Dependable Ghosts and Other Human Inventions

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

“Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn’t a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It’s all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in.…Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.”

Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I’m grateful to Don Lipper for guest-hosting tonight’s Pub Quiz. 

I pride myself on my professional attitude towards work responsibilities. For example, I have yet to miss a day of work because of my own illness, but has only been 34 years so far. Who knows what the coming years will bring?

Even when I caught Covid in February of 2022, I was able to teach my writing students from the back yard via Zoom. I got to eat a number of meals in the back yard that February.

With my wife Kate and our bookend kids visiting Chicago this week, I considered bringing my disabled son Jukie with me to Sudwerk for the Pub Quiz. Because of the aforementioned Covid, Jukie hasn’t eaten inside a restaurant for the last four years, and it will rain this evening. He and I will spend this Wednesday as if it were just another weekday, probably with a long walk before the rains come.

On Wednesday, March 18th, 2020, I texted Don Lipper’s Portraits teammate Keith David Watenpaugh a photo of my walk with the dog. I wrote him “This is the first Wednesday afternoon at 5 o’clock in 20 years that I’ve been out for a walk in the city of Davis. KDVS has gone dark!”

Back then my radio show was only 20 years old. This was Keith’s response: “Savor it.”

I did, and I do.

This morning, for example, while Jukie slept, I arose early and started work on my clothes. I culled about 15% of both my dress shirts and my shorts, filling two boxes of clothes to donate. Some of the shirts had belonged to my dad, who passed away 20 years ago this month, and he himself had held onto some of his shirts for more than 20 years back then. 

I will still be hearing my dad’s voice even while no longer wearing his shirts.

I sent a picture of my progress to Kate, and she wrote back “I thought you like that pink one for Poetry Night.” She was right. I’ve always been grateful for Kate’s wise counsel. Imagine all the boneheaded decisions I’ve avoided since 1987!

My best decision was deciding to study abroad in London that fall. My second-best was convincing her to move to California a few years later.

As I reread those last two sentences, I realize that I should now switch from prose to poetry and get to work on something for Kate. Meanwhile, I will send you this newsletter with my good wishes for a fun Pub Quiz tonight. I look forward to hearing back from Don, and perhaps from you, how it went.

Happy spring break, if you get one!

Dr. Andy

 —

If you are in Davis this evening, please join the fun at Sudwerk, despite the blustery weather. 

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on Sydney, internet acronyms, famous families, Reno reservoirs, public playhouses people who were caught stealing, misguided vetoes, works of literature that ask questions, climate change, county seats, famous scuba divers, big octaves, research centers, video games, pellets, people who laugh out loud, ranting voices, Emmy-winners, three dimes, economists, notable cities back east, bald people,  accords, big places, place names, superheroes, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to my new patron Adam who has been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks also to Brooke, Jeannie, Becky, Franklin, and More Cow Bell. Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from a past pub quiz:

  1. Current Events – Names in the News. What is the job title of Rishi Sunak?  
  1. Sports. What do the greatest Swiss tennis player of all time and the first runner to break the four-minute mile have in common?  
  1. Shakespeare. Which Shakespeare play has secondary characters with the names Balthasar, Benvolio, Paris, and Tybalt? 

P.P.S. Davis Poet Laureate Julia B. Levine reads with Rebecca Foust on the roof of the Natsoulas Gallery on April 4th at 7.

In novels and films, we often root for characters who are bit imbalanced, those whose rash decisions drive the plot, while in real life, we prefer our friends to be balanced.

The musician Patti Smith put it this way: “In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.”

When my children were young, I would sometimes say surprising or outrageous things at the dinner table to see how they would react. Aristotle allegedly said, “The secret to humor is surprise,” and I love to hear my surprised children laugh. Once my daughter Geneva accused me of being silly (or unbalanced), like Mr. Noodle.

This fall my youngest son Truman will be heading off to college. Truman is a novelist who is trained as an actor and an improviser, but he also makes more measured decisions than most of his peers. Will his new roommates and lunch buddies consider him to be more or less balanced than the norm?

Henry Miller said that “All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.” Perhaps the job of the novelist, the playwright, or the poet is to discover or create the miraculous? Such is a significant task, but eyes must be opened.

According to a 2022 report in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, if you can balance on one leg for 10 seconds or longer, you are unlikely to die anytime soon. To quote the article’s abstract, “Balance quickly diminishes after the mid-50s increasing the risk for falls and other adverse health outcomes.” Ironically, that sentence itself is imbalanced – it needs a comma after “mid-50s” the way a see-saw needs a fulcrum.

I’m not naming names, but I still remember who was the heaviest girl in my second-grade class. How did I know? From where my lightweight self had to sit across from her to keep the see-saw evenly balanced.

After I heard about that sports medicine study, I tried to balance on one foot for ten seconds. Even though I my age could be characterized as “after the mid-50s” (I’m around the age that Dante was when he finally lost his balance), I can balance well. I can still put on my socks and shoes, and tie my shoes, from a standing position without losing my balance. Bringing my feet up to my hips, such as to tie my shoes, is the only way I can touch my toes.

Before the pandemic, I found it easier to put on my shoes. For decades on teaching days I wore lace-less black dress shoes. Back then, I biked everywhere around town instead of walking. As my back bike tire went flat that fateful March week just over four years ago when all the (bike) stores closed in Davis, I just opted thereafter to walk. I found that I was less in a hurry than before.

While out long-walking with my son Jukie (he joined me for 15 miles this past Sunday), I will hop up on an elevated curb or greenbelt ledge and walk a stretch to test my balance. Sometimes I make Jukie do the same. With our strong legs, he and I can (immoderately) walk all day.

Like veteran skiers, Jukie has excellent physical balance. When he was younger, we used to play this game where I would sit on the floor at Jukie’s feet and then push and pull at his calves or thighs in a mock-attempt to knock him down. He would laugh and laugh, but never fall.  

Currently we Davisites are balanced between winter and spring, but meteorologically, spring dominates. Like a spring day just before dawn, our once-optimistic country also seems precariously balanced between darkness and light, between what the Bard called “the winter of our discontent,” and the way that he described spring in Love’s Labour’s Lost:

When daisies pied and violets blue

And lady-smocks all silver-white

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue 

Do paint the meadows with delight.

I hope that this November every Californian and every open-eyed and mentally-balanced American will be filled not with discontent, but with delight.

But even after November, I hope you and your families enjoy many years of physical, spiritual, and work-life balance. If you feel your balance waning, I recommend that you invite a favorite companion on a long walk that is interrupted often by daring feats of balance and by Mr. Noodle-like whimsy. I have found that in many cases, like life, those two will be one and the same.


Subscribers to my pub quizzes on Patreon have already received a bonus treat this week, the short pub quiz that I performed for the yearly Patwin Elementary Auction and Fundraiser. I was also the auctioneer. 

This bonus quiz has 15 new questions, and I transferred one of the trickier questions to tonight’s 7 P.M. Sudwerk pub quiz, so join me on Patreon to see that preview. Tonight also expect questions on big places, locators, Japan, championship games and series, forked lightning, tricky riddles, big cities, Hurricanes named Hugo, losing politicians, nannies, self-described legends, monkeys, Latin words, medieval lingo, first novels, TV sports, coastlines, orchestras, old animals, popular characters, place names, superheroes, game statistics, appointments back on planet Earth, words that could be Wordle answers if they were not proper nouns, fancy words for washing up, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to new patron Adam who has been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks also to Brooke, Jeannie, Becky, Franklin, and More Cow Bell. Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. Thanks for considering backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Science fiction icon Kim Stanley Robinson, himself the topic of a pub quiz question at least once a decade, will be reading poetry at Poetry Night on March 21st at 7 PM at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Come early, for I expect on that we will run out of chairs.

Enjoy these three questions from our last Sudwerk Pub Quiz.

  1. Renaissance Men. What poet, singer-songwriter, and cartoonist wrote the books A Light in the Attic, The Giving Tree, The Missing Piece, and Where the Sidewalk Ends?  
  1. Books and Authors. First name Zadie, what White Teeth author and NYU creative writing professor was born in Britain to a Jamaican mother and British father?  
  1. Film. First name William, what director has directed 14 actors to Academy Awards, more than any other director? Hint: His films include Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, and Funny Girl, but not the Billy Wilder classicSome Like It Hot.  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I’ve been thinking about my writing styles, and really my writing identities, as I gather poems to read at my first headlining poetry reading since March of last year. I recognize the healthy ways that the person who has written my poems of the last couple years is different from those one who wrote the works that filled up my previous published and unpublished books. 

Tomorrow, Thursday, March 14th, I will be reading 25 minutes of new poems starting around 8:30, with open mic performers performing before and after my feature. You should come by the Silver Lining Piano Bar at 1414 16th Street in Midtown Sacramento to see the show.

As our parents have faced all sorts of health problems in the last few years, most of them cognitive, my wife Kate and I have adhered ever more closely to the brain health regimen recommended by neurologists. I’ve been a vegetarian for more than 40 years, and I don’t typically eat high-calorie or high-sugar baked goods or desserts, but in recent years I’ve recommitted to healthy eating, for Kate has started making me elaborate feasts packed with tofu and more than a half-dozen vegetables. These meals take Kate almost an hour to make, and they take me almost that long to eat. As only one in ten Americans eats the vegetables that they should, I assume that I eat more vegetables at one sitting than most Americans do in a week.

I started walking during the pandemic lockdown, and haven’t stopped since, averaging more than five miles a day since 2021. According to a recent article in The Telegraph, “Walking 15,000 steps a week for two years could add years to your life, a London School of Economics (LSE) study has found.” As I walk back and forth to campus, I hit that benchmark easily, and my son Jukie and I typically cover more than 15,000 steps every weekend day. This past weekend we walked 25 miles.

So my poems these days are fueled by healthy food, and many of them are composed (sometimes by dictation) while I am enjoying the greenbelts of Davis.

The other big change that affects my poetry? My going to bed before 11 PM every night.

I used to wait for everyone in my family to go to sleep before plumbing the depths of my poetic brain for material and quiet composition time. Franz Kafka journaled about his insomnia in his diaries, and some biographers think the wild imagery found in stories such as “The Metamorphosis” resulted from his lack of sleep. He died at age 40.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac and many other authors struggled with alcohol, and Charles Baudelaire and Hunter. S. Thompson were also drug addicts. All of them, like Woolf, Plath, and Hemingway, suffered from insomnia, and most of them died much too early.

Addressing my own sleep problems (starting with a sleep study) and choosing to go to sleep (early) when my wife Kate does have all improved my life. It has been refreshing to wake up feeling rested, and I nap a lot less than I used to, using that awake time to write poems during the day, rather than overnight.

But are the poems any good? I can tell that they are more controlled, less obstinately random. The comedian Stephen Wright once said, “I have to be asleep by one in thе morning because my dreams are going to start whether I’m sleeping or not, which can make for some pretty strange conversation if I’m still awake.” I have sometimes felt the same way about poems I wrote late at night, such as this one in which I tried to represent the kaleidoscopic descriptions of Kate’s first ocular migraine:

First Ocular Migraine

Transchromatic vision spiraled before her,

Void of calculations or of volition,

Rather, arctic icepick arpeggios,

Hyacinth river syringes, an antipathetic siren song, 

Synthetic shuddering childbirth of synapses,

Awakened autoplay of uneven blackative perforations,

Intermission from logic and pretension,

Like Carmen Miranda choking a parrot, furious tintinabulations,

Squawking polychromatic involuntary terrace table geyser-sabre fever-burst!

Waves of judgment, the snap of brain-stem hunger!

Somewhere a basilica is burning pestled crystals; 

they are the color of the world!

Hypertrophic painters have machine-blasted zigzag astronomical cracks. 

The imps are dancing to transparent friction idiophones, 

Two or three of them on the sides of her eyeball.

Blushing buzzer, besmirched blushing bloodstained barefaced bandit!

Hallucination independent of eyeball, of eyelid, of light source, 

Formless and inchoate, like the lacuna of an unborn star.

I don’t know if I could write such a wild and haphazard poem at two in the afternoon, but now that I am taking better care of myself, I will see if I can bring other strengths to bear to my writing processes and products. You will see evidence of my new verse at The Silver Linings Piano Bar if you join us tomorrow night at 8.


The Sudwerk Pub Quiz happens tonight and every Wednesday night at 7. If you are in Davis this evening, please join us. Recruit a team and join us at the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for everyone. At the end, we are left only with our thoughts, so I would love for your thoughts to be populated with your friends. As Saint Augustine allegedly said, “Good times and crazy friends make the best memories.”

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on art museums, social media, 401K accounts, annoying people, football, elements, Florida losers, the year 1988, Beavertowns, expensive cities, second acts for athletes, secondary names, Oscars, NATO headquarters, Ryan Gosling, funny girls, books about teeth, notable novellas, things that are soft that you wouldn’t expect to be soft, crabs, imagined scenarios with the UC Davis alumni ski team, covers, scientific sub-disciplines, people who have been arrested, public domain characters, common sense, tennis stars, New York University, The Financial Times, job titles, centers of culture, SI units, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to my new patron Adam who has been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks also to Brooke, Jeannie, Becky, Franklin, and More Cow Bell. Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

  1. Mottos and Slogans. What was the most famous slogan of Wheaties?  
  1. Internet Culture. What does the “QR” of a “QR code” stand for? 
  1. Newspaper Headlines. In the city of Davis, did Measure N pass or fail?  
  1. Four for Four. Which two of the following are native to North America: cabbage, cactus pear, carrots, cranberries?   
  1. The Streets of San Francisco. What street is famous for a steep, one-block section with eight hairpin turns?  

P.P.S. Kim Stanley Robinson will be reading his poetry at Poetry Night in Davis on March 21st, the first day of spring!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

March 2nd is always a day of reflection and remembrance for me. I got to go on a long walk with my son Jukie this past Saturday, May 2nd, during which time I spent some hours thinking about two of my favorite people, both gone too soon.

March 2nd, 2024, marks the 20th anniversary of the passing of my dad, Davey Marlin-Jones. As I have written in this newsletter previously, “Davey Marlin-Jones was a magician, actor, theatre director, film director, theatre critic, film critic, and drama professor, roughly in that order, but with significant overlap.”

I have also written about “performing” with my dad (including interviewing him on my own KDVS radio show in 2002), about his childhood in Indiana, about his lifetime immersion in film, and about his work as a movie critic allowing me to be the first child in America to watch the film Star Wars.

As I prepare to send my youngest off to college, and as I reconnect with friends from childhood (more on that below), I realize what a special childhood I had. My librarian mom made sure that I was immersed in good books and curious about my home town of Washington, D.C., and my famous television personality dad made sure that my afternoons and weekends were filled with games, films, and talk about theatre and other forms of arts.

Strangers who watched my dad on TV also called out to my dad as if they knew him. As he and I would walk down Wisconsin Avenue, drivers would lightly honk their hellos, pedestrians would recognize him and smile, and even bus passengers would yell his name (“Hey Davey!”) from DC Metro busses. Because he was functionally blind, an unexpected restriction for a drama and film critic, my dad would green these people back like they were old friends, just to cover his bases. I think dad was such a big deal in Washington, D.C. not only because he came on CBS just before Walter Cronkite on most evenings, but also because everyone came away from interactions with the towering blind man with feelings of mutual appreciation. I try to emulate my dad in this way.

My dad died 20 years ago this week at age 71. That seems so young to me – he collected only a single year of social security payments – but actuarial tables reveal that males born in 1932 were expected to live only to age 67, and that number is lower for men born in Indiana than those born in California. I could have benefitted from dad’s wisdom and guidance over the last 20 years, but I am grateful for all time I got to spend with him, and his humor and showbiz energy continue to inform all my work with students and other audiences.

March 2nd is also special to me because it is the birthday of my best friend Montague David Lord, known to his friends and family as Tito. I feel like I had spent most weekends at Tito’s house before my parents’ divorce, and most of my weekend’s at my dad’s house after the divorce.

Like my dad, Tito was also a renaissance man, just in different fields. He was the most dominant player on any baseball or cross-country team, and because of his fitness, my short friend Tito and an equally-fit friend would eventually win in two-on-two basketball because of the intense pace at which he played. Later he took to mountain climbing because of the ease with which his powerful limbs allowed him to brachiate up even the steepest inclines.

When still a college student at Trinity College, Tito saw his drawings from an archaeological dig in Peru appear in the New York Times, he learned to rebuild the engine of his Ford Thunderbird, and he started taking flying lessons. A philosophy and architecture major, Tito somehow had memorized all of “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot, reciting it to me during a long drive from Connecticut to Washington D.C. during the spring break before I met my wife Kate.

Tito flew his plane to our wedding in 1992, and soon thereafter flew off to Alaska where he would pilot his last flight. His mom (and my 1970s backup mom) called me in August of 1993 to report that Tito’s plane had gone down. For eight days after his death on August 4 of that year, I thought to myself that Tito was still older than me, that he was still alive just earlier that month. Tito pointed out to me when we were youngsters that he was the wiser of the two of us because he was born on March 2nd, eight days before me. When Tito died, I felt that I had lost a brother, or part of myself.

Many people knew or knew of my dad, even though he reviewed his last movie in December of 1987. Fewer people knew Tito, though he is remembered fondly by those who did.

I’m now going to fill a paragraph with the names of our Washington Waldorf School classmates. If one of them Googles themselves, or the self that they once were in Hearst Hall under the shadow of the National Cathedral, they will find this greeting, know that I am thinking of them, and know that Tito loved them, and that he is loved still.

Here are the names: Marty Benjamin, Jessica Case, Cassie, Chuck, Andy D’Angelo, Franceve Demmerle, Amanda Efron, Lucinda Eagle, Ben Foster, Aaron Gilmartin, Scott Glaser, Kirsten Sturman Hasslinger, Helen Hegland, Andrea Leigh Humphries, Bernie Keil, Tia Kirby, Ian Lent, Chris Lester, Chris McAulliffe, Emily Menezes, Maurice, Robert O’Hara,  Kristin Paddack, Jim Parmelee, Kirsten Parsons, Scott Portacarerro, Matthew Ramsey, Steven Robinson, Birgit Rudelius, Sean Scully, Tom Schweiker, John Singleton, Emily StussiWes Taylor (happy birthday!), Rebecca Trimble, Stephanie Holman Thwaites, Ulrich Winkelmann, Raphael Cavalier Yanick. To this list I should add Montague David Lord, AKA Tito, his mom Anna Johnson, and his late stepdad Jim Johnson. Our teacher, a backup dad for me, is the esteemed Jack Petrash. The bolded names are current Facebook friends of mine, remarkably. I think fondly and often about all of you. If I have misspelled a name or forgotten someone, please let me know.

Meanwhile, treasure your family members, treasure your friends, and join me in raising a March 2nd toast, actual or imaginary, to Davey Marlin-Jones and Tito Lord.


I think that you know that I run a pub quiz every Wednesday night. If you are in Davis this evening, please join us at Sudwerk. With regard to tonight, recruit a team and join us at the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for everyone. Even though it is more work for me, we always have more fun with the bigger crowds and more voices. As Saint Augustine allegedly said, “Good times and crazy friends make the best memories.”

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on fruits, the City of Davis, carrots, Scandinavia, semi-autonomous regions, racy statures, French women, restaurants, ushers, CIA agents, Los Angeles Kings, Queens, islands, cabbage, cacti, breakfast cereal, suckers, insects, daughters, famous hammers, Chinese companies, romantic novels, prisms, big dinners, aeronautics, cinematic wrestlers, emojis, famous football players who died before even I was born, forms of dance, sources of energy, football, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to my new patron Adam who has been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks also to Brooke, Jeannie, Becky, Franklin, and More Cow Bell. Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

  1. Midwestern Culture. What B word do Midwesterners use for turn signals?  
  1. Unusual Words. What word with a Z in it that means “To deceive or cheat by trickery”?  
  1. Pop Culture – Television. The primary female character in the TV show Succession shares a nickname with what weapon?  

P.P.S. Please join us for Poetry Night tomorrow night at 7, and every first and third Thursday night, at the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis.

Zooming Through a Wednesday while Talking About Writing

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I Zoomed today with an author whom I met at the San Francisco Writers Conference. At the conference I get to consult with first-time attendees who wonder if their writing projects will find an audience. Some of them ask for a follow-up visit, or even a chance to work with me after the conference. Today this particular author found an audience with me for an hour, and I shared with him my unique perspectives on his unusual four book projects.

If “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time,” as the musician James Taylor says, then I got to enact that secret for an hour, talking about creativity, writing, publishing, and the discoverability of an aspiring creative professional. I eventually cut the conversation short not because I wasn’t enjoying our chat, but because I wanted this author to value my time. Also, I wanted to attend to Kate.

Today’s conversation partner lives in a small town in Iowa, and he revealed that locally he couldn’t find the perspectives that I could offer him on non-sequential, poetic, and experimental writing projects. We discussed how discoverability as an author matters, too, because of inadequate local interest in what he writes. The long tail of the internet, and the frictionless ways in which any digital document can be purchased, means that any productive author with what Kevin Kelly calls “1,000 True Fans” can likely make a living from sharing one’s latest publications.

My friend the Sacramento novelist M. Todd Gallowglas has an army of followers, locally and out there in the world, who attend his online classes and writers’ salons, buy his science fiction books and books in other genres, and attend his (Sacramento only) regular storytelling performances, such as the two he put on this past Saturday. He calls them “Bard for Life.” His income is made possible in part from the books that he sells to his 1,000 true fans. I suspect he has more than 1,000.

I’ve been collecting poems for a reading that I am giving in a Sacramento piano bar on March 14th, so I have been thinking about authorship as a producer as well as a consultant. Meanwhile, my French bulldog Margot sits in the family “comfy chair,” and my son Jukie was upstairs watching Encanto, though right now the house is eerily quiet. Both of these charges would like to go out for a walk, while I need to write up some notes for my new author contact in Iowa. 

I also need to look over the script for today’s airing of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour, my radio show that airs live Wednesday afternoons at 5 and drops as a podcast Thursday mornings at 9. So many authors from the writers conference have their own projects to discuss, and poems they would like to share with KDVS listeners.

I, too, have 1,000 true fans out there in the world, though many of them have but fond and fading memories of their writing, journalism, or poetry professor. I’ve been fortunate to draw a salary from UC Davis for the last 34 years. If I wanted to commodify and monetize all my creative work, I would spend more time ensuring my own discoverability, but I also recognize the pleasures of a Zoom conversation with a new friend, time preparing a meal for my son, the rough draft of a poem, or a late afternoon walk with the dog. 

As Robert Graves reminds us, “There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either.”


If you are in Davis tonight, please join us for the Pub Quiz at Sudwerk. The weather is warming up, and we have no rain scheduled for tonight, so recruit a team and join us at the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for everyone. Even though it is more work for me, we always have more fun with the bigger crowds and more voices. As Saint Augustine allegedly said, “Good times and crazy friends make the best memories.”

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on fruits, questionable medical advice, prototype computers, warriors, neurons, childish games, gold, capital cities that  you have never visited, reactions, all saints, posthumous heroes and their girlfriends, sports franchises, overdue retirements, Poles who move to Britain, final lines to films, named weapons, grasses, words translated into multiple languages, magic, record breakers, surroundings, Dilbert, girls’ adventures, candy, fake mountains, groups of girls, emotional goodbyes, orthodox countries, comical antagonists, donations, spurs, nails, trickery, pigs, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to the Brooke, Jeannie, Becky, Franklin, and More Cow Bell. Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

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

  1. Gold. More than half the U.S. gold reserve is found in what U.S. state?  
  1. Forests. What country alone holds more than 20% of the world’s forests?  
  1. Pop Culture – Music. The 2022 number one song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is sung by the cast of what film? 

P.S. Did you know that I post free bonus quiz questions on Patreon? I should start sampling those in my Wednesday quizzes.

Writers Conference Peals of Laughter

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Returning to the San Francisco Writers Conference every February is like returning to summer camp. Encountering many of the same friends that I’ve made there over the last 19 years, I get to teach lessons learned from previous talks to new writers, and I get to orient the new campers, the first time attendees, on approaching the process of writing, marketing, and selling a book.

My family didn’t have a lot of money, so I got to attend sleep-away camp only one pivotal summer, but I learned a lot from that experience about interacting with kids who were not oddball Waldorf types like myself and all my friends. At the World Community Camp (what I have jovially since called a “hippie training academy”), I was also introduced to vegetarianism.

Those lessons about expressing compassion for all sentient beings through our dietary choices resonated with me, and I have been a vegetarian ever since. My family didn’t know what to make of my dietary restrictions, just like they didn’t know what to make me for dinner. Some vegetarians define that term loosely by eating fish or chicken, but I myself have not. 

Nowadays vegans have lapped vegetarians in the self-congratulatory self-righteous department. You might not have known I was a vegetarian if you have never dined with me (and in recent days I have enjoyed many 6 PM meals with Mavens), because don’t I bring it up all the time. I have a vegan coworker who I lunched with today, and he will work the word “vegan” into most conversations.

After ten or more years of this, I once said out loud, at a meeting with all of us there, “Wait,  you are a VEGAN?! I had no idea!” Now I don’t joke about that anymore. At least he doesn’t do CrossFit or host a podcast, two other topics that practitioners will bring up unbidden in almost every conversation.

Sometimes I return to familiar topics the way that Chaucer says a tongue will return to a sore tooth. Tell us more about your radio show, Dr. Andy, I hear someone saying. You haven’t mentioned Poetry Night for thirty seconds. What’s the latest with Kate? Have you taken any long walks lately? Any new signups on your Patreon? Do you have a funny story about one of your students or about one of the celebrities who lived in your basement in the 1980s? People rarely request these topics, nor need they, for I will volunteer them myself.

At a writers conference, people instead bring up their book projects. Sometimes the conference program will indicate the time for the no-host bar and add the admonishment  “NO PITCHING.” Everyone there wants to pitch their books, and sometimes the agents need a break. Some agents will flip over their nametag on their conference-provided lanyard to indicate that they are off duty.

But I do love the laughter that comes from the Eclipse Bar and Kitchen at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco. I even made it a primary subject of the conference poem, which I wrote on Saturday night after the open mic (58 people signed up) and performed this past Sunday morning.

Peals of Laughter

Hear the deep resonant chimes of The Ferry Building clock tower bells.

Il est huit heur

It’s always 8 PM somewhere, the beginning of a night out,

or so say the answering bells of tourists on rented electric scooters,

scaring both the nocturnal rats and the diurnal pigeons, 

before stopping to stare 

at the new floodlit Embarcadero Center pickleball courts.

Hey, those weren’t here at last year’s conference!

The writers notice everything.

The only sound that is more joyous 

than tourist scooters or pickleball cheering 

is that of the laughter of authors, or so I keep hearing,

for my Hyatt Recency room 334 is right above the hotel bar. 

Every February I hear the authors gather there at breakfast 

and enjoy eggs over laughter. 

Every February I hear the authors gather 

there at lunchtime over martinis, 

some of them the best martinis they ever had,

sharing business cards, unsolicited pitches, and outrageous laughter. 

As we all can hear, the authors gather there late into the evening, 

long after I finished writing this poem, 

to sound the third floor rooms laughter alarms, 

the alarm clocks no one wishes to snooze.

To the smiling authors staring up at a Hyatt ceiling, 

higher than the belfry of Grace Cathedral;

to the joking authors 

attempting auctioneer-speed elevator pitches 

in elevators they discover ascend too quickly to the VIP rooms 

that are imagined to be briming with agents; 

to the thunderous back-slapping authors 

visiting the Hyatt atrium Eclipse Kitchen and Bar, 

every hour is happy hour.

Risible writers, I consider your insistent words 

a revolt against silence. 

Jocular journal keepers, I consider your comical words 

a revolt against mediocrity. 

Mirthful wordsmiths, agented and unagented 

synthesists who can create anything, 

lead the revolt against weekday jobs, 

for on this weekend, 

lit by the low, faux moonlight of a moonlit bar, 

the only traffic that slows us down 

is that of hopeful authors who traffic in inspiration, 

who traffic in community, 

and who traffic in our February palace home’s 

raucous, echoing, creative, literate, and irrepressible laughter.


I hope you enjoyed the weekend. To commemorate it, I wrote at least one pub quiz question about U.S. presidents, even though most of the early ones seem less heroic today than they did when we were reading their illustrated biographies as children.

In addition to topics raised above, expect also questions about the following: 

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on snacks that go well with tea, winds, Rocky Mountains, keyboards, Oscar-winners, monologues, shooting guards, waves, vibes, popular TV shows, salmon, years, clouds, ceremonies, U.S. states, musical films, forests, European countries, Nebraska, bees, pies, long songs, horses, American sports, newsmen in the shed, billboards, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to the Brooke, Jeannie, Becky, Franklin, and More Cow Bell. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

The rain has stopped for the day, so I look forward to performing tonight’s trivia contest outdoors. Will you join me there?

Best,

Dr. Andy

  1. Film. What British actress had important supporting roles in the following 2010 films: Alice in WonderlandHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 1, and The Kings Speech, for which she was nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress?  
  1. Countries of the World in 2021. True or False: The three countries in this sentence, Poland, Ukraine, and The United Kingdom, are arranged in order by population from lowest to highest.  
  1. Desserts. What coffee-flavored Italian dessert is made of ladyfingers dipped in coffee, layered with a whipped mixture of eggs, sugar and mascarpone, flavored with cocoa?  

A Valentine’s Day Pub Quiz Newsletter, with Poetry!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Happy Valentine’s Day! 

Yesterday while walking home from campus after teaching an advanced personal essay writing class, I stopped in Logos Books and bought a small hardback selection of the poetry of Wallace Stevens, a number of them about peacocks. While typically during the walk home I will listen to an audio book, on this walk, I provided my own audiobook, reading out loud to my son Jukie more than a dozen poems by the modernist master.

As is the case with many high modernist poems, I found it difficult to tell exactly what the poems were “about,” but I did delight in their sounds and word choices. Typically when I am pouring over literary works, I will quickly look up unknown (or approximately-known) words as I read, but this time, I just listened as if enjoying a piece of classical music.

Just now I randomly chose a Stevens poem (“The Comedian as the Letter C”) and then randomly picked a selection of lines to give you a sense of what I mean:

Crispin,

The lutanist of fleas, the knave, the thane,

The ribboned stick, the bellowing breeches, cloak

Of China, cap of Spain, imperative haw

Of hum, inquisitorial botanist,

And general lexicographer of mute

And maidenly greenhorns, now beheld himself,

A skinny sailor peering in the sea-glass.

This can be deciphered without a dictionary, certainly, but poems should not be seen as puzzles. Save your puzzling for my pub quizzes. Sometimes one gains the most satisfaction from a poem when the “meaning” is communicated only approximately. 

This is how T.S. Eliot addressed this concern in his essay “The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism”: “The chief use of the ‘meaning’ of a poem, in the ordinary sense, may be (for here I am speaking of some kinds of poetry and not all) to satisfy one habit of the reader, to keep his mind diverted and quiet, while the poem does its work upon him: much as the imaginary burglar is always provided with a nice bit of meat for the house-dog.”

Kate raised the topic of occasional inscrutability upon first hearing the tetrameter sonnet I composed as her 2024 valentine. It contains at least a couple words that might appear in a Wallace Stevens poem, but not in everyday conversation. 

For context, our family tradition is for me to provide Kate two poems for each of the four love-poem holidays: Valentine’s Day, our anniversary, her birthday, and Christmas Day. Then she decides if one of the two compositions merits being shared more broadly via social media and, I suppose, in this newsletter. Gustave Flaubert once said, “It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.” I love using my poems to move into the universe where, for example, Kate is delighting crowds with her anecdotes. She is an excellent storyteller.

Here is my short 2024 valentine, about Kate’s recent trip to San Diego (which our family often visits in the summer) to tell the 150 people attending a corporate retreat about our son Jukie and about her outreach and family support work on behalf of the Smith Lemli Opitz Foundation. She said she was treated like a rock star, and that her stories made them laugh and cry, so I ran with that:

Kate’s Charisma Tour

Welcome home, our touring rock star!

Your February SoCal jaunt

Yielded plaudits rather than floods,

The spotlight rather than sunburn, 

And high fives, not sandy sandals.

Yarn-spinner, anecdotalist,

When our charisma queen holds forth,

Lachrymose viewers hold their breath.

From each storytelling trip

You reappear in my arms with

Independent confirmation 

Of my Beauty’s captivation 

From the folks who get to see your

Incommensurability.

Happy Valentine’s Day to Kate, and to you. I hope this day surrounds you with love and that it is replete with welcomed displays of affection.

If you are in Davis tonight, please join us for the Pub Quiz at Sudwerk. With regard to tonight, recruit a team and join us at the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for everyone. Even though it is more work for me, we always have more fun with the bigger crowds and more voices. As Saint Augustine allegedly said, “Good times and crazy friends make the best memories.”

This paragraph includes hints. In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on artificial intelligence, Grease, Playback.FM, silly donuts amid the Biden administration, people of color on TV, second acts, English professors, People, famous falls, cheese, bards, NATO countries, princes, knitting and programming, music genres, places that have not been visited by most Americans, love moves, accompanists, European countries, desserts, sacs, famous creeks, foreign aid bills, numbers of hearts, Native Americans, British actresses, amplifiers, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. 

Thanks to the new supporters Brooke, Jeannie, Becky, Franklin, and More Cow Bell. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

  1. Newspaper Headlines: Nearby Countries. Fill in the blank from this headline in a recent edition of The New York Times: “For First Time in Two Decades, U.S. Buys More From BLANK Than China.”  
  1. Sports. According to CNN, “Fiona O’Keeffe produced a stunning performance at the US Olympic Marathon Trials in Orlando on Saturday, [February 3], smashing the previous record by more than three minutes.” Where did Fiona O’Keeffe attend high school?  
  1. Science. What are bromeliads: rare gemstones, flowering plants, tropical rodents or shooting stars?  

Ten Hip Replacement Recovery Options for Kate

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

My wife Kate has to get her hip replaced. Unlike many candidates for this operation, she is relatively young, fit, and active. All of these factors have contributed to her successful delay of an eventually necessary option, and that’s encouraging, especially if the patient doesn’t want to get the same hip replaced more than once.

According to the website WebMD, “95% of hip replacements last at least 10 years, about 75% last 15 to 20 years, and just over half last 25 years or more.” With Kate’s healthy diet and active lifestyle, she will surely outlast her first titanium hip, no matter how soon it is installed.

The hip replacement procedure is one that for our household will require significant preparation. The obstacle? No stairs. Last week her surgeon told her that she would have to stay on the first floor of our home for the first month or more, despite the fact that our first floor bathroom has no bath, or a shower. We would have a downstairs bedroom for Kate, especially after our youngest heads off to college this fall, but how will recovering Kate take a shower?

While I was out walking with Jukie earlier this week, I sent Kate ten ideas on how to address this problem, none of which are reasonable.

One, we could check Kate into the hotel that was in recent years built a block from our house and have her shower there once a week. That option would be expensive, but at least nearby. The hotel has first floor rooms, and an elevator.

Two, we could install a stair lift in the house, one of those sitting railing-based escalators that old Ruby Deagle (played by Polly Holiday) used rather dramatically in the 1984 horror Christmas film Gremlins. In that movie, Mrs. Deagle received an end fitting for a James Bond villain, so I think all filmgoers from my generation are wary of stair lifts. Of course, as Francois Truffaut said, “Film lovers are sick people.” There’s a picture of the French director posted with a bonus trivia question on Patreon.

Three, we could have installed an elevator that would deliver Kate from the southwest corner of the first floor to the southeast corner of the second floor, right next to her side of the bed. An elevator would cost about ten times as much as the stair lift, and it would require its own backup power source so that people don’t get stuck in the elevator between floors, such as what happened in the 1983 Dutch horror film The Lift.

I promise that I don’t have a horror film connection for each option on this list.

Four, we could have our contractors A+J Construction, who did such a good job with our kitchen, build a full bathroom with a door that connects it to our downstairs bedroom. Adding a bathroom to our home would cost about twice as much as the elevator. Our current emergency fund could pay for a (dental) crown, but not a room addition, so this option seems unlikely without a fundraising telethon.  

Five, I contend that we have never-seen and unclaimed space in our house under the staircase. If Harry Potter could sleep in such a space for much of an entire book, Kate could crouch while taking her home shower. We haven’t scoped this out with a tape measure. Also, don’t ask me about drainage.

Six, we could just move to a one-story house in Davis. That would cost about ten times as much as the bathroom addition, especially with mortgage rates hovering around seven percent. We like our current house and its greenbelt access, and we have grown fond of the neighborhood cat, so this option also seems unlikely.

Seven, we could make judicious use of the hose in the back yard, an approach embraced by my son Jukie one summer before the Pandemic.

Eight, we could install one of those portable solar showers in the backyard. That approach would at least include hot water. 

Nine, we could ask one of our friends with a one story house to swap houses with us for a month while Kate recovered. That would be a lot to ask. 

And Ten, we could just to move into a one story Airbnb for a month. I would want it to be within walking distance of campus, but of course everything in Davis is within walking distance for me.

My reasonable wife Kate has wisely vetoed all these creative suggestions, but we would still have to figure out how she would take showers while recovering from hip replacement surgery.

I welcome your suggestions. What ideas haven’t we explored yet?


If you are in Davis tonight, please join us for the Pub Quiz at Sudwerk. I believe the rain will conclude by 7 PM, but my phone’s weather app has a spotty prediction record recently. With regard to tonight’s competition, recruit a team and dress for a winter sunset if you plan to play outside. Most players will gather indoors, I expect. 

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on imports, royalty, record breakers, atomic numbers, California cities, autonomous communities, public offerings, animated films, iconic villains, super heroines with and without capes, again with the spiders, revolutions, title characters, Oscar winners, flu resentments, famous bridges, pineapples, Olympic hopefuls, YouTube subscriber counts, self-portraits, new castles, mobile apps, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare. Three of the questions for tonight have not yet been written. Despite what you might think, there will be no hip surgery questions. We had enough of that in the newsletter.

Thanks to the new supporters Brooke, Jeannie, and More Cow Bell. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are four questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:

  1. Newspaper Headlines. What is the name of the former advice columnist to whom a jury has said Donald Trump must pay an additional $83.3 million in a widely-followed defamation case
  • Popes. When you multiply the number 38 by the famous number of Hills in Rome you get the number of popes (so far). What is that number of popes?
  • Nursery Rhymes. According to the nursery rhyme, which Duke marches ten thousand soldiers up and down a hill for no apparent reason?
  • Four for Four. Which of the following Emmy-winning actors appear in the 1990 comedy horror film Arachnophobia: Bryan Cranston, Jeff Daniels, John Goodman, Mary Tyler Moore?

P.P.S. Can you believe that next week I will perform a breakfast pub quiz at the San Francisco Writers Conference?

A Low-Stakes Competition with Frisky Wombats

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I hosted a bonus Pub Quiz last night online last night, and it was a hoot. I asked a bunch of questions that would have appealed to people who knew the night’s honoree, Sheila Allen, candidate for Yolo County Supervisor. The answer to one question the name of the Will Ferrell character in the film Elf, and Sheila’s dog is named Buddy. The answer to another question, one that you will find on tonight’s in-person pub quiz,  was the title of a book that Sheila is reading right now. Another asked about the Guggenheim architect from Wisconsin, the home state of Sheila Allen. Most teams knew the answer was Frank Lloyd Wright.

You probably also knew that. I had to figure out how to adjust the difficulty of a quiz for people who were not trivia regulars. It turns out that everyone knows that Budweiser calls itself the “King of Beers,” though not everyone yet knows that beers from Sudwerk taste better than Budweiser. Other questions matched the difficulty of the questions I typically ask. Here’s an example:

“Countries of the World. The names of four of the ten most populous countries in Africa start with three different vowels, including Ethiopia and Egypt as numbers two and three on this list. Name both of the other two.” 

Most teams, including Brooke’s team, figured out that the correct answers were Uganda and Algeria. That said, I think no teams answered a question that I repurposed from a quiz ten years ago at the defunct de Vere’s Irish Pub: “What proper name occurs most often in The Bible?” Someone asked if that includes the Old and the New Testament. It does. I think the answer is the same in either Testament.

I set up each team with its own Google Doc scorecard, a place where participants could propose answers and discuss their ideas. I’ve read that some junior high students have turned to Google Docs comments on their Chromebooks to text with their friends during class without using their forbidden smartphones. Rather than mocking teachers, these comments were mostly mutually supportive of teammates and their answers, including “Yup!” and “Seconded!” and “You rock!” and “Amazing that you knew that!”

Most of the teams included team-mates who didn’t know each other, including one that had students of mine from 2001, 2018, and 2023. I wonder if such teams had more fun getting to know each other during the two Zoom breakout room sessions than they did while actually taking the quiz. Either way, we could all benefit from meeting and problem solving with other fascinating thinkers.

The stakes were low – bragging rights – but the enjoyment was high. Congratulations to the winning team that answered 25 of 30 questions correctly. “Frisky Wombats” included Cami R, Lori W, Ian W, Brad B (a favorite retired professor living in Sacramento), and Geneva J, though I think she typically goes by Geneva D. 

And here were some of the comments that were texted to me afterward:

Okay that was TOO MUCH FUN

[My teammates] were so awesome. If we ever do remote trivia again, I’m going to ask to be on their team 🙂

That was indeed fun, Andy

Thanks for thinking of me

Will 100% do again

And I met some really nice people. Davis is full of them

Engaging in fun stuff is a really pure way of not staring off into the distance and thinking about [my troubles]

This was a fantastic rendition of your classic pub quiz, and I always love participating and indulging in the Davis nostalgia.

[My team] was delightful! 

And we even won!

Yeah!  

Sorry for all of the exclamation marks professor, but I am simultaneously excited and tired.

What wonderful comments! That last one reminded of something that Gillian Flynn writes in her novel Gone Girl: “Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it.” To that I would add that sleep comes when we earn our exhaustion with a full day of activities. The pub quizzes I host always conclude with smiles, and help to guarantee my readiness for sleep.

Speaking of sleep, Shakespeare describes sleep best: I will finish with words from what superstitious actors call The Scottish Play:

“Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care, 

The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, 

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, 

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”


If you support these efforts on Patreon, you will receive the entirety of last night’s bonus quiz, including the anagram question about a prominent Davisite – nobody got it! I will post it this weekend rather than now because two of its questions will be asked this evening.

Speaking of which, if you are in Davis tonight, and you don’t mind hearing the sounds of a torrential downpour as you huddle inside with teammates, please join us for the Pub Quiz at Sudwerk. As Saint Augustine allegedly said, “Good times and crazy friends make the best memories.”

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on newspapers, Asian countries, pint-sized beer glasses, answering services, award nominations, splatter experts, Michael Jackson songs, edible oils, the courts, notable outlaws, nursery rhymes, hills that are not alive, rich journalists, famous fellowships, roses that suppose, rubber cities, confirmed Luddites, debut novels, trending weather phenomena, empires that grow slowly (and then all of a sudden), West Hollywood, dialing conventions, elf culture, spiders, trans-species conversations, fractions, strong views, major orchestral works, Chicago allusions, French exports, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to the new supporters Brooke, Jeannie, and More Cow Bell, which is a great team name. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

  1. Mottos and Slogans About Products That Hold Your Hair Like a NET. Starting with the letter A, which hairspray claimed to “Hold your style like hairspray, but smell like roses”?  
  1. Internet Culture. Chat GPT 3.5 and GPT 4 exemplify AI, while some say that Chat GPT5 will achieve AGI. What does the G stand for? Hint: It’s a shorter word “generative.”  
  1. Newspaper Headlines. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said today that he supports Sweden’s admission to NATO. Of what country is Orbán prime minister?  

P.P.S. Poetry Night is tomorrow night, and Alan Williamson is one of the features! See https://poetryindavis.com/archive/2024/01/alan-williamson-and-jeanne-foster-perform-at-7-pm-on-thursday-february-1st-2024-in-davis/ for details. 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I met today with almost a dozen students during my Zoom office hours, and the essay drafts they shared inspired some writing advice that I will also share with you. Because some of this will be straightforward and obvious to some of you seasoned writers, I will also include a few quotable nuggets of advice from notable authors.

Enjoy!

Advice:

  1. Review first paragraphs for an indication of your point or emphasis.
    1. Often a topic sentence will provide this sort of content or structure, that is, a connection between individual paragraphs and the whole.
    1. “Editing means figuring out what you really mean to say, getting it clear in your head, getting it unified, getting it into an organized structure, and then getting it into the best words and throwing away the rest.” Peter Elbow
  2. Review all sentences for continuity and logic.
    1. Preview the 3rd C of Style: Connect (which we will also go over in class)
    1. Review all for flow.
    1. “To have the necessary momentum, that steady flow that is going to finish the book, you should wait until you feel the story welling up. This comes slowly during the development and plotting period, and you cannot rush it, because it is an emotional process, a sense of emotional completion, as if you felt like saying to yourself one day, ‘This is really a great story, and I can’t wait to tell it!’ Then you start writing.” Patricia Highsmith
  3. Review all for wordiness and repetition of overlapping content
    1. The content of the first page of one of your peer’s essays could have been communicated with 25%-40% fewer words. Is that also true for you? Make every word count.
    1. Review for 1st C of Style: Cut
    1. “Nothing is less real than realism. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meanings of things.” Georgia O’Keeffe
  4. Review the organizational strategy of the whole
    1. If your essay gets good only when we get to the evidence, ask yourself why your reader must wait so long to get to the marvelous engaging parts.
    1. “I tend to finish my research, clarify my thoughts, and organize my points before I begin writing books and essays. In other words, I judiciously prepare to write. If I haven’t completely finished my preparatory work, and I have to conduct research, clarify, and organize my thoughts while I write, then my writing is not as good. And when my writing is not as good, it is difficult to maintain momentum. It is difficult for me to remain inspired. Good writing inspires good writing.” Ibram X. Kendi
  5. Make sure your details function as evidence for your point or emphasis.
    1. Just as claims should be supported by evidence, so must details be connected to claims, emphases, or overall points.
    1. “Details are the Life of Prose.” Jack Kerouac
  6. Have all your topic sentences connect meaningfully to your point or thesis.
    1. Review your essay for unity.
    1. Make sure the entirety of your essay is about your topic.
    1. Cut out sections that do not contribute to your point or emphasis.
    1. “When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” Stephen King
  7. Emphasize evidence and exemplification. Show your reader your experiences, rather than just saying that they took place.
    1. “I don’t think you could become a good writer unless you spend a lot of time immersed in text allowing you to soak up thousands of idioms and constructions and figures of speech and interesting words, to develop a sense of writing at its best. Becoming a writer requires savoring and reverse-engineering examples of good prose, giving you something to aspire to and allowing you to become sensitive to the hundreds of things that go into a good sentence that couldn’t possibly be spelled out one by one.” Steven Pinker
  8. Necessary categories of evidence include anecdotes / narratives and descriptions. Some essays also include dialogue.
    1. “There is no ideal length, but you develop a little interior gauge that tells you whether or not you’re supporting the house or detracting from it. When a piece gets too long, the tension goes out of it. That word–tension–has an animal insistence for me. A piece of writing rises and falls with tension. The writer holds one end of the rope and the reader holds the other end–is the rope slack, or is it tight? Does it matter to the reader what the next sentence is going to be?” John Jeremiah Sullivan

If you are in Davis tonight, please join us for the Pub Quiz at Sudwerk. Recruit a team, dress for a winter sunset when the temperature drops five degrees in an hour and a half, and join us at the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for everyone. The rain is scheduled to have stopped by dinnertime, and the Sudwerk employees will gleefully prepare you room, as the Christmas carol says. 

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on the smell of roses, shorter words than “generative,” new club members, sad garments, neighboring cells, cities of the world, Lilies, famous doctors that are not actually doctors, places to grade, volcano slopes, fast mammals, Monty Python (you are welcome), people named Bob (unless we save that one for a future quiz — hello Bob!), zombies, executive producer candidates, geometry problems, malingerers, trials and tribulations, non-venomous snakes, female leads, national sports, sassy film sequels, iron spikes, medieval fashion choices, available occupations, sudden responses, colorful words with indeterminate syllable counts, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters, those who are alerted to my bonus pub quiz questions on Patreon, such as today’s free question about gold mining and January 24th. I never expect to strike gold with my Patreon earnings, but I do I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine! 

Best,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are some questions from last week’s quiz:

  1. Running Backs. Najee Harris plays for what AFC North NFL football team?   
  1. Countries of the World. The official currency of Egypt is the Egyptian dollar, the Egyptian koruna, or the Egyptian pound?  
  1. Know Your American States. The U.S. state with the lowest Covid vaccination rate at 16.1% produces more copper than any other state and is home to professional sports teams in the four major sports. Name the state.