Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Today at lunch, soon after my brother-in-law deplaned for the first of his many days visiting Davis from Seattle, I noticed that he and my wife Kate were speaking in hushed tones on the other side of the table. Children of various ages were separating us in a noisy restaurant, so of course there was no way I could hear the only other adults at lunch. Kate admitted that she sometimes conceals idle chitchat from me on the day that she’ll be competing in Pub Quiz, because she doesn’t want me to remove from the Quiz anything that she might be thinking about. I suspect that she and Paul were discussing Robert Byrd.
Growing up in Washington DC, I knew that even then Byrd had been in the Senate forever, since Eisenhower, that he had many federal buildings named after him in nearby West Virginia (for he procured the tax dollars for those buildings), and that he was once a Klansman (who would go on to support Barack Obama for President). He also believed in collegiality and decorum in Congress, and, like Ted Kennedy, he had many friends on both sides of the aisles. Of course, his voting records also reflected both sides of the isles, and he espoused some beliefs in the 1940s that deserve to be aired in no aisles. In his book Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields, he wrote “I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times… and I don’t mind apologizing over and over again. I can’t erase what happened.” We’ll see how much space his work as “Exalted Cyclops” gets in the obituaries. Robert Byrd died this morning at the age of 92.
If you are one of the folks who arrives at the Pub Quiz “just in time,” I encourage you to give yourself some extra time this summer. Davis residents who pined for “mottos and slogans” questions and karaoke during the school year finally get to come out on a Monday night to enjoy a respite from responsibility. Perhaps some of those people miss being assessed by PhDs every week, and need a Pub Quiz to stay sharp. No matter the reasons, whereas I would prefer always to ring the Pub Quiz bell at 9, we also want the quiz participants to be seated and comfortable before I start making announcements. So come early if you can. Some of the summer crew at is new, and they would appreciate your arriving early so they can find you and your team a table before Nate turns down the funky music and I boorishly interrupt your conversations.
Tonight expect questions on American millionaires and billionaires, the carryings on of Prime Ministers, the rising cost of life and death in New York City, Otto Klemperer (whoops – I gave that one away – expect that one in the fall), favorite albums of the RIAA, international sporting events, anions and cations, six-letter words beginning with the letter “H,” rock and roll bands, game shows, the University of Oxford, Princess Diana, animal crackers, African adventures, grapefruit, the playlot and the cluhouse, ladders and quills, post-impressionists, the science of stress, famous last names, and one history of summer.
I hope you can join us tonight for another sold-out Pub Quiz!
Your Quizmaster
http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster
Davis, California