Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I imagine that one’s first college visit as a high school junior is like one’s first visit to The Cheesecake Factory, with over 250 items on the menu. Unlike the food choices at the Factory, most of which your cardiologist would consider inadvisable, just about all the class options in the college course catalogue are potentially judicious choices, depending on the teachers. In 1989, then future U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky told me that when it comes to classes in a graduate English program, “it’s not the courses, it’s the horses.”

This week my son Truman visited Galesburg, Illinois, in order to find out more about Knox College. Known for its English Department and its writing program, Knox is one of those small liberal arts colleges that promise to change lives. Students there get to take writing workshops in the same building where Lincoln and Douglas held one of their seven debates, publicity events to convince local voters in the Illinois General Assembly to prefer one candidate over the other for the U.S. Senate in 1858.

The debates were three hours long, about as long as the advanced poetry workshops that I have taught here at UC Davis. One candidate would speak first for 60 minutes, after which the other candidate would challenge and rebut for 90 minutes, followed by the first candidate speaking for another 30 minutes to rebut the rebuttal. Like some of the classes I taught during the Covid era, these events took place outdoors so that more people could gather round to hear the orators. And like some of the best supported podcasters of the current era, Abraham Lincoln benefitted from delegates (stenographers in the audience, and sympathetic newspapers in Chicago and elsewhere) who recorded and broadcast his every word to Chicago and everywhere east. He turned his speeches into a well-received and top-selling book that helped set the stage for his becoming the nominee of the new Republican party, and our first Republican president.

Knox College administrators are keenly aware of this special place its extant buildings play in American history. When Kate sent me pictures of the Knox County library and some of the museum-like Old Main building where the 1858 debate occurred, I remarked that the place should be called “Lincoln College.” One can find a “Looking for Lincoln Heritage Coalition” as well as a Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College. The Old Main building has a number of admirable anti-slavery exhibits. I seem to remember from history class with Howard Zinn that Lincoln lost that debate, and that in 1858 the venerated and towering politician argued merely for the cessation of slavery in states newly added to the Union, rather than its eradication in the south.

Even if he was initially an incrementalistic abolitionist rather than a radical, Lincoln is still a hero to me. And as Lincoln himself said, “A nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.”

So will Truman end up attending Knox College? Time will tell. The Director of the Writing Program there met with Truman, his sister Geneva, and their mom Kate for 70 minutes this week. That’s the sort of compelling and welcome personal attention that perhaps only a small college can offer. 

Campus visits are compelling. During my ill-fated trip to visit New York and New England colleges as a high school junior, I did tour Boston University, and ended up attending. College tours today do a much better job than mine did of making the students feel seen and wanted. Kate, our daughter Geneva, and Truman attended a series of financial aid presentations meant to communicate that, unlike my dad, nobody pays the sticker price for a college education in 2023. We will see.

Galesburg, Illinois is not only the home of Knox College (where students eat in an on-campus café called The Hard Knox), but also the birthplace of the poet Carl Sandburg. In addition to poems about fog and grass (Thanks for the inspiration, Walt Whitman), Sandburg is best known for his poem “Chicago,” published in Chicago’s Poetry Magazine in 1914 (and thus in the public domain). It is so well known that even my wildlife biologist friend Roy quoted its “broad shoulders” when he first met my impressive wife Kate, also from Chicago, more than 30 years ago.

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,

   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

   Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;

   Stormy, husky, brawling,

   City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,

   Bareheaded,

   Shoveling,

   Wrecking,

   Planning,

   Building, breaking, rebuilding,

Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,

Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,

Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,

Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,

                   Laughing!

Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

I was going to say that most of the occupations that start and end this poem are not likely to be replaced in 2023 by generative large language neural network such as Chat GPT, but then I remembered that most of that work is done (or assisted) by robots. The coming years will reveal how well Knox College, UC Davis, and other centers for higher education prepare our students for a world where there might be a lot less for humans to do.

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Truman is one of the featured high school actors at the April 8 Stories on Stage with Kim Stanley Robinson in conversation with Dr. Andy Jones. Most public speaking gigs don’t make me nervous, but this one does. Stan is an amazing writer and thinker, and I am loving his most recent book, a nonfiction work titled The High Sierra: A Love Story.

Thanks to everyone who supports the ongoing asynchronous pub quizzes that I create for you every week. Please drop me a line if you would like to send you a sample (this week’s quiz), or just pick a tier on Patreonand join the fun, just as Quizimodo, The Original Vincibles, The Mavens, and the Outside Agitators do. Every Patreon patron will receive an e-book or paperback of my next pub quiz book, due out later this year.

Speaking of the Agitators, congratulations to them for winning my most recent live Pub Quiz at the Encounters UFO Xperience Museum. Word on the street is that Encounters UFO Xperience is running a Picnic Day fundraiser of sorts for the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation, that tiny organization that supports medical research into the rare syndrome that my family knows too well. Perhaps I will see you at the “Xperience” on April 15. If not, you could mail in your support for this effort by sending a check to the Foundation. Thanks!

Here are three questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

1. Jennifer Aniston. Jennifer Anniston’s highest grossing film also featured Steve Carrell and Jim Carey in the lead. Name the film.

2. Science: California Geology. What kind of bowl in the Sierras is a half-bowl? 

3. Books and Authors. Who wrote Slouching Towards Bethlehem? 

Thanks for reading, and for your patience. Every new reader of this newsletter is a treasure.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

It’s raining again today, this time with thunder and hail, in Davis, California. The rain encourages contemplation, or, for me, prosaic and poetic composition, because of the inactivity that it enforces, at least in most Californians I know.

One afternoon last week Jukie and I took the dog for a long greenbelt walk on one of the days that threatened rain, and we encountered almost no one. We have so much to occupy us indoors these days – our work duties as well as our entertainments – that many of us do not step outside on a rainy day.

I can see why. Currently I recline in a La-Z-Boy recliner that conforms to my frame so comfortably. While it comforts me, I remember what the father of nuclear physics, Ernest Rutherford, famously said to people like me who appreciate comfortable chairs: “Of all created comforts, God is the lender; you are the borrower, not the owner.” I appreciate our Davis home that protects me from the elements. Above me is the second floor of our home and at least one sleeping member of the family, and above that, an attic and a newish roof. Rarely does it rain so hard in Davis that I can hear it clearly from my first-floor writing perch, though it did today.

Rather than relying on auditory evidence, we typically look outside to confirm the strength of the rain. The outdoor glass table behind the house, purchased so that we could have friends over for dinner, despite the pandemic, substitutes for a weathervane. Beholding the splashing of rain like an amateur meteorologist, I behold the frenetic little show, a transparent fireworks display.

Outside the south window, the trumpet flowers of the Chicklet Orange Esperanza bush seem to herald the first day of spring, bowing and dipping as they are buffeted by the insistent raindrops. Nearby, an unidentifiable bush that has sprouted chaotic vines seems to be dancing, perhaps expressing the joy of all California flora that we have had such a wet winter, and that the rain will continue into the week, as the lion of spring roars.

Showers such as these summon to my mind the memory of trying to fall asleep in my family’s cabin during a summer rainstorm. That three-room hut in Beavertown, Pennsylvania, bought for a few thousand dollars in the 1950s, seemed to me like a museum celebrating the early life of my grandmother, Vera, who had spent her 1900s and 1910s girlhood on a farm a block from the Beavertown cemetery where she is buried today. We loved Grandma’s austere time machine. By the standards of the 1970s, with our love of our television shows and record albums, the cabin was retro: The last structure on Reservoir Road at the base of Shade Mountain had no TV and no hi-fi. 

Indoors we instead had the radio, which my grandmother turned on almost hourly to check the weather report; paperback novels and hardbacks filled with Roosevelt-era editorial cartoons left behind by previous generations of visitors; and different colored metal basins in the kitchen, one for washing hands and another for washing dishes. All the kitchen implements – I remember the potato masher and three-tined carving fork with their wooden handles, the chipped mismatched Pennsylvania Dutch porcelain, the ancient cookie tins – seemed well-worn. Once my grandmother told me that people were so poor in the 1930s that they reused and recycled everything, a practice she continued. 

Outside the cabin, where I spent most of my daylight hours, we had the pump where we got the fresh water that filled those basins, the outhouse, and the path leading to the creek. Much to my delight, Luphers Run, the creek which provided Beavertown its water, not only crossed our little parcel of property, but it was also filled with crayfish and water striders. I am so glad to have spent those summers in the creek rather than on the couch.

But back to that rainstorm. While my home in Davis has a new (expensive) roof and a storey of bedrooms under the unused attic upstairs, the cabin in Beavertown had a 1930s era corrugated metal roof. Each raindrop that fell upon the rooftop a few feet above my head resounded like an acoustic explosion. On summer break from my Waldorf school where we studied Greek and Roman gods, I felt that Tempestas, the Roman goddess of storms or sudden weather, had hired a troupe of mad percussionists to tap and pound their metal drums erratically.

If I hadn’t been so exhausted from building and then disassembling (as I was ordered to) shale rock dams in the creek all day, the racket from that raucous summer tempest might not have let me fall asleep at all.

When we were stuck inside on a rainy day, Grandma used to tell us a misquoted version of “Into each life some rain must fall.” Later I discovered that she was quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (perhaps the most-read poet of 19^th century America), and later still, I came across Longfellow’s poem “Rain in Summer” and the lines that present this remembered inclement cacophony better than my words above:

How it clatters along the roofs,

Like the tramp of hoofs

How it gushes and struggles out

From the throat of the overflowing spout!

I hope that the clatter of rainstorms’ hoofs continues on your roof and mine through the coming weeks, and that the life breathed into our perpetually dry state brings all of us a more substantive comfort than what can be found in any recliner.

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While I get to host in-person or Zoom Pub Quizzes on occasion, as happened on March 9^th (and thanks to all of you who attended), these days I primarily share Pub Quizzes asynchronously. If you would like to receive a weekly Pub Quiz of 30 questions and answers, and if you would like to support these ongoing oddball newsletters about rain and such, please sign up over at Patreon. This week on Patreon, for example, regulars heard audio of me reading “Rain in Summer” by Longfellow. I will continue to share more audio of poetry and other writing, by famous authors and by me, if there is interest. Thanks especially to the teams who pledge ongoing support for all their members, and who share the quizzes via Zoom or in person (and I’m thinking especially of Quizzmodo, the Outside Agitators, The Mavens, and the Original Vincibles).

Here are five questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

1. Four for Four. Which of the following, if any, fluoresce under a black light: adult scorpions, baby scorpions, floral scorpions, scorpion fossils? 

2. Science. The hottest planet in our solar system is the only such planet that rotates clockwise. Name it. 

3. Great Americans. One U.S. President reportedly spoke eight foreign languages (Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Russian, and Spanish), more than any other U.S. president. He remains the only U.S. president who could converse in Russian. Name him. 

Our next Poetry Night takes place on April 6^th at the Natsoulas Gallery. Plan to join us!

Dr. Andy

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I enjoyed the Oscars last night more than I usually do, mostly because I appreciated the stirring speeches by the acting award winners, and because of the musical numbers by the makeup-free Lady Gaga and the singers of “Naatu Naatu” who were surrounded by dancers who recreated the most inspiring scene from the film RRR.

Film has been the most consumed form or art and pop culture in my family since my dad was a kid in the 1930s, a passion that he has passed on through my wife Kate and me to my son Truman, our favorite film encyclopedia who was born the year after Davey Marlin-Jones passed away. 

We have shared my dad’s stories with Truman, as I have here in previous newsletters. In 1939, my dad laughed so hard at a Wizard of Oz scene with the Cowardly Lion that he chipped his tooth on the theatre seat in front of him. In the fall of 1941, the kids at his school in Winchester, Indiana started calling him Dumbo because of his big ears, just like the Disney character that had captivated theater-goers that year.

My dad grew up with the film industry, watching all that amazing film noir and those rousing westerns  in the 1940s and 1950s. Later, he shared his enthusiasm with his new bride. My parents got married one morning just over 60 years ago (in 1962), and that afternoon they watched all 210 minutes of Lawrence of Arabia. I wonder what they talked about during the intermission. I wonder what my mom thought she was getting into.

My dad saw fewer films during the first decade of his marriage, for he was spending so much time on and back stage in that other sort of theatre, directing shows in New York City and then hundreds more as the Artistic Director of the Washington Theatre Club. Although my dad would later accumulate one of the largest privately-owned VHS tape collections in the city, during that time there were no VCRs. In fact, as I read this week in the Steve Turner band biography, the members of The Beatles were given some of the first VCR prototypes in 1966. Without access to such futuristic technologies and pregnant with me, instead of going to the movies, my mom watched many play rehearsals, sometimes running lines with actors who later became movie stars.  

And then, in what I’m sure seemed like a sudden pivot, my dad became the theatre and film critic for WTOP, the CBS TV affiliate in Washington, D.C., and as a result, he had to see and review pretty much every film that was released throughout the boyhood of both his sons. 

My family home, a row house on Tunlaw Road in Glover Park, had movie posters on the walls, we had a movie-themed table which held our marble chess set (see the photograph, above), and its built-in bookshelves brimmed with books about film, some of which were sent to my dad by the “Book World” section of The Washington Post, which was always looking for reviewers. At my third-grade birthday party, my dad showed my friends and me both reels of Citizen Kane. We had a discussion about “Rosebud” during the intermission.

Because of his job as a film critic and a notable local personality, from 1970 to 1987, most of my conscious hours living in D.C., my dad frequented the dozens of movie theaters that one found all over the city. One hundred and eleven movie theaters existed in Washington, D.C. at different times during the 20^th century, a time when such theaters and the wonders we saw there drove much of popular culture.

I just checked to see if any of the 20 or so movie theatres where I spent much of my weekends in 1983 and 1984, the years I was an usher at the Tenley Circle Theatre at 4200 Wisconsin Avenue, were still around. Nope. Not one. I can see why so many presenters at the Oscars Sunday night emphasized the importance of seeing movies on the big screen.

When I moved to Davis in 1990, Davis had two movie theaters. Since then it has lost one (The Cinema II at 207 F St), and gained two (The Regal Stadium and, thank goodness, The Varsity). Old-timers might know if the city ever had a theater other than those four, but I doubt it. We Davisites are lucky to get to see movies downtown, so close to campus and to all the restaurants that drive traffic to our city. 

Some of us are old enough to link momentous events to the grand cinematic spectacles we enjoyed at the time. I saw Batman at The California Theatre on Berkeley’s Kittredge Street the day I moved to California in July of 1989, and Goodfellas at Berkeley’s United Artists Cinema at 2274 Shattuck Avenue in September of 1990, the month I moved to Davis. 

Not all college towns are as lucky as Davis. Later called the Regal UA Berkeley, United Artists Cinema closed just last month (February, 2023), leaving no downtown Berkeley theaters for the undergraduates to visit when taking a break from studying. That grand old theatre, home to so many fantasies and adventures, had a long and storied run, having launched in 1932, the same year as the birth of my favorite film enthusiast, critic, and dad.

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Thanks to all of you who came to my live and in-person Pub Quiz and fundraiser for the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation last Thursday. We raised over $600 for a good cause, and I got to see and perform for some old friends who hadn’t gathered for live trivia in years, and they all sang to me – what a delight! We also had fun with the folks running the Encounters UFO Xperience in the University Mall – they provided the space for the Pub Quiz and made a donation to the cause.

Thanks especially to my subscribers on Patreon and Substack. Some people pledge for their entire teams, and they get to enjoy a Pub Quiz delivered via Patreon every Monday. The money helps to pay for the hosting of my Pub Quiz website and mailing list, as well as the costs of hosting the podcasts of my weekly radio show. I appreciate all of you who support my ongoing work on behalf of the community, and my writing projects, such as these weekly newsletters, or the bonus original poem that I shared this morning. If you find value in any of this, or would like more original trivia in your life, please subscribe. Thanks!

Here are three questions from the bonus Fundraiser Pub Quiz:

1. Great Americans. Married to David Burtka since 2014, what widely-loved five-time Emmy winning actor appeared in the films Starship Troopers (1997), The Smurfs (2011), and Gone Girl (2014)? 

2. Unusual Words. I am thinking of a three-syllable K word that means “a commotion or fuss.” Name it. 

3. The Circus. When The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performed its last show in May of 2017, about how long was its run: 25 years, 75 years, 150 years, or 250 years?

Dear Friends,

I am hosting a Pub Quiz fundraiser for the Jukie Jones Duren Endowment of the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation to celebrate my birthday this coming Thursday night, March 9^th, at 7:30. If you are in or near the town of Davis, I hope you will come by to partake in the fun at the Encounters UFO Xperience Alien Museum at 871 Russell Boulevard, at the corner of Russell and Sycamore, across the parking lot from Trader Joe’s.

Speaking of Trader Joe’s, you could spend $10 on a few containers of Eggplant Garlic Spread with Sweet Red Peppers, which sounds delectable, or you could also spend that same amount to gain entrance into the alien museum in the old Cost Plus World Market, and in doing so, make a donation to the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation, which funds research into the rare syndrome that affects my son Jukie. 

Anyone who drops by Thursday night at 7 or so will support the cause and be invited to participate in the Pub Quiz. If you don’t have a team, come by yourself, and you will be assigned to one. There will be some snacks and non-alcoholic beverages available for purchase, and I promise that you will be able to hear the questions over the sound of all the laughter, and over the gasps of awe from those examining the cinematic alien exhibits.

Prizes aplenty will be awarded to the winners, including swag bags of art and comic books created by Steve Oerding, an amazing local artist and illustrator who created the Ranger Ralph line of comic books. Steve will be attending this event, offering some cartooning lessons to the young and the young at heart who don’t want to engage in the trivia competition. In addition to the cartooning lessons, video game consoles will be available to entertain the kids, as well as a station where people can film real or invented stories of alien abductions.

If you don’t know, a Pub Quiz is a trivia contest made up of 30 questions and a tiebreaker. Teams of up to six compete with each other by writing down their answers on scorecards. A Pub Quiz can be a raucous experience brimming with frivolity and good cheer. Expect questions on a variety of topics that you should have learned about in school and science fiction movies, including history, books and authors, current events, popular culture, technology, and science! We will review the rules, which include not asking Chat GPT to research the answers via your smart phone, and not yelling out the answers. Over the years, Dr. Andy has hosted hundreds of pub quizzes and written thousands of pub quiz questions. You are invited to subscribe to his weekly Pub Quiz service via Patreon or Substack.

I’m grateful to Michael and Hugh from Encounters UFO Xperience for donating half the $10 ticket sales from Thursday night to the Jukie Jones Duren Endowment at the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation. There will be a donation station where additional tax-deductible gifts of any size will be collected to support the cause. 

Whether or not you can join the Pub Quiz fundraiser (and I hope you can), to help me celebrate my birthday, please consider making a donation by visiting the foundation website at http://www.smithlemliopitz.org – there you can also find out more about the Jukie Jones Duren Endowment. We are hoping to fully fund the $25,000 endowment by 2028, and we are already about 40% there!

Thanks for considering this request and for spending the Thursday night of my birthday week with me in an alien museum. Any intended birthday gift should be a check made out to the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation with the word JUKIE in the memo. Thanks, and see you Thursday!

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from my most recent Pub Quiz:

1. Great Frenchmen. Jules Léotard created and popularized the one- piece gym wear that now bears his name. What was his profession: aerialist, clown, pilot, or swimmer? 
2. Unusual Words. What O verb means “to prevent, to make unnecessary by taking action in advance”? 
3. Higher Education. What is s the oldest institution of higher education in New York State? 

P.S. If you prefer to mail checks than make donations via websites on their giving pages, please send a check of any amount to The SLO Foundation • c/o Gretchen Noah • P.O. Box 10598 • Fargo, ND 58106 • USA. Thank you.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

*Editor’s Note: Dr. Andy is reading from new poetry at his own poetry series on Thursday, March 2^nd at 7 PM at the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis. Also, he will be hosting an in-person Davis Pub Quiz as a fundraiser on March 9^th. Details to come.*

Do you learn best by listening, reading, watching, or doing? I think I learn best in conversation, or at least that’s what my recent experiences at the San Francisco Writers Conference confirmed for me.

I’ve been serving as faculty at the SFWC for about 15 years, or almost half the time that I’ve been teaching classes writing and literature at UC Davis. In the early days, my University Writing Program colleague Brad Henderson and I helped to run the poetry track at the conference, a track that was created, I believe, because Brad and I volunteered to manage it and to give most of the presentations. 

In those early days of the conference, Brad and I gave talks about putting poetry into prose, running a poetry series, or sound and texture in poetry. We also ran critique sessions where attendees would read a poem out loud before an audience of 30 or more, and get critiques on the spot. Brad was an accomplished cowboy poet with an MFA from USC, while I was a PhD in poetry who kept many poetic examples and micro-lessons in his head.

As many talks as we gave, back then I appreciated the gaps in our presentation schedule, so I could sneak into the back of talks on the book trade, an author’s platform, unleashed shareable content via social media, eBooks, and the pitfalls and advantages of independent publishing. I also got to have long conversations with some important authors, from Davis’s own John Lescroart to perennial favorite Joyce Maynard to the author of more than 430 books, R.L. Stine. By the way, Stein has sold more than 400 million copies, outpacing even his friend Stephen King. I learned so much from listening to those wise and experienced authors, and I’ve written several books (and published three of them) since attending my first SFWC.

I feel adept by now at giving formal presentations. I’ve been doing so since I first presented at the my first academic conference at MIT back in 1992, just a few years after I concluded my undergraduate studies in Boston. But what I love most is the give-and-take of the academic panel, the Q+A session, or the impromptu speech. About ten years ago when the writers conference was held at the International Mark Hopkins Hotel, President Obama was staying across the street at the Fairmont Hotel, so the city halted all the streetcars on California Street, thus delaying one of the speakers. A conference organizer tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I would run that speaker’s session. As we walked to the room, I asked just one question: What was the planned presentation topic? I was told five seconds before I walked in the door, and then gave his talk. What a delightful challenge and resulting triumph.

These days the SFWC puts me to work as a book coach for attendees. I “charge” $100 for a 30-minute session, with all of the money going to pay for scholarships for the subsequent year’s conference. 

While we shouldn’t limit participation only to people who can pay outrageous prices for Dr. Andy’s time, I’m grateful for these brave souls. I love meeting with the aspiring authors, most of them working on novels, and a few of them on memoirs. I learned so much from their pitches and their answers to my clarifying questions. For some of them, I helped them shorten their pitches for agents; for others, I helped them think about their projects from their readers’ point of view. As journalists will tell you, your having written something obligates no one to read it. Some attendees just wanted to know how to get the most out of the conference.

Last year my favorite conferee was a woman whose father was a magician and whose mother was a librarian. I told her that she probably expected to go her entire life without hoping to meet another person in the world whose father was a magician and whose mother was a librarian. Well, I was that other person in the world.

This year I met with almost ten authors, including a winery owner whose novel pitch seemed like that of a romance novel rather than what she called “a serious work of fiction.” I asked her when she had last read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Her response was expected: College. I showed her the way that her plot resembled the book which the critic Daniel Burt called the “first history[y] of the private consciousness.” The novelist before me was thrilled by the realization of the helpful echoes, and then brought me back a revamped pitch an hour later.

I was also thrilled. Rarely does my PhD in English turn out to be helpful in everyday conversations, but of course these conversations were not everyday. That’s why I love them.

I hope you get to have such a conversation this week.

Dr. Andy

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Thanks to all of you who support the Pub Quiz and this newsletter on Patreon, where you can now start a free trial of the service, which typically means a free Pub Quiz. Special thanks to Quizimodo, The Outside Agitators, The Original Vincibles, The Mavens, and others. Artist Steve Oerding recently made a big pledge to keep the newsletter going. Thanks, Steve!

I hope you can join me Thursday at the Gallery and on the 9^th for a big in-person Pub Quiz! Meanwhile, here are some bonus questions:

1. German Names. From the Latin name Ursus, the German name “Urs” means what? 

2. Historic Periods. What historic period (or “age”), lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, was characterized by the presence of writing in some areas and other early features of urban civilization? 

3. Pop Culture – Music. Jimi Hendrix was born the same year as Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, and Jerry Garcia. Name the year. 

4. Sports – Race Car Movies. In the first scene of what race car film does Matt Damon’s character ask his pit crew if he is on fire before getting back into his racecar? 

Cheers.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

“The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.” Zora Neale Hurston

If we consider 1990 the last year of the 1980s, then I have spent part of five decades teaching at UC Davis so far, and I may make it to parts of seven decades if I teach first-year seminars in my 70s, as some of my emeriti colleagues do. 

Because I earned my graduate degrees at the same institution where I teach, I have a longer history here even than those faculty colleagues who are older than I am. One exception to this would be my retired colleague Kevin Roddy, who can tell stories about his conversations with Emil Mrak, the food scientist who served as our second UC Davis Chancellor from 1959-1969.

So when I arrived at a celebration of new emeriti at the Putah Creek Lodge last Wednesday, I saw some faces that I knew from previous decades, but which I hadn’t seen for a while. For whatever reason – it might be the “big interruption” of the pandemic, it might be age, it might be that I know so many categories of people – I can’t place faces and names as easily as I once could. 

But at this event, I knew why these distant friends and old colleagues were there. And because our guest of honor, Geerat Vermeij, the esteemed Dutch-born geologist, conchologist, and MacArthur Fellow, was blind, everyone in person and on video introduced themselves clearly.

When it came time for me to read my paean, my poem of praise, I was delighted to see my friend Ralph Hexter in the audience. I hoped the classics scholar and UC Davis Provost emeritus would appreciate the ways that Greek mythology suffused my quirky and poetic discussion of geniuses who famously worked with shells.

Daedalus

Contemporary of Hercules, perhaps Daedalus was our first retired distinguished professor.

After the inventor’s workshop in Athens, 

after the exile from Greece in the palace of Minos, 

after the puzzle of the labyrinth, 

after the open-air cell he and his son shared 

with the birds at the top of the tower of Knossos, 

Daedalus was given time to reflect on his creations. 

Clearly none was more ingenious. 

He had invented carpentry and its tools, each of them a metaphor. 

When Daedalus conceived the axe, he reminded all of us to sharpen our tools. 

With the plumb-line, he taught us to measure a right angle twice before we start to build. 

With the drill, he taught us to excavate. 

With glue, he taught us to make connections, 

to fashion with wood, with fabrics, and even with feathers.

After his flight from Crete, Daedalus hoped to lie low in Sicily

and to give thanks to the Gods for his rest.

But King Minos lured him out with the puzzle of the conch shell,

challenging any man to thread it from one end to the other.

Minos knew that only Daedalus could decode the conchological dilemma, 

and that by solving the puzzle, the genius would reveal himself.

If you know this story, you know that the venerable inventor tied a thread to an ant,

and introduced the eusocial insect to the entrance of the conch.

Round and round the inside of the shell it marched,

lured by the smell of Sicilian honey on the other side.

When King Minos was presented with the threaded shell,

he knew his former court genius was on the island.

Today we celebrate our Daedaluses,

geniuses whose discoveries and creations are known throughout the land,

scholars whose accomplishments approach the status of myth.

The laurels are yours, and well deserved!

But you might also think of yourselves as that industrious ant,

for long have you marched through your personal labyrinths,

hearing the (published) echoes of your own voices in your shell,

as well as those of the people outside the lab who have cheered you on.

Now is the time to liberate yourselves from your tiny harnesses. 

Come out of your shell. Cap your power!

You answer now to no king, to no court, and to no fellow virtuosi. 

It’s time to enjoy all the honey that rewards you for your persistent genius.

You have threaded the conch, and long will we speak of your triumphs.

Thanks to Distinguished Professor Walter Leal for inviting me to participate in this recognition of UC Davis emeriti. I love presenting the sort of “occasional” poems that I wrote often when I was Davis poet laureate (I performed another one to close out the 2023 San Francisco Writers Conference on Sunday), and I’m glad that I could contribute to making this well-organized and touching celebration even more memorable. Congratulations, Emeriti!

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I walked amongst exuberant drummers in Golden Gate Park yesterday, and met a French Bulldog named Lala (as in Ooh La La) who barked ferociously at every dog she saw except for our Margot, whom she saw as a cousin. Evidently Lala is an especially tribal dog. I hope that like drummers, you can invite strangers to enjoy your “music,” even if at the end of the day, when you get home, you play favorites, like our new friend Lala.

Thanks of being members of the tribe, thanks to all of you who support my work by subscribing to my weekly Pub Quizzes via Patreon. Thanks especially to Quizimodo, The Outside Agitators, The Mavens, and The Original Vincibles for providing a lion’s share of the support needed to keep this enterprise going. Thanks also to new supporter Steve Oerding, the genius artist and cartoonist behind the Ranger Ralph Comics. I would love to include you or your team in my shout-outs, so please consider pledging your help.

I myself will be a featured poet at Poetry Night on March 2^nd. I would love it if  you could join us that night at 7 at the John Natsoulas Gallery.

Here are three questions from a previous quiz:

1. Countries of the World. The eighth most populous country in the world shares land borders with India to the west, north, and east, and Myanmar to the southeast. Name the country.  

2. Science. Mustard comes in three varieties: white/yellow mustard, Sinapis alba; black mustard, Brassica nigra, and a third, Brassica juncea. What is the English name for the third kind of mustard? 

3. Books and Authors. With five words in its title, what an adventure novel by French author Alexandre Dumas completed in 1844 is one of the author’s most popular works, along with The Three Musketeers? 

Be well!

Dr. Andy

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Jack Petrash was a conscientious teacher. For instance, because my father was a famous theatre director, having directed over 500 plays in his 71 years, Jack made a point not to show me favoritism when it came to assigning roles. In The Christmas Carol, I got to play Narrator #2. In The Devil and Daniel Webster, I got to play a member of the jury. In that play, I had one line.

My biggest roles were the avaricious doctor in an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, and in the 3^rdgrade production of Perseus and The Minotaur, I played Daedalus, the genius architect who appears in one scene: he whispers instructions to the Minoan princess Ariadne on how the Athenian hero Perseus could escape his labyrinth with a ball of yarn.

Now that I think of it, I believe I was the only one of my 30 Washington Waldorf School classmates who appeared in either of those plays who went on to earn a PhD, or teach university classes. Put another way, without the avarice or the genius, I went on to become both the “doctor” and the Daedalus of my class. Prescient typecasting.

I’m writing this newsletter on Jack Petrash’s birthday, one he shared with Abraham Lincoln, a fact that my classmates and I thought to be telling and relevant. Jack was born the same year that Casey Stengel became the manager of the New York Yankees, Jack’s beloved home team. They came from behind that year to overtake the powerful Boston Red Sox, starting a decades-long rivalry. In that year’s World Series, the Yankees defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers in five games. What a great year that was for Jack’s parents!

Clearly I need to drop a note to Jack, one of the kindest men I know, kindness that clearly shaped the curriculum chosen for the students he taught for eight straight years. You see, Steinbeck’s doctor was smart and wealthy, but his greed and prejudice distinguish him from the hero of the The Pearl, Kino, the poor pearl fisherman who just wants the best for his family.

Like Kino, Daedalus famously loses his son (spoiler alert), despite all the advantages of being the smartest man in the Kingdom of Minos. A Christmas Carol is about a crafty and successful businessman who finds his soul only when he finds his compassion. Even Old Scratch (the Devil) outsmarts Daniel Webster in the legal drama The Devil and Daniel Webster until Webster’s rhetoric compels the undead jurors to remember their humanity that binds us all together. Even though Jabez Stone sold his soul to the Devil, we the jury found Jabez not guilty.

Some of us may think of ourselves as rich, smart, accomplished, or tactically sophisticated (I may be zero for four, but that’s another matter), but only when we find ways to explore and share kindheartedness, Jack Petrash and the plays we read seemed to teach us, will we recognize the opportunity to live lives of purpose and fulfillment. On his birthday, I send thanks to Jack for directing us in so many fine productions, rehearsals for many subsequent acts of kindness. 

Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon, especially the teams that pledge for the entire team. Special shout-out to Quizimodo, Original Vincibles, and the Outside Agitators. Poetry Night is this Thursday in Davis, and we have some strong writers coming to town.

Here are three questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

1. Mottos and Slogans. What company whose name in Latin means “Great Voice” used to use the slogan “Smart, very smart”? 

2. Internet Culture. What event is mentioned in most February Smart TV advertisements? 

3. Newspaper Headlines. Did the United States add closest to 5,000, 50,000, 500,000 or 5 million jobs in January? 

Be well!

Dr. Andy

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Recently I learned that during the filming of the 1945 film Brief Encounter, the cast and crew took a day off for the celebration of VE (Victory in Europe) day. The director, David Lean, later famous for Lawrence of Arabia,wanted the people on his set to be festive, but rather because the motion picture cameras were needed to film the celebrations in the streets.

Has the United States or England breathed such a sign of relief since the end of World War II? We thought the “end” of the Vietnam War, then the longest and most unpopular of all our wars, had come after five years of negotiations with the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, but the peace did not hold. In the United States, we knew neither the jubilation of victory nor the satisfaction that comes with the cessation of hostilities. 

The people harmed by Saddam Hussain or Osama Bin Laden (and I suppose that includes all of us) might have been gratified by their executions, but no death brings the relief that comes with the end of a war. 

And some bad news stories seem intractable. The death of former Sacramentan Tyre Nichols reminds us again of another instance of disproportionately brutal treatment of African-American men by police officers. His friends tell us that Tyre loved skateboarding and sunsets. One Black skateboarder tweeted this: “I’ve never been more proud of my Memphis Skate Community. They way Black skaters have been supported & the entire skate scene in Memphis has been front & center with the Nichols family. We’ve lost one of our own. We’re all grieving.” The tweet includes footage of Nichols doing amazing skating tricks that he learned while a Sacramento youth.

Domestic terrorists and insurrectionists have received vocal support from members of Congress. The incremental warming of our planet leads to droughts, loss of habitats, shrinking glaciers, and increasing threats of megafloods here in California. In a world marked by interdependence, the war in Ukraine is worsening the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

Closer to home (and a problem throughout the world), the ongoing pandemic continues to afflict so many in our communities with new infections, with the health complications associated with long Covid, and with lingering anxieties concerning both gathering with strangers (Is it safe? Probably not), and staying apart. The isolation, alienation, and apprehension we feel colors how we see our lives and the world.

The sudden progress reported in the news is typically technological rather than spiritual or cultural or, dare I say, meaningful. I’m reading a book now titled The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America in which Margaret O’Mara tells us the story of the personal computer being followed by the iPhone and then wafer-think table computers and ebook readers. In the last three month, ChatGPT has made us all aware of the early possibilities of conversational AI. Last week Microsoft announced a $10 billion investment in ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, its new partner.

The problems with these sorts of advancements, and the social media applications and services that drive the conversation about these instances of tech progress, is that they often serve to overstimulate us, and thus to drain us intellectually and emotionally in ways that we may not even notice. We are assisted in communicating, sharing, and accomplishing tasks faster, but we still sense that something is missing. Speaking in the context of “duhkha,” the Tibetan term for “unsatisfactoriness” (is that a word?) or “unease,” the tenth-century Buddhist monk Tilopa said, “It is not the outer objects that entangle us. It is the inner clinging that entangles us.” In our lifetimes, the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Stillness is the foundation of understanding and insight.” Whether or not you believe that popular technologies and services are “invasive,” as a reporter suggested in a recent piece in The California Aggie for which I was a source, we can be sure that most of these tools do not bring stillness.

So, I thought I would share with you some good news, news that might provide you a pause of stillness and a bit of encouragement during what many would see as a dark time.

• As I suggested regarding movie night that my son Truman organized in our house on this past Saturday, most of the world’s notable films are available for streaming or downloading right now. This is true also for the world’s books. My film critic dad accumulated one of Washington DC’s largest private film libraries because he wanted some control over the films he watched for pleasure. Today all of us can exert some of that control.

• The Giant Panda and the Manatee are no longer on the endangered species list. Perhaps Jack Black and John Lithgow are in part to thank? I hope the numbers of these beautiful creatures continue to grow.

• The nonprofit organization Ocean Cleanup is working to extract the hundreds of miles worth of floating plastic from the world’s oceans.

• The rains of January have enlivened all our Davis nature walks, despite what my wife Kate calls “the tree carnage.” One can smell the negative ions in the air, with the cold afternoons feeling so fresh and clean.

• During the Obama administration, veteran homelessness declined by 50%. Some of those veterans are still fighting the war in Vietnam decades after they came home.

• UC Davis professor Delmar Larsen founded a 501 nonprofit online educational resource project called LibreTexts that provides free and open access to hundreds of online textbooks that have been accessed by about a quarter-billion students from around the world. Those students have spent over a millennium of “confirmed reading.” One of the book projects that I mentioned in last week’s newsletter will be added to this list of OER textbooks.

• In May of 2021, during a fire at the Philippine General Hospital in Manila, two nurses rescued 35 babies from the fourth floor neonatal intensive care unit, including those on ventilators. Congratulations to national heroes Kathrina Bianca Macababbad and Jomar Mallari.

• Costco offers cases of Orgain organic nutrition nutritional shakes in creamy chocolate fudge flavor. I don’t drink coffee, but I reward myself with one of these on most evenings if I got some writing done that day. 16 grams of protein!

• Norway’s last arctic coal mine has been transformed into the 1,000-square-mile Van Mijenfjorden National Park. Imagine the gratitude of the 20 million birds that nest on the islands there, not to mention the 3,000 polar bears that see the park as their hunting grounds.

• In Berlin, Germany, a new place of worship called House of One houses a church, a mosque, and a synagogue in one building, with a communal area that connects them, a place for interfaith dialogue and social activities. The House of One is a place of peace that stands firm against religious and sectarian prejudice and hatred.

• Somehow the three colonies of bees living on its sacristy roof of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris were unbothered by the flames there, as well as by the smoke or the water that followed the fire. The beekeeper Sibyle Moulin, which is a fun French name to speak out loud, says this of the 30-45,000 insects in the three hives: “The behaviour of the colonies is perfectly normal.”

• Bessie Coleman, first Black person to earn an international pilot’s license (in France, in the 1920s), is being honored with her own Barbie doll. Coleman was a widely-popular stunt pilot who nevertheless refused to perform before segregated audiences.

• Up from just 2,000 in 2020, researchers counted nearly 250,000 monarch butterflies in California in 2021. Welcome back, monarchs!

• I love my wife Kate’s sassy new haircut. Not all of these are world news stories.

• Great people model good choices and phenomenal creativity. For example, the poet Dr. Maya Angelou inspired generations of readers, listeners, and viewers with her writings and her performances. I got to see her perform in Boston in 1988, and upstairs at Freeborn Hall (the same building where I host my weekly radio show), about five years later. Angelou once said this: “I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.” 

I hope this good news is doing you some good. Feel free to respond with your own encouraging words. Thanks for reading to the end, and enjoy the coming week!

Andy

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If you would like to support this newsletter and/or the Pub Quiz that comes with it, please consider supporting this effort on Patreon. My patrons make all of this possible. Thanks especially to the Outside Agitators, The Original Vincibles, Quizimodo, and the other teams that support my Quizmaster work month after month!

For them, and for you, here are three pub quiz questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

1. Pop Culture – Music. Lous Reed was part of what rock band that formed in the 1960s, and that was known for their experimental sound and their influence on the development of punk rock, alternative rock, and indie rock? 
2. Sports. What is the national sport of Japan? 
3. Science. William Harvey was the first known physician to describe completely, and in detail, the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the brain and the rest of the body by the heart. In what century did this physician to James I make his discoveries? 

P.S. Poetry Night on Thursday at the Natsoulas Gallery features two first-time features: Rooja Mohassessy and Teresa Pham-Carsillo. Find the details at https://poetryindavis.com/archive/2023/01/rooja-mohassessy-and-teresa-pham-carsillo-read-in-davis-at-7-pm-on-thursday-february-3rd-2023/

P. P.S. Also, check out these upcoming poets, all starting at 7 PM with an open mic at 8 PM:

February 16: Robert Thomas and Beverly Burch

March 2: Dr. Andy Jones with Siri Ackerman

March 16: Former California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia

April 6th: Maya Khosla and friends

April 20th: Julia Levine and Susan Cohen

May 4th: Pam Houston with Talia Lakshmi Kolluri

May 18th: Lois Jones with William O’Daly

June 1st: New York Times best-selling author Mary Mackey

The writer’s duty is to keep on writing. – William Styron

When my disabled son Jukie and I started our daily greenbelt walking habit in the spring of 2020, I would often don a cloth mask about 20 yards before we encountered people walking towards us, and then remove it again as soon as we passed them. Jukie didn’t understand this new practice, so he gestured at my face to communicate that he wanted me to remove my silly mask.

While he never embraced either mask wearing or Zoom school, I made sure that Jukie would at least get some physical education during quarantine. He and I walked every day in 2020, when I averaged 4.6 miles a day, and in 2021, when I averaged seven miles a day. Jukie lost some of the weight that he had gained as a side effect of his medications, and we both explored the streets of Davis. As if to indicate that he was having fun, about four times a walk he would catch up with me and give me a side hug, atypically looking me right in the eyes.

With Jukie’s help, I aspired to walk 2,746 miles in 2022, or the distance between Davis, California and my birth city of Washington, D.C. That would require me averaging 7.523 miles a day. I’m proud to say that I trounced that goal by walking a full eight miles every day in 2022, a total of 2920 miles. You can imagine that I was eyeing that round number goal of 3000, but a variety of factors killed my averages in the last two months of the year – I would have to settle for eight miles a day.

Still, that’s more than I had walked in any other year of my life, even when I was committed to distance running in high school or during my first year in Berkeley. And although I’ve run greater daily distances – there was that one day in 1989 that I got lost while visiting Orinda from Berkeley on foot, so I just ended up running all day – 2022 taught me that consistency matters most whenever you are trying to complete a big task. As John Quincy Adams said, “Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.” 

Along with my meditation habit, I found that the regular physical exertion, my time on the tree-lined greenbelts of Davis, and the fresh air supported my mental health and overall well-being. I felt a sense of accomplishment every time I hit my monthly target, even if I had to add a number of late-night audiobook bonus walks on those evenings when I was falling behind my audacious eight-mile goal.

In 2022, I did write a 100-poem book of poetry, much of it dictated to Google Docs while I was out on my walks, but I also glanced often at my list of unfinished book projects, regretful that I hadn’t devoted more time to writing non-fiction as well as poetry. I knew that if I truly wanted to make finishing and publishing these books a priority, I would have to make some sacrifices.

So, while my low-impact exercise regimen has supported my physical health, this writer also needs to write. Teaching the book The War of Art to my Writing in Fine Arts students at UC Davis, I came across this reminder from Steven Pressfield, one that seemed to be written for me: “The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” 

I shall pump the brakes on my walking obsession in 2023 – I’m aiming for five miles a day, rather than eight – and instead dedicate more time to finishing book projects. I agree with Maya Angelou: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Instead of agonizing over unfinished manuscripts, I shall complete and release them. Perhaps I will see if any of those uncaged birds will sing.

I’m already enjoying the new opportunities that have resulted from my change in schedule. Typically on Sundays I would catch up with my weekly mileage quota by strolling to morning meditation in Chestnut Park, taking Jukie on a long walk, and then later walking with him to an outdoor dinner at a favorite Davis restaurant. As I seek to embrace new experiences, on this most recent Sunday I met with more than 20 new friends to play bocce ball, a yearly tradition for this friend group. Because I spent so much of my boyhood throwing things – Frisbees, , rocks, shuriken – I did pretty well at bocce, or so I was told. My team came in second – 30 points to the winning team’s 32 points – and I was even voted “Rookie of the Year.” I’m now the proud owner of a new gift card to YoloBerry, the best frozen yogurt shop in town.

As I walked to my car – yes, I actually drove to this event – I realized with a laugh that I was the only rookie this year. I look forward to many such realizations in 2023, including realized ambitions. I hope the same will be true for you.

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Thanks to everyone who subscribes to the weekly pub quiz, as I hope you will do via Patreon. You keep me going on this particular writing project. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz.

1. Internet Culture. Starting with the letter H, what toy company owns Wizards of the Coast, the company behind Dungeons and Dragons?  

2. Cars. Starting with the letter S, what full-size SUV introduced in the year 2000 has the longest lifespan of any SUV at 296,509 miles?   

3. Sports. The first African American coach in NBA history, who was appointed as player-coach for the Boston Celtics in 1966?

In my most recent podcast, I interviewed the Sacramento poets Brad Buchanan (who has an incredible medical story to tell) and Frank Dixon Graham. I also chat about ChatGPT with a reporter from the California Aggie. Please listen and subscribe to Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour wherever you get your podcasts, or find the show at https://poetrytechnology.buzzsprout.com/. On the first and third Thursdays of each month, I host the Poetry Night Reading Series at the John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st Street in Davis. Find out more at www.poetryindavis.com (where you can sign up for the mailing list).