Quiz Night

It must have been about 10 years ago that St. A's had its last Trivia Night event, where teams of 8 or so competed to see who knew the most about, well, everything and nothing. Our table of four couples had a great time, did some good-natured trash-talking with the other tables, and won. We basked in that glory for years.

When I say "we" I mean the guys, of course -- the women had fun, and contributed their share of answers, but didn't revel in the competition or the knowledge of arcana that the guys did. It's a funny phenomenon, and not just limited to sports trivia, either. If I told you I know someone who can name every state nickname and year of statehood, or every property value in Monopoly, or what album Santana released in 1970, or every world capital, you'd ask, "Who is he?" (The answers would be Tom Giella, Paul McMahon, Jim O'Donnell, and me.)

There's a place on the northwest side of Chicago called the Irish American Heritage Center, housed in a wonderful old converted grade school building. The organization hosts all sorts of Irish cultural stuff, including dance, music, Gaelic language lessons, a big "Irish Fest" in the summer, and of course St. Patrick's Day. The "Fifth Province" pub has live traditional music every weekend night. And to beat the winter doldrums there's a trivia night ("Quiz Night") once a month...

Last year Rach and I organized two outings to the Quiz Night at the Heritage Center, with mostly the same crowd (plus or minus a few couples) from our glory days at St. A's. We went in pretty cocky, and wound up getting schooled both times -- they were still fun social events, but we left chastened, and a little disappointed. How could this happen? To us, in all our trivial brilliance?

I got a group together for this past Friday night's event, and no fooling around this time -- I recruited six of the most trivial guys I know (including myself). We didn't do any formal training over the last few weeks, but I'm sure there were a few almanacs or reference books stationed in a few bathrooms at home. We met up at the pub for dinner, a strategy session, and a pre-quiz Guinness or Harp, and then moved into the quiz room with great purpose, where we were one of 20 six-person teams.

Competition was fierce over the next 3 hours. Who's Rebecca Pallmeyer? Which president was born on the 4th of July? What's the angle of tilt of the Earth's axis? Who composed the opera Fidelio? On what mountain did the Marines plant the flag on Iwo Jima? Who was on the first cover of Rolling Stone? What were the daughters' names in Pride and Prejudice? The scores were announced along the way, and our team (the "Redhawks") was right in the thick of it, either leading or in second place. There was great tension in the air, made bearable only by a few more Guinness.

The final part was the "Greedy Round" -- a set of 40 written questions in 10 minutes, where you could answer as many as you wanted, but one wrong answer would get you a zero for the whole set. So how sure are you, and how greedy? In this case it was a list of 40 products, and you had to name whether each was made by the Coke or Pepsi corporation. Fanta, Tab, and Dasani are Coke, sure, but Doritos? Tostitos? Life cereal? Aquafina? Mug root beer? Are you sure, or really sure?

We answered eleven, and got them all right, earning us the victory for the night. Woohoo!

The entry fee was $30/table, the Heritage Center kept a cut of that, and the top three teams finished in the money. Our winnings just about covered our dinner/bar bill -- kinda like the Blues Brothers at "Bob's Country Bunker". It wasn't about the money, of course, it was about -- well, I'm not really sure. But it was fun to win, and we'll do it again sometime.

The answers to the bold questions above, by the way, are "A U.S. District judge in Chicago", "Calvin Coolidge", "23 degrees", "Beethoven", "Mt. Suribachi", "John Lennon", and "Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia".

Pat

Cameroon?

I'm always a little hesitant to start telling Africa stories -- I'm afraid I'll sound like Higgins in the old "Magnum P.I." TV show.  Remember him?  "There I was in the Congo, surrounded by savages, my only weapon a grapefruit spoon..."

But they're good stories, most of which I can tell in mixed company, so I'll share a few here.

I had "co-op"ed through college with Procter and Gamble, a total of four semesters -- three in Cincinnati and one outside of Dallas.  I worked on coffee -- P&G makes Folger's, and there's all sorts of chemical engineering involved in coffee processing, especially decaffeination.  I enjoyed the work and liked Cincinnati, but by my senior year I felt a strong urge to do something a little different before settling down into my career.  Maybe a little adventure...

I also had a desire to give something back to the world, recognizing I'd been pretty fortunate in life.  At Detroit there was a modest push on campus for people to consider the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, where you spend a year post-graduation working in inner-city USA.  After 5 years in Detroit I'd had my fill of inner-city USA, but the idea of adventure plus volunteer service led me to check out the Peace Corps.

The surprising part of the application process was how competitive it was, as only about 1 in 3 Peace Corps applicants get in.  The more specific you were about what you wanted, the harder it was to get in.  I applied to teach math/science, and asked to be sent someplace where French or Spanish was spoken.  (I had studied Spanish before, and didn't think learning Nepali or Urdu or something would be too useful later.)  Other than that, I was up for anything.

The not-surprising part was how drawn-out the whole process was, as the Corps is indeed part of the federal government.  Lengthy paper applications, then interviews, then stacks of forms, etc.  But in the spring of my senior year I was told I had been accepted, and would be teaching math/science in Cameroon.

Cameroon?

I found it on a map at the library, and found some basics facts: Next to Nigeria, French- and English-speaking, variety of climates, etc.  I read as much as I could find, which wasn't very much.  When I told people what I was doing after graduation I got a variety of reactions as well, from slight disbelief ("I mean, I knew Pat was a little weird...") to envy/admiration.  That was true at home, as well, where the parent who had been in the Navy totally got it, while the parent who had nursed and nurtured me spent the next 2-1/2 years worrying.

In June it was off to Philadelphia for 3 days of initial "training" for our Cameroon math/science group, but the main purpose of this short stay was essentially to ask everyone: Are you sure you want to do this?  And we did have someone drop out (girlfriend reasons, as I recall), saving the taxpayers considerable airfare and hassle.  For the rest (20) of us our collective naivete and optimism could have powered a small town; throw in our collective enthusiasm, and you'd power a city.

Our itinerary was the typical Philadelphia-to-New York-to-Paris-to-Douala-to-Yaounde route that everyone knows so well.  I remember showing that to the skycap at the airport and asking him if we could check our bags all the way through, or if we'd have to get them somewhere along the way.  He said a little indignantly, "We can check 'em through to Hell if you're flying there!"  (He turned out to be right, as ultimately 39 of our 40 bags made it.)

I was too excited to sleep on the overnight flight from New York to Paris, and then we ran around Paris all day before our connecting flight at midnight to Douala.  I couldn't sleep on that leg, either, so I was really running on fumes when we landed the next morning.  When the plane's door opened and we walked down the jetway we were amazed at the early-morning heat and humidity; it was like trying to breathe pudding, and everyone started sweating.

We had our final short connecting flight to Yaounde, then a 1 hour bus ride to our training site in Mbalmayo -- at a Catholic girls' school that had let out for the summer, where we'd learn some French, get some cross-cultural and health training, and generally get acclimated.

In my slightly-weakened state I caught some kind of digestive bug in that first week, and it really knocked me out.  I distinctly remember being in the bathroom for what must have been the eighth time one day, hoping I wasn't going to see internal organs starting to come out, and saying out loud to myself, "Pat, what the hell are you doing in Africa?"

It got better after that.

Pat

Chores

Tolstoy's opening line to Anna Karenina is famous: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."  Based on my observations my corollary to that is: "Hard-working kids are all alike; every lazy kid is lazy in his own way."

Growing up my brothers and I were given a steady supply of chores.  (By the time my sister Maura was old enough to do work around the house it wasn't needed, somehow, so she was spoiled rotten, and she knows it.)  My dad, the ex-Navy guy, organized our household work on a "Watch, Quarter, and Station Chart" that was kept on the fridge.  Although we didn't have to stand watch very often, and our quarters were always our own rooms, and there was more vacuuming than one would do aboard ship, I imagine.  There were a few things each of us had to do each day, and they got done, or there would be consequences.

Maybe that's the problem now -- I have yet to come up with consequences (either positive or negative) that really motivate, or I'm not consistent enough in applying them.  Whatever the case, trying to get chores done is really, well, a chore.

Fiona is very agreeable when it comes to work -- she simply says "OK" when assigned.  But then (more often than not) she doesn't do anything.  It seems "OK" means "I recognize that words are coming out of your mouth; please stop."  This is true not only for chores, but for instructions like "Bedtime, Fi -- lights out."

When there's work to be done, or in progress, Emmet has the uncanny ability (like Jeeves in the P. G. Wodehouse stories) to sort of shimmer and disappear.  We'll all be out raking leaves, and I'll be looking right at him, and then suddenly the rake is on the ground, and he's inside watching TV.  It's eerie.

And then there's Conor.  He has a two-step approach to chores:

1.  Argue and negotiate as long as possible.

2.  Do such a half-assed job that he won't be assigned again.

If I drag him back to re-do or finish something, his approach is "Repeat Steps 1 and 2."  Example: Around Christmas he had left some paper scraps on the kitchen floor; when I was later doing some cleaning I had the trash can out, and told him to throw his scraps away.  After a brief argument he picked up the papers and dropped them in the direction of the trash can, where they hit the edge and fell back out on the floor, and he started to walk away.  I told him again to throw them away, and he said (I kid you not) "I did."

Amazingly this incident didn't end in violence, and he's gradually learning that I'm every bit as stubborn as he is.  But he's raised half-assed work to an art form.

So it's a simple picture: my brothers and I were hard workers when we were young, and my kids are as lazy as could be.  Simple pictures offer the clearest lessons, of course, so we don't need any "revisionist historians" telling more nuanced versions of how things were way back when.  (That means you, Dad.)

Pat

The Stars, Like Dust

Regarding hobbies, I'm not dedicated -- I'm a dabbler.  An example is the dog show thing, which came and went in about 9 months, which was fine with me.

Our house on Grant Street had a single-story family room at the back with a flat roof.  Our bedroom opened up onto this roof, so we eventually built a deck on top.  This provided a much better view of the night sky, which piqued my interest in astronomy, which led me to get a couple of books, which ultimately got me a telescope as a Father's Day present one year.

Looking up at the night sky can take your thoughts in a number of different directions, including "I'm seeing the same thing that people have seen at night for thousands of years...."  The ancients connected the stars to their mythologies, of course, and these varied from place to place.  A favorite trivia tidbit of mine is that the star cluster we call the Pleiades was associated by the Greeks with the "Seven Sisters", the seven daughters of Atlas; various Indian tribes had other stories about maidens or orphans, while the Japanese called this grouping of stars "unity", which in Japanese is "Subaru".   Think of that the next time you see the logo for that car company...

The other thing that got me into astronomy was our place in Lake Geneva.  Here in Evanston you can always tell which way Chicago is at night by the glow in the sky.  That's great for knowing directions, but not great ("light pollution") for stargazing.  The clear, dark Wisconsin sky gives awesome detail; the Milky Way is easily seen, a band of thousands of visible stars stretched across the sky from east to west.  It wasn't too long after getting my telescope that I took it up to Lake Geneva, and I've kept it there since.

The telescope is about 3 feet long and 6 inches in diameter, mounted on a tripod.  The lens-and-mirror setup lets you observe through an eyepiece that's perpendicular to the body.  It also has a couple of small motors and a computer of sorts that allows you (theoretically) to select the star you want to view and have it find and point automatically.  I've never gotten that working right, and gave up years ago, since relying on just moving it manually.

On a summer night up north I'll set up on the lawn right outside the condo, not too close to the golf course (to avoid the sprinklers).  If the kids (ours or anyone else's) want to see I'll set a plastic lawn chair next to the telescope for them to stand on.  The rule is that they have to hold their hands behind their backs and then look down through the eyepiece; otherwise they tend to bump it and lose whatever we were trying to see.  Sometimes I'll have a line of 5 or more waiting their turn.  I have to re-adjust between kids, as the field of view keeps moving (Earth's rotation and all that.)

My favorite things to look at are the Moon and the planets Jupiter and Saturn.  In general I find that a star that appears to the naked eye like a dot of light looks, with the telescope, like... a bigger dot of light.  But those three closer objects are really something, even with my amateur tools and skill.  Here are some pictures I found online that are pretty representative of what you can see:

Moon

Jupiter

Saturn

With Jupiter you can also see several dots of light nearby (not shown in the picture above); those are the Galilean moons, the four biggest of Jupiter's dozens of moons, discovered by Galileo way back when.  These move around Jupiter quickly, so they'll be in different positions from night to night.

The adults will do a little gazing, too.  The typical adult response to seeing the detail in Jupiter or Saturn is "That's SO COOL!"  (Of course, on a summer night in Lake Geneva at Telescope Time the typical adult has already had a few cocktails.)

Early on I had memorized a couple of dozen constellations and stars, but I've forgotten quite a few since.  Maybe I'll get back into it this summer, and see what else is up there worth looking at.

Then again, maybe not.  As I said, I'm a dabbler.

Pat