jeering music critics, bicycles, traitors, famous brothers, social media experts, Primetime Emmys, unstable economics, significant predators, relative taxation, Caribbean vacation opportunities, Viking diets, Jason Statham, incomplete swimming lessons, grand islands, the question of Africa, young Californians, oil money, dented gums on The Simpsons, and Shakespeare.

Don’t we have fun? I hope you will join us this evening for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Word Puzzles. Using capital letters, what five-letter present-tense verb looks the same whether right-side-up or upside-down?  
2. Pop Culture – Music. The top-selling Ed Sheeran song of 2018 begins with these two lines: “I found a love for me / Darling just dive right in.” Name the song. If you were going to answer “Shape of You,” that’s wrong.  
3. Sports: Basketball. Former Rookie of the Year Damian Lillard received four NBA All-Star selections and is one of four players in his team’s franchise history to become a four-time All-Star. Name his team.  

P.S. Gary Snyder is reading at the Natsoulas Gallery this coming Friday night at 7. Once in a lifetime!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.” Jonathan Swift

Casual readers of political history think that President Trump was the first president to contact the leader of another country to compel that leader to investigate the son or daughter of the U.S. president’s political opponent.

Even if you don’t count the crucial help in 2016 of the Russian overlords of the NRA for a moment, Trump was part of a well-established 21^st-century tradition of such skullduggery. Now the truth can be revealed.

It is not widely known that one of Mitt Romney’s five sons (even today we don’t know if it was ‎‎Craig Romney, Tagg Romney, ‎Matt Romney, ‎Josh Romney, or Ben Romney) did not plan to have children. This is surprising because Mitt had 18 grandchildren at the time that he was running for president in 2012; evidently all Romneys have certain familial obligations. Well, you know who DID discover at the time of the yearly Romney French Riviera vacation that there was a Romney son who was considering having no children? Barack Obama. People don’t remember how well he milked that Romney scandal. How else do you think he was re-elected? Thanks for your help with that, Nicolas Sarkozy!

Now, of course, John McCain was born at Coco Solo, Panama (which, coincidentally, is also the name of one of Han Solo’s granddaughters). Recently unsealed Presidential records have revealed that then Senator Obama and then Panamanian president Martin Torrijos had many conversations about this what they called McCain’s “Central American Roots.” Evidently the Senator from Illinois and presidential candidate promised future additional Canal dredging work contracts in exchange for photographs of the baby McCain wearing a “McCain for Herbert Hoover” onesie on a Panamanian beach in October of 1936. This might explain why the Arizona Senator was so flustered during the 2008 financial crisis.

In 2004, President George W. Bush, hoping for a second term, telephoned the then president of Vietnam, Trần Đức Lương, and told him that his country could expect significantly more military aid if Trần Đức Lương himself would make a large personal contribution to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which he did. It was a beautiful phone call.

Bush was confident that this tactic would work because in 2000, his brother Jeb had successfully negotiated with Festus Mogae, the onetime President of Botswana (in power from 1998-2008), regarding Gore daughter Karenna’s recent trip to the African nation. Evidently she had haggled rather rudely with a shopkeeper! Mogae promised the Bush family actual footage of the overseas incident in exchange for “future considerations” (which he received). Eventual Bush cabinet member and Department of the Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne was even dispatched to Botswana to help with the Mogae re-election campaign.

They decided on this campaign slogan: “Don’t Mess with Festus.”

So, as you can see, Trump hinging innocent “favors” to hundreds of millions of our American tax dollars of military aid to Ukraine is not so odd. Those in the know see this as contemporary presidential politics as usual. As David Hume said, “The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will somehow address an issue peripherally raised above, as well as the following: love as a driving force, the state of California, guards with cymbals, state borders, Samuel L. Jackson, residual bleachers, angelic enjoining, pianists, short gentlemen, momentous trials, bodies of water, contiguous states, darling dives, integration, British poets, bonus deals, Idaho, popular reads, chemical bonds, escape plans, Indiana, private colleges, Oscar nominees, AI sneezes, particulate matter, disappearing vocations, monkeys, apps that record audio, Colorado, and Shakespeare.

Poetry Night Thursday will feature Camille Norton and Maya Khosla as our featured poets. Join us Thursday night at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery.

See you this evening!

Your Quizmaster

Here are three questions from a previous quiz:

1. Japanese Cities. The second most populous city in Japan has four syllables in its name. What is it? Angeles    
2. Food and Drink. Vermiculture depends on what W word?  
3. Books and Authors. What Chinese author was the founder of philosophical Taoism?

P.S. “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” – Ernest Hemingway.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

For tonight’s competition, I had planned five questions on Dromio, but then I saw the two captains of the team that won last week’s quiz unlocking their bikes outside of the Veterans’ Theatre yesterday, so I changed my mind about asking questions about The Comedy of Errors.

As I write this, my faculty colleagues int eh University Writing Program are finishing their lunches at our fall welcome. I feel so lucky to be working with such diverse and accomplished colleagues. For example, sitting at my table today are Steve Magagnini, the longtime race and ethnicity reporter at the Sacramento Bee who always presents himself as the most positive and humble people I know (despite his prize-winning recognition for his important work, even though his contract with the Bee has ended).

Sitting next to Steve is Sasha Abramsky, the author of many books on political and cultural topics who, as a reporter, has been leading the charge in exposing public corruption. Born not far from where I met my wife Kate (in London, England), Sasha studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Balliol College, Oxford. If you ever have a chance to see one of Sasha’s public addresses, take advantage of it! Meanwhile, you can find hi give talks about his various books online.

Each of my University Writing Program colleagues deserves the attention and love that I am sharing with Steve and Sasha here, and I’m sure that would be true for the friends who join you at your Pub Quiz team Monday evenings. So much intellectual curiosity! So much cultural capital! I could have chosen to live in any number of cosmopolitan capitals, but people like these remind me why I chose this town, this university, and this life.

As the students return to clog our streets and bike paths, I hope you have similar reasons to feel and express gratitude.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following topics: questions of travel, light years, the unlikely example of Ajax, words that start with Q, time travel, recognizable traits, drama, friends, what counts as dressing, philosophical authors, unpleasant helpers, distant relatives, comparisons to Los Angeles, millions of visitors, the Moon, sandals, people named Heather, aromatic spices, yeast, learners who are also ladies, hills, fannings, elephants, rhythms, alphabetized verbs, computer leaps, who vs. whom, alternative bookings, and, of course, Shakespeare.

I look forward to seeing you this evening at the Pub!

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 2012 Pub Quiz. What are the answers? Who knows?

1. Books and Authors.   What founding father, author of The Gospel Preacher: A Book of Twenty Sermons, once said, “Glass, china and reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended”?  
2. Retail Sales. According to a profile published in the Sacramento Bee in 1990, Cal Worthington grossed $316.8 million in 1988, making him at the time the largest single owner of what kind of retail chain?     
3. Irish Culture.  The population of all of Ireland, the Republic and Northern Ireland, is closest to that of which of the following US States, presented here from most populous to least? Pennsylvania, Tennessee, or Nevada.  

P.S. “[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air … Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.”  Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

This past Friday I got to host the yearly Summer Institute on Teaching and Technology (SITT) at UC Davis. I’ve been involved in coordinating or hosting SITT for what feels like 20 years, and it is an exciting (and draining) culmination of a lot of the work I do every year with the instructional designers and graduate student researchers who are part of my team at Academic Technology Services.

Our theme this year was “Building in Active Learning.” Reflecting on that phrase, my poet’s brain reflected on all the “acting” we do as faculty as we attempt to “build learning” in our UC Davis classrooms. The students happily watch us (as faculty) at the front of our classrooms, sometimes happy that the “sage is on the stage,” but also wondering what exactly they should be doing while we ham it up in the front of the room while wearing a lapel microphone. We faculty feel that all the world’s our stage as we flip the next textbook page.

Now, of course, part of our “act” as teachers is reacting, reacting to what the students with their projects and responses to our assignments are building and rebuilding. Students don’t always immediately grasp the lessons we so dutifully create for them. In fact, sometimes it works this way: we build, they burn (or crash and burn), and then they rebuild, and we react. And then, we invite further rebuilding in response to our reacting, sometimes acting as if our reacting was the point of all this building.

I have learned, for myself, that my lectures can also lead to what might be called “churning.” How do we prevent the churning? By imagining that our lessons are giving our students kindling for burning! Sometimes this burning (curiosity, etc.) takes place only when we faculty learn to spurn the lectern.

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Benvolio says that “one fire burns out another’s burning.” I love that. Sometimes the professor’s impressive fires take up all the intellectual and active fuel and oxygen in the room. I argue that, rather than being the sole steward of this bonfire that we are imagining,  the faculty member should light the long wick and stand back, in fact, stand way up in the back of the auditorium so that our students will engage in active learning without the added pressure of our nearby looming.

We faculty also need to do a better job of calling on our students, even when they don’t want us to. I say, pluck the student out from all her peers; for a moment, confirm her realized performance fears! Such a student quails, she pales when I put her on the spot, hoisting her ideas upon the scales. She takes no pleasure in all this measuring, but eventually her confidence grows when I let her take a turn, encourage her to stand; she will even learn something during the long walk up to the lectern. We allow too much sitting in our active learning buildings!

The meditation center has its gongs, while churches and schools have their bells. In each case, the ardent practitioner’s heart will sing if we provide the room and mic for them to do so. But we must spend more time reflecting on what active part students will play in all this learning. In my computer classrooms, that means letting my students wield the whiteboard markers. I like to think that Clark Kerr, the UC President who came up with California’s multiversity approach, would have handed over the marker. When we give students something to do, rather than just providing them content to record as if they were merely able transcriptionists, then we will find students willing and eager to learn and, when the bell rings or the gong gongs, sometimes we will find them even unwilling to adjourn.

For me, my primary legacy, and my most fulfilling work, would be the mentoring relationships that I have built with my launching and launched students. As Jim Rohn says, “Whatever good things we build end up building us.”

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as on the following: imaginary workplaces, Joseph Haydn, Alabama, significant exporters, unexpectedly Irish folklore, child labor laws, worker bees, technology owners, Asian parents, poets on beaches, loosely-defined theology, North Carolina, anticipatory measures, translated accomplishments, proxies, American engineers, phone numbers, dinosaurs, ornithology, lucky acts of dodging, keeping up with the Fords, grocery stores, lessons we can learn from twins, big cats, U.S. Senators, tickets, chimney sweeps, rivers, French speakers, famous literary characters, nurses, prize-winning fiction, falcons, welcome and forgotten “miracles,” space, rookie sensations, fire labs, American cars, repeated letters, numerical changes, rich plumbers, the rust belt, median ages, primary protagonists, and Shakespeare.

Speaking of Shakespeare, the new Davis Shakespeare Festival production opens this Friday, and tonight our theatrically-inflected pub quiz returns at 7. Last week everyone who arrived by 6:15 secured a table, while those who arrived closer to 7 were asked to wait and see what might turn up. I hope you will plan accordingly!

See you tonight.

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com  

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster 

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster 

yourquizmaster@gmail.com 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Newspaper Headlines. As we learned in an article in Politico recently, Liberty University has about how many online and face-to-face students? Is it closest to 25,000, 50,000, or 100,000?
2. National Mammals. What mammal has been chosen as the U.S. National Mammal?
3. Bulldozers. What monosyllabic word do we use for the bulldozer’s large metal plate used to push soil, rocks, and gravel?

P.S. Poetry Night Thursday at 8 at the Natsoulas Gallery will feature Mischa Kuczynski and Elana K. Arnold, two sisters who graduated from the graduate creative writing program at UC Davis. Please join us!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Some people who follow history, or who read historical novels, gravitate to one time period over all others. For example, my friend Christy English, an author of historical novels and romances situated in distant lands, has written about Eleanor of Aquitaine, who spent most of her intriguing life in the 12^th century. Others spend their time imagining the wild west, Jane Austen’s England, or the Nara period of Japan. Some prefer to read about revolutions in America, France, or even Ireland, looking for lessons from times of tumult that we as individuals have been spared. While it’s fun to visit the past, eventually we have to let it go, lest we be dragged.

When we gravitate to these faraway time periods, do we do so because of what the age offers, or what the age could not yet offer? For example, Tolkien’s Middle Earth depends upon medieval technologies, but also magic, while a Victorian novel will rarely involve people being interrupted at dinner by telemarketers. Once I interviewed the prominent novelist Joyce Maynard on my radio show, and she revealed that she situates all of her novels in the 1990s or before so that none of her characters would keep disappearing to send or receive texts, Google the context of topics that come up in conversation, or insistently show their friends hilarious YouTube videos.

How many of us make decisions according to what we wish to avoid, rather than according to what we wish to do? As a high school student, did I limit my college search to city schools because I wanted big-city culture or because I wanted to avoid small-town parochialism? When Kate and I consider where we eventually might want to retire, do we choose Davis because it is bikeable and because we have so many friends here, or another location because it is more affordable? You might ask yourself a question like this every Monday night: Do we attend the Pub Quiz because we love the competition, the hubbub, and the time with friends, or do we, like readers of a Joyce Maynard novel, appreciate the break from gadgets and pixels for a couple hours?

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was choosing the “Four Freedoms” he wished to emphasize in his 1941 State of the Union Address, 11 months before Pearl Harbor, he settled on two freedoms “of” preferred practices (speech and religion), and two freedoms “from” unwanted burdens (want and fear). America’s formal involvement in World War II would test our relationship with these freedoms, and subsequent presidents have had vexed relationships with all four of these American concerns, but I think they give us a helpful framework for understanding how we gauge freedom in our own personal choices and pastimes, our obsessions and our phobias, our obstacles and our motivations.

I reread speeches by Lincoln, Roosevelt(s), or King from time to time to help remind myself how I want to spend my day, my year, or my life. As Zig Ziglar says, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.” Thanks to all of you who bathe before joining us at the Pub Quiz on Monday nights. I’m expecting way more than 100 motivated people tonight, each of us embracing or escaping something, together.

Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions about topics raised above, as well as the following: The Journal of Nutrition, sweetness, name confusion, the orders of heroes, sporting bullies, current events, colorful book titles, magpies, ways back, menus in national parks, American royal families, M for Mendelssohn and masks, people who know Avogadro’s number, dogs not named Rover, romantic hammers, smart as a post, actors who have won Oscars in unexpected categories, superheroines, strong countries, rocks, art galleries, ethical syringes in politics, pansexuality, SoCal acronyms, news or information, three-word titles, prominent universities, stories on stage, right angles, two verb hits, storytelling, metal plates, roaming examples, Chicago ends, silly Siri, special deliveries, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us tonight at the Pub Quiz. So many people moved around or moved away at the end of August. We may need to recruit some new players!

Best,

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

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

1. Great Americans.  David Strathairn played Secretary of State William H. Seward in what 2012 film?  
2. Unusual Words: Three six-letter P words with pretty much the same meaning. The first word is “priest,” and the second is “pastor.” What is the third? 
3. Pop Culture – TV.  What show features Hugh Laurie, Lisa Edelstein, Omar Epps, Olivia Wilde, & Amber Tamblyn?  

P. P. S. Tomorrow night, the 10^th of September, at 7:30, I will be hosting a read-through of some scenes from an upcoming production of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors with members of the Davis Shakespeare Festival. Please join us at the Avid Reader bookstore for this casual preview of what promises to be a marvelous presentation of the classic comedy.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

As I write to you on this Labor Day morning, my French Bulldog is sprawled out in the grass of our back yard, her nose about three inches from where the morning sun is slowly invading out yard. This is the longest stretch she has ever spent untethered outside,  so I imagine she is contemplating rascalry. Atypically, both my boys are asleep at this early hour, and thus I have a few minutes for the newsletter and to write a poem.

My wife Kate has been in Denver all weekend (for those of you keeping score, last weekend, it was Chicago), so the boys and I are getting less done around thee house than usual, though I am keeping up with my grading and my poetry self-assignments. Sometimes while researching a pub quiz question, I come across strange and rejected topics, such as the water-spinach known as “swamp cabbage.” Such a phrase might prompt associative thoughts about whatever is nearby, such as my dog, and then I am writing instead of grading.

Indeed, a day off in the back yard gives me the perfect opportunity to make up stories about our French bulldog Margot, to explore outrageous hyperbole in the form of a sonnet. Robert Hass once said that “You owe the truth nothing; you owe the poem everything.” “Appetite” is my mendacious response to that:

Appetite

While I was distracted, the dog swallowed the lobster whole.

Thereafter, she ran right up the palm tree as if aided by rocketry

and returned with palm body parts, in fact, with the heart of the palm in her jaws.

Energized she buried and dug up again swamp-cabbages in the back yard;

not the small ones, mind you, that are more ornamental than functional,

but the huge variegated swamp-cabbages that could sustain a borscht.

Not satisfied with mere Nylabone, Kong puzzle treats, or sawed-off antlers,

our 4-H hound considers a wide range of tubers, from the Jerusalem artichoke

to the hog potato, to the white flame Chinese yam, to be fair game.

We find their roots, their stems and rinds, splintered on the front stoop.

Masked, she prefers to burgle, and not herself to have been burgled.

Indeed, she once chased a burglar, a flimflam man, into the sunflower patch,

returning with burglar remnants, with what might be called “deliverables.”

Such excursions remind us that our Fido favors the flavors of flesh over fiber.

Sometimes I think that our animal companions allow themselves to be “domesticated” only to humor us, and to keep the kibbles coming. Craving adventure, they might chase after all their appetites if someone were not here to guide them. In this way, our dogs are like most people we know.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz may feature questions about some of the topics raised above, as well as the following: prime numbers, elevators, headquarters, election results, trail-blazers, popular music, social security, serpent similes, regretful teammates, late starts, Dana Gioia, ungulates, teenagers with adult responsibilities, world capitals, commonwealths, seconds of screen-time, Penguin classics, web browsers, opportunities for percussion, the suffering that comes from having one’s eyes opened, best friends, repeated fates, military words, big tech companies, Colorado culture, local heroes, elemental humans, little fires and big fines, the smell of happiness, voice actors, national slogans, and Shakespeare. I regret that the lack of questions about swamp-cabbages.

Poetry Night is Thursday. Join us at the Natsoulas Gallery at 8. Meanwhile, see you tonight at de Vere’s Irish Pub, everyone’s favorite eatery!

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

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

1. Irish Culture. What west coast county of Ireland shares a name with what 2018–2019 U.S. News & World Report calls the best hospital in the United States?  
2. Countries of the World. The largest and most populous city in Western Asia has more than 8.8 million residents in the city and 15 million in the larger metropolitan area. In what country is it found?  
3. Chicago Nicknames. What is the affectionate local nickname for the remarkable reflective Chicago sculpture called “Cloud Gate”?      

P.S. “Dogs’ lives are too short. Their only fault, really.” Agnes Sligh Turnbull

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Someone asked me recently if the number of poetry readings in Davis has outgrown the hunger for poetry among the local citizenry. My friend wondered if Davis Poet Laureate James Lee Jobe hosted too many readings.

I reminded my friend that we are all bound to read something. Even those who shackle themselves to their TV remotes, their bingeable content, their subscribed YouTube channels, will reach on occasion for the cereal box, the alumni magazine, or the fortune cookie fortune. Our phones sit obediently on our hips or in our purses, offering even the aspirationally anti-literate (like my friend) the addictive murmur of the fake news headline, the shareable tweet, or the hashtagged Instagram viral photo caption. Readers who depend upon only on this slight content, who read unwittingly, almost unwillingly, think they don’t pay a cost. One thinks of the isolated man, buried amid his own belongings, who thinks the air will last longer if he takes shallower breaths.

I say, step outside, breathe deep, and mix in a book (or at least a poem) once in a while. For me, if it is a sin to covet poetry on a Thursday night or a Sunday afternoon, then I am the most offending soul alive. I say, envy not the man who Barcalounges with his remote and the uncaring company of the televised golf announcer, whispering bogeys and birdies into his numb ear, or the football announcer (is it football season yet? I don’t even know) who pricks the adrenaline nerves of the once-muscled teeth-gritting shut-in, the angry man who hungers for he does not know what, but thinks he can feed it on any given Sunday.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think such a person would join us at the Pub Quiz or join me at a poetry reading. No, let such a man, sequestered in his quiet querulousness, rest comfortably in his home seemingly unawares, even though his dulled unconsciousness tallies with each passing missing metaphor the opportunity cost of his inactivity. For this man and for many others, this day will be immediately forgotten, breakfast itself forgotten by lunchtime, the forgone conversations missed, the walks untaken, the books unread. And SCIENCE unscreamed.

But me, I shall long remember this day, the gentle August breeze that blows us to towards E Street on Monday evenings, the bass-line of almost discernible songs heard on the Irish Pub speakers, the friends waving their greeting as they pass our regular booth, and the relations joining me – a family of five once more before Christmas – for a family and community ritual that warrants putting down our remotes and our devices and joining we few, we happy few, to laugh and compete with the best of Davis once again.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics suggested above, as well as on the following: Pashtuns, beneficiaries, Kermit the Frog, esteemed peers, soccer teams, locks of love, debut novels, mathematics, ice carvings, lakes, Spanish explorers, comedic relief on the Serengeti, cardinal directions, names that are not Giorgio or Guillermo, oil refineries, Latin initials, literary decades, bays, dystopic robot visits, populous cities on the water, positional egos, notable couples, heavenly introductions, world records, bunches and collections, Twitter trends, scoops, University of Chicago, nodelessness, famous Fords, missy, challenging suburbs, photovoltaic power, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us this evening (evening is almost here). We love it when you join us.

Your Quizmaster

P.S. “Lateness showed that serene contempt for the illusion we call time which is so necessary to ensure the respect of others and oneself.” Rose Macaulay , Mystery at Geneva

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Two of my children wear a MedicAlert bracelets with their names on them. One has a deadly peanut allergy and a bleeding disorder, and the other was born with Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome, is nonverbal, and has been known to “elope.” I thought of them both this morning when I was getting ready to take our French bulldog on the long morning walk that is necessary if our puppy is going to remain calm during these long hot summer days in Davis.

Rather than a bracelet, I typically carry my phone and three sets of keys: one for the weekend, and two for work. They represent my identity, I suppose, as well as access to my home, my bike lock, and my on-campus offices. It’s rather silly that I also grab my driver’s license and a credit card when I leave for these walks. On the one hand, if I keel over on one of the arboreal greenbelts of South Davis, I would want the paramedics to find evidence of my identity when they rifle through my pockets, if only to know to which house they should return my dog and my son.

On the other hand, I’ve never had to show my driver’s license while out on a walk (police officers almost never ask for my papers), and I’ve not yet had to buy anything on the greenbelt. What do the contents of our pockets say about what we value? For example, I wonder how many of us associate our senses of self with where we live, what we drive and what we can buy.

I’m reading a book right now titled In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (an early chapter of the book actually inspired the anagram for tonight’s Pub Quiz). In this spiritual memoir, the author explores this concept of identity when he leaves the abbey that he heads (he’s an abbot) and begins a multi-year unaccompanied trip as a wandering mendicant. The book invites us to ask ourselves who we would be without the trappings of our status, whether those trappings include a Chase credit card, or a monk’s robes.

Spending our time insisting on our identity, and grasping after the objects that make us ourselves, we ensure dukkha, the sort of suffering that Buddhists translate as “unsatisfactory and painful.” When we recognize the temporal and physical limitations on that identity, and therefore our own ephemerality, we might be taking the first step towards increased equanimity.

For most of us, even people who meditate every day, this equanimous state of mind is more an aspiration than a practice. And practices succeed best when we undertake them every day. This morning, for example, my pockets mostly empty, I got to practice a favorite form of meditative circumlocution, as well as attentive loving shared with my son and my dog, two of my many attachments that bring me the most joy.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the topics raised above, as well as the following: Georgia, American firsts, mendacity, Somalia, musical instruments, melting reactors, farm animals, one-word titles, rankings, illustrated books, chlorides and oxides, unsteady steps, languages and cultures, engines, books that were once extremely popular, pirates, the names of TV stars, bodies of water, sleep leaders, internet culture, stirring speeches, French operas, designers, civil rights, strange fruits, players who become coaches, unusual sports, hoods, pen names, table grapes, series of series, compassionate and musical kings, island adventures, train stations, and Shakespeare.

Please join us for the fun this evening!

Best,

Your Quizmaster
https://www.yourquizmaster.com

P.S. Poetry Night takes place Thursday. Our featured performers are retired Davis physician Charles Halsted – he has a new poetry book out – and poet, storyteller, and musician Angela James, visiting us from Sacramento. This would be a great week for you to join us! We meet at the Natsoulas Gallery Thursday night at 8, and I would gladly add your name to the open mic list.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

The newsletter is arriving late today because Kate and I went on a double-date last night, dining with new friends at the time that I am typically hard at work writing questions for your Pub Quiz. I love making new friends. Jim Rohn said famously that “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” so I thought I would arrange to dine with a couple for whom the husband seems as adoringly devoted to his wife as I aspire to be with Kate. Cynical people (most of us?) probably grow fatigued with all that adoration at the same table at the Tower Café in Sacramento.

Speaking of restaurants, I try not to, but sometimes I dine in restaurants other than de Vere’s Irish Pub (which, for the food and the service, remains my favorite). In the last couple weeks, Kate has been craving the fresh-fruit milkshakes made by the staff at Redrum Burger, so I obliged, bringing her home creamy delicacies with evidence of locally-grown raspberries and strawberries in each straw-ful or spoonful. During one of these trips to the restaurant formerly known as Murder Burger (a restaurant name that suggests truth in advertising?), I saw a dad who was bringing his wife and 18-year-old son to his favorite former haunt. The son was visiting six schools, I overheard, including Stanford and UC Berkeley, but the oversized dad ensured with this trip that his alma mater UC Davis was also on the list. Furthermore, he told the restaurant owner, he wanted to bring his son to the restaurant where he had packed so many calories while training to be a linebacker for the UC Davis football team.

Everyone was full of smiles and nostalgia during this visit, but only the proprietor knew that this would be this family’s final visit to the local diner, for the final closing time had already been scheduled, if not announced. My daughter Geneva and I recently stopped by the restaurant after seeing a marvelous Davis Shakespeare Festival musical, only to be told that Saturday night they were “out of food” because of the rush  of people wanting to visit Redrum Burger one last time. Come back tomorrow, we were told. The long lines shared on social media kept us away, and as of today, the restaurant is closed forever, another part of old Davis for Bob Dunning to reminisce about in his daily column in The Davis Enterprise.

The philosophers, the dharma-teaching Buddhist lamas, and the poets are better equipped than Your Quizmaster to remind us that life is ephemeral, and perhaps cyclical. Having recently reread the Tennessee Williams summer story “Happy August the Tenth,” I will share here a Williams poem that might  compel you to reflect a moment on what has been lost, that some losses must be welcomed if there is to be a renewal, and that we can grow if we can let it go. (So literary! Expect a few more questions today on books and authors than usual.) Here’s the Williams poem, “We Have Not Long to Love”:

We have not long to love.

Light does not stay.

The tender things are those

we fold away.

Coarse fabrics are the ones

for common wear.

In silence I have watched you

comb your hair.

Intimate the silence,

dim and warm.

I could but did not, reach

to touch your arm.

I could, but do not, break

that which is still.

(Almost the faintest whisper

would be shrill.)

So moments pass as though

they wished to stay.

We have not long to love.

A night. A day….

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will take on the following topics: German technology, cohosts, (poems about) remade kelp, early anagrams, movies you’ve seen, Iron Maiden, people with beautiful names, agriculture, hilarious spies, green hardware, multiple births, frenemies, official clocks, spelling bees, retirement buddies, Oakland, names in the news, deep activities, long roads, psycho action, lake countries, minimal rainfall, Berlin welcome committees, two pieces for Jade, chaotic cutlery, superstitions, famous factotums, Charles Xavier, textiles and clothing, Hungary exports, outstanding parts, jobs for Saint George, California. former heroes without capes, broken hearts, sunset songs, hydrogen, findings, universities, seasonal starts, advancements, and Shakespeare.

Please join us for the Pub Quiz tonight, for I appreciate what you contribute to the conversation.

Your Quizmaster

P.S. Here are three questions from a 2016 quiz. Even I don’t know all the answers:

1. Pop Culture – Music. Speaking of groups that start with the letter C, C+C Music Factory had a huge 1991 hit with a song titled “Gonna Make You Sweat,” though everyone knew it better by its subtitle. What is that subtitle?
2. Sports.   Born in 1981, who is the only male tennis player to win five consecutive US Open titles? 
3. Science.   Starting with the letter S, what species of animal has a field metabolic rate that is the lowest ever recorded for any mammal in the world?