Dear Friends,

This morning I was listening to the “Summer” section of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, and the experience brought me back to a visit to Yellow Springs, Ohio during spring break of 1988.

I was driving from Washington, D.C. to Yellow Springs, Ohio in my family’s tan 1978 Checker Marathon, a full-sized, boxy rear-wheel-drive sedan that you might know from Checkers being used as taxicabs in old movies. As large as a van, our Checker featured two compact, hinged jump seats folded up from the partition behind the front seat, meaning that it could seat nine.

Because radio reception faded outside D.C. (the eight-hour trip took me across Virginia, part of West Virginia, and much of rural Ohio), I brought a box of cassette tapes, the plastic cases clicking together like a stack of smooth little bricks. Much of it was classical music, one of my then obsessions. 

I had so much to be thankful for in 1988. I was constantly feeding another of my obsessions, British and American poetry, by poring over the poetry in my textbooks and in my personal library. I was taking great classes with professors such as Christopher Ricks, Derek Walcott, Rosanna Warren, and Harry Thomas. 

My parents were alive and well and living just a couple miles from each other. I was living in my family home on Tunlaw Road in the Glover Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C., so I got to see my mom and brother every day that I was in D.C.

The two grandparents that I knew best were still alive, my best friend Tito was enjoying life at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. We encountered Bill and Ginger MacKaye on Beecher Street. eOur family friend John Davenport stopped by for weekly visits.

All these D.C. people are gone now, their voices echoing in the hilly alleys and sleepover row houses of my memory. I remember them fondly in the oppressively humid city they loved, a temple of artistry and excitement—with its video arcades, 25 movie theaters (see below), The (unblemished) Kennedy Center, and a dozen or more bookstores—a city that sustained my youthful absorption in urban, literary, and cinematic culture. Somehow, I knew to be grateful for what I had.

In that era, I was especially grateful to have just spent a semester studying poetry, Shakespeare, psychology, and urban life in London, England. Most beneficial was my living situation, for kismet and good fortune landed me in the same shared bedroom with Kate. Her nickname at B.U. became “my beautiful London roommate” – my Boston friends had to hear about her constantly.

Kate was the reason I found myself driving for eight hours to get to Yellow Springs, Ohio. I was so enamored of the fast-moving “tempest” movement at the end of the “Summer” section of The Four Seasons, so much so that I kept rewinding the cassette tape. 

Listening to that music again today reminded me that I wanted my favorite section to be playing when I finally arrived in Yellow Springs. As magical as it was, immersed in such beautiful music, I felt that car trip took just too long.

Much like a tone poem, what some critics have called orchestral cinematography, the final movement of Summer erupts in rapid, jagged rhythms with the cellos rumbling like thunder and the violins flashing like lightning across a darkened sky, urging me westward. The rapid scales and syncopation mirrored nature’s violence, but the harmonic turbulence also reflected my own youthful exuberance as I sped across Ohio to see my beautiful London roommate, and future wife, once again.

Postscript.

As regular readers know, I can’t resist a list; when I looked up those old D.C. movie houses, I felt the geography of my youth returning in neon and popcorn. Movies were such a big part of my life back then (my dad was a film critic, and I worked in the Tenley Circle Theatre), so for fun, I list here the D.C. theaters from that era. 

• American Theatre — L’Enfant Plaza, 10th & D Sts SW
• Jenifer Cinema I & II — 5252 Wisconsin Ave NW (2 screens)
• K-B Cinema — 5100 Wisconsin Ave NW
• Outer Circle — 4849 Wisconsin Ave NW (2 screens)
• Inner Circle — 2105 Pennsylvania Ave NW
• Circle Tenley — 4200 Wisconsin Ave NW (3 screens)
• K-B Studio — 4600 Wisconsin Ave NW (3 screens)
• Georgetown — 1351 Wisconsin Ave NW
• Key — 1222 Wisconsin Ave NW (2 screens)
• Circle MacArthur — 4859 MacArthur Blvd NW (3 screens)
• Casino Royal — 806 14th St NW
• K-B Fine Arts — 1919 M St NW (2 screens)
• K-B Cerberus III — 3040 M St NW (3 screens)
• Biograph — 2819 M St NW
• Circle Theatre — 2105 Pennsylvania Ave NW
• Circle West End 4 — 23rd & L Sts NW (4 screens)
• Circle Dupont — 1332 Connecticut Ave NW
• Circle Embassy — Connecticut & Florida Aves NW (2 screens)
• Circle Uptown — 3426 Connecticut Ave NW
• Circle Avalon I & II — 5612 Connecticut Ave NW (2 screens)
• K-B Janus III — 1660 Connecticut Ave NW (3 screens)
• Ontario — 1700 Columbia Rd NW
• Gayety Theatre — 508 9th St NW
• Senator — 3950 Minnesota Ave NE
• Capitol Hill — 507 Eighth St SE

---

Tonight’s rain will start after the Pub Quiz has concluded, so I hope you will join me outside. You might want to bring an extra layer to warm your lap during the second half of the competition. I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars for the social event of the week featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. Come early to say hello to my friend and dining companion Jeff. Today’s pub quiz is 960 words long, if we include the answers.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: southwestern heroes, creative writing programs, Mexicans, ink shapes, tree products, graphics, watches, box office bombs, tennis, Korean bands, more and more sports, longevity, EDM, shared decades, vines and wines, rappers, fire sales, people with three names, fingerprints, hunger abatement, big fans, Metacritic scores, World words, motorsports, veterans, important directors, merchants, mental sports, 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 80 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Kiera, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! I should write a question for Kiera. Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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 the aforementioned avocado. I appreciate the Mavens’ kind words to me in the newspaper. Thanks in particular 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

Thanks to Dan for being my substitute quizmaster when I was made unavailable. Three questions from last week.

1. Mottos and Slogans. Starting with the letter P, what company introduced Jif peanut butter in 1958, later adopting the slogan “Choosy moms choose Jif”?  

2. Internet Culture. Did ARPANET officially switch to using the TCP/IP protocol suite in the 40s, 60s, or 80s?  

3. Newspaper Headlines. What is the topic of the new Ken Burns documentary series that airs on PBS starting later this November?  

Teaching Tuesday nights this quarter means that I get less time with my students than most of my colleagues. Normally they would have a profile draft due on November 11, but the Veterans Day holiday means we have to work around that obstacle. Some students also see the two-day break for Thanksgiving as a weeklong break, thus sacrificing another Tuesday.

This quarter, my calendar was already patchworked by holidays and absences when illness came knocking.

I tested positive for Covid on Saturday, and Kate immediately started lobbying for me to cancel everything, including work meetings, the radio show, the pub quiz, Poetry Night with Brad Buchanan, and my Tuesday evening class.

I agreed to everything but the class. I wanted my students to get their money’s worth out of a writing class with Dr. Andy, even if our November 4^th class would be taught via Zoom with frequent breaks and student groupwork so I would have time to recover from the excitable talk about writing and the First Amendment that fills my journalism classes.

Indeed, my students spent much of their class time working collaboratively in Zoom breakout rooms while I sat in a hoodie in the backyard, coughing between comments and trying to project normalcy through the webcam’s narrow frame. 

Even sick, I tried to bring my A game. Using chat, shared screens, and breakout rooms reminded me how much I enjoy teaching with Zoom, a tool we all relied on for a couple years starting at the onset of the worldwide pandemic. The nimble teacher can experiment with approaches that don’t translate easily into the physical classroom. I will miss this if I ever retire from teaching: the faces in those little boxes, the revealed moments of discovery when a student makes a connection, the shared laughter when someone’s cat crosses the keyboard.

Afterward, as I sat bundled in the night air, still a bit gleeful from having taught well to receptive students, I reflected on a future in which all my children but one have been leaving home. I thought of a line attributed to Confucius: A healthy person has a hundred wishes; a sick person has only one.

This quarter I assigned my first-year seminar students a “reverse bucket list,” that is, a list of activities or accomplishments that they once wished for themselves (like getting into UC Davis) that they have already accomplished. Such a list fosters gratitude.

Covid reminds me that when the body fails, the mind narrows its ambitions to breath, warmth, and rest. Illness offers the philosopher an opportunity to practice what the Stoics called futurorum malorum præmeditatio (the Latin meaning pre-studying bad future), or negative visualization: imagining the loss of things we take for granted, so that when we recover them, we recognize their worth. The Stoic imagines loss, while the Buddhist accepts it.

Anyway, back to me and my Covid. Early in the fever, I felt like Charlie Gordon at the beginning of Flowers for Algernon: I was aware that my intelligence and focus were slipping, but I was still fascinated by the process. I could sense a dulling, a static or cognitive interference on the line of thought. While such intellectual deadening is regrettable, a Buddhist might remind me that awareness of the change is itself a kind of clarity. To witness decline is still to be awake. Perhaps we sit in wisdom when we sit with the absence of sharpness with compassion.

When I told Kate I didn’t feel as smart as usual, she said she could tell. Then we laughed. November 4 was Kate’s birthday. Even in my masked quarantine, I poetically celebrated her steadiness, her patience, and her humor that keeps our small household running with “Happy Birthday to Kate, the One Who Keeps Us.” See below if you want to judge how foggy and febrile I was when I wrote my latest love poem.

I’ve been living in the spare bedroom these past five days, windows open to the autumn chill, the air cleaner humming 24/7, and now a silent fan circulating the air as if composing its own weather system. The patient and cleansing morning rain against the windowsill was the best sound of the day. I sat with it, noting its rhythm. 

Jukie and the dog both want my company, puzzled that I’ve become distant. They don’t understand why I mask up to fetch a glass of water, or why I wave them away from the door. Sometimes I hear them sighing outside the door, loyal as monks outside a cell.

Soon enough, I’ll rejoin the family, the classroom, the world of a hundred wishes. For now, I’ll sit still, looking forward to once again breathing easily, and to notice the small weathers within and around me.

The One Who Keeps Us

You move through the house 

like our gentle November weather,

steadying every fragile thing:

the clock with an extra hour of dark,

a glass of water at my elbow,

the cat’s soft inquiry,

the Instagram announcements,

the insistent whirring of our machines.

You attend to them all.

Your attention has sustained us.

When our children’s small bodies ached with fright,

you gathered them back into breathing.

You coaxed words from the unwilling.

When Jukie woke with his song of need,

you were already rising,

your voice the surest medicine.

When Geneva crossed her own thresholds,

you lit the way with your calm belief.

Even now, when the dark world feels blurred

and my body forgets its strength,

you reappear with the gift of your bright eyes

and I remember what health looks like.

Online, in your circles, and here at home, 

you move toward whoever needs you,

our caretaker and secret flame,

ever-ready to kindle, spark, or warm.

Love is just something you do.

For thirty-three years,

you’ve turned care into art:

every day painting with your words

a patient, daily masterpiece

of touch and resilience and grace.

Outside in the dark, here in our bed,

the light in the room, our torch, our beacon,

comes from you.

---

The weather forecast called for rain on the first and second Wednesday in November. Nevertheless, I hope you will show up for tonight’s Pub Quiz. Dan will be the substitute quizmaster. Come early to claim a coveted outdoor table, especially because we will have a bonus large party joining us at Sudwerk just before the pub quiz begins. I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. Today’s pub quiz is 973 words long, if we include the answers. This week the newsletter was almost twice that long!

Dan the substitute Quizmaster says this: “I’m encouraging food bank donations like crazy given the interruption in SNAP.” 

“At UCD Law, I ran the annual food drive my last year and got a bit of advice from Yolo Food Bank that I’ve never forgotten: Peanut butter is like gold. Kids love it. It doesn’t need refrigeration. It’s protein that can be added to all sorts of foods. One container has enough servings to supplement multiple meals.”

“Family allergies aside, moms finding a peanut butter container in their Food Bank box were known to ask if they could get one every time. And where Food Bank workers could, they’d steer the peanut butter containers to moms with kids.”

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: protocols, founding fathers,  fashion, peanut butter, time travel, Albania, skulls, prime ministers, sequels, special effects, birds, fun jobs that start with the letter H, fictional rock innovators, pop stars, bells, sandwiches, silly memes, Pixar films, ties, distribution centers, favorite colors, Davis names, Canadian exports, poisons, languages, people who imitated The Ramones, clutch players, immunology, departed heroes, machines, support systems, security systems, black glasses, beauty, Supreme Court Justices, people with ridiculously unusual last names, ampersands, 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 80 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Kiera, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! I should write a question for Kiera. Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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 the aforementioned avocado. I appreciate the Mavens’ kind words to me in the newspaper. Thanks in particular 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

Three questions from last week:

1. Great Americans. The only Army General to win the Nobel Peace Prize did so for his plan to aid the recovery of Europe after World War II. Name him.  

2. Unusual Words. What eight-letter R noun do we use for a person who has returned from the dead?  

3. Chinese Communism. The Chinese Communist Party was founded near the beginning of what decade?  

Dear Friends,

I’ve always suspected that the timing of our calendar’s switch away from daylight savings time is a gift to young trick-or-treaters. The extra hour of darkness stretches through the Halloween season so that children can be out at “night” on the 31st, but still potentially return home by bedtime, even if all the pernicious sugar in their systems keeps them from sleeping.

My son Jukie and I take a long walk every afternoon before dining outdoors at a restaurant, and then returning home after nightfall, so I have been noticing all the ways that the cheerful neighborhoods we traverse in south Davis become dark and spooky at night.

“Tenebrous” is a favorite relevant word that is too obscure to use confidently in conversation. Nevertheless, the Italian equivalent, tenebroso, worked for Dante, who tells us in The Inferno that

Grandine grossa, acqua tinta e neve

per l’aere tenebroso si riversa;

pute la terra che questo riceve.

Longfellow translated these words thus:

Coarse hail, and water grey, and snow,

through the tenebrous air pour down amain;

the soil that receives them stinks.

Walking the streets of London in the early 1920s, T.S. Eliot also alluded to Dante to indicate the spiritual languor that he saw in the faces he encountered near the bank where he was a teller. Eliot’s own reading list led him to dolorous interpretations of his surroundings, manifesting in his poetry as patterns of shadows.

Davis is much different from London or Dante’s hell, but I’ve encountered shadowy streets and uncanny Halloween decorations that have reminded me of other works of literature that offered bright settings during the day and sites of shadowy secrets at night.

Walking past an older, shadowed Victorian house, I found myself thinking of how great writers use darkness to reveal hidden or unwelcome truths. In the novel Dracula, for instance, we are introduced to the beautiful British seaside town of Whitby, a church of which is described in a letter as “the nicest spot in Whitby, for it lies right over the town and has a full view of the harbour and all up and down the coast.”

After a nighttime shipwreck brings Dracula and his coffin to Whitby (the vampire enters England in the form of a huge hound), the dark nights and dark weather transform that same church: “The wind roared over the graves, and the old church seemed to rock on its foundations.”

This duality of light and shadow, and a easygoing town hiding deep secrets, is perhaps best seen in Harper Lee’s Maycomb, Alabama. We know the town in daylight with children roaming freely. But at night, especially when Jem and Scout walk home from the Halloween pageant, the quiet streets turn menacing, culminating in a surprising attack. Nighttime in Maycomb reveals the town’s latent racial and moral darkness.

While great writers have taught us to read darkness symbolically, as a literary critic, I can’t help but find similar resonance on our post-dinner walks. With some notable exceptions that have overshadowed the news in Davis in recent years, I still find Davis to be safe on autumn evenings. But around Halloween, spirits and shadows seem to haunt the streets.

Yesterday, as Jukie and I turned from a greenbelt path to a side street, the entire culdesac was illuminated with a Cimmerian red glow. Had someone overdone it with Halloween decorations? 

No, instead the dusky street was illuminated with the red glow of the brake lights of a tow truck that, like a hearse, was preparing to escort away the formerly lifeless frame of an older model sedan. Dressed in black, an elderly woman signed a clipboard and then watched her car slowly escape her vision.

My non-verbal son and I walked on in silence before he started to intonate as he does sometimes, perhaps imitating the siren that he associated with the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle, in this case the spinning amber eyes of the tow truck that was fading into the gloom. I spend so much time wondering what he is thinking, reading his gestures and sounds like a literary critic or detective looking for clues.

Jukie’s vocalizations typically sound joyful – once a stranger said he sounded like he was warming up for an operatic aria – but on this evening, the lights and decorations on Davis streets putting us in the mind of Halloween, his plaintive keening sounded like a restless spirit that was searching abidingly for a place of rest.

---

October can be so gentle in Davis, and so it will be this evening. I hope you can join us for the unseasonably warm Pub Quiz. Come early to claim a coveted outdoor table, especially because we will have a bonus large party joining us at Sudwerk just before the pub quiz begins. I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. There might be a larger crowd than usual, so come early.  Today’s pub quiz is 969 words long, if we include the answers.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: world capitals, possibilities, sweet children, sisters, thrills, roses, devils, electrical currents, film attendance, Clint Eastwood, portability, home improvement, smart dogs, cauldrons, birds, hormones, tides, Facebook friends, wraps, resignations, outfits, favorite songwriters, yellow bags, closed rooms, Halloween films (sort of), surprises, skate culture, everlasting vacations, unwise hair anagrams, ranches, estates and fates, supernatural threats, fashionistas, communists, ghosts, American heroes, horses, typicality, hit songs, 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 80 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Kiera, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! I should write a question for Kiera. Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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 the aforementioned avocado. I appreciate the Mavens’ kind words to me in the newspaper. Thanks in particular 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

Three questions from last week:

1. Current Events – Names in the News. Sanae Takaichi was recently elected prime minister of Japan. What is the main difference between Takaichi and all previous Japanese prime ministers? 

2. Sports. What baseball player recently hit three mammoth homers and struck out 10 while pitching shutout ball into the seventh inning in a championship game?  

3. Shakespeare. Starting with the letter O, what is the name of the fairy king in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?  

Dear Friends,

One of my favorite strategies from Bob Dunning’s 50 years of daily columns in The Davis Enterprise was his habit of reminding us that his readers were always writing him messages about his column topics and about other City of Davis concerns. The readers always write.

Bob continues to interact with his viewers on Substack, but now he doesn’t have to worry about taking up too much room on page A2 of the newspaper. Plus, he can include color photos!

Inspired by that conversational tradition, I’d like to share a recent email from a favorite Davisite, along with my own reflections.

My friend begins this way

“Hi Andy,

[My husband, daughter] and I were at your reading of Howl.  Masterful.

Meant to say as much, but didn’t have a chance to then, nor when we saw you and Jukie in passing, near the Civic Center.” 

How kind! I did get to read the first part of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl at the recent Davis Jazz Beat Festival. The poem introduces “angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, / who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz.”

The 2600 words take about 20 minutes to read, and many of the lines are as linguistically ambitious and thus challenging to pronounce as this tiny sample, meaning that reading the poem aloud is an act of concentration and endurance, as well as artistry and thrilling theatricality.

My late father directed about a thousand plays during his long career in theatre. I often wish I could have heard his notes on performing poetry, whether it be mine, Ginsberg’s, or the work of any of the hundreds of other poets I’ve read on the radio.

Now that I think of it, I started my career as a performer after he passed away. He loved me always for who I was, and not for what characters I tried to impersonate while holding a microphone on various stages.

My friend continues:

“On Instagram, where I don’t go so much, I chanced upon a sweet photo of you and Kate at the Sacramento [No Kings] rally, where we too had been earlier that day, and hearted it.”

In Sacramento, where I lived most of my years as a graduate student, we saw tens of thousands of people at the No Kings rally at the State Capitol, but I only saw a couple friends whom I knew.

Meanwhile, in Davis, the crowd was counted at about 4,500, and I saw perhaps 100 people whom I knew. In both locations, dozens and dozens of friends participated in both rallies, but I never saw them. Of course, on both occasions, I was on Jukie duty, as we call it, rather than scanning the crowds. Historically not a fan of large gatherings, Jukie did a great job at both events.

“Then, driving back from a downtown postal run this morning, a clump of mostly dark-clad, round-shouldered college students, (I surmised), with faces up-turned in the same direction caught my eye, in passing by 3rd and B Streets.

What made me smile was what they were looking at: you, before the old teen center now our ‘UNITED STATES BICYCLING HALL OF FAME’ delivering pearls of inspirational wisdom to unsuspectingly land with said college students.”

This is true. I am teaching my first-year seminar called “Journaling Our Long Walk Together” where I bring together three of my favorite subjects: walking, writing, and the City of Davis. 

On day one we get to know each other and explore the Arboretum, on day two we explore the Quad and its surrounding buildings, on day three we learn about Mrak Hall and the “Gateway District” of The Mondavi Center, the Vanderhoef Quad, and the Shrem Museum of Art, while on the fourth day, we walk into the city, with a focus on Central Park and all its offerings.

At each of these spots, I provide the history, purpose, and widely-held impressions of the place, providing students a deeper understanding of the campus and the city than they would find online or even on a campus tour. Once a friend asked if I was moonlighting as a tour guide.

I also tell stories on my walks with students. Once I had the pleasure of walking down 2^nd Street with Bob Dunning while he told me the names and locations of all the businesses that lined that street 60 years ago. My Davis memories go back only 35 years, and they tend to focus on experiences I’ve had in the places we visit, rather than departed businesses.

My favorite teaching tactic is pressing people I encounter on our walks into giving short guest lectures. My students have enjoyed unscheduled interactions with Heidi Bekebrede, the artist who sang students her original City of Davis Song; Bob Blake, the distinguished Spanish professor who invited the students to watch him play jazz with his trio in downtown Davis some weekend; Randii MacNear, the Davis Farmers Market Director who directed them to join the fun every Saturday and Wednesday; David Breaux, who taught them timeless lessons on compassion; and local heroes Robb Davis and Lucas Frerichs, who reminded students that compassion can be a political act.

I appreciate all those people, and the many others, including readers of this weekly newsletter, who have taken time to enrich the lives of my students.

Speaking of appreciation, my friend concluded her email this way: “I appreciate you. And realize, I don’t say so, enough.”

We all need to hear such sentiments from time to time. Reader, I share the same with you!

---

October can be so gentle in Davis, and so it will be this evening. I hope you can join us for the Pub Quiz. Come early to claim a coveted outdoor table. I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. There might be a larger crowd than usual, so come early.  Today’s pub quiz is 916 words long.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: dreams, recycling, mammoth accomplishments, glass ceilings, Davisites, last names, IKEA products, viral sensations, the one, detectives, Bob Sylan quotations, misspelled birds, unisex baby names, surprises, sailing ships, antagonists, wine countries, angles, poets, signs, oils, services, crowds, balloons, sorting challenges, respected kings, mating season, princes, chess and poetry, Alps, forever agency studios, great Scots, antlers, architects, archipelagos, parallels, provinces, noble gasses, 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 80 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Kiera, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! I should write a question for Kiera. Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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 the aforementioned avocado. I appreciate the Mavens’ kind words to me in the newspaper. Thanks in particular 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

Three trivia questions:

1. West Bank Cities. What important city and tourist destination on the West Bank (that is, the Western Bank of the Jordan River) once shared a name with the second-largest steel company in America?  
2. Science: Nuclear Physics. What is the two-word term for the spontaneous emission of radiation by an unstable atomic nucleus?  
3. Books and Authors. October 15, 70 BCE marks the birthday of Dante’s guide through two thirds of The Divine Comedy. Name him.  

As someone who has taught college students writing for the last 35 years, I may be uniquely qualified to comment on the misuse of the word “unique.”

Actually, in the University Writing Program at UC Davis I have dozens of colleagues (all but one of them with less seniority than me) who could comment helpfully and cogently on the word “unique,” but you have stumbled your way into my essay, so I will give it a try.

In 1970, Los Angeles Times columnist Jack Smith declared that “it is almost a lost cause to argue that ‘unique’ means unduplicated… Everything is more unique than everything else.” More than half a century later, his lament still rings true. The word “unique” has drifted from its original sense—one of a kind—into a catchall for noteworthy, special, or different.

In the hundreds of classes that I have taught, I have seen this small erosion of meaning mirror a larger cultural trend: the surrender of precision to emphasis. I come across so many “emphasis” words – often adverbs, they include “amazingly,” “incredibly,” and “extremely” – that I have created an acronym that targets this problem. “ONI” means “omit needless intensifiers.”

Students (and podcasters and YouTubers) often seek to use “unique” as another intensifier, but doing so often halts the forward momentum of the reader who knows what the word actually means.

Unique is misused in so many ways that they deserve to be listed so we can discern and distinguish their “unique” properties.

1. The relative fallacy

Some students treat unique as if it were a sliding scale, writing that one thing is “more unique” than another. This is like claiming to be “more married” than your spouse, or that the water in your glass is “more wet,” the way Kristin Wiig’s hair-twirling Penelope is always trying to one-up people with her “deep breaths” and such on Saturday Night Live. In standard English, something either is or isn’t one of a kind.

2. The “special” substitution

Writers often use unique when they mean unusual or distinctive. A cat wearing a bow tie may be distinctive, but it is not unique. In a world with the Internet, we can safely assume there’s another cat in formalwear somewhere, especially so close to Halloween.

3. The unnecessary booster

“Very unique” and “kind of unique” sound earnest but self-defeating. “Unique” already carries its own emphasis. Adding modifiers to the word would be like putting training wheels on your racing bicycle in order to participate in the Davis 4th of July Criterium. As Jack Smith says, “There are no degrees of uniqueness, except in American advertising.”

4. The context-free compliment

“Her essay is unique” tells us little. Unique how? Because of the subject, the tone, or the number of exclamation points? A claim of uniqueness gains force only when the writer explains the basis for it. One thinks of the Cambridge dictionary definition of “faint praise”: “praise that is not very strong or enthusiastic, suggesting that you do not admire someone or something very much.” In American English, if you do not admire someone very much, you actually don’t admire him at all. At this point, everyone reading this is probably thinking of a man who is difficult to admire.

5. The praise-inflation problem

Even some teachers use the word “unique” as a generic thumbs-up. “Your argument is unique,” offered with a smile and a nod, usually means “I liked it.” Classroom leaders should instead describe what makes something work, such as its evidence, structure, or insights. Precision makes praise more believable and helpful. As Nabokov once said, “A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.”

6. The category confusion

Writers sometimes apply “unique” to a group: “Each student wrote a unique five-paragraph essay on the same topic.” If they all followed the same template, they are not unique. They are simply compliant. Groups are typically heterogeneous, and that’s why we like them.

7. The historical drift

The overuse of unique reflects a larger linguistic slide. We like intensity and exaggeration; understatement feels dull, or difficult to pull off. But restoring a word to its original meaning can remind students that clarity often carries more authority than excitement, and certainly more than insincerity. Many people allude to George Orwell in this era, so I will add a relevant Orwell quotation: “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.” 

8. The modest proposal

Let us reserve unique for the truly one-of-a-kind: a solar eclipse, a live and improvised jazz solo, a poem no one else could have written, you. For everything else, English offers an abundant vocabulary of distinction. Most words do not require a superlative to prove their worth. Consider how much weaker James Brown’s best-known song would be if he were to repeat “I feel very good” or, worse yet, “I feel unique.”

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The rain has concluded for now, and your outdoor seat will be wiped down by the time you arrive at the pub quiz this evening. Come early to claim a coveted outdoor table. I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars outside our favorite brewery tonight for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. There might be a larger crowd than usual, so come early.  Today’s pub quiz is 953 words.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: aquatic beasts, dance moves, sneakers, populous cities, films with Oscar-winners, gentlemen, tigers, victors, hosts, instability, comedies, guides, cities long rivers, sequels, defunct companies, jealous husbands, arm swings, defections, sorcerers, sable heroes, ships and guns, singers, college stories, earthquakes, prizes, ribs, quarterbacks, fangs, color of water, state-owned enterprises, California heroes, electric vehicles, consoles, 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 80 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Kiera, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! I should write a question for Kiera. Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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. I appreciate the Mavens’ kind words to me in the newspaper. Thanks in particular 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

1. Internet Culture. What S-word do we use for low-quality media made with generative artificial intelligence?  

2. Newspaper Headlines. What universally-loved entertainer released an October 8, 2025 video saying that she has been facing some health issues, that she appreciates everyone’s prayers, even prayers from her talkative sister, but that she’s not dead yet?  

3. Four for Four. Which two of the following American titans of industry were the children of immigrants: William Boeing, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt?  

P.S. Local educator Chris Erickson will be reading from his new novella HENRYTOWN this coming Thursday night at 7 at Poetry Night. You should join us.

Dear Friends,

I am excited that the Jazz Beat Festival is returning to Davis this Saturday. Peter Coyote will be a featured speaker Saturday night, and other poets will be performing at the event, including Mercedes Ibanez, our current Davis poet laureate.

I will be reading the first section of Allen Ginsberg’s epic Beat poem Howl, which means that even though I don’t swear in private, much less in casual conversation, at this event I will be required to swear poetically before a large audience.

This conference has an amazing track record of phenomenal speakers and performers. This year’s highlight, Peter Coyote, will also appear on my KDVS radio show around 5:10 this afternoon.

• Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) — Poet, critic, and Black Arts Movement leader; Dr. Andy talked with Baraka for two hours during a drive from the San Francisco Airport to downtown Davis.  
• Ray Manzarek — Keyboardist of The Doors; appeared in Davis with Beat poet Michael McClure, playing a grand piano in the grand hall of the John Natsoulas Gallery.
• Michael McClure — San Francisco Beat poet/playwright; performed with Manzarek and enjoyed meeting my then teenage daughter Geneva.
• Dana Gioia — Poet, California poet laureate and former National Endowment for the Arts chair; poetry hero Gioia inspired Dr. Andy’s KDVS radio show. 
• Judy Chicago — Landmark feminist artist; danced with Dr. Andy outside the largest 19^th-century estate in South Davis. 
• Peter Coyote — Actor, Emmy-winning narrator of over 200 documentaries and audio books, counter-cultural hero and co-founder of the Diggers, Zen priest, memoirist, and poet; one of the adult leads in the film ET, The Extra-Terrestrial. Coyote will appear on my radio show this afternoon around 5:10. 
• Gary Snyder — Pulitzer Prize–winning poet of the Beat circle and retired UC Davis professor; Gary turned 95 in May.
• David Amram — Composer/multi-instrumentalist and Beat collaborator; a dynamic pianist and bon-vivant.
• George Herms — Seminal California assemblage artist linked to the Beats; I have one of Herms’ assembled paintings in my campus office.  
• Anne Waldman — Poet and co-founder (with Ginsberg) of Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics; performer, editor, and teacher associated with the Beat and post-Beat avant-garde.
• Craig Baldwin — Experimental filmmaker and Other Cinema curator; friend of Davis cultural hero Jesse Drew.
• Deborah Remington — Painter and Six Gallery alumna.
• John Handy — Alto saxophonist and Bay Area jazz great.  
• Tom Mazzolini — Bay Area jazz/blues broadcaster and festival producer. 
• Phil Elwood — Influential San Francisco jazz critic/historian.  

Many jazz bands will perform outdoors during the day on Saturday, followed by speakers, dancing by Linda Bair and her troupe, and ‘happenings’ at the Natsoulas Gallery in the evening. Check out the Gallery website to find out more. Perhaps I will see you there.

Andy

---

The pub quiz tonight will be so much fun, and not only because it should be easier than last week’s quiz. I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars outside our favorite brewery tonight for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. There might be a larger crowd than usual, so come early. I might even join you for dinner. As I said last week, festivity will abound! Today’s pub quiz is again 937 words, just like last week, if we count the answers. The answers always count, like that guy with the monocle on Sesame Street.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: faraway countries, small businesses, adventures, telegrams, unexpected antonyms to lazy, sturgeon jokes, AI, prayers, titans, estates, minor characters, funerals, engineers, European countries, fatal numbers, the Hot 100, outsiders, unusual verbs that rhyme with each other, sweaters, gasses, memorial birthdays, immigrants, crooners, the midwest, autocracies, playing cards, domestic terrorists, proportions, oceans, memoirs, plants, 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 80 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Kiera, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! I should write a question for Kiera. Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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 the aforementioned avocado. I appreciate the Mavens’ kind words to me in the newspaper. Thanks in particular 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. Three questions from last week:

1. Mottos and Slogans. October 1st marks the anniversary of the motto “In God We Trust” first appearing on U.S. paper currency. Name the century.

2. Internet Culture. What are the three letters in the name of the satellite-based navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31?

3. Newspaper Headlines. In a September 19, 2025 decision, did the US District Court for the Central District of California rule that nurses with doctorates could or could not call themselves doctors in clinical settings?

Dear Friends,

I learned from a Substack titled The Haiku Daily that “Sacramento has just approved the purchase of over $1,000,000 of military equipment for its police.”

This gave me pause, not only because of the questionable constitutionality of deploying troops in American cities such as Portland, Chicago, and Los Angeles, but also because of growing concerns about how local law enforcement uses military equipment already distributed nationwide.

For example, in August LAIST published a story titled “Santa Ana police have been violating state military equipment law for 2 years: ‘We messed up.’” That article by Yusra Farzan reminded me that “California law enforcement agencies are required to track and publicly document how they use military equipment, including less-lethal bean bag shotgun rounds, drones and armored vehicles, under a state law passed in 2022.”

In June of this year, Abigail R. Hall wrote in an LA Times editorial that “Since the nation’s founding, laws have aimed to separate the roles of police and military. The police are civilian peacekeepers. They are expected to protect the rights of all individuals they encounter — victims and suspects alike — and to use force only as a last resort.”

Hall continues: “The military, in contrast, is trained for war: to engage and destroy enemies. Proactive, often violent engagement with enemy combatants is part of the job.”

I do not want myself, my family, or other peaceful protesters to be treated as enemy combatants by domestic law enforcement. Under the latest 1033 program, local police are required to use military equipment or risk losing it. I myself don’t want to live in a community where the police have bean bag shotgun round quotas.

I performed a poem about plans to bring a mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle (MRAP) to Davis on the evening that I became poet laureate of Davis in 2014. As you can see from the following, I did not want to encounter military vehicles while strolling up Sycamore Avenue on a Sunday afternoon. 

I phoned then-mayor Dan Wolk to see if he wanted to hear my poem before I read it at the city chambers. He declined, explaining that he did not want to influence the content in any way. He had too much respect for the First Amendment to the Constitution. Even near the start of his legislative career, our youthful mayor was already thinking with the wisdom of a judge.

The poem was titled “The Blood Jet.”

The Blood Jet 

“The blood jet is poetry, / there is no stopping it.”

Sylvia Plath

There is a giant shaking the second floor of the house,

                  and he wishes to have words with you.

There is a beast stretching his many limbs beneath your bed,

                  and he opens his mouths to speak.

The pool is sloshing, and a metaphor seeks to be born.

There’s a tank hiding in the city of Davis,

                  and the tank is a symbol.

A metaphor is hiding in the imagination of Davis,

                  and it is better hidden than the tank. 

The contrarians of Davis will help us decide the uses of the tank.

                  Search and rescue!

                  Toxic oil train explosion recovery!

                  It shall never be used to quell.

                  We have learned much about quelling,

                  and the people will not be quelled.

The tank is a symbol.

                  A city that needs symbols has rejected its tank. 

                  Some wish it to be a peace tank – a weapon of peace. 

                  Pink and orange peace decals affixed to the tank!

                  Flowers in the turrets of the tank! 

                  (It’s not a tank.)                                                                                      

                  Fill its un-turreted maw with flowers, then.

                  On Picnic Day, let David Breaux, our Man of Compassion,

                                    Climb the tank and wave to the children of Davis.

Meanwhile, a thousand dollars a month for the tank!

                  Some say ten thousand dollars a month for the tank.

                  The tank needs to be fed, and flowers will not sustain it.

                  Even the peacefulness of David Breaux will not sustain the tank.  

                  It is a symbol hungry for more than symbols!                        

Somebody wrap up the MRAP and send it on its way!

                  Shall its exit be our symbol?

                  Let it arrive elsewhere, postage due.

Goodbye to the tankhouse!

Goodbye to the tank!

But the giant is still shaking the second floor of your house.

The giant wants us to awaken!

It’s an impact tremor, that’s what it is!

Wake up Davis, for the temblor has tumbled you out of bed!

We must replenish the metaphors of the absent poet!

                  You mustn’t lose your spark of madness, the genie told us. 

Who will replenish his metaphors?

                  What shall be our new symbol?

We have been jolted awake,

                  and the city is charged with the potential of metaphor.

Your alarm is ringing! 

Do not hit snooze on the unwritten poem.

The morning star cares not for your snooze button.

Someone in Davis feels the blood jet of poetry.

Someone in Davis is trembling with emotion,

                  and shouldn’t that someone be you?

Fall is here! Yesterday Lucas Frerichs stopped by my outdoor class to give a guest lecture to my Arboretum students on mental health! We all need more mental health, walks in the Arboretum, and Lucas Frerichs!  I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars outside our favorite brewery tonight for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. There might be a larger crowd than usual, so come early. I might even join you for dinner. As I said last week, festivity will abound! Today’s pub quiz is a muscular 937 words, if we count the answers. The answers always count, like that guy with the monocle on Sesame Street.

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: faraway countries, navigation aids, US District Courts, godliness, Oscars, kings, big cities, beers, unusual Christmas gifts, monuments, French dairies, people with unusual names, places that are above the Alps, literary words, planets, acclaimed losers, princes, housing units, published stories, the additions of silent E’s, doctors, newspapers, Shakespearean love, titles, Supersonics, games, popular powders, flowers, trivia itself, nepotism babies, deserts, 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 80 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Kiera, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! I should write a question for Kiera. Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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 the aforementioned avocado. I appreciate the Mavens’ kind words to me in the newspaper. Thanks in particular 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 Breaux, to whom I send sustained compassion. She can tell from my poem that I was always a fan of her brother. My new paid Substack Subscriber is Anne Da Vigo. Check out her mysteries! Thanks to new subscriber Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas.

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three poems from last week:

1. Mottos and Slogans. ALCOA has used the tagline “The Element of Possibility.” What does the first A in the corporation name ALCOA stand for?  

• Internet Culture. Which company launched “Orion” AR glasses in 2025, replacing its earlier experiment with Ray-Ban Stories?  

• Newspaper Headlines. A new season of the TV show Survivorstarts this week. Is it Survivor 9, Survivor 29, or Survivor 49?  

P.P.S. Two of my favorite poets are reading in Davis on October 2^nd at 7 PM at the Natsoulas Gallery: Lawrence Dinkins and Bob Stanley!

Dear Friends,

My son Truman, a sophomore at Ithaca College, is studying creative writing and filmmaking, but he has read as many books as any English major or comparative literature major, or so it seems to me. 

To prove my point, I will share here a list that he recently sent me, titled “Books I’ve Read.” My wife Kate and I wanted to get him a literary book he hadn’t read for his birthday, but we were having trouble finding gaps in his literary reading.

The Brothers Karamazov

King Lear 

The Grapes of Wrath 

Crime and Punishment 

Hamlet 

Blood Meridian 

Pride and Prejudice 

In Cold Blood 

The Color Purple 

East of Eden 

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Beloved

Long Day’s Journey Into Night 

Notes from the Underground 

No Country For Old Men

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  

The Poisonwood Bible

Sula

As I Lay Dying 

The Joy Luck Club 

The Old Man and the Sea 

Giovanni’s Room

Macbeth 

Death of a Salesman 

Jane Eyre 

Persuasion

The Bell Jar 

Walden 

To Kill a Mockingbird 

All the Pretty Horses 

Life of Pi 

One Hundred Years of Solitude 

Anna Karenina 

Catch-22 

If Beale Street Could Talk

Our Town 

A Streetcar Named Desire 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 

The Road 

The Sound and the Fury 

Waiting for Godot 

Fahrenheit 451

Slaughterhouse-Five 

The Metamorphosis 

The Handmaid’s Tale 

Wuthering Heights 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 

The Last Picture Show 

The Shining 

Doctor Zhivago 

Cat’s Cradle 

Fences 

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Frankenstein 

Richard III

For Whom the Bell Tolls 

Misery 

To the Lighthouse 

Julius Caesar 

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption 

Dubliners 

Emma

Invisible Man

Go Tell It on the Mountain 

The Trial 

Black Boy 

The Piano Lesson 

Lord of the Flies 

Of Mice and Men

Brave New World 

A Farewell to Arms 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The Awakening

The Stranger 

The Color of Water 

The Importance of Being Earnest 

Animal Farm 

Little Women 

On the Road 

Great Expectations

Sense and Sensibility 

The Year of Magical Thinking 

The Catcher in the Rye

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Death on the Nile 

The Great Gatsby

The Death of Ivan Ilyich 

The Cherry Orchard

All Quiet on the Western Front 

The Maltese Falcon 

The Iceman Cometh 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead 

Dracula 

Oliver Twist 

The Tempest 

There There 

Things Fall Apart 

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 

Lady Windermere’s Fan

Salomé

Heart of Darkness 

The Giver 

Dune

Candide 

The Jungle Book

Hatchet 

The Hobbit

The Call of the Wild 

A Christmas Carol 

A Clockwork Orange

The Lord of the Rings

The Long Walk to Water 

Into the Wild 

Lolita 

Moby Dick

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The Comedy of Errors 

Ender’s Game

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

The Illustrated Man

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Crucible 

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Journey to the Center of the Earth 

Treasure Island 

At the Mountains of Madness

Behind the Beautiful Forevers 

Angry Black White Boy 

The Pearl

He may have added several books to this list since sending it to us last week. For the record, I have assigned many books for my university students to read over the years, but I did not assign Truman any of these.

I am reminded of a scene in that 1996 Danny DeVito film Matilda in which Matilda tells her teacher Miss Honey which loads of books she’s read “just this past week.”

Here’s the list Matilda gives:

                  •               Nicholas Nickleby (Charles Dickens)

                  •               Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)

                  •               Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)

                  •               Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

                  •               Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)

                  •               Moby-Dick (Herman Melville)

                  •               The Invisible Man (H.G. Wells)

                  •               The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)

We later learn that Matilda is six and a half years old. I’m glad that Truman wasn’t taking on all those tomes at that age. He would have had no time to play!

Happy birthday on Friday, September 26^th, Truman! We sent you a book that’s not on your list!

---

It rained today and UC Davis has restarted, so summer is officially over! I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars outside our favorite brewery tonight for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. Festivity will abound! Today’s pub quiz is a muscular 807 words, if we count the answers. The answers always count

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: faraway countries, NFL football, robots, flowers, scenic drives, titles that start with the letter I and the letter M, glasses, legacy shows, possibilities, metals, demands for music, German culture, sacks, the Indian subcontinent, Athens, foreign sports teams, Berkeley, wonders, murals, rivers, TikTok musicians, coming of age dramas, beers, locations of sustained belief, lakes, popular late-night hosts, religious traditions, deforestation results,  cousins, planes, 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 80 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Kiera, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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 the aforementioned avocado. I appreciate the Mavens’ kind words to me in the newspaper. Thanks in particular 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. My new paid Substack Subscriber is Anne Da Vigo. Check out her mysteries! Thanks to new subscriber Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas.

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1. Mottos and Slogans. Founded in 1989, what company uses the slogan “Hand-crafted in Davis, California”?  
2. Internet Culture. Roku recently announced its first TV projector. What is the size of its biggest screen: 15 inches, 150 inches, or 1,500 inches?  
3. Newspaper Headlines. Today the Fed cut rates for the first time this year. By what percentage was its benchmark interest rate cut?  

Dear Friends,

I began hosting the KDVS radio show Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour in the year 2000 because I craved even more opportunities to bring together my seemingly separate interests of poetry, the subject of my doctoral dissertation, and instructional technology, a vehicle for keeping current on exciting changes (in communication, innovation, and education) that were sparked by all the energy and software emerging from Silicon Valley.

Last week, at the 30^th annual Summer Institute on Teaching and Technology (somehow SITT, which I also host, is even older than my radio show), we took a momentary break from all the substantive and compelling talks by my esteemed faculty to hear “The SITT Poem.” This year the SITT theme was “Reaching Every Learner,” so I also took on that topic in my poem, “Nothing Rhymes with Neutral.” Enjoy.

Nothing Rhymes with Neutral 

The inclusive classroom

includes us, too.

With apologies 

to that treasure,

our favorite professor

of Plant Pathology,

we may enter 

with the sunny point of view,

with the celebratory oratory stories

of a Sara Dye, or,

likely, something darker.

Whether a logician

intoning about protocol,

or a circus barker

mishandling the whiteboard marker,

we are compelled, like a candle, to illume.

We ourselves resemble the room,

never neutral.

In time, we find 

that nothing rhymes with neutral.

Every classroom chair can share a story.

Sometimes, cowed, the story whispers its name.

Sometimes it is proudly proclaimed

in the postscript of an overdue essay.

Don’t pass over

the student who hovers

at the door.

Reach out to the holdout.

One student adjusts glasses;

another cups her ear.

Whether the absentee, 

or the favorite returner,

when it comes to learners,

each must be reached.

We build slides decks, yes,

but also ladders, ramps,

alternate routes through the thicket 

of a perilous syllabus.

Some students seem ready 

for the scenic path;

others need a shortcut and a machete.

Everyone needs a map.

A slight smile lifts

when the room’s quietest hand

rises, trembling, yet certain,

and the room tilts to listen

to the unexpected gift,

confidence rebuilt.

Some of us teach inclusively 

From the tightrope,

improvisers suited for the high wire.

Others behold their students and light fires:

they deploy student amplifiers,

they hand the chalk to spitfires,

they enlist clarifiers.

Some of us follow trends;

some narrow the scope.

With captions I can read

that the bell tolls also for me.

My fallow mind tumbles

like a kaleidoscope.

In the end, each student,

humble peacemaker or spitfire, requires 

a stubborn kind of hope. 

A favorite Robert Redford quotation anticipates one of the points of my poem: “I try to avoid giving advice. The only advice I will give is to pay attention. I don’t mean to the screen in your hand. I’m talking about the natural world. I spent a lot of time educating my children about nature by putting them in nature. I said, ‘I want you to listen; I want you to look.’”

With stubborn hope,

Dr. Andy

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The weather will be unseasonably hot tonight, so let’s pretend that it’s still summer! I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars outside our favorite brewery tonight for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. Last week we focused on a favorite boxer, while today we will look inward and downward. Today’s pub quiz is a muscular 977 words, if we count the answers. 

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: faraway countries, standards, definitions of style, planes, charts, fans, captains, detectives, scholarships, ambitious projects, sultans, American cities, beasts of burden, chases, souls, castles, East Technical High Schools, stages, records, stifled independence, famous criminals, lineages, Harold Bloom pronouncements, 19th century authors, boards, dashed expectations, military victories, mundanities, mates, departments, large voids, rare occupations, solopreneurs, cars, water sports, troubles, desserts, California companies, screens, reckonings, Memphis, the USDA, ducks, genes, royalty, 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 80 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, 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 the aforementioned avocado. I appreciate the Mavens’ kind words to me in the newspaper. Thanks in particular 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. My new paid Substack Subscriber is Anne Da Vigo. Check out her mysteries! Thanks to new subscriber Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas.

P.S. Three questions from last week:

1. Current Events – Names in the News. Polly Holliday, who died recently at the age of 88, played a sassy waitress named Flo on what situation comedy TV show? 
2. Sports. Cartavious Bigsby was recently traded from the Jacksonville Jaguars to the Philadelphia Eagles. By what nickname is Bigsby widely known among NFL fans? 
3. Shakespeare. In all of Shakespeare, what character most tragically drowns in a stream? 

Poetry Night returns on September 18 with John Bell and Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas!