This coming Friday, after putting up the Christmas tree, Kate and Truman will likely watch the holiday classic It’s a Wonderful Life. It is a film famous for its concluding scenes, where George Bailey finally recognizes just how lucky he is.
Thanksgiving should make us all feel that way, especially if we get to gather and relax with family members, taking a day off from labor and worry.
During my walks this week, I reflected on the essay I might write today, a piece that explores gratitude and togetherness.
Writing a public essay about gratitude carries risks. Such writing could sound like self-praise rather than reflection; it might drift into a narrative of personal virtue. Hearing my teaching stories, my daughter taught me the term “virtue signaling.” Few want to hear anyone imply they sit atop a moral hierarchy.
Gratitude lists can imply shared conditions where none exist. I am grateful for the stability of my unusual family, and the breathing room that has resulted from our living so frugally, but for someone living with precarity, loss, or strain, the subtext of such an essay could be painful, as if I were saying “Imagine if you had these things.”
I want to avoid sounding insulated from our world’s woes, or complacent about them. I see and acknowledge that most people have not benefitted from a three plus decade marriage or the professional flexibility that allows my son Jukie and me to walk so many miles every day.
All those caveats stated, I will name what I value, and what prompts my feelings of gratitude.
I value a family that anchors me. I appreciate the support of Kate, a beautiful partner whose presence steadies me, and whom I support in turn; the meals I get to share with my children, especially my walking buddy Jukie, who prefers the contents of other people’s plates to his own. I treasure the time spent with our French bulldog, Margot, who always seems ready to enable, and even enforce, a nap on the couch.
I value a vocation, not just work. Every day in the classroom, I get to inspire, dramatize, and exemplify curiosity, realization, growth, and love of learning. After 35 years, my performative work before my students and my painstaking work with their prose feels more like a craft than duty. In my (mostly unpaid) side gigs, I get to host Poetry Night in a beautiful art gallery, the Pub Quiz outdoors with competitors who have become friends, a radio show where I get to talk about poetry and other forms of creativity with master craftspeople, and online forums where I get to reconnect with UC Davis faculty from across the disciplines. In these spaces where people gather, we also speak together, laugh, and feel less alone.
I value a body that still carries me far into each day. As I often note in these newsletters, I will walk five, seven, or even ten miles a day. I also row on Kate’s rowing machine and do suitcase carries for five minutes at a time while brushing my teeth in the morning and evening. I stop for push-ups on many of the park benches that we pass on our walks. I am grateful for legs that carry me to campus on every teaching day, and through the greenbelts of south Davis and beyond.
I value a creative mind that refuses stillness. I write poems, and these years, especially love poems, with sensory detail and deliberate attention. In essays and in poems, I revise, refine, guard against cliché, and abjure weak verbs. I read, research, and plan, challenging and delighting students and bargoers alike with my clever assessments. I greet curiosity with more curiosity.
I value community that sustains me. Poets read under the lights of the John Natsoulas Gallery where I gather them twice a month. People gather outdoors on November evenings to hear me prattle on about mottos and slogans. Sixty-three university colleagues gathered this past Friday to hear me and others opine on digital accessibility and AI. If you count my radio show and the Summer Institute on Teaching and Technology, I get to host about 150 events a year. I should stop being surprised that strangers greet me by name on the greenbelt.
I value life still in motion. Even though I largely remain in our little town of Davis, I cover a lot of ground here. I have plenty of plans yet, plenty to do.
Raising a son with significant special needs has attuned me to the kindness of the people of Davis. I see it when they greet Jukie, but I also see it in quiet moments that have nothing to do with us. This past Sunday, I was meditating in the Chestnut Park with friends from my weekly meditation group. Two boys, perhaps nine years old, pulled a wagon overflowing with groceries and party supplies to a picnic area for a birthday party later in the day.
We sat on our zabutons, the rectangular cushions we use when we meditate together. Upon seeing us, the two boys signaled to each other that they would lift the laden wagon and carry it past us so as to make no noise that would disturb our meditation. Because it was unusually heavy, they paused every few steps, muscles visibly straining, but still they moved silently, step after step, until they were well past our hearing.
I want the parents of those boys to know what fine young men they are raising. Their quiet generosity embodied the grace I seek to notice and cultivate. This Thanksgiving, I am grateful to them and to their spirit of consideration and care. I want to grow up to be like those boys.
I hope you can join us for the Pub Quiz tonight. You likely have tomorrow off for Thanksgiving, so you can start the celebrations this evening. The heaters will be turned up to eleven! I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars for the social event of the week featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. Finally I get to eat again with The Mavens! Today’s pub quiz is 1031 words long, if we include the answers.
In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: rappers, drifting lives, shots, rentals, fancy neighborhoods, tramping, American kings, western heroes, flavors, operatic inspirations, divas, traffic, Hall of Famers, dancers, plots, generosity, crosses, the absence of seeds, boys, nostalgic guilt-casting, baseball, décor, temporary presidents, disastrous Thanksgiving dinners, earth metals, debut albums, sequels, protons, restaurant reviews, drones, drinks, rivers, changed names, cacti, U.S. states, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.
For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.
Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 80 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Kiera, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! I should write a question for Kiera. Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of the aforementioned avocado. I appreciate the Mavens’ kind words to me in the newspaper. Thanks in particular to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine!
Some trivia from last week:
- Great Greeks. In Greek mythology, who beheaded the Gorgon Medusa?
- Unusual Words. Both the common words that contain three consecutive double letters start with the letter B. Name one of them.
- Hot Counties. The hottest county in the U.S. is not Yolo County, even though the county in question does have four letters and start with a Y. Name the county.