Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Happy December to you and your families! The end of the academic quarter for me means reading and measuring the success of an incredible load of final projects from my students. Overall I am impressed with their improved writing skills, and with the creativity of the collage essays that students have researched, written and wordsmithed for my advanced non-fiction writing class this quarter. Several of my students will be encouraged to submit their work to Prized Writing, the University Writing Program’s annual journal of the best in undergraduate writing at UC Davis. If you would like to see an example of such writing, pick up a copy of Prized Writing at the UC Davis Bookstore.
Speaking of writing, I am always impressed with the ways that my wife (an author and counselor to new moms) can use writing to express how she feels about our kids and other sentimental topics, such as the year-end holidays and the people who have supported us here in our hometown. Here’s an excerpt from her blog about parenting, “Thriving in Holland”:
Davis, California is a wonderful place to raise children, an opinion which never feels truer than during the first weekend of December. The Davis Art Center holds its annual holiday sale, which is guaranteed to be jam-packed with Davisites sipping hot cider while perusing the many remarkable wares made by local artisans, and catching up with all the friends they encounter. We look forward to this event all year long. Also held early in December is the annual tree-lighting ceremony and lead-up parade. Families line up early outside of our natural foods co-op, prepared with candles and glow sticks. Then the UC Davis Marching Band-uh leads us to the tree to be lit, with Santa sitting nearby. Walking slowly with my husband and kids, all of us in candlelight, seeing the shopkeepers on their doorstops watching us parade past their stores in the misty rain, I discover yet another opportunity to fight back tears. I think about the year we’ve had, and the feeling of community I feel with my family and friends in Davis. I see the wonderment in my five-year-old son Truman’s eyes, and I can’t help but cry.
I don’t think you will cry when you hear the questions on tonight’s Pub Quiz, but of course I think this every week. Any sports fans out there? You might invite someone who knows basketball to join your team tonight. In addition, I’ll share with you questions on topics such as Cyber Monday, ersatz domestic terrorists, Vienna, Oprah, the year in film, steel, Tennessee, chemistry, authors of rugged fiction, ignitions, occasions for a toast, Dr. Seuss, transportation companies, jingling saunas, Houston heroes, gliding, color commentary, wannabe governors, films of the late 1970s, African countries, PhDs, worms, mother songs, football families, Egypt, and Shakespeare.
As always, if your team brings a team of new players to the Pub Quiz, you both will be awarded either a bottle of wine or an order of sweet-potato fries. If you have any friends who follow basketball and who also have a habit of reading unassigned texts, invite them to form a team and join the fun!
See you tonight.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:
1. Sports – Baseball. What speedy center fielder nicknamed the Say Hey Kid was the National League’s Rookie of the Year in 1951, played in 24 All Star games, and was named the National League’s most valuable player in both 1954 and 1965?
2. Science. What unit of measurement can be defined as the ability to raise 33,000 pounds one foot high in one minute?
3. Great Scots! In the 1995 film Braveheart, Mel Gibson played a Scottish knight and landowner who is known for leading a resistance during the Wars of Scottish Independence and is today remembered in Scotland as a patriot and national hero. He shares a last name with an Emmy-Award winning journalist. What is that last name?
4. Unusual Words. According to the Old Testament, what four-syllable word beginning with the letter T was the portable dwelling place for the divine presence from the time of the Exodus from Egypt through the conquering of the land of Canaan?
5. Another Music Question. “The Time (Dirty Bit)” is the first single from the November, 2010 sixth studio album by what American alternative hip-hop music group?
Friends of the Pub Quiz, and those curious about all the fun and fuss associated with the Pub Quiz, should come to de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis (217 E Street), the highly esteemed pub and restaurant that fills up every night because of the superb quality of food, drink and company that can be found there. The de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz takes place every Monday at 7pm, though players are encouraged to arrive early to claim a table. As always, find out more about the Pub Quiz by visiting https://www.yourquizmaster.com. For more on de Vere’s Irish Pub, visit http://deverespub.com/.