This fall I am teaching one of my favorite first-year seminars: “Journaling Our Long Walk Together.” On Tuesday mornings, I will be meeting my students in eight outdoor locations, take my students for a walk during which time I will offer facts and stories about the sights we encounter, encourage the class participants to talk with one another, and leave time at the end of each class for us to write in our hardback journals.

As much as I enjoy talking with my students about my 35 years of (hopefully relevant) experiences at UC Davis and in the City of Davis, I take the most delight in spotting a friend or colleague, introducing this unsuspecting local to my eager students, and then ask the “mark” to give a five-minute lecture on a campus or city-related topic of their choosing. Actual readers of this newsletter have been asked to speak to my students, as have a retired Spanish professor and jazz musician, a former Mayor of Davis who is a bicycling enthusiast, and the local artist who wrote the song of the City of Davis, which she volunteered to sing for my students.

I first offered this class during the pandemic. Students had returned to the dorms (everyone had a single), but not really to our classrooms. An outdoor class was deemed to be safe to teach, so my students were thrilled to be in the presence of their peers, even if in those early days we kept our social distance from one another.

The assigned readings concerned journaling, enjoying the outdoors, and walking. With that in mind, and to offer another text that I can assign my students, I present to you ten health-related reasons why I, they, and you should all go for a walk.

1. Walking strengthens the heart and circulatory system

Because I walk with my son Jukie, I could be accused of “moseying” or “meandering,” rather than walking quickly, but my students will be encouraged to pick up the pace. Walking briskly increases heart rate and circulation, reducing cardiovascular disease risk. Research also shows brisk walking significantly reduces cardiovascular risk factors like high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol

2. Walking improves endurance and energy levels

Regular walking builds stamina without the strain of high-impact exercise. Hippocrates allegedly said that  “Walking is the best medicine,” anticipating what modern sports medicine confirms. I walk so much that I feel that when I set out on a weekend morning, I could walk all day. On rare occasions, and with pit stops at Jukie’s favorite restaurants and grocery stores, I actually do.

3. Walking aids in weight management

Walking burns calories steadily, especially if practiced daily, the way I practice it, and the way I hope will inspire my students to do the same. A 2015 study summarized by CBS News reported that “good old‑fashioned brisk walking on a regular basis may trump gym workouts and other types of exercise when it comes to managing weight.” Although I use the verb “supersede” rather than “trump,” I still agree with these findings.

4. Walking boosts immune system function

A Harvard Health article titled “5 Surprising Benefits of Walking” cites a study involving over 1,000 men and women (the original study is found in Archives of Internal Medicine from 2008). It reports that individuals who walked at least 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week had approximately 43% fewer sick days than those who exercised one day per week or less. I have yet to take a sick day at UC Davis (at least for my own illness), but it has only been 35 years. We’ll see.

5. Walking lowers blood pressure and supports cholesterol health

I hope this is true. Because my good cholesterol is a bit low, I have started requesting two orders or avocado on my salads, rather than just one. I could eat avocado with every meal.

6. Walking enhances balance and coordination

Especially in older adults, walking strengthens muscles and engages proprioception. Tai Chi master Cheng Man-ch’ing wrote of walking as “a discipline of balance in motion.” When I am out walking, I try to balance myself on curbs, walls, and parapets, my arms outstretched like those of a child.

7. Walking supports joint health

Contrary to myth, walking lubricates joints, improves flexibility, and helps those with arthritis, according to the Arthritis Foundation. At what age did I start talking about arthritis in my newsletters?

8. Walking helps regulate blood sugar

Post-meal walks can lower glucose levels. A 2013 study published in Diabetes Care, led by Loretta DiPietro at George Washington University, found that three short post-meal walks (15 minutes each) were as effective for reducing 24‑hour blood sugar levels as one continuous 45‑minute walk, especially among older adults at risk for impaired glucose tolerance. I’m definitely engaging in more health research than usual this week. Look at all these links!

9. Walking provides fresh air

Fresh oxygen intake improves alertness and well-being. The Romantic poet Wordsworth, who walked thousands of miles in his lifetime, claimed his imagination was “sharpened on the road.” Meanwhile, Canadian physician William Osler said, “Patients should have rest, food, fresh air, and exercise – the quadrangle of health.” Disappointingly, my doctor never brings up quadrangles.

10. Walking provides you opportunities to notice plants, trees, animals, and seasons

Biologist E.O. Wilson called this connection “biophilia,” or our innate affinity with life. A walk is a daily lesson in ecology. It’s also an occasion to write lesson plans and various sorts of assessments.

Enjoy this week’s bonus assigned readings! I’m sorry for your sake that the enrollment cap in my walking first-year seminar at UC Davis has already been reached.

---

As Kate is out of town, I’ve asked a substitute quizmaster, named Dan, to take the reins this evening. He has been training for years, mostly by wearing his beard like mine. I am sure he will do a rousingly good job. Thanks, Dan!

Happy mid-August to you! The weather will be hot tonight, hotter than we deserve, as one media personality might say. I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars outside our favorite brewery tonight, perhaps in the shade, for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. 

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: elevators, Times Square and other popular places, disappearances, ghosts causing fires, abandoned places, expensive spices,mountainous regions, complex arrangements, laureates, burrows, Oscars for playing real people, popular names last year, breakfast, Mongolians, alternatives to Cyprus, equator concerns, camping gear, bumpers, football clubs, people named York, powerful claws, Canadian birthplaces, cable fails, Neills, lowlands, conductors, passes, unpopular choices, poignant music, heavy makeup, nuclear research, Jedi mind tricks, U.S. states, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

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

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers 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!

Best,

Dr. Andy

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Pop Culture – Music. What funk band had hits with “Jungle Boogie,” “Get Down On it,” and “Ladies Night”? 
2. Great Americans. The Apollo 13 commander recently died at age 97. What was his name?  
3. Unusual Words. What L word means “relating to a transitional or initial stage; in between two states”? 

P.S. Poetry night on August 21 will feature new work by Rhony Bhopla and Mariam Ahmed. Join us at 7 PM at the John Natsoulas Gallery.

On the afternoon of August 13, 2025, I recall something Henry James wrote in his 1911 memoir The Middle Years: “Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

Even when teaching a summer writing class at UC Davis, I relish the slower pace of August. On this afternoon, for example, I got to talk with my daughter Geneva during a long walk home from campus. As she is also a teacher, a paraeducator at Patwin Elementary, we love sharing stories about our experiences in the classroom, and the funny things our students say.

I love that Geneva lives in Davis – we get to see her often, and I don’t take that for granted. Eager to be parents, but facing obstacles, my wife Kate and I had completed the international adoption proceedings when we learned of her pregnancy. We were so grateful to be parents late in 1997 that we paid close attention to every blessed moment with our cute and colicky baby. Reflecting on my first night shifts in those early days of parenthood (I did knee bends with the baby in my arms until late into the evening so Kate could slumber), I can think of few times when I was simultaneously so sleepy and so present.

Because of that, part of my cultural memory remains rooted in the era of the late 1990s and early 2000s when I would watch with wonder as my daughter took in a curated media diet of books, music, film, and even TV shows. If you were to ask, I could tell you all about the characters from Dragon Tales, Blue’s Clues, andCaillou, everyone’s favorite bald Canadian (other than Howie Mandel).

Today in my advanced writing class, I was riffing on student essayists’ obsessions and what they reveal. Before I could stop myself, I brought up the late 1990s TV show Teletubbies as an example of an obsession, trying desperately to wrench an insightful thesis from an improbable scenario. I imagined that a collector might someday empty his shelves of Teletubbies collectibles, but place them in storage for the day when he might have children. Then on one day, revealing his gifts for the lucky toddler, he could show as much precious love for this child as the baby in the sun did when shining down on Tinky Winky, LaaLaa, Dipsy, and Po. Seeing a few lifted eyebrows, I’m sure my students wondered what sort of class they had registered for.

With regard to films, I told my students that I believed Shrek was one of the only cultural touchpoints we had in common, Shrek and the MCU movies. Today I taught my students that deploying vulnerability in an essay shows your readers that the author is not an OPMC (overpowered main character). For example, the penultimate Avengers movie teaches us lessons about loss, while Endgame teaches us that, even against difficult odds, we must continue to struggle towards our goal, even when doing so with only half a metaphorical shield.

During our long talk on the phone today, Geneva told me that in 5^th grade she once wrote a two-page letter to Santa Claus from the point of view of the Monsters, Inc. villain Randall Boggs, and then shared it with her teacher, Ms. Sandoval. Why? As a way of using all her vocabulary words in a (mostly) functional way.

As I write this, Geneva texted me an image of the entire Santa letter, one where Boggs does not hide his nefarious inclinations. For instance, because one of Geneva’s  vocabulary words was “smug,” I learned from this ancient missive that “[Randall Boggs] would like to give that clown Sullivan and that smug little cyclops Wazowski a good kick in the rump.” I wonder if that sort of talk tested the DJUSD anti-bullying ordinances. I can see why we didn’t take three-year old Geneva to that film about hidden monster nightmares when it was released in theaters. Instead, she (and the rest of us) watched it many times on DVD.

Looking through her elementary school effects, Geneva also shared with me that one of her (and everyone’s) favorite teachers, Barbara Neu, responded with written comments on every one of her first-grade diary entries, and then wrote a long comment at the end. Mrs. Neu also delivered our family a home-cooked meal when Geneva’s brother Jukie had ptosis repair surgery in March of 2004. I’m sure the writing work of that devoted teacher and her love of early Pixar classics were eventual reasons why Geneva majored in creative writing in college.

One Emily Dickinson poem proclaims that “There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away.” When we are ready and especially receptive, favorite films can also transport us back to a time when we experienced an awakening, a revelation, or just a sustained sense of awe. Because of my parents and my Waldorf school, my childhood was full of these qualities. And because of our much-loved Geneva, my wife Kate and I got to revisit such a sense of wonder whenever we (finally) got to sit down on the couch and laugh with our delightful daughter.

---

Happy mid-August to you! The weather will be cooler than we have grown used to this evening. I invite you to join me outside our favorite brewery tonight, perhaps in the shade, for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about.  At least one local reporter will join us for the fun tonight.

Because Kate will be out of town visiting family on August 20, a substitute quizmaster will be running the show that night. Thanks for your continued support!

In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: time travel, Soviet visitors, insects, African nations, S plays, the function of war, governing bodies, common multiples, American heroes, California geography, fancy shirts, metaphorical bridges, jungles, odd pairings with Alfred Hitchcock, UC Davis, competition with China, camel directions, hits awareness, lists, long lines, western locals, famous problems, coaches, Sacramento exits, platforming decisions, cities that sound German, kindred spirits, halls of fame, outrageous statements, scaly creatures, U.S. states, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.

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

Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 70 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers 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 avocado. Thanks in particular to Ellen and to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, and Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. My new paid Substack Subscriber is Anne Da Vigo. Check out her mysteries!

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. From last week, three questions on calendars!

1. What was the job title of the person who introduced the world to the calendar we use today?  

2. Who introduced the Julian calendar?  

3. Co-starring Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, what 2008 Indiana Jones movie references the Mayan Calendar? 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

We have more family visiting, and I have started teaching a new writing class at UC Davis., so I don’t have time to write you an expository or discursive newsletter, as I typically do. Instead, enjoy this poem, full of oblique indications of topics that I have been considering during my walk back and forth to campus.

Suggestive Fragments

1.

A plaintive voice fades — 

urgent, falling,

long since silenced, —

still echoing in basements.

2.

Never interested in productivity,

a quiet notebook

dreams alongside machines.

3.

A mountain speaks in Cyrillic

After a long silence.

4.

Two portals opened

in a year the cosmos snapped—

now we don’t cough

to attract attention.

5.

A language roams deserts,

not shopping malls.

In one word, it reigns.

In another, it waits.

It does not wait for you.

6.

Pinned at the top:

not a butterfly,

but a fragment of voice

from the one who lit the screen.

7.

A ship sails,

its sails stitched from harmony,

its name lost

in a curling wave of harmony.

8.

The son raised fists.

The father taught silence.

Together, they broke something

nobody could hold.

9.

Five bones

beneath your breath.

They bend,

but have no time to beg.

10.

She studied flight

in kernels and stems—

while her shadow

served bills and boundaries.

11.

Three dots

walk into a word,

seeking to be decoded.

They leave no footprints.

They are not eyes.

12.

It comes again,

this twisted Friday—

older,

the scandals forgotten

like unopened fortune cookies

13.

He landed

in polyester dreams—

in a garage

with a family named for fabric.

14.

She moved higher

than most choirs,

a crown resting

not on gold

but spirit.

15.

Asked of tragedy,

he replied in time.

His name rearranges

the play’s demand.

There’s a dog in this play.

16.

A man in robes,

numbered in popes,

reset the clock

with the tilt of a ringed hand.

17.

A dagger’s calendar,

red with reforms,

carries no apologies.

18.

They searched the temple,

that crystal whisper—

but what they found

was time itself breaking.

19.

Many months marched straight.

One was crooked,

holding days like teeth.

20.

Born of coil and hush,

this year returns

like a red menu,

every dozen steps.

21.

He wrote of kings

who barked philosophy,

of men in bathrobes

on fire with thought.

22.

The jungle returned—

not once,

but again,

birds in disguise.

23.

The dried chameleon 

wore cowboy dust

and drank mirages.

24.

A nation of edges,

stitched in shoreline.

Within it,

snowmelt forgets its name.

25.

Power spoke

through three voices

from one compass point,

cold as prison bars.

26.

Salt stings.

But in sweetness,

the air lingers longer.

27.

With an unrushed 

Midwestern hush,

the  told stories sufficed

when the answers ran out.

28.

Crowns may change,

but favor genuflects

toward gentleness.

29.

He bloomed 

beneath backboards,

floated,

spun petals into records.

30.

The blind, the  fool,

And the faithful are gone.

Note what remains.

31.

Blake never saw

This many square teaspoons

Of sand.

---

Happy August to you! Today is a scorcher! I’m glad we have misters on the patio. I hope you will join us for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. 

 Find your hints, above.  

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

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

I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, and Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. I have almost 300 Substack subscribers!

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

1. Hotness. An all-time European high temperature record was set this past Friday in Silopi, Turkey. Was the Celsius temperature closest to 30, 40, or 50 degrees?  

• Books and Authors. Taking place in Florida, which 1937 novel with a female protagonist tells us that “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board”?  

• Film: One-Star Reviews of Great Movies. What film received this one-star review: “Hot dog fingers? This is what won Best Picture??” 

P.P.S. August 7 is Poetry Night. We have Robin and Keith Ekiss! I earn a mention in Robin’s bio. I hope you can join us at 7 PM in the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis.

Dear Friends,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Do not obey in advance.

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

2. Defend institutions.

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

3. Believe in truth.

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

4. Stand out.

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

5. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.

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

6. Be reflective if you must be armed.

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

7. Listen for dangerous words.

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

8. Make eye contact and small talk.

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

9. Practice corporeal politics.

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

10. Be a patriot.

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

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

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

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

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

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

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

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

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

We are stronger when we come together. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

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

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

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

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

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

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

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

🎭 EVENTS & PERFORMANCES (ITHACA / REGION)

🎶 Music & Dance

• Great Blue Heron Music Festival 2025

July 4–6 music festival featuring various regional acts.

• REV Theatre’s “Barnum”

A circus-themed musical running July 9–26.

• The Notorious Stringbusters

Live bluegrass performance on July 5.

• Pineapple Punk Party

Music event held June 29.

• Burly Bingo

Drag or burlesque-themed bingo night on July 18.

• Bluegrass Jam

Recurring acoustic jam sessions.

• Drag Me to the Discotheque!

Dance party for queer and allied communities.

• Community Square Dance at Stone Bend Farm

Folk music and dancing with live music.

• MicrTones

Electronic music and DJ show with multiple performers.

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🎭 Theater, Literary, & Performance

• Musical Theater Open Mic

Recurring public event for live musical performances.

• The Wedding Show

Interactive theater event at The Cherry Arts in Ithaca.

• Spring Writes Literary Festival

40+ free literary events with 100+ artists.

• Extended Stay Theater Series

Theater event featuring short plays and staged readings.

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💃 Other Events

• Dance Party on the Patio (June 28)

Open-air community dance.

• Peace Trot (June 15)

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

• FLX Calendar Events

Includes local music, crafts, classes, and fairs.

• Hardware Demo Day

Hands-on event for trying tools and equipment.

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🧠 EDUCATION & CLASSES

🎓 Academic & Skill-Based

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

Intensive summer courses open to all.

• Wild Mushroom Identification Classes

Field and classroom instruction.

• Astrology Meetup

Monthly community meeting on astrology topics.

• Chess for Kids

Private chess lessons and peer coaching.

• Creativity Connects Us

Art program focused on healing and self-expression.

• Creative Reuse Art Supplies Drive

Art supply collection for community reuse.

• Information Literacy Campaign

Poster encouraging information sharing and fact-checking.

---

🤝 Parenting & Youth

• Virtual Childbirth Education

Remote childbirth preparation classes.

• Summer School of Rock

Free youth music program.

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

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🧘 SERVICES & WELLNESS

• Jillian’s Cleaning Services

Local professional cleaning offerings.

• Creativity Coaching

Sessions with a local coach for artistic support and expression.

• Yoga Classes at Mighty Yoga

Promotion includes $10 first visit offer.

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

Wellness event with kombucha and sunshine.

• Vitamin D Awareness Campaign

Health education on deficiency prevention.

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📢 ACTIVISM & POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT

• Living Wage Town Hall

Public forum on fair wages.

• Stop Starving Gaza

Political awareness and action campaign.

• Glory to the Fallen & Day of Healing

Revolutionary political remembrance event.

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

Rally held at Washington Park.

• Voting Engagement & Info Booths

Posters encouraging voter participation and education.

• Pride Booth Outreach

Community info distribution tied to local LGBTQ+ events.

• Doomsday Messaging Poster

Anti-capitalist and social justice commentary.

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🛍️ MISCELLANEOUS / COMMUNITY RESOURCES

• Onigiri Food Days

Weekly food-related cultural event.

• Transportation Scout

Possibly a survey or outreach effort about local mobility.

• Grow Your Own Organic Garden (Coplant Gardens)

Gardening resource with promotional materials.

• Local Event Roundups

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

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

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

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