Dear Friends,

Today I told my son Truman that King John of England is his 22^nd great-grandfather. Therefore, Truman and I are also descended from John’s son, King Henry III and his son, King Edward I, though those last two did not warrant plays by Shakespeare.

I once discovered that, unlike myself, most people were not required to memorize the year of the signing of the Magna Carta by King John. Some lessons that I learned from David Kerrigan in 9^th grade history class have stuck with me forever. Sometimes these lessons only contain a private importance, whereas sometimes history’s inclination to repeat itself (or to “rhyme,” as Mark Twain allegedly said), revives some long past conflict or lesson.

Speaking of conflicts, in the play The Life and Death of King John, Shakespeare  explores John’s wars first with the French and then with the Pope. The lives of his direct descendants Henry III and Edward I offered fewer political conflicts and court intrigues to dramatize, so Shakespeare did not portray them on stage.

In his essay “Shakespeare and the Doctrine of Monarchy in King John,” Philip D. Ortega examines how Shakespeare’s King John reflects and reinforces Elizabethan political doctrine, particularly the Tudor doctrine of monarchy, which discouraged any limits on royal authority, such as those implied by The Magna Carta.

New historicism co-founder and Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt has pointed that the play King John“conspicuously avoids the most famous aspect of the historical King John’s reign.” We think of The Magna Carta as a foundational document for constitutional democracy, and a precursor to our U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, but Shakespeare didn’t want to anger Queen Elizabeth I (my second cousin, twelve times removed), so he left it out.

He was likely right to do so. Responding to documents regarding the Shakespeare play Richard II (a play about the forced abdication of a British king), in 1601 Queen Elizabeth famously said, “I am Richard II, know ye not that?”

If we are to learn lessons about responses to autocratic political threats to entertainers, whether they be William Shakespeare or Stephen Colbert, we might consider the 2017 book On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. Yale historian Snyder famously coined the term “anticipatory obedience” in the face of expected threats from tyrants.

Here are some sample lessons and quotations from On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Centuryby Timothy Snyder:

1. Do not obey in advance.

“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. Individuals offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

2. Defend institutions.

“Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning.”

3. Believe in truth.

“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.”

4. Stand out.

“Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom.”

5. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.

“Modern tyranny is terror management. When some act of political violence occurs, the authoritarians exploit it.”

6. Be reflective if you must be armed.

“If you carry a weapon in public service, God bless you and keep you. But know that evildoers in the past have used uniforms and guns to justify criminal acts.”

7. Listen for dangerous words.

“Be alert to the use of words like ‘extremism’ and ‘terrorism.’ Be especially wary of any invocation of ‘emergency’ or ‘exception.’”

8. Make eye contact and small talk.

“This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society.”

9. Practice corporeal politics.

“Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people.”

10. Be a patriot.

“A patriot wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves.”

I appreciate historians, literary scholars, and playwrights who all seek to understand all the ways we have sought to express our humanity, especially the sort of kindnesses that resist cruelty and assert human dignity as they respond to the human condition.

That last Snyder quotation reminds me of what James Baldwin says in Notes on a Native Son (1955): “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

As we approach the 250^th anniversary of America, I will reflect on how our country got its start when we chose to live up to democratic ideals, and when we chose disobedience over obedience, anticipatory or otherwise.

Exciting news! I adapted on of my weekly newsletters, about walking the greenbelts of South Davis with my son Jukie while reflecting on Ralph Waldo Emerson and nature, and submitted it to The Sacramento Bee. It was published today! I invite you to check out “Learning from nature: The wild delight of slow walks through Davis with my son.”

Also exciting: My brother Oliver will be joining us for pub quiz tonight. Oliver and I know many of the same things, and he knows about ten times as much about film and television as I do, so I have been joking that I’ll have to ask questions tonight about obscure science topics and the metric system. Two of my kids will also join us for the fun tonight.

Occasional pub quiz participant Andy Fell shares some good news about UC Davis: “National Science Foundation Awards UC Davis $5 Million for Artificial Intelligence Hub.”

Happy mid-July to you! The weather will be cooler than we deserve this evening. I invite you to join me outside our favorite brewery tonight, perhaps in the shade, for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. 

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: American heroes, transportation alternatives, Japanese statistics, secondary video, Turkey, news anchors, fast cars, slow bicycles, European pioneers, drudgery, cartoonists, capitals, oily surgeons, commencement addresses, anticipatory craziness, American wars, King John of England, medals, velvety goodness, languages notably spoken at home, friendliness, gerrymandering, stars, pillars, straw, revolutionaries, nepotism, U.S. states, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, and Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion.

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions (purportedly about train travel) from last week’s quiz:

1. Which of the following French painters was born in 1869, the same year that the transcontinental railroad’s final golden spike was driven by Leland Stanford: Georges Braque, Edgar Degas, or Henri Matisse?  

2. Operated by Amtrak, what is the name of the 168-mile passenger train route between San Jose, in the Bay Area, and Auburn, with a stop in Davis?  

3. Kingman, Arizona is home to the closest Amtrak train station to what vacation destination city of over 600,000 people?   

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

My wife Kate and I took our children Geneva, Jukie, and Truman to Monterey this past weekend. About our experience, Kate wrote this:

“I am finding that one antidote to living our current dystopian reality in the U.S. is to spend as much time as possible with my people, creating joyful memories in nature. 

When we put our feet in the Pacific Ocean, we feel grounded. When we breathe in the salty mist of sea air, we feel both calm and invigoration. When we look out at the majestic rocky coastline of Monterey Bay, we experience awe and wonder. 

Over the last few days in Monterey Bay, we also connected with people we met along our walks. One favorite interaction included multiple visits on Spanish Bay beach in Pebble Beach by a 20-month-old girl named Evie who was so taken with Margot that she couldn’t resist returning to us for more Frenchie kisses. Her mom and I discovered that we were in similar lines of work and discussed nursing our toddlers, parenting older kids, and wistfully noting the way too fast passage of time. Interactions such as these feel so much more meaningful to me now: they fuel a sense of community we all so desperately need.

We are stronger when we come together. 

One of the important voices getting me through the darkness is Heather Cox Richardson’s, the American historian and professor of history at Boston College. I find this particular quotation of hers particularly helpful: “One of the really important things to remember going forward as we fear the rise of authoritarianism in the United States is that authoritarians cannot rise if there are strong communities and people are acting with joy. That is, you need despair and anger in order for an authoritarian to rise. Whatever those things are that you bring to the community, do them, and do them with joy. And don’t stop doing them because you are scared, because that is actually a form of resistance. Showing up and doing things you love says to an authoritarian you have no place to root here, and that’s going to be really important going forward.”

Any Californian can walk along the beach, get lost in the horizon, and smile at the other beachcombers, or even start up a conversation. Even short vacations in nature will remind us of our mutual humanity, of our unspoken solidarity, and of those awe-filled moments of joy that remind us how easily we can inoculate ourselves against the fear and estrangement that fuel despotism everywhere.

I hope you have also been inoculating yourself against despotism, and I’m glad that patriots such as Kate continue to civil leaders accountable for their actions. As Patrick Henry said, “The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.” Patrick Henry

Thanks to Kate for writing most of this week’s newsletter.

I always look forward to Wednesdays and hope that you can join me on the patio or in Sudwerk tonight starting at 7. Arrive early for the best choice in tables! I invite you to join me outside our favorite brewery tonight, perhaps in the shade, for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. 

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: American heroes, vegetables, video games, the MCU, royalty, halls of fame, obstacles, corridors, literature in the streets, California bands, USA in 4th place, repeated catchphrases, eyes, Scandinavia, unhappy beginnings, heartbeats, phones, exchanges, trains, Monterey, twins, all stars, lungs, French creative professionals, pitches, spiders, summits, furious cornmeal, San Francisco, good scores, mothers, unhelpful fixations, fast birds, UNESCO, U.S. states, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 70 Patreon members now, and almost 30 paid, including the new paid subscribers Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

This month the great Sacramento poet Frank Dixon Graham made a generous donation to the Jukie Jones Duren Endowment of the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation. Thanks, Frank!

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, and Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion.

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. From last week’s quiz, three questions on revolutions:

1. Starting with a B, whom did Lenin lead during the Russian Revolution of 1917? 
2. What Caribbean nation became the first independent Black republic after a successful slave revolt? 
3. John Lennon penned the White Album song “Revolution” soon after media coverage in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive spurred increased protests in opposition to the Vietnam War, especially among university students. Name the year.  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

This week marks the ten-year anniversary of the Facebook group “Events in Davis” with its more than 11,000 members. I founded the group for the same reason that I started the Poetry Night Reading Series more than 18 years ago – I wasn’t finding the sort of events in town that I had found in other cities I’ve lived.

I’ve loved living in cities that have featured theatrical performance, poetry readings, classical music concerts (such as the Baroque violin and harpsichord concert that my son Jukie enjoyed at Davis Community Church this past Sunday), and stand-up comedy performances. Have I left out your favorite genre of performance? I guess I should include trivia nights, or what we call pub quizzes.

Speaking of comedy, one of the best one-liner comedians working today is Andy Huggins, the 72-year-old comedian who mostly mocks himself for presenting as being so old while performing before hip young audiences in comedy clubs. Here’s an example of his work: “As far as social media goes, you can follow me on the bulletin board at Kroegers, or MyChart.”

Huggins’ joke about Kroegers reminds me how, even in 2025, the humble bulletin board still thrives, as long as we visit it. Before online community forums, we used to depend on thumbtack-and-flier bulletin boards to find out anything, and people still depend on fliers in 2025. When my son Truman was showing me around his home campus of Ithaca College, we encountered a flier recruiting (paid) actors for a student movie he had made in the spring. He pointed out that, as that particular flier served its purpose back in mid-April, he could take it down.

Ithaca, New York has a strong bulletin-board culture, likely stronger than what we have in Davis. While walking around town during my visit last month, I photographed a few bulletin boards and then asked ChatGPT to categorize and summarize the offerings. Below you will find the results. You can tell that ChatGPT created this extended list, for only this large language model uses emojis as bullets.

🎭 EVENTS & PERFORMANCES (ITHACA / REGION)

🎶 Music & Dance

• Great Blue Heron Music Festival 2025

July 4–6 music festival featuring various regional acts.

• REV Theatre’s “Barnum”

A circus-themed musical running July 9–26.

• The Notorious Stringbusters

Live bluegrass performance on July 5.

• Pineapple Punk Party

Music event held June 29.

• Burly Bingo

Drag or burlesque-themed bingo night on July 18.

• Bluegrass Jam

Recurring acoustic jam sessions.

• Drag Me to the Discotheque!

Dance party for queer and allied communities.

• Community Square Dance at Stone Bend Farm

Folk music and dancing with live music.

• MicrTones

Electronic music and DJ show with multiple performers.

🎭 Theater, Literary, & Performance

• Musical Theater Open Mic

Recurring public event for live musical performances.

• The Wedding Show

Interactive theater event at The Cherry Arts in Ithaca.

• Spring Writes Literary Festival

40+ free literary events with 100+ artists.

• Extended Stay Theater Series

Theater event featuring short plays and staged readings.

💃 Other Events

• Dance Party on the Patio (June 28)

Open-air community dance.

• Peace Trot (June 15)

5K and 10K run/walk for community solidarity.

• FLX Calendar Events

Includes local music, crafts, classes, and fairs.

• Hardware Demo Day

Hands-on event for trying tools and equipment.

🧠 EDUCATION & CLASSES

🎓 Academic & Skill-Based

• 2-Week Free Language Programs (Chinese & Japanese)

Intensive summer courses open to all.

• Wild Mushroom Identification Classes

Field and classroom instruction.

• Astrology Meetup

Monthly community meeting on astrology topics.

• Chess for Kids

Private chess lessons and peer coaching.

• Creativity Connects Us

Art program focused on healing and self-expression.

• Creative Reuse Art Supplies Drive

Art supply collection for community reuse.

• Information Literacy Campaign

Poster encouraging information sharing and fact-checking.

🤝 Parenting & Youth

• Virtual Childbirth Education

Remote childbirth preparation classes.

• Summer School of Rock

Free youth music program.

• LGBTQ+ Youth Events
  • UNIQUY: LGBTQ+ youth group with weekly meetings.
  • Activate! Youth Summit (June 14): Activism and empowerment event.

🧘 SERVICES & WELLNESS

• Jillian’s Cleaning Services

Local professional cleaning offerings.

• Creativity Coaching

Sessions with a local coach for artistic support and expression.

• Yoga Classes at Mighty Yoga

Promotion includes $10 first visit offer.

• Rejuvenate at the Ithaca Children’s Garden (June 20)

Wellness event with kombucha and sunshine.

• Vitamin D Awareness Campaign

Health education on deficiency prevention.

📢 ACTIVISM & POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT

• Living Wage Town Hall

Public forum on fair wages.

• Stop Starving Gaza

Political awareness and action campaign.

• Glory to the Fallen & Day of Healing

Revolutionary political remembrance event.

• No Kings: Nationwide Day of Defiance (June 14)

Rally held at Washington Park.

• Voting Engagement & Info Booths

Posters encouraging voter participation and education.

• Pride Booth Outreach

Community info distribution tied to local LGBTQ+ events.

• Doomsday Messaging Poster

Anti-capitalist and social justice commentary.

🛍️ MISCELLANEOUS / COMMUNITY RESOURCES

• Onigiri Food Days

Weekly food-related cultural event.

• Transportation Scout

Possibly a survey or outreach effort about local mobility.

• Grow Your Own Organic Garden (Coplant Gardens)

Gardening resource with promotional materials.

• Local Event Roundups

Multiple boards feature compiled lists of arts, culture, and civic events.

So, does the progressive college town of Ithaca have more going on this summer than your hometown? Would you avail yourself of any of those events or services if they were offered to you? I’m doing my part locally by hosting poetry readings, pub quizzes, and Stories on Stage performances in Davis, but I think more of us should put our cultural shoulders to the wheel, at least as audience members if not as organizers and performers.

Walt Whitman’s famous proclamation about poetry can apply to many fields of cultural creativity and performance: “Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations — many rare combinations. To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.”

Thanks to all of you who read about Ithaca offerings, and who continue to contribute to such generational cultural growth!

Happy mid-July to you! The weather will be cooler than we deserve this evening. I invite you to join me outside our favorite brewery tonight, perhaps in the shade, for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. My man Bill at the bar may be taking on all of you, solo.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: American heroes, amendments, transportation contrivances, horror stories, candy, robots, heinous behavior, royalty, winds, pleasant walks,  the Appalachians, vaccinations, champions,  doctrines, swimmers, patriarchies, dukes, nuts and fruits, republics, birthplaces, tuxedos, movies for children, castles, offensives, U.S. states, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

Two teams tied for first place on July 16 with 27 points each. Congratulations to the team Menace to Sobriety for besting Inforwhores on the Mars tiebreaker question.

For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon, where you may find bonus pub quiz hints, at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate you backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, and Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion.

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions on musicals from last week: 

1. On the cover of the album of the soundtrack to The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews is carrying a suitcase and a what? 

2. Near the beginning of one soundtrack, we learn that “Here in Anatevka, we have traditions for everything.” Name the play. 

3. According to the title of a song sung by Willy Wonka, “Count to three, / Come with me and you’ll be / In a world of” WHAT two words?  

P.P.S. Join us July 17 at 7 for Poetry Night!

What do my favorite film critic, a mountain man Portlander self-taught guitarist, and a D.C. punk icon have in common? Find out below.

Today is the birthday of my brother, Oliver Jones—film critic, journalist, and college professor, and once, believe it or not, a founding member of a D.C. punk band. Happy birthday, Oliver!

Oliver writes film reviews for The Observer and teaches journalism and popular culture classes at the Los Angeles campuses of both Emerson College and Syracuse University. While writing for a variety of magazines, including People, he has interviewed hundreds of notable people, many of them actors. He is a smooth communicator, a quick wit, and an encyclopedia-like film buff. Although I am more than four years older than him and have been grading the essays of UC Davis students for 35 years, he has likely written more words than I have.

But there’s another side to Oliver that his film industry colleagues might find surprising: his past as a fleeting participant in D.C.’s Carter-era music scene. In 1979, Oliver co-founded a proto-punk rock band, The Headaches. Made up of three members: Oliver Jones, Chris Ternes, and Amanda MacKaye, The Headaches brought a raw, chaotic and stylistically rough energy to their unfiltered sound and frenetic performances. To The Headaches, spirit mattered more than scales.

The Headaches also did not let their lack of prowess with actual instruments keep them from pursuing their punk rock ambitions. At 29, our beloved cousin Chris Ternes, the oldest member of the group (by about 20 years), did know how to play the guitar, being largely self-taught. Ternes, a multi-sport athlete who admired and emulated baseball players, professional wrestlers, and lumberjacks, was also the strongest member of the group. One of his jobs was to hoist young Oliver into retail store dumpsters so that Jones could pick out the cardboard boxes whose pitch and timbre best approximated the sound of drums. Wooden spoons that the day before might have ladled some of our mom’s stew stood in for drumsticks. The Headaches drum set looked like recycling and sounded like rebellion.

Amanda MacKaye, now the frontwoman of the D.C. art punk band Bed Maker and a respected concert booker, grew up in the most influential musical family in the District punk scene. Amanda’s brother Ian MacKaye co-founded Dischord Records as well as the hardcore punk bands Minor Threat and Fugazi. Her brother Alec has been a member of the DC hardcore bands Untouchables and the Faith. The MacKayes were our neighbors and our closest friends in our Glover Park neighborhood, so I looked up to Alec as he guided my early appreciation of rock music, including by introducing me to many excellent bands, such as Queen.

While Chris brought the muscle and Oliver the rhythm to The Headaches, Amanda brought her singing chops and a Shaun Cassidy plastic guitar that had the 1970s heartthrob’s face painted over with black paint. The DIY ethos of this band (as they created even instruments from available materials) anticipated the spirit of Ian’s bands who traveled to gigs in used vans, refused to sell merchandise, depended on community promoters to find gigs, and charged only $5 for their shows, even though they could have raked in much more cash by charging the higher ticket prices that their loyal community would have happily paid.

Having attended all of The Headaches shows, I remember fondly how each performer brought a distinctive heart, soul, and spirit to this unlikely musical experiment.

It could be argued that The Headaches were a “manufactured” band in the best sense: they lovingly imitated their musical heroes the way that the made-for-TV band The Monkees were formed to echo The Beatles. One memorable song by The Headaches parodied the “(Theme from) The Monkees,” with The Headaches singing “Hey, Hey, We’re the Headaches! / People say we headache around!” Ian MacKaye, attending one of the first Headaches performances in 1979, complained of the perceived plagiarism. We laugh about this today.

Decades later, my mom indirectly got the band back together. A couple weeks ago, in a cabin in Beavertown, Pennsylvania, The Headaches enjoyed their first reunion since the 1980s. Amanda still lives in DC, Chris lives in Portland, and Oliver lives in Los Angeles. All three of them were deeply loved by my mom, Mary Ternes, and all three gathered to remember her and tell stories about their earliest explorations of artistic camaraderie and scrappy, makeshift music-making. Time spent with our closest family members, including our adopted sister Amanda, is the best birthday gift my brother Oliver could have hoped for.

Because of a concert on the patio, tonight’s (July 9) Pub Quiz will meet indoors, including in the full beer hall (which I still stuffily call the banquet room). Some of you may want to bring masks as you join competitors and me for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about.  

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: soundtracks, remakes, factories, TikTok, networks, name changes, hospitals, horses, names that are also occupations, Viola Davis, rivers, famous problems, opportunities for relaxation, manners of talking, excitability, poems that start movements, playlists, fish, dissent, owls, national parks, designation changes, video clips, quality, oils, human impersonators, people who stick around, African countries, London, swimming holes, fletchers, traditions, cases, birthday parties, pop telecasts, water sports, airports, headaches, sluggers, layoffs, contrived acronyms, U.S. states, geography, current events, and Shakespeare. Did you know that Patreon members sometimes encounter more hints than those who are not?

For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Damian, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, and Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion.

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from last week, this time about Rays!

1. Whose second and third most famous books were titled The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes?  

• It was not a manta ray that stung Steve Irwin. What stung him?  

• Ray Charles recorded three number-one pop hits in three years: “Georgia on My Mind” was followed by “Hit the Road Jack” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” Name the decade.  

P.P.S. “Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance… poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.” Ezra Pound

Moss draped heavy and green across the roof of the last cabin on Reservoir Road, its walkway a squelching path of mud and more moss leading to the porch. As I stepped into the rustic and remote cottage, last visited by my late mother in 2021, I felt her presence in every arranged detail: her toiletries in the “bathroom,” her books organized by subject in the small bedroom (a librarian even in her absence), and every bed made.

While the building next door is said to echo with the ghostly music of Davy Jones, the Monkee, who often jammed there with his biographer, our modest ancestral home held no such ghosts. Instead, we encountered the lingering presence of departed caretakers, alive in our memories.

As nice as my mom had left it, one could tell that no one had stepped foot in the place for years. I immediately found the vacuum and got to work. I wondered why I didn’t find any spiderwebs, but then my son Truman pointed out the wolf spider, a titanic creature that hunts at night, devouring insects and other spiders. Even though this arachnid functioned as our watchdog guardian in the woods during the many years we were gone, we still ushered the long-limbed monster outside.

In this kitchen, I discovered my mom’s spices and my grandmother’s mid-century cooking implements. My brother Oliver pointed out to me that we have pictures of me receiving my first Pennsylvania bath from my grandmother in the very basin that sat on the kitchen counter.

Headquarters for my exploration of the natural world, replete with frogs, snakes, and sometimes deer and even bear, the cabin and its grounds were mystical places for me growing up, one where my grandmother and I spent many summers in the 1970s. She had bought it in the 1950s for $1,500, attracted by the creek, my playground, that runs through the middle of the property. Though a similar investment in the S&P 500 in 1955 would now be worth over $6 million, my grandma sought no profit. She simply desired a summer escape from Detroit, a place to live beside her sister Eunice, who owned the house next door, and her brother Anson, just two doors down.

Grandma’s sisters Lucille and Lila lived elsewhere in Beavertown. All three of the sisters were widowed when I knew them. They loved my mom, Grandma’s youngest, and then they eventually passed that love on to me, often in the form of home-cooked meals with ingredients provided by farmers whom they knew by name, and warnings about the dangers of the forest out back. I still feel the influence of these women who partially raised me, historical throwbacks who I realize now had lived through the advent of the car, the airplane, stainless steel, and the zipper.

Speaking of ancient inventions, even in 2025, the cabin still doesn’t have running water. We were once told that our place in the woods is too close to the creek, and that we therefore didn’t qualify for a septic tank. A new generation of borough administrators is not so sure, so someday we may install a shower and a sink in the “bathroom” that my mom left space for in the “new” cabin when she had the previous structure (built in 1900 or so) torn down, replacing it with a solid structure in 2000 or so. The original outhouse stands, or at least leans, itself now approaching 100 years old.

We gathered with cousins and an adopted sister Saturday to remember my mom in one of her favorite places, a place where she had spent so many quiet hours reading with her mother, reading with us, and then, in recent decades, reading alone. Truman brought home some novels from her library. My mom would have loved this, and she would also have been tickled that all of us could finally accept her invitation, even if the gathering took place after she was gone.

After four days there, my brother Oliver and I left the cabin Monday morning with so many questions. How will two Californian brothers use and maintain a cabin in Snyder County, Pennsylvania? Can we entice any of my Grandma Vera’s other grandchildren (there are nine of us) or great-grandchildren (there are about 14 of them) to take it over? None of these 23 people live in Pennsylvania. Mostly, we want the cabin, its third of an acre, and its fast-running creek, to be loved. 

As the novels my mom left behind remind us, it is difficult to sustain love in the world. In her book All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks writes, “To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds.” When it comes to the cabin, its need for restoration, improvement, and visitors to tell new stories, I look forward to seeing who among us is up to the task.

Happy July to you! The weather will be especially warm this evening, but dry (except for those under the Sudwerk misters).  I invite you to join me outside our favorite brewery tonight, perhaps in the shade, for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. Tonight I will be returning as Quizmaster.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: guilt, shockers, Parisians, superheroes, poachers, Nobel laureates, teenage girls, gurus, roads, chronicles, vacation times, ambient music, PBS riveters, daily showoffs, diversification specialists, chiefs, New England exports, wolf men, jazz musicians that share names with painters, humidity, ancient universities, days off from school, animated feature films, wearers of bobble hats, stones, people named Jack, artists who change their names, hard music, beads, trucks, mobile apps, space camps, Saharan exports, actresses, sleepwalking,  U.S. states, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, and Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion.

Best,

Dr. Andy

1. P.S. Thanks to my substitutes for the past two weeks. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
   
   Musical Instruments. Played in what is now Germany in the Paleolithic era anywhere from 53,000 to 45,000 years ago, what is the category of the earliest known identifiable musical instruments?  

2. Davis Schools. Which Davis junior high school is named after one of the first African American women to be published in the United States and the most popular Black poet before Paul Laurence Dunbar? Name the junior high school.

3. Pop Culture – Music. What Puerto Rican rapper and singer became the first non-English language American artist to be Spotify’s most streamed artist of the year, doing so three consecutive times in 2020–2022?  

P.P.S. Also, Poetry Night returns to Davis on July 3 with a Wide-Open Mic! Plan to join us at 7 PM at the Natsoulas Gallery. 

“They shall be a city upon a hill; the eyes of all people are upon us.” John Winthrop (1588–1649), First Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in his sermon A Model of Christian Charity (1630), imagining Boston even before his feet ever touched American soil.

My friend Sandra joined my son Jukie and me for a long walk around Boston last Thursday. I hadn’t seen my high school and college classmate for decades, so I appreciated the chance to share stories while exploring the city on foot.

We started our walk at the New England Aquarium, meandering through the Rose Kennedy Greenway with its fountains, public art, and a carousel that so intrigued Jukie. Then we lunched at Tia’s Waterfront Restaurant before picking up part of the Freedom Trail past the Copps Hill Burying Ground, where my 5^th cousin by marriage, the onetime Harvard College president Increase Mather, is buried. With the help of the website FamilySearch, we found many ancestors.

Then we walked past the Old North Church (one if by land, etc.), through the North End and then Beacon Hill until we finally made it back to Boston Common, the oldest public park in America, and the Boston Garden, where Robin Williams’ Sean Maguire sat on a park bench with Matt Damon’s Will Hunting.

My oldest and youngest kids were at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, so I proposed to Sandra that she accompany Jukie and me as we walk all the way there, even though we had been walking all day. She had the day (Juneteenth) off, and I suspect that she was enjoying catching up on all our old friends as much as I was, so that walk continued. We took the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, the shaded and tree-lined green axis of Boston’s Back Bay, the two miles all the way to Massachusetts Avenue.

As we walked, certain truths about Boston, and about myself, began to emerge.” I categorized them in my head so I could remember them for you here:

1. I did not know Boston as well as I thought I did, even though I spent almost four years there as an undergraduate. During my week in Beantown, our adventuresome navigator, my son Truman, introduced me to parts of the city that he had dutifully researched, and that I had not bothered to investigate when I lived there. For example, I relished (I almost said “revered”) the peaceful and shaded courtyard at the Paul Revere Mall. By contrast, when I was an BU undergraduate, I had my head in the books of my ever-growing library and my heart divided between my many Boston friends and the “beautiful London roommate” (as I kept describing Kate to anyone who would listen) who would later become my bride.
2. Boston wears its history on its sleeve. As I reflected upon last week, everywhere you go, you find a plaque or a statue reminding you who slept where or who walked that same thoroughfare. We saw six buildings where Ralph Waldo Emerson had spent some time, mostly talking to skeptics about abolitionism. At almost 200 years, the median age of buildings in the Beacon Street neighborhood is older than the state of California. Yesterday on the Black Heritage Trail we stopped by 66 Phillips Street, the Lewis and Harriet Hayden House (settled by them in 1846) that was Boston’s most active safe house for escaped enslaved Africans and African Americans. For many, it was the last stop on the Underground Railroad.
3. My companions and I took advantage of Boston’s walkability. Judged the third most walkable city in America (just behind New York City and San Francisco), Boston is tightly packed around neighborhoods that once benefitted from everyone walking who wasn’t riding a horse (or today, a bike). The numbers tell the story my feet already knew: Boston has 930 parks covering 17% of the city, which means that all residents live near a park. As was true for most of the time that I lived in Washington D.C. and Boston, 33.8% of Boston households have no car, compared to a 2016 national average of 8.7%. The MBTA and my shoes took me everywhere I wanted to go. Such a city empowers the walker and offers freedom to the carless. 
4. Jukie and I spent almost ten hours walking on Juneteenth, interrupted often for meals, chats with my friend Sandra, and sightseeing. Because he and I spend so much of our time walking (averaging over ten miles a day on weekends), he is a hearty traveling companion in cities as walkable as Boston. I get to fly east rarely (my last trip was in 2019), partly because Jukie’s disabilities and OCD can make him such a handful. If this trip is any indication, his training as a walker may make my perpetual companion particularly well-suited for walks in European cities. Someday!
5. The aforementioned parks allow meandering Bostonians and visitors to dwell in oases of wooded reverie that, to me, are just as inspirational as Winthrop’s imagined City upon a Hill. Walking with Jukie on busy city streets is anxiety-provoking, while stepping into one of Boston’s many parks, or the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, provides a respite from all that hubbub, traffic, and noise. As Wordsworth says in his “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” “Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her.”
6. I write to you around the time of the Summer Solstice, the longest days of the year, the very heart of summer. When I regard The Saint Francis of Assisi Garden next to the Old North Church; the 200-year-old Shaw Memorial Elms located near the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on the Boston Common, or even the aforementioned Commonwealth Avenue Mall, I wondered aloud why I never studied or wrote academic papers in such transcendent locations. Then I remember that as a college student I only spent the whole of one month a year in Boston, October, when the high temperature was over 60 degrees. I read all those books in Boston University’s Mugar Memorial Library in part because it was too cold to read outside. Summer in Boston is glorious and atypical, and now the home to new memories. Memories reshape places.

After Sandra, Jukie, and I walked all the way to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where my daughter Geneva and son Truman had spent the entire day, I got to introduce my kids to a friend whom I had made in ninth grade at The Field School, who I helped to get a job at the Tenley Circle Theatre in 1984, and who was a Boston University classmate for four years. As I listened to Geneva and Sandra compare food allergies, and as I took in that Truman and Sandra’s son Henry will be focusing on film and writing in college, I smiled at the connections that rewarded us much more than the impressive step count. I also realized that had spent more time with Sandra than with most of my other friends, and then I spent more years away from Boston and from good friends like Sandra than I should have.

As we rode the Green Line train back towards our hotel, I knew that Sandra had to exit one stop before us, at Park Street, to transfer to the Red Line and home to her family in Quincy. Having so enjoyed our day together, I wanted to stop time, or at least stop the train, and cover all the topics and people whom we might have missed. Even a full day of walking and laughter with a lifetime friend feels too short. 

I miss my friend Sandra, but I realized that day that I also miss those unfinished versions of ourselves that were raw, ridiculous, and gloriously unaware of what we didn’t yet know when we hung out together on high school trips, at senior prom, or at the movies we watched together as college students. 

I was both naive and book-zealous when I lived in Boston, and I didn’t mind that I was merely stumbling eagerly through life, asking every person and book Allen Ginsberg’s famous question: Are you my angel? It feels strange to say so, but I loved the incomplete, unreflective, and academically obsessive person I was back then when I walked the frozen streets of that city on a hill. As I have been bittersweetly remembering this week, I was so full of possibilities, so full of hope.

Late June is upon us — how lucky we are to live in Davis! I invite you to join the regulars and the first-timers outside at Sudwerk tonight, perhaps in the shade, for a grand competition. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset as we all get to enjoy the cooling temperatures together. Others feel the same way, for we had almost 35 teams compete last week. We will have a substitute quizmaster tonight in Toby. Give him your patience and attention!

Speaking of the weather, here in New York, we’ve been instructed to stay indoors because the temperature is approaching what we enjoy every summer in Davis. Today we will see more waterfalls and Ithaca College and then dine at the Moosewood Restaurant. My mom cooked many recipes from the Moosewood Cookbook soon after I became a vegetarian in 1981.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: explosions, eastern Europe, helpful animals, Oscars, good leaders, champions, foxes, inventors, countries of origin, obscurity expeditions, personal income taxes, historical commissions, romantic confusion, social media personalities who change their names, the examples of brothers, dramatic home runs, missed games, intense greenhouse effects, journals, Romans, jokers, narrators, significant leads, charmers, migrations south, drummers, alternatives to Philadelphia, women’s shoes, astronomy, memories, bells,  U.S. cities, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Find here three questions on Katherine Hepburn!

1. Katharine Hepburn was born in a state that shares a name with the longest river in New England. Coincidentally, Dr. Andy drove across this river on June 24^th. Name the state.  

2. Katharine Hepburn holds the record for the most Academy Awards by a theatrical performer, at four, winning those Oscars in three different decades. Name just one of those decades.  

3. What actor was Katharine Hepburn’s romantic and professional partner in nine films? 

Dear Friends,

I’m in Boston, writing to you on June 17^th, 2025, the 250^th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. I’ve been thinking about both the original threats to the colonies and the ongoing threats to American principles. 

Low on ammunition, colonial militias at Bunker Hill built fortifications all through the night to prepare for the expected British assault. The British aimed to crush colonial resistance and secure control of Boston Harbor, while the plucky militias hoped to maintain pressure on British forces and disrupt their dominance in the region.

Rallying his men, Colonel William Prescott, seeking to conserve precious ammunition and to ensure accurate fire during the three British assaults on Bunker Hill (actually Breed’s Hill), allegedly gave this famous order to his troops : “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

While the eye-white story might be apocryphal, and while the British succeeded on their third assault during the Battle of Bunker Hill, their loss of over 1,000 soldiers, half their invading force, convinced Americans that the British monarchists could be resisted, and convinced the British that quelling the popular revolts against the locals would be costly and dispiriting. The colonists saw the invading forces as imperious, vindictive, and despotic, and thus they felt they had the moral upper hand.

Back in Boston as I reflect on all this history, I took the blue line train of the MBTA under that same Boston Harbor today and had lunch not far from the Freedom Trail that stretches from Boston Common to the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown.

This afternoon my son Jukie and I sat for 20 minutes on a park bench in the Boston Public Garden while listening to a jazz duo. Near us was a famous equestrian statue of George Washington that I remember gazing up at as an 18-year old Boston University freshman entering the park from Arlington Street. The statue was unveiled on July 3, 1869.

I have been of at least three minds about George Washington. First of all, I grew up in a city, Washington D.C., that was named after our first president, and my late mom, a Washingtoniana Department public librarian, was born on February 22, George Washington’s birthday. Growing up, I felt a special kinship with the American leader, the hero who had surprised and dismayed British troops and the British monarchy with his prowess as an under-resourced general.

On the other hand, Washington personally enslaved over 100 people at Mount Vernon, his estate a mere 13 miles from the Glover Park neighborhood where I was raised by civil rights advocates. General Washington also led campaigns against Native American populations by torching dozens of villages, displacing thousands, and breaking treaties. Among generations of the Iroquois, Washington was known as the “Town Destroyer.” I learned some of Washington’s activities from Howard Zinn in a Boston University history class.

With Boston’s long history of abolitionism and progressive governing policies, one might wonder how Bostonians could celebrate such a man.

I wonder, though, in the current climate, with millions of protestors recently gathering in hundreds of American cities to proclaim that we will accept “No Kings,” if Washington might be reassessed for some of the original reasons most of us were taught to admire him. Washington voluntarily gave up power, stepping down after two terms as president. He explicitly declined monarchial power when prompted to take control by the 1782 Newburgh Letter. Even Alexander Hamilton proposed that Washington serve for life in his executive role, which Hamilton thought should come with an absolute veto. 

Washington said no. Channeling the departing president, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote it this way: “If I say goodbye, the nation learns to move on. / It outlives me when I’m gone.”

Washington made a series of immoral decisions regarding his treatment of Blacks and indigenous people, but he also rejected monarchial invitations and provisions, thus helping to set the foundation for the democratic principles that undergird American society today.  Washington once said, “I rejoice in the belief that our government will prove a blessing to every people who shall adopt it.” Many of us thought that the example of George Washington should have concluded the conversation on American kings.

Yet we cannot let Washington’s democratic restraint overshadow the fundamental moral failures of his era and his personal choices. The enslaving of over 100 human beings (or more than 300 if we include Martha Washington’s estate) and the systematic destruction of Native American communities did not merely reflect the revolutionary era. Instead, Washington’s profound moral wrongs caused immeasurable suffering. 

As we grapple with what I see as the current misuse of American leadership and power, we must consider both truths: that Washington’s rejection of monarchy helped establish democratic precedent, and that his participation in systems of racial oppression betrayed the ideals of human dignity and equality that should underpin any just society. As I consider all the signs I saw at a recent Woodland march and rally, I see that the protesters calling for “No Kings” today understand something Washington himself seemed to grasp only partially: true democratic leadership requires not just the rejection of absolute power, but the recognition of the full humanity of all people.

June is upon us — how lucky we are to live in Davis! I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight, perhaps in the shade, for a grand competition. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset as we all get to enjoy the cooling temperatures together. Others feel the same way, for we had almost 35 teams compete last week. We will have a substitute quizmaster tonight. Give them your patience and attention!

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: homes, workout songs, big dogs,European countries, appendages, chambers, recipients of surprises, babies, professional partners, New England, menus from random restaurants, kings, thieves, charms, misnomers, quantum computing, efforts, Boston, musical instruments, baseball, superstars, missed opportunities, airports, romances, elements, beasts, big cats, Rob Lowe, U.S. cities, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Damian and Meebles! Thanks especially to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

Dear Friends,

I write today with an expression of congratulations and farewell to an undergraduate student who has shone brightly at UC Davis, Dyson Smith.

One of the greatest benefits of teaching at UC Davis for the last 35 years is the caliber and spirit of the students I get to teach. They bring enthusiasm, discipline, and a willingness to work hard in my writing and literature classes. They learn quickly, thus inspiring me always to be learning.

I get to hire many of the best of these students who excel in my classes, or in other endeavors at UC Davis. I teach my paid interns to solve problems (sometimes my problems), to imagine big projects for themselves, and to engage with campus and Davis communities.

They have all impressed me, both while in my employ and thereafter. Students of mine have won Pulitzer Prizes, published multiple books, and earned tenure track faculty jobs. Among them: One of my former interns sold his company to Apple; another won the 2019 University Medal and is now the chief of staff to a member of the California Assembly; a third earned an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the most prestigious of all such programs in the country.  

My former interns’ and students’ purpose is not to stay in touch with me, but rather to succeed after they leave UC Davis. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.” Sometimes LinkedIn or Facebook allow me to keep up with the progress of my former pupils. Sometimes I instead reflect on fond memories of their work in my classes, or their roles as helpers with my reading series, radio show, or book projects.

I am lucky to work with one such intern now, someone who has recently graduated from UC Davis, and whom I will miss as the producer of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour (which you should subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts).

Dyson Smith brims with energy, encouragement, and the sort of quiet confidence that results from his aptitude at understanding workflows, working well with others, and solving problems.

Like my wife Kate, Dyson comes from Chicago, the city that Carl Sandburg correctly named “Stormy, husky, brawling, / City of the Big Shoulders.” He brings a diligent and humble demeanor that one might expect from a Midwesterner, and the disciplined work ethic of an amateur boxer, which he is. Dyson recently graduated UC Davis majoring in Statistics, English, and Sociology. Can you imagine taking on three majors at such a demanding university?

I have worked in the College of Letters and Science for most of my career, so you can imagine how proud I was when Dyson was awarded the Herbert A. Young Award as the College of Letters and Science’s Medalist, given to the graduating senior determined to be the most outstanding. 

As regulars at The Poetry Night Reading Series know, Dyson is also an accomplished poet. Earlier this year he and I performed together at the Sacramento Poetry Center. Dyson’s hungry imagination, nuanced emotions, and inventive wordplay were on display that night, as seen by many of his friends and classmates who drove across the Causeway to see him shine. He read close to the end of a recent Poetry Night open mic on the roof of the Natsoulas Gallery, bringing to the microphone the sort of humor and confidence of a veteran featured poet.

Our English department also recognized his preeminence, for last week Dyson’s honors thesis in poetry, Tomboy Ballet, won the Lois Ann Lattin prize for UC Davis’s Best Honors Creative Writing Project. Poems from that collection have been published in a number of local and distant prominent journals and anthologies, including Open Ceilings, Poet News, GTFO Poetry’s 2024 Anthology of Sacramento Poets, Euphemism andThe Madison Review.

The work to accrue so many honors and honorable accomplishments would exhaust most poets, but Dyson made room in his week for many ambitious projects. For example, in addition to his work as a poet, as a social statistician, Dyson wrote a research thesis on the association between social proximity to gun violence and chronic health conditions in California. He has also worked on other projects pertaining to housing insecurity in Davis and understanding the regrettable “deaths of despair” among formerly incarcerated persons. 

Like me, Dyson is a strong proponent for public and community radio, in this case, KDVS. Our campus and community radio station remains the preeminent local source for varied sources and genres of music, all of it chosen by the volunteer DJs themselves. KDVS also provides actionable and edifying information for our community through its public affairs and news shows, and acts as a hub for people in our community who support the values and practices of KDVS.

In the past school year, my radio show producer Dyson worked as a Community-Coordinator and DJ at KDVS, bringing together new and experienced DJs to learn from each other and from the experience of hosting one’s own radio show. In addition to all that, Dyson has been a researcher at the UC Davis Innovations and Research Lab, a data analyst for Davis’s Data Driven Change Club, and a submissions reader for the literary magazine Open Ceilings. 

Dyson is loved by those closest to him, such as his DC-based girlfriend who did me the grand favor of introducing me to Dyson, and his mom who for many years owned a bike shop in Chicago. He is also loved and admired by his peer groups, as I have had the pleasure to see on the poetry stage and in the basement studios of KDVS.

Like the most accomplished of those remarkable students and interns who have enriched my life in the past, Dyson will also impress his future colleagues, his employers, and his future onetime UC Davis and KDVS mentor. As the poet Mark Van Doren said, “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” Working with Dyson has reminded me how deeply rewarding it is to support a student’s discoveries and achievements.

Dyson Smith has already discovered so much, and the horizon is wide, ready to be further discerned by his keen senses. His successes will lift him up and lift up all those admirers, such as myself, who cheer him on in his communities of mutual support.

Congratulations, Dyson!

We are looking forward to a pleasant June evening with cooler than usual temperatures on this June 11. I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk for a grand competition. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset as we all get to enjoy the evening temperatures together. Others feel the same way, for we had about 35 teams compete last week. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, even though the quiz is longer than usual at over a thousand words. 

I am grateful to the two substitute quizmasters who will be hosting the Sudwerk Pub Quiz on June 18 and June 25. I will be hosting a scientific conference in Boston and then attending to family matters in New York and Pennsylvania. I don’t get to travel much, so I am looking forward to this break!

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: pilots, spiders, Abbeys, bears, inventors, farewell messages, items that are named after people named Justin, sealed souls, patrilineal employment influences, calories, soft textiles, bartender jokes, Mars comparisons, good times, flappers, explosions, coaches, meat sequels, heavy smokers, birds, blushers, atmospheric phenomena, goddesses, big bands, undead representatives, gameplay, revolutions, British arts, summertime, Nobel nominees, the example of manganese, Waltons, maps, U.S. cities, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks especially to new subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz with a paid subscription (almost 30) on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three atmospheric questions from last week’s quiz:

18.          When the five levels of the atmosphere are arranged alphabetically, the outermost comes first, more than 600 kilometers from earth, and where we find most satellites and the International Space Station. Name the outermost layer.  

19.          Born in San Francisco in 1874, one of America’s most famous poets, likely familiar to members of your team, published a poem “Atmosphere” that ends with this couplet: “Moisture and color and odor thicken here. / The hours of daylight gather atmosphere.” Name the poet.  

20.          Three different characters speak the following sentences in what 2019 film? “Friday, what are they firing at?” “Something just entered the upper atmosphere.” “Oh, yeah!” Name the film.  

P.S. If you would like to hear some poetry by Dyson Smith, tune into KDVS (90.3 FM) today / Wednesday at 5, or check out the podcast subsequently. I will also be joined by the France-based poet Nicolette Daskalakis.

Dear Friends,

As a child, I watched many horror films with my best friend Tito. On Saturday nights, we would end up at his house or mine, trying to stay up unusually late to watch either Saturday Night Live or Creature Feature, which presented “unearthed” horror movies from the 1930s to the 1960s. Often our enthusiasm for the SNL guest host would determine which we would watch, or try to watch, for sleep inevitably claimed us both before we could watch one of those horror movies all the way through.

Universal Pictures horror films taught us that we were right to fear large and seemingly abandoned burial places of mythic undead figures, and that we were much safer on Tito’s orange couch in the living room of his home on the 3600 block of Whitehaven Parkway in Washington, D.C., than we were exploring rural Transylvania or the what The Mummy called the “Hill of the Seven Jackals” near Thebes (now Luxor) in Egypt.

That part of Egypt is still revealing surprises. According to an Owen Jarus article published last month on the website Live Science, we continue to make discoveries near the onetime resting place of Boris Karloff’s titular villain, Imhotep: “Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered three New Kingdom tombs dating to more than 3,000 years ago. The burials were found within a cemetery now known as Dra Abu el-Naga, which is near modern-day Luxor (ancient Thebes).” I hope these tombs are not cursed!

One fascinating detail: “One [of the tombs] is of a man named Baki, who was a supervisor of grain silos.” This must have been an important job, for, like the other discovered non-royals that are featured in this article, each of their tombs had a courtyard and featured profile figures on murals that would be familiar to anyone who visited the King Tut exhibits that came to Washington D.C. in 1976, as I did.

Imagine a room that sits in stillness for 3,000 years, almost everything we know as history taking place before the return of even a hint (or a glint) of sunshine. Such places that stay undisturbed for ages fascinate me.

Consider, for instance, the “time capsule” apartment in Paris that was unsealed in 2010, after its owner died, having abandoned the place (while keeping up with the rent) back in 1942. Understandably, an influx of Nazis evidently convinced the owner of this apartment to look elsewhere. 

As we can see from the photographs in this extended blog entry on the blog Beautiful Buildings, the books, plateware, paintings and make-up case were found just as they had been left 70 years previously. There was even a Mickey Mouse doll in the apartment, further proof that none of us can escape Disney.

A contemporary of the owner of that Paris apartment, my grandmother saved money by reusing old calendars. During the summer of 1973, she showed me that that year’s calendar had all the same days of the month and year as 1962. I remember being amazed by this, and impressed by my grandmother’s frugality.

Vera Rosina Boush came from a distant era that required such thriftiness. My grandmother was born in the year 1900, the same year as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and England’s Queen Mother, so she witnessed much during her 91 years. She learned to mend clothes, rather than replacing them, in the 1910s and 1920s, and then made do with less during the 1930s when the Great Depression era auto industry layoffs in her hometown of Detroit affected everyone. One imagines that she bartered for eggs and other foodstuffs, walked when she could to conserve rubber, and repaired her family’s shoes that wore out because of all that walking.

I became eco-conscious in Berkeley in the late 1980s (thanks to Roy Bridgman and Steve Manning), but way back in the 1970s, in a rural cabin in Beavertown, Pennsylvania, my grandmother taught me about sustainable and minimalist living. We burned our paper trash in the fireplace to help start fires in the morning, composted our food scraps, and “packed out” our trash. We used lye in the outhouse.

My grandmother died almost 35 years ago (though I can still summon her voice and hear her stories in my head when I need to), and her youngest daughter, my mom, passed away last year. I miss them both. 

Meanwhile, the cabin stands, its own sort of time capsule, ready to reveal stories from a previous age. With my two sons, I return there later this month, eager to recapture some of that familial love and sentiment from a previous century. I wonder if I will find my grandma’s recycled calendars. For example, 1958 corresponds in the placement of months, weeks, and days to 2025.

More likely, all those weeks and days long ago went up in smoke to warm whoever perched expectantly before that ancient fireplace, contemplating the descendants who would fill the rooms of the family cabin in the future.

June is upon us — how lucky we are to live in Davis! I invite you to join me outside at Sudwerk tonight, perhaps in the shade, for a grand competition. On such days, I especially love hosting an outdoor Pub Quiz at sunset as we all get to enjoy the cooling temperatures together. Others feel the same way, for we had almost 35 teams compete last week. I plan to move the quiz along quickly, even though the quiz is longer than usual at 920 words. 

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: creators named Tyler, rhythm nations, gasses, space stations, letter carriers, matrices, U.S. Presidents, American acronyms, many lines worth remembering, short names, greenery, pioneering godfathers, essayistic enigmas, atmospheric elements, rhyming poems, the Federal Reserve, college towns, watchful people, atomic teaspoons, cult tactics, coastal heads, young people who were injured in factories, historical dramas, Republicans in California, frogs, Friday messages, onetime San Franciscans, conquerors, college degrees, gripping dramas, countries worth visiting, short story experts, long voyages, cavities, Italian culture, favorite places in Australia, aardvarks, airports, U.S. cities, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have almost 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Damian and Meebles! Thanks also to subscribers Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious Broadway play viewership plans and the cost of avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. So many thanks! I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Four Tom Cruise questions from last week:

17.          Tom Cruise was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award as Worst Actor for his work in what 2017 horror film?  

18.          At almost $1.5 billion dollars in worldwide box office, what was Tom Cruise’s highest grossing film?  

19.          In Tom Cruise’s highest-grossing film that was not a sequel (though it was a remake), he played a character named Ray Ferier. Name this 2005 Steven Spielberg film.  

20.          Released last month, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is what even number film in the franchise?  

P.P.S. Poetry Night takes place tomorrow at 7 at the Natsoulas Gallery! Join us June 5. Details at https://poetryindavis.com/archive/2025/05/heather-bourbeau-and-andrea-ross-read-poetry-and-prose-at-poetry-night-on-june-5/