Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I’ve been tearing through audio books this summer, spending more than I should at Audible.com. It started with a couple film books as I was preparing for the Film as Narrative class that I am teaching for the Department of English during the first summer session, and now I am reading about Buddhism, working my way through titles such as Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery, by Chögyam Trungpa.

If I take the fast route, and if I hit the lights right, I can bike from my home in south Davis to my office on the west side of campus in the time it takes to listen to three Stevie Wonder songs. Typically and preferably, I take the long path to work, meandering comfortably along Putah Creek, and encountering no vehicles except for occasional other bicycles. This commute rewards me not only because of the fresh air and the opportunity to greet everyone along the green belt, but also because I take the time to listen to a chapter or more of my current book.

My recently restarted meditation process has resulted in one welcome benefit: a growing ability to focus. One way this manifests itself, I’ve discovered, is through my ability to listen to audio books at accelerated rates. Typical conversation is shared at about 150 words per minute, but I can play my audiobooks comfortably at about 150% speed and still follow, at least when I concentrate. For me, this is a practiced skill, one that can be further improved. For instance, I have blind friends in town for whom my sped-up rate of listening would be lugubriously slow – I’m amazed at how quickly and effectively they can process aural information.

Self-impressed with my practice of eating up the pages of books this summer, I still find myself zoning out whenever I bike for a short stretch alongside Interstate 80. I find that on West Chiles Road, just before Hamel Lane, the traffic noise interferes significantly with the speakers of the iPhone in my shirt pocket (I know not to use headphones on a bike). Sometimes I back the book up 30 seconds to see what I missed, while at other times I just resign myself to having missed 30 seconds of information, story, or poetry. At such moments I realize that most of us, including especially myself, are like bike commuters along a highway much of the time, in that we find that outside noise interferes with our own thinking processes. Some of us continue for years this way, welcoming other people’s noise and seeking any sort of distraction rather than merely sitting for a moment with our own thoughts.

As the Buddha said, “Irrigators channel waters; fletchers straighten arrows; carpenters bend wood; the wise master themselves.” Mastering one’s self may seem too ambitious for the summer. I would be happy just to practice better understanding what I am thinking about, and why.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight expect questions about undertakers, elves, German titles, taking cures, active compounds, kidney ailments, sweetness, eastern Europe, seas, consumerist autonomy, smaller than Taurus, what you can only imagine, momentous deaths, carboniferosity?, American cities, Harry Potter, David Bowie remarks, retired numbers, John Brown, harnesses, future slackers, bands that are filled with young men, Cheez Whiz, Scottish tips, divided houses, three initials, soft drinks, drivable city visits, facts that you know but which your teammates do not, bellicosity, limestone, world-changing books, rivers, fall dragons, Korea, future Fries, acts of rebellion, Miami, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us this evening. As Helen Keller says, “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.”

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. Books and Authors.   Who narrates F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby?   

1. Current Events.  What supermarket chain that is moving its headquarters from Woodland to Davis?  

1. Sports: World Cup Finals. Who lost to France?  

P.S. These are the last weeks for you to see the summer 2018 productions of the Davis Shakespeare Festival. Tickets are still available!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Have you ever noticed that we really only have four hills in Davis. One of the hills is manmade, Slide Hill of Slide Hill Park where children slide down the concrete incline on boxes left behind by previous children. I’m surprised bike helmets are not also handed out. Two of the hills are overpasses, passing over Interstate 80, the artery that connects the Atlantic to the Pacific. The fourth hill is found in the cemetery, which is now also an arboretum. Each of these hills deserves a visit.

Sometimes I bike up the Pole Line Road overpass so quickly that the top feels like an opened curtain, tickling my nose. The metaphor manifests itself in an actual tickle. I have to close my eyes while sneezing twice on the way down the steep hill, the bike itching towards the guardrail, the impact of the sternutation nearly throwing me, as if I were wearing a bronco. To fix this problem, I learned how to imagine cresting the overpass as I approach it, to get my sneezes safely out of the way.

Yesterday in the gathering room of the Davis Shambhala Center, just before the sitting, a four year old boy was walking among the adults saying “I can’t see because I am covering my eyes with my hands!” Then he removed his hands and said, “Now I can see.” It was almost like a sermon.

Friday, while wearing a red and blue shirt, I found a red and blue bracelet on 3rd Street here in Davis, so I put it on, noticing the match. It was Art About, so Heidi Bekebrede served me a cookie at The Artery. And then, on the bike ride home, I saw a tree, a red-tailed hawk, and the setting sun; I welcomed them in, again noticing the match.

Have you ever played “Rock Paper Scissors” with an octopus? I have. It goes like this: Rock? Tentacle. Paper? Tentacle. Scissors? Tentacle. Tentacle wins every time.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on recent movies, for this has been a summer of movies for me. I’m teaching a film class, I am a MoviePass subscriber, and I am married to Kate, my favorite cinephile. Also, I’ve recently joined the subscription service at Four-Star Movies, found in the back of Bizarro World, right next to our pub, so that I have easy and ongoing access to their 7,500 film titles. So expect more film questions in the coming weeks and months.

Tonight expect also questions about Michael Jackson, internet letters, video content delivery mechanisms, Tintern, thrillers, home country heroes, wielded pestles, narrators, Keanu Reeves, macromolecularity, big hits, preferred colors, heroes, Dubliners, everyday monsters, Australian dollars, writing credits, great Greeks, new alphabets, a musical imperative about one’s beloved, wasps, groups of four, menacing dogs, people named Jimmy, mariners, short capes, siblings, garden pavilions, indoor sports, ferocious women, understanding America, numbers that are divisible by five, Einstein and jazz, superheroes, monism, chemical clothes, patrilinear job titles, perambulations, and Shakespeare.

Did you know that we get even bigger crowds when it’s hot than when it is not? Plan accordingly, unless you don’t mind sitting outside.

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. Decarbonization. By banning fossil fuels, President Carlos Alvarado has set a goal of decarbonizing by 2021, which will mark 200 years of independence for what country whose name starts with the letter C?   

2. Fast Food Restaurants. The U.S. state with the most fast food restaurants per capita is found near or at the beginning of the alphabet, while the U.S. state with the least fast food restaurants per capita is found near or at the end of the alphabet. Name either state, but not both.  

3. Pop Culture – Music. Largely about pain, the video for a top-selling Imagine Dragons song of 2017 features a boxing match between Dan Reynolds and Dolph Lundgren. Name the one-word title of the song.  

P.S. Two Pub Quiz irregulars who happen to be established and respected authors are FEATURING at Poetry Night on Thursday, and they will both be reading FICTION! Find more on Naomi Williams and Evan White below:

Naomi J. Williams was born in Japan and spoke no English until she was six years old. She is the author of the novel Landfalls (FSG 2015), long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Zoetrope: All-Story, A Public Space, One Story, The Southern Review, and The Gettysburg Review. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and one-time winner, Naomi has an MA in Creative Writing from UC Davis. She lives in Davis, California, where she teaches creative writing and serves as co-director of the beloved literary series Stories on Stage Davis. Naomi’s new writing projects include a collection of short stories inspired by Japanese ghost stories and folktales, and a novel about the early 20th-century Japanese poet Yosano Akiko.

Evan White is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in English, with an emphasis in Creative Writing. As an undergraduate, White co-founded Absurd Publications and published an anthology of poetry and short fiction, All the Vegetarians in Texas Have Been Shot, and the creative journal The Oddity. He has designed and published half-a-dozen books as a freelance designer, including Pub Quizzes: Trivia For Smart People, Where’s Jukie?, and the children’s book Che the Rat Lives in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Evan has contributed stories to numerous programs on KDVS 90.3 FM, the UC Davis campus and community radio station. He serves the local literary community on the board of Stories on Stage Davis, and as the designer for Under the Gum Tree magazine in Sacramento. In 2016, his story “Patterson” received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award contest. He works as a graphic designer at UC Davis.

Guests are invited to arrive to Poetry Night early (by 7:45) to sign up for a spot on the open mic that will follow the readings by our featured poets. Please bring your poems, short stories, monologues, and songs. Performers with instruments are especially welcomed. Participants will be asked to limit their performances to five minutes or two items, whichever is shorter. The Poetry Night Reading Series is hosted by Davis poet laureate Dr. Andy Jones, and is supported by Musical Director Timothy Nutter, and Dr. Andy’s graduating interns. The after-party begins at 10 P.M. at de Vere’s Irish Pub. You might be familiar with it.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I wonder if a city such as Las Vegas will seem strange and irresponsible a decade, a half century, or a millennium from now, assuming there are still people in 3018 to take note of our obsessions and foibles. The 8,000 megawatts that Las Vegas uses daily, 20% of which comes from the city’s 40 large casinos, would power the entire state of Idaho. Do visitors consider such concerns when engaging with all those slot machine pixels, when strolling beneath blinding Strip lights, or when bundling up amid all that air conditioning?

Will we all someday live like this, separated from an environment that we have made unlivable, as foreseen by the dystopian science fiction worksThe Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritchby Philip K. Dick or Pixar’s WALL-E? Is it too late to make better choices? Perhaps in this coming century we will better understand and employ solar technology, so that Nevada and the rest of our desserts can bake solar panels, rather than our diminishing ice caps, and all our planet’s residents.

We can all make less wasteful choices. For example, this past weekend my family and I visited Stinson Beach, a place to commune with our nearby ocean. Despite the intense car traffic leading up to this fog-protected census-designated place with a population less than 1% that of Davis, and the illuminated road signs reminding tourists that one needs reservations to park at Muir Woods, a visit to Stinson Beach allows one to step away from the glowing “future” of Las Vegas, or even our busy present of our lives in Northern California, and instead spend some time in a never-changing past.

We know from the miracle of radiocarbon dating that a typical drop of water deep in the Pacific Ocean is about 1,000 years old, though the oceans themselves formed more than four billion years ago (I’m glad I’m not responsible for explaining the relationship between those two facts). The entertainments that awaited my family and me at Stinson Beach Saturday—the endless surf, the diggable sand, the pelagic birds (and no oil rigs)—are the same that have existed for each of those thousand or the past million years. Although these evergreen qualities of the beach were complemented by a sampling of my Kindle library and by my wife Kate’s amazing iPhone photography, the essence of our trip was timeless, or even outside of time.

Thoroughly sunscreened, Kate and I gripped the sand with naked feet and laughed at the seaside escapades of our children as the stress of the week or of the year faded from our shoulders. I was reminded of something Marcus Aurelius said: “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” Californians have access to delightful locales where we might step away from the consumption of megawatts and instead just breathe, just think, or even just attempt the cessation of thinking. Such delights are free, and freeing. If you can make such an investment in your peace of mind, consider an extended stint walking along a beach, hiking Sierra paths, or gazing up old-growth redwood trees. In these places you may find the essence of summer.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about kites, plot and plots, cute animals, sequels, Portugal, competition for Harry Potter, boxing, big questions, reimbursements, decarbonization, 17 seasons, rich rungs, tragic novelistic choices, the interests of billions, one-word names, the reduction of pathogens, imagination, famous daughters of famous fathers, the view from space, popular films, islands, geometry, fast “food,” dead rituals, Victorian releases, Oscar-nominated films, our many days of summer, people named Ellen, the Buddha, prisons for parents, the lessons offered by pain, people whose names start with M, and Shakespeare. When I asked the Buddha question to Truman, he answered it correctly and instantly, so I made it harder. Thanks for the QAQC testing, Truman!

Happy birthday to my brother Oliver, college professor and movie reviewer for the New York Observer.Click his reviews to see some fine and principled writing.

I hope to see you at de Vere’s Davis this evening at 7. If you bring a full team, I can all but guarantee that you will score in double digits. Jake will be there.

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 Pub Quiz from July, 2008:

1. American History. Who was the first American to orbit the earth?   
2. Books and Authors. What is the last word of the title of this 1726 novel? Travels into several remote nations of the world, in Four Parts, by Lemuel [BLANK].Fill in the blank. 
3. Pop Culture – Music(Karaoke Question). What Rolling Stones song begins with the line “I was born in a cross-fire hurricane”? 

P.S. More oceanic inspiration: “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.” John F. Kennedy

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

My son Truman was born on the same date as a primary subject of my doctoral dissertation, T.S. Eliot. I used to recite Eliot poems to Truman when he was a baby, distracting him with the unusual combinations of words and sounds. Registering Truman’s delight, I recalled something that Eliot wrote in a long essay about the poet Dante: “What is surprising about the poetry of Dante is that it is, in one sense, extremely easy to read. It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” By this Eliot means that the power of mellifluous rhyming poetry can work its magic on the listener even before the words are understood. One of my Eliot professors in college, William Arrowsmith, an important classics scholar who had been called “arguably the most gifted poetic translator of his generation,” accompanied Eliot to Italy when Eliot presented that Dante appreciation essay, titled “What Dante Means to Me.”Arrowsmith noted the kerfuffle that resulted when the collection of Dante scholars expected Eliot to present his address in Italian, but the Anglican poet spoke in English. Scandal!

Arrowsmith was on hand for a centennial celebration of the life and work of T.S. Eliot that took place at Harvard Theatre at Harvard University, a building where Eliot himself doubtlessly spent some time when he was a Harvard undergraduate from 1906-1909. Also on hand were a number of authors who admired Eliot, such as UC Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott, and poets and even actors who knew Eliot. For some reason, the musician James Taylor also performed a song. When I attended this even in 1988, I knew that I would never forget the names of all the assembled literati and glitterati, many of whose names I have since forgotten.

Most of all I remember my conversation with Donald Hall, a poet and anthologist whose curatorial work shaped my understanding of 20^thcentury poetry, and whose works I had studied in my classes. Hall told the story of going with another undergraduate to interview Eliot in 1951, just before heading to Oxford.

Christopher Hitchens picked up this story in The Atlantic in 2005:

Then Eliot appeared to search for the right phrase with which to send me off. He looked me in the eyes, and set off into a slow, meandering sentence. “Let me see,” said T. S. Eliot, “forty years ago I went from Harvard to Oxford. Now you are going from Harvard to Oxford. What advice can I give you?” He paused delicately, shrewdly, while I waited with greed for the words which I would repeat for the rest of my life, the advice from elder to younger, setting me off on the road of emulation. When he had ticked off the comedian’s exact milliseconds of pause, he said, “Have you any long underwear?”

Hall earned the biggest laugh of the evening that night, but I was more impressed with how kind and patient he was with me, a poetry fan and undergraduate who didn’t know quite what to say when meeting an idol. He made conversations and made jokes, wishing that he was young enough to cavort on stage with the actors. Donald Hall seemed old to me then, and in recent interviews he has seemed ancient, having endured so much, and having shaped a generation’s understanding of poetry as a public man of letters, and as the winner of the National Book Critics Circle prize, and the National Medal of Arts. Hall died yesterday at age 89, but his acts of kindness and his poetry will live on in those who remember and read him, as I encourage you to do.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about the ephemeral nature of life and newspapers, as well as domestic birds, monks, the moon, lords and Lords, Pence’s challenges, Virginia disappointments, doves, appreciated portraits, fibers, strength against chaos, people caught on tape, The World Cup, wind whipping through valleys, fake dads, fine songs, immortal players, charcoalification, understanding the universe, electric countries, network TV, musical mathematics, stores for elites, really cute animals, Henry David Thoreau, controversial times that prompt leaders to step forward, serifs, military fashion, popular hotspots, tariffs, and Shakespeare.

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. Science.  The aardvark is native to what continent? 
2. Books and Authors.   Norton Juster’s most famous book is titled The Phantom WHAT?  
3. Current Events – Names in the News.     We learned today that Kim Jong Un is more popular than what prominent Democrat among the GOP?  

P.S. Please go find and read a Donald Hall poem today.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Once when my daughter Geneva was about three, we mentioned that she was due to see her pediatrician the next day, and she did not take the news well. Rather than wanting to get a check-up from the beloved and highly-respected Dr. Michael Reinhart, Geneva insisted that she be distracted by our telling her about the time we went to Fairytale Town. Geneva had imagined a safe space, sometimes called a “happy place,” where she could escape her fears, such as necessary vaccines and inoculations.

I was reminded of this 17-year-old conversation this morning when my 12-year-old son Truman was getting a blood draw this morning, not his favorite activity. Anticipating our August trip to Disneyland, Truman closed his eyes as the needle went in and explained to us what attractions we would visit, and in what order, when we first arrive at the theme park. His evocation of a happy place was somewhat more sophisticated, in that it benefited from his more complex understanding of architecture and theme-park strategies. For instance, evidently Americans automatically go right towards Tomorrowland when entering the attractions of Disneyland, meaning that early arrivers who amble in a counter-clockwise direction can have the westerly sections of the park to themselves, at least for a while.

When it comes to the frenetic crowds and lengthy lines of Disneyland, I myself am a fan of Café Orleans, where one can sometimes hear live jazz performed while looking across the “Rivers of America” to Tom Sawyer’s Island. In his book European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, German Romanticism scholar Ernst Robert Curtius posits that a true locus amoenus(Latin for “pleasant place”) must have trees, grass, and water. It seems odd to visit one of the most bustling cultural icons of America to find trees, grass, and water, but sometime one has to satisfy multiple audiences, the man who loves jazz and a locus amoenus, and the children of America who can’t wait to visit Marvel Landin 2020, a place to be known by many parents as the most crowded place on earth.

I hope you get to visit your happy place this summer!

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as on bonds, composers, football, Kim Jong Un, islands, magical heritage, Canadian alcohol, prime numbers, controversial films, big and little Dippers, the answer to everything, soy, plans, aisles, Darwin, adult contemporaries, wily people, phantoms, unusual animals, exclamation marks, California cities, Wayne Thiebaud, unusual gifts, spies, economics, presidents, movie stars, Pulitzer Prizes, and Shakespeare.

See you tonight at 7. Summer is here, so I expect a crowd.

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

Tweets by yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Another Music Question.What current Post Malone hit song shares a title with a Hitchcock film?  
2. Anagram. What actor’s name is an anagram for the phrase “He’s a rich TV person”?   
3.  Annas.Which House Bunny Anna has a starring role in the 2018 film Overboard? 

P.S. Speaking of people named Anna, our own Anna Fenerty, a Pub Quiz regular who turned 21 last week, will be featured at Poetry Night Thursday. Come out to support here! Details at https://poetryindavis.com/archive/2018/06/poets-anna-fenerty-and-nick-leforce-will-read-in-davis-on-june-21st/

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

A dental visit delayed this morning’s newsletter. Kate and I have been seeing Dr. Howard Shempp for years, and have counted on him for much good advice and care over the years. The crown jewel of the Shempp dental practice is Therese, the star hygienist who has remembered our incidental family updates and vacation plans for the past decade. This morning she noticed that I had lost weight (on purpose). Little acts of kindness from people like Therese help to make Davis into a community. More on that later.

This morning in the waiting room I encountered Emily, a graduate student studying horticulture who was embarrassed that she didn’t know the answer to the guava question that I asked two weeks ago. I’m sure that she would have answered last week’s cellulose question correctly, and I told her that I hoped that her team would do well at the Pub Quiz this evening, with its many questions about female actors and authors, and its science questions about organic compounds and cute animals. I told her that many of the questions are easier in the summer, when we all feel less studious.

Speaking of school being out for summer, I am inordinately proud of my son, Truman, who graduated from Patwin Elementary School last Thursday, giving a commencement speech of sorts that his mother Kate and I had not heard or read beforehand. Although Truman doesn’t read most of my newsletters, his writing reminded me of my own, with a focus on kindness and a quotation providing the conclusion. His writing style is a bit more angsty than mine. With Truman’s accomplishment in mind, my youngest child will be given the last word before the hints this week. Congratulations, Truman!

I have been going to Patwin for three years now. But before I came here, I used to go to a school called Fairfield. And there, life presented me with a set of challenges. And on the worst days, I would ask myself the same question over and over again: “What. Is. The. Point?” What is the point of living?

This question echoed through my soul day after day. And then I came to Patwin, and I finally knew the answer.

We are here for simple acts of kindness.

To show compassion to everyone we meet.

To be the best people we can be.

To make the world have just a little bit more love.

The other purpose of the human race is to be ourselves. Don’t try to change who you are to be “cooler” or to be like your friends. And don’t worry what your peers think about you. If they don’t see what a great person you are, that’s their burden, not yours. Never be ashamed of something you cannot change.

Even on stressful days, I remember Feliks greeting everyone with “Hey, my brother!” Or I remember the schoolyard where I aged into a (pre)teenager. Then all the sadness was let out.

Because, in the words of Bill Withers, who wrote the song “Lean On Me:”

Sometimes in our lives,
We all have pain,
We all have sorrow,
But if we are wise,
Then we will know,
That there’s always tomorrow.

In addition to topics mentioned above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on rich TV actors, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Eva Longoria, people who need life vests, white pines, youngsters who hesitate before speaking, completions, prophesies of doom, travel pillow casualties, prime numbers, AWOL executives, Halle Berry, song and film titles, incomplete maps, cuteness exemplified, prominent films of yesteryear, Oprah Winfrey, domestic products, risings and sinkings, insects, categories of learning, publishing in the modern age, Jennifer Lopez, demanding bosses, US singles charts, refilled cups, solids of questionable solidity, antonyms to ledge safety, happy couples, seats, plane travel, Texas hold ’em, filial piety, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us tonight. Come early to claim a table, and listen carefully at the end to see if you (could possibly) beat Emily’s team. Horticulturalists rule.

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. Books and Authors.  George Milton and Lennie Small are the two primary characters in what 1937 John Steinbeck novel?  

2. A Bit of Latin. What does the word “dexter” mean in the phrase oculus dexter?   

3. Sports.  Zach Randolph, the top-scorer for the Sacramento Kings last season, scored closest to which of the following, on average? 15, 20, 25, or 30 points a game.  

P.S. Advice for graduates from Jon Stewart: “Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age.” See you tonight.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Often I take a week of vacation from my administrative duties during the tenth week of the academic quarter so that I can keep up with my teaching duties, all the grading of my students’ final papers. I take a “vacation” so that I have enough time to do my work. As one of my colleagues said recently, “I don’t think you understand this concept of a vacation.” Welcome to week ten.

In my advanced writing classes, I teach juniors and seniors, students who are thinking about the future rather than about the present, about writing for the job and for graduate school, rather than thinking only about writing to impress their current UC Davis professors. While I might encounter my freshman seminar students for years after our class, opportunities for professional mentorship with my advanced writers are necessarily compacted. Many visit office hours.

Some of those advanced writers will march across the commencement stage in a couple weeks, accompanied by my admiration and, in some ways, my envy. Despite what I see as the political darkness emanating from at least two buildings in Washington DC these days, students have reasons to be optimistic, to be buffeted by the hope and sanguinity that I hear in the ways they describe their next professional and vocational steps. UC Davis has prepared them well, with regards to the content, modes, and depth of their thinking; and Californians live in a land of opportunities, with important work being done in our state in computer networks, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and all the industries needed to support technological innovation and discovery. While the locus of all this industry is Silicon Valley, Southern California, Seattle, and other locations are also vying for opportunities to fashion the future.

I envy my students because of their opportunities to participate in such practical and (as yet) impractical innovations while they are still so young, to enter a new industry, say, cognitive computing and machine learning, on the “ground floor,” as it were. While I recognize the value of what I have built here in Davis, a couple of intellectually challenging careers, and a family whose company I treasure most of all, I also wonder what it would be like for to start a life, a career, in our current era, even though there are so few local newspapers left to write stories about the outrageous costs of housing our new workers. I will be enjoying my bike commute along Putah Creek greenbelts, grateful for Kate and the kids and the colleagues with whom I get to work, but I will also watch my students wistfully, eager to hear their eventual stories of innovation, meaning-making, and discovery.

If you are among this group, or if you could pass a message to a graduating college student in your life, I would say this: “Make us proud.” I would also say this: “Build our economy and protect our planet. Give the rest of us an innovative, sustainable, and kinder world to grow old in.” Also, “Keep writing, including an update email to me – will we still use email? – at least once a decade.”

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as the following: Pride month, bamboo, the irrelevance of the Sacramento Kings in early June, optometry (hello Dr. Helmus!), villainous blowhards not named Trump, small rivers in faraway places, fashion, authors with revealed names, people who reveal themselves in unwelcome ways, coffee, Latin terms, big purchases, Drew Barrymore, that new movie Solo: A Star Wars Story, Bay Area waterways, government acronyms, summer choices, revelations in Rolling Stone, polymers, delicious ingredients, Hollywood voice work, the nicest people ever, not counting cameos, cotton clothing, tears, juice in industrious countries, candidates, cruel cuts, tropicality on multiple continents, wishes, American literature, predictive statements about villainy, fruits and vegetables, and Shakespeare.

Poetry Night on Thursday will feature Susie Meserve, a talented Berkeley poet who has recently published her first full-length book, Little Prayers. Opening for Susie will be uber-talented actor and Davis Shakespeare Festival monologist Ian Hopps. Join us Thursday at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery.

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. Current Events –Dance Crazes that Start with F.  Started by a 15 year old wearing a backpack, name the latest dance craze that requires significant coordination to execute. 
2. Sports.  What center-fielder named after a fish had a career-high five hits against the Yankees Saturday, three of them doubles? 
3. Shakespeare. Which Shakespeare history features the infant Princess Elizabeth in a non-speaking role?  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

One of my favorite Robin Williams comedies is the 1984 film Moscow on the Hudson, and not only because I got to interview its director, the late Paul Mazursky, in person on my KDVS radio show more than a decade ago. The film lovingly depicts the immigrant’s experience, and represents New York City as a place where artists and dreamers can find their purpose. In the first scene of the film, Williams’ character Vladimir Ivanov gives directions to a tourist confused by New York City’s bus system. Soon the film flashes back to Vladimir’s first visit to New York, on the occasion of his defecting as a careworn and disoriented Russian saxophonist. Williams learned Russian and the saxophone for the role, as one does.

Last week I stood in front of my rather diminutive childhood home at 2454 Tunlaw Road, where I once displayed a Moscow on the Hudson movie poster on the wall of my basement bedroom. During my trip to my onetime hometown of Washington DC, I felt like I was living the two versions of Vladimir’s character, for on the first Saturday I was in DC I felt both annoyed and charmed that everyone but me knew that subway line repairs on the Red Line meant we had to take shuttle busses from the Van Ness station to the Dupont Circle station. On the bus, I was taking pictures madly, including of my son Jukie peering out the window as we passed the corner of Connecticut and Wyoming Avenues, the onetime site of my high school. Everyone could tell that I was a tourist.

On the subsequent Saturday, I saw a visitor from Germany who was similarly confused by the subway exodus for the shuttle busses, so I explained to her why the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority saved its subway repair work for weekends, and that the above-ground leg of her trip would afford her an opportunity to see the entrance of the National Zoo. She was grateful, and thought that her good Samaritan was a Metrorail veteran. What a difference a week can make.

All the time I spent on using public transportation gave me an opportunity to reflect on the ways that our transportation methods reveal elements of our identities. For instance, as I write this newsletter on a flight from DC to Seattle, I am discovering that although I have many songs in my iTunes library, I had actually downloaded only one to my phone: Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine.” While I myself have never tried cocaine, I am seeing to what extent the song “Cocaine” on endless loop will try my patience. What does this song have to do with transportation? I used to listen to it while engaged in a different endless loop, that of roller-skaters around the basketball courts of Jelleff Boys and Girls Club on Saturday nights in 1979 and 1980.

To adapt Clapton’s song, “When your day is done, and you want to run”: roller skating. The physical artistry, necessary balance, and speed of this pastime appealed to me, and the hours circulating counter-clockwise to late disco also provided me a way to meet girls, including the daughter of the president, Amy Carter. After looping Saturday nights from 7-11, I would roller skate the mile or so to my house past the still brightly-lit shops, bars, and restaurants of Wisconsin Avenue, sometimes wearing a cape. Is there any greater freedom? The rock and roll, disco, and rhythm and blues music, and the exhilaration of the acceleration, informed who I was, or at least who I wanted to be. With the help of a Donna Summer mix on Pandora, I sometimes recapture this feeling as a Davis bike commuter today.

I never owned a car in high school or college. I depended upon public transportation, on friends or my mom to transport me, or on walking or biking (I had hung up my skates by then). To me, the primary emotional satisfaction of owning a car came from delivering friends places, just as my French comrade Jean Gruss delivered me home in his 1973 baby blue Chevrolet Chevelle Laguna (make and model confirmed this morning via Facebook), most days after high school. Like Blanche DuBois, I depended upon the kindness of others (though not of strangers – I knew to be careful).

Yesterday I overheard that one of the presenters at the Computers and Writing Conference (where I presented a talk on the Digital Learning Environment at UC Davis) was about to drop $60 on a Lyft to get him from the Fairfax, Virginia site of the conference to Washington DC where his Florida-based nuclear family was waiting to begin touring one of the most museum-friendly cities in the world. Channeling my eminently kind friend Jean, I approached this Florida scholar named Dan and told him that I was heading to DC, and that I could facilitate the reunion with his family at the cut-rate price of nothing.

We see such an act of kindness as an everyday occasion in Davis, but in Central Florida, evidently, this just doesn’t happen. My new friend was effusive in his thanks, offering on three separate occasions to contribute towards the gas that was fueling my mom’s Chevy Trax (a peppy and comfortable compact SUV that I have never seen advertised – perhaps I should have asked Chevrolet to sponsor this week’s newsletter). I kept changing the subject to our families, our universities, and the sights around us. Ever the teacher, I professed on the history of the different monuments arrayed before us as we crossed Memorial Bridge into our grand capital city.

As Dan Martin’s effusive gratitude continued on Twitter that evening, Dan also pointed out that the Computers and Writing organizers had created a conference where people are engaged, friendly, and mutually supportive, which is true. As I read his complimentary words about me, I also realized that I didn’t quite feel like my 2010s self when I was spending so much of my DC trip waiting for or on busses and subway trains. But when I could do something kind for someone, as is expected of me as poet laureate, faculty member, or quizmaster, then I was enacting my best (Be best!) and most authentic self. Taking up the microphone and committing acts of kindness make me feel like I am still wearing that cape, fresh from holding hands with a pretty girl to the music of Eric Clapton, which for some reason I can still hear echoing in my ears today.

Happy Memorial Day! Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as on the following: toasts on Memorial Day, mighty Mikes, the measure of a gram, sweetness, battlefronts, streams and rivers, triple-doubles, franchises, roofs, generous plans, cinematic investments, payment options, big booms, Dulles Airport, infant princesses, the history option, Africa, possibly free of merits, Yankee shortcomings, unlikely backpack choices, regrettable mistakes, favorite fruits, she don’t lie, Susan B. Anthony, unread collaborations, old poems, women in charge, comic characters, football moves, pretty women, cities on rivers, scourges to tyrants, energy hogs, expensive revivals, a topic that I haven’t chosen yet, a bathrobe and a funny hat, and Shakespeare.

I am honored to read a poem at today’s 10 AM Memorial Day ceremony at the Davis Cemetery, and my introductory remarks will answer one of the easier questions on tonight’s quiz. Even though I have given you no notice, perhaps I will see you there. If you need more poetry than that, this coming Thursday night at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery, Berkeley poet Susie Meserve will read from her recently-published first book of poetry, Little Prayers. Opening for Meserve will be an actor/monologist from the Davis Shakespeare Festival, an opportunity not to be missed. I hope to see you at one or both these events, and tonight for a Memorial Day Edition of 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. Current Events – Names in the News. What is the name of the new president of the National Rifle Association?  
2. Sports.  What member of the Golden State Warriors was recently scolded by his mom for a profane outburst?  
3. Shakespeare.   Who speaks the following lines in Hamlet? “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”; “To thine own self be true,” and “Brevity is the soul of wit.”  

P.S. Typically I turn my longest Facebook posts into Quizmaster newsletters, or vice versa, but this week was full enough to warrant two posts, if not many more. Facebook-stalk my most recent post if you want to see how my son Jukie did during a week of tests and procedures at the NIH.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Why is the newsletter so late today? Because my morning has been filled up medical appointments in one of the most respected medical facilities in the world: The National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD.

I was driven past the NIH a great number of times when I was a kid, but, luckily I suppose, I never had a chance to visit until much later, when doctors and medical researchers expressed significant interest in my son, Jukie. We know so much more about Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome today than we did when Jukie started visiting this place as a three-year-old, but the procedures for the visits are largely the same: individual meetings with experts in audiology, anesthesia, neuro-psychology, ophthalmology, and physiatry. We also talk to some of the foremost researchers who study Jukie’s syndrome. Such knowledge! Such support!

I also get to see this lovely city of Washington that I called home for the first couple decades of my life. The air is thick with fecund humidity, and the bird songs and cricket and cicada symphonies sound absolutely tropical. This past weekend I took some pictures of the old home at 2454 Tunlaw Road, and got to explore some of the neighborhoods that I knew as a child. They have all shrunk.

I have more to share, but will have to save that for after I have done some reflecting on the passing of the years. As Helen Keller said, “So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.”

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will be hosted by Quizmaster James, for which I am grateful. Expect questions on the royal wedding, chastisement, periods of time, updated vision statements, research centers, shortened brevity, degrees, our golden state, Congressional testimony, hunger, various syndromes treated at the NIH, spelling words with a C or a K, fathers of things, official languages, Brexit, fictional countries, both a Hugh and a Hugo, medical topics, quotations from yesteryear, noodles and other foods, criminals, superheroes, sneaky entrances, dead wood, altitudinous greenery, soap operas, patents, lists that include beavers, valuable teams, and Shakespeare.

Have fun tonight at the Pub Quiz. I will return on Memorial Day for our next 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. Four for Four.  Which of the following animals, if any, were domesticated by 5,000 BCE? Cats, Dogs, Horses, Siamese Fighting Fish. 

1. Pop Culture – Television.    What Andy Samberg TV show was recently cancelled after five seasons?   

1. Another Music Question. Whom did Rolling Stone describe as “the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time”? 

P.S. “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” Mahatma Gandhi