Thanks, Auntie. I got numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12.
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Thanks, Auntie. I got numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12.
I got 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. Yeesh!
Auntie, I got 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, picked the wrong Jewish writer for 10 (went with Singer), 11, 12, 13 correct.
An apology about The Odyssey and the Trojan Horse. The Iliad and the Odyssey blur for me and somehow I think the war ends in the Iliad. However, your probably right and the horse is probably in Odyssey.
Thanks DickZ, Q, and Pablo! Next quiz sometime tomorrow, but I don't know the exact time o' day.
“Training is everything,” Mark Twain wrote; “A cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college education.” Hence, the topic for this week – education of various species. From our proverbial ivory towers we might proclaim that there is no greater lesson than learning how to treat others with respect – though one wouldn't know it these days, with our public schools run exactly like medium security prisons. As a case of point, yesterday's opening panel of the posthumously published “Classic Peanuts” comic strip by the great Schulz. While being dragged to the school bus stop by his sister Lucy, Linus says, “Put in a good word for me. . .Tell the guards I came peacefully. . .”
So before I get rapped on the knuckles with a ruler or have to do time in detention, let’s get out our pencils for this week’s lesson plan:
Is This Stuff Gonna Be on the Quiz?
1. How many of the fabled “three r’s” actually begin with that letter?
2. John Hughes was an American screenwriter/director/producer who passed away just last month. His work was praised for his sensitive depictions of adolescents, especially for the film which centers around a small group of high school students forced to spend a Saturday morning confined to detention. What is the name of this well-received movie of 1985?
3. A much earlier Hughes -- Thomas – created a novel in which the title character attends a British boarding school, where he is tormented by a vexatious bully named Flashman. Name this 1857 novel.
4. The works of this American poet (1902-1967) appear on a typical high school English syllabus not only for their multi-layered quality but also for their resonance with contemporary American teenagers. The speaker in “Theme for English B,” for instance, attempts to find common ground with his instructor though both come from different cultures. Name this poet, the leading light of the Harlem Renaissance.
5. Who was the Greek philosopher (ca. 427-ca. 348 B.C.) who ran the Academy outside Athens?
6. Name the beloved comedy written by Sheridan in 1777 which contains several elements of farce, including romantic dalliances, hidden identities (especially behind screens), gossiping busybodies, and vivid characters drawn as broadly as their names: Lady Sneerville, Lady Teazle, and members of a family named Surface.
7. What is the title of Flaubert’s 1869 novel in which the protagonists may be viewed as the male counterpart of Madame Bovary, in the sense that he bases his behavior on his illusions of a romantic hero?
8. An American sportswriter first coined the term for these elite institutions, but varsity football isn't the first thing that comes to mind whenever any of these hallowed halls of learning are mentioned. (Perhaps Stanley Woodward was being ironic, since ivy was once thought to prevent drunkenness.) In any event, what are the names of the colleges in the Ivy League?
9. Who was the lean, lanky, and highly suggestible schoolmaster in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving?
10. The second word of the title of this 1621 prose work by Robert Burton sounds like the first academic course a pre-med student would take. The book itself is set up like a medical treatise, but its use of cultural examples to illustrate the various kinds of mental states established the book as a significant literary work more than a scientific one. What is the complete title? (Don't feel sad or depressed, if you don't get it right.)
11. This American writer, cultural historian, and philosopher (1838-1918) is best known for his autobiographical work, whose purpose was to show how his education “didn't prepare him for the conflicts of the modern world.” He pursued a “lifelong quest to find order and unity” in a world “in the process of disintegration.” (Hmm. Where have we heard that line before?) The author’s name is incorporated within the title of this work, which is what?
12. Name the British playwright who said: “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” (Incidentally , urban legend has it that during the era of graffiti, somebody once scrawled, “He who cannot teach teaches gym.”)
13. And finally, who was the title character in the 1959 hit in which the Coasters sing: “He walks in the classroom, cool and slow/Who called the English teacher ‘Daddy-Oh’?” (You may find a hint to the answer in the intro way up at the top of the quiz.)
All right – Pencils Down!
Answers
1. Only one– “reading”
2. The Breakfast Club
3. Tom Brown’s School Days
4. Langston Hughes
5. Plato
6. The School for Scandal
7. A Sentimental Education (L’education sentimentale)
8. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Dartmouth and Cornell. (Score yourself a point for each.)
9. Ichabod Crane
10. The Anatomy of Melancholy
11. The Education of Henry Adams
12. George Bernard Shaw
13. “Charlie Brown”
Sources: Reader’s Encyclopedia, Oxford Companion to English Literature, National Geographic Online edition (for #8), and YouTube.com (#13.)
Thanks for the quiz, Auntie. I got numbers 1, part of 8 (named all but U of Penn and Dartmouth), 9, 12 (by guessing), and 13.
On questions like number 5, I know there’s always a 33% chance of getting any given question right since 99% of the time the answer to Which Greek philosopher did xxxx? turns out to be either Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, but hardly anyone answering it really knows which one.
In fact, in the live online trivia quiz group I’m in, I always avoid asking questions about Which Greek philosopher did xxx? because the computer screen immediately lights up with every one of the three. Of course, even that is better than the notorious What color is yyy? because the screen then lights up with every one of the 64 colors in a Crayola box.
But then I once violated my own rule about color questions, when I said "Well, everybody will know this one - What color was Barbara Fritchie's hair?" I still saw every color in the Crayola box mentioned before anyone came up with gray.
It’s harvest time! Although you wouldn't know it by the prices in the produce department, late-summer/early-fall is prime time for fruits and vegetables to appear in abundance. Commercial husbandry is always a risky undertaking, as entire crops can be taken under by a mere whim of weather.
Like farmers, amateur gardeners must be optimistic souls, especially up here in the Great Northeast where the growing season is even shorter than Mariah Carey’s skirts. According to conventional wisdom, corn is supposed to be “knee-high by the fourth of July,” but in this neck o’ the woods, it’s more likely to be “still low when the autumn winds blow.” With the possible exception of zucchini, which seem to reproduce like Tribbles or Schmoos, tomatoes are the most difficult to cultivate. Not only do gardeners have to contend with threats by woodchucks, invading insects, and – new this year!--a particularly virulent strain of mold, there’s the annual race against frost, which customarily hits when the fruit on the vine is still green. Whether or not the produce is ripe, the home canning process is an extremely tricky process to avoid the danger of botulism. If you ask me, I think that’s a lot of anxiety and back-breaking work to obtain canned vegetables when you can buy the store-brand on sale for thirty-nine cents apiece. And if you've got a yen for stewed tomatoes, why not duck down to the Dew Drop in on Ladies’ Night?
Aw, shucks! Before somebody throws some rotten produce at me, let’s dig up the quiz:
Shuck and All
1. What is the title of a collection of Carl Sandburg poems as well as the name of the Big 12 football team at the University of Nebraska?
2. Name the title character from a circa 1608 tragedy by Shakespeare to which this phrase refers: “Ripeness is all.”
3. Provide the last word in this warning from Galatians, a New Testament epistle: “Let us not be weary in well doing: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also ___.” (What?)
4. The modern word for a breakfast food derives from the name of the Roman goddess of agriculture, which is what?
5. Name the prominent twentieth century New England poet (1874-1963) who wrote these lines in “After Apple-Picking”: “. . .I am overtired/of the great harvest I myself desired./There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,/Cherish in hand,lift down, and not let fall.”
6. Akin to Thanksgiving in North America, this holiday once widely celebrated in the British Isles occurred earlier in the year “with the bringing in of the last crop of corn of the season.” What is it called?
7. He grafted Eastern philosophy onto American culture in such poems as “Sunflower Sutra” Never afraid to “howl” with political passion, he often displayed wry humor, as in these lines from “A Supermarket in California”: “What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at/night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!–and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the/watermelons?”Identify this giant among mid-twentieth century poets.
8. In which patriotic American song would one sing the phrase: “amber waves of grain”?
9. A beautiful poem by the highly-influential and greatly beloved 19th century English poet (1770-1850) begins with the following lines, whose title is the current month exactly 190 years ago: “The sylvan slopes with corn-clad fields./ Are hung, as if with golden shields,/Bright trophies of the sun!”? Identify this poet with the alliterative name.
10. His signature sign-off of was “Good night, and good luck,” but this pioneer in broadcast journalism earned accolades for Harvest of Shame, his 1960 documentary about the plight of migrant farm workers. Who was he?
11. American author John Irving picked up a screen writing Oscar for his 1999 adaptation of his own novel set primarily in a commercial apple orchard in Maine. What was the title of both the movie and the original 1985 book?
12. The ancient mythical symbol of the bounty of growing things was thought to provide an “endless supply” of fresh food. What is its name, which literally translated means “horn of plenty”?
13. And finally, Jack Norworth co-wrote the iconic American anthem, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” but he also gets credit for another old standard still heard this time of year. Norworth’s wife, Nora Bayes, co-wrote this song containing the lyric: “I ain’ had no lovin’ since January, February, June or July.” What’s the title?
Answers:
1. Cornhuskers
2. King Lear
3. Reap
4. Ceres
5. Robert Frost
6. Harvest Home
7. Allen Ginsberg
8. “America the Beautiful”
9. William Wordsworth (The poem is called “September,1819")
10. Edward R. Murrow
11. The Cider House Rules
12. Cornucopia
13 “Shine On, Harvest Moon”
Sources: Once again, Reader’s Encyclopedia and Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, various anthologies, and the website for the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame.
Thanks for another great quiz, Auntie. I got numbers 1, 3, 4, 8, 12, and 13.
However, I'm almost ashamed to say that I only got number 1 because of the Nebraska football team, and not through my knowledge of poetry.
Actually, in the first draft of this quiz, the question was solely about Nebraska's gridiron team. I came across the Carl Sandburg factoid when looking up something else! But I was glad that I could include a literary reference.Quote:
Originally Posted by DickZ
I only got 1, 3, 4, 5, and 8 correct.
On the education quiz I got only five: 4, 5, 7, 9, 11.
On the harvest quiz I did very well getting ten correct: 1, 2, 3 ,4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. One of my best.
Thank you q for taking the quiz, and Virgil thanks for going back and taking the one you missed. Great job, everybody!
We can point to climate change as the culprit behind the droughts that turn southern California into a tinderbox and the rains that are inundating Georgia. We can blame global warming for the fact that the ice caps on the top and bottom of our planet are melting faster than the heart of a teeny-bopper at a Jonas Brothers concert. If the earth were a manic-depressive (and had a good health insurance plan), and it were cured with some prescription medicine, then we could say: ” ‘Bye, polar disorder!” Nope. Sadly, global warming only goes one way - up.
Fortunately, on a daily basis the spiky temperature graph is merely a seasonal thing. In my neck o’ the woods, autumn is a season of contrasts. The morning temperatures can dip down into the forties and thirties, which the afternoon sun may boost way up into the seventies. That’s why it’s so difficult this time of year to decide what to wear – and why so many kids leave their jackets on the schoolbus.
Thus, the topic for this week: each of the question and/or answer involves the words high and low. So before everybody starts giving me heat, and/or – to paraphrase Sholom Aleichem – I get such a chilly reception that the room catches a cold -let’s go to the quiz:
High and/or Low
1. “Mary,” the sweetheart of many of Robert Burns’s poems, hailed from which scenic region of Scotland?
2. When one itches for some insider information, possibly of a shady and disreputable nature, he might say, “Give me the ----“ (what?)
3. In Lost Horizon, a novel by James Hilton and a film by Frank Capra, the natives of a land high in the Himalayas never seem to age. What is the name of this mythical place?
4. Customarily served in the British Isles during the late afternoon or early evening and usually consisting of a substantial warm dish, bread and butter, and the hot beverage mentioned in its name, what is the two-word term for the meal that often forms the setting for many a scene on Masterpiece Theatre?
5. Alfred Noyes (1880-1958) deliberately defied the trend toward modernism by writing poetry the old-fashioned way, with traditional forms such as ballads. His most famous work is about a robber targeting travelers and contains the line: “The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor.” What is its title?
6. What is the title of Maxim Gorky’s most famous novel (1902)about a group of society’s outcasts and destitute souls who try to cling to their illusions while inhabiting a fleabag hotel?
7. What is the colloquial expression for a supercilious, overly-cultured individual or an adjective describing cultural phenomena or entertainment requiring a certain measure of intellectual vigor? The word is often used pejoratively as a substitute for “snobbish” or “highfalutin’ .”
8. What is the collective term for the European lands such as Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg whose geographic locations are near sea level?
9. Name the Texas native (1921-1995) who wrote “literary” mysteries such as Strangers on a Train as well as a series of novels featuring the high-living villain, Mr. Ripley.
10. Various branches of a highly-respected New England family can boast of the astronomer who discovered the erstwhile planet Pluto and three poets: James Russell (1819 -1891), Amy (1874-1925), and Robert(1917-1977.) What is the surname of these Boston Brahmins (no relation, methinks, to Mike, the equally-worthy, current third baseman for the Red Sox.)
11. Name the musical composer (1901-1988) who was lyricist’s Alan Jay Lerner’s partner for the creation of such hits as Camelot, Paint Your Wagon, and Brigadoon.
12. According to the English Book of Common Prayer, who or what is described as being “a little lower than the angels?”
13. And finally, name the title of the traditional spiritual in which one would hear the line, “Coming for’ to carry me home.”
Answers
1. Highlands
2. Lowdown
3. Shangri-La
4. High tea
5. “The Highwayman”
6. The Lower Depths
7. Highbrow
8. The Low Countries
9. Patricia Highsmith
10. Lowell
11. Frederick “Fritz” Loewe
12. Man
13. “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”
Sources: Same as last time!
Thanks for another great quiz, Auntie. I'm feeling pretty low because I only got numbers 3, 5, 10, 11, and 13 right. And I didn't even need to use your helpful clue for number 10.
But I'll get over this low feeling before high noon today.
Gee, Dick, I was worried about whether the q. about "The Highwayman" was too obscure, so it makes me feel good that you got that one.
Hope you were just making a joke about feeling "low" and that you hit a high note soon.
I can't be positive because it happened so very long ago, but I think The Highwayman was the first poem I encountered in high school. I've remembered it ever since.Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
Me,too! It was in 9th grade, and the teacher used that poem to illustrate a metaphor.Quote:
Originally Posted by DickZ
When they're not warning us that we're mere moments away from succumbing to West Nile/Monkey Pox/Swine Flu, national news anchors are thundering about The Storm of the Century, even though the present century has only been here for less than a decade. The network broadcasters intone their doomsday prophecies in utter seriousness, as if any viewer foolish enough to ignore the reports would do so at his or her peril. Local “News Center 3, 5, 7 (or whatever number)” follow their big brothers’ leads, but it’s best to take whatever they say with a grain of rock salt.
A case in point: on Sunday morning, October 4, 1987, inhabitants of upstate New York and western New England woke up to the sounds of sharp, snapping noises. The view from many windows revealed the same scene: bent and broken tree branches, still laden with a full complement of leaves, which hadn't even begun to change color yet, let alone fall to the ground. Streets and roads were crisscrossed with downed telephone wires and power lines. But most startling of all is that everything was covered with snow, from 6.5 to 20 inches deep, depending on the regional altitude. Schools and businesses closed, and some residents were without power for more than two weeks, but the worst aspect of this snow “Emergency” was that the storm had been a complete “surprise.” Folks were shoveling and plowing their way out of what the local weather reports had called “partly cloudy.”
A few decades before that Blizzard of ‘87, when I was a little girl, we were the last family on the block to get a television set. Back then the local “weatherman” (not the more pretentious “meteorologist”) showed us what kind of weather to expect with little cardboard cut-outs of a sun, a cloud, an open umbrella and other cartoon figures. I don't want to rain on anybody’s parade, but that low-tech forecast was far more accurate than today’s millions of dollars worth of satellite photos and Doppler radar.
All of this precipitates this week’s topic -- weather. So before this interminable snow job makes everyone storm out of here, I'd better give the forecast:
Cloudy, with a Chance of a Quiz
1. What is the title of the last play Shakespeare wrote? Its title is an old-fashioned word for a storm.
2. Socrates and his philosophical colleagues were satirized (some say unfairly) in a comedy by Aristophanes circa 423 BC. What was the “lofty” one-word title of this play?
3. According to American poet Carl Sandburg, what is the weather phenomenon that “comes in on little cat feet”?
4. The sea voyage back to Ithaca suffered another serious setback when his all-too-curious crewmen let loose the contents of a leather bag, which Aeolus had given to Odysseus with the strict instructions that it was not to be opened. Who was Aeolus?
5. W. Somerset Maugham’s tale about Miss Sadie Thompson and her seduction by a missionary in the South Seas spawned several theatrical and movie versions under which single weather word?
6. What’s the title of a renowned poem by Shelley, who enlightened posterity with this note about how it was conceived “on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapors which pour down the autumn rains. They began as I foresaw at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by . . .magnificent thunder and lightning.”
7. Early in his illustrious career this Canadian-born American novelist (1915-2005) wrote Henderson The Rain King. Who was this writer who in 1976 won the Nobel Prize for Literature?
8. Name the chief character in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days.
9. The action of his 1963 novel, Cat’s Cradle, zeroes in on “Ice-9,” a substance which has the potency to turn the entire world into a frozen graveyard. Who was the American novelist (1922-2007) who specialized in science-fiction satire?
10. Name the British poet (1808-1892) who was so inspired by Arthurian legends that he created stirring lines, such as this one describing “Avilion” (Avalon) as a place “Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow/nor ever wind blows loudly.”
11. Some homeowners who recently found themselves “under water” with their mortgages most likely wouldn't find consolation in the fact that a fictional amphibian actually owns a country estate. What is this 1908 book by Kenneth Grahame whose characters include Toad of Toad Hall?
12. Who wrote Gravity’s Rainbow , a 1973 tour de force about a suicidal missile race in the post WWII world?
13. And finally, what’s the title of the Irving Berlin standard that contains the lyrics “Never saw the sun shinin’ so bright/never saw things goin’ so right”?
Answers
1. The Tempest
2. The Clouds
(Half credit if you said “cloudcuckooland,” which appears in another Aristophanes play, The Birds.)
3. The Fog
4. Greek god of the winds
5. Rain
6. “Ode to the West Wind”
7. Saul Bellow
8. Phileas Fogg
9. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
10. Tennyson
11. The Wind in the Willows
12. Thomas Pynchon
13. “Blue Skies”
Thanks, Auntie, for another great quiz. I got numbers 1, 3, 5, 8, 11, and 13. I enjoyed reading The Wind and the Willows as an adult, and I think that I got a lot more out of it than I would have as a child.
For the education quiz a measly 7 (+7 for the rest of the Ivy League), nabbing 1, 2, 4, 8,9, 11, and 13. Charlie Brown is my idol.
For the Children of the Corn quiz, an 8 -- hitting the mark on 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, and 12.
On the high/low quiz I only got four: 2, 8, 10, 12. :(
On the weather quiz I got an eight: 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12.
Thanks everyone, for taking our little quiz.
Mid-October reminds us of a world-changing discovery by an Italian explorer hired by a husband-and-wife team of entrepreneurs ruling Spain. Imagine that --the first instance of “outsourcing” goes back to ‘92 – 1492.
Columbus wasn’t really the first one to discover the new world. The idea that the honor belongs to Leif Ericsson of the Vikings hasn’t really stuck– sort of like Brett Favre’s retirement. It’s also false that Columbus found a totally uninhabited land. He set ashore on a island already populated with folks he erroneously dubbed “Indians,” who reportedly told him, “No parade for you until you show us your green card.”
In our contemporary elementary schools, lessons about early explorers aren’t as prominent as they once were. That’s why if you ask a kid, he’ll tell you that Columbus was the guy behind the “Harry Potter” and “Home Alone” movie franchises. Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria? An R&B girl group from the sixties. And don’t even go near the phrase “land ho!”
So before my ship sails off the edge of the flat earth, let’s explore this week’s topic, which has to do with Italy, Spain, and a little country that often maxes out its limit on its Discover card, and is late making payments on the Visa.
"Diss"-cover This!
1. What is the geographical setting for such Shakespearean plays as Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and (partially) Antony and Cleopatra?
2. What is the title of Thomas Kyd’s 1584 revenge drama rife with political intrigue, murder, suicide, and mayhem?
3. Name the 1988 Eddie Murphy vehicle in which the comedian portrays a prince who travels across the Atlantic in search of a bride.
4. It’s believed that Geoffrey Chaucer borrowed the structure for his Canterbury Tales from an Italian literary work dating from the year 1351. What is the title of Boccaccio’s opus, which stems from ten tales told by each of ten travelers trying to escape the Black Death?
5. Set in Spain during a time of religious persecution, “The Grand Inquisitor” is often published separately from the lengthier work in which it first appeared. What is the title of that larger masterpiece by Dostoevski, which is also the last novel that he ever wrote?
6. What is the title, derived from a line in The Tempest, of the 1932 novel by Aldous Huxley which predicts a future dystopia?
7. What is the beautiful (though somewhat damp) city that forms the setting for a novel by Thomas Mann, The Aspern Papers by Henry James, and several plays by William Shakespeare?
8. Using pre-existing source material, Mozart composed an 1789 opera about a character, Figaro, who is lively, romantic, and an expert in things sartorial. The same character shows up in a later opera under a different title. What is Rossini’s 1816 opera called?
9. By the seventeenth century, scientists and artists had begun to accept the fact that the world was not flat and that other lands lay beyond the vast ocean. One holy sonnet begins “At the round earth’s imagined corners” and another love elegy contains this line describing the speaker’s beloved: “O my America! My new-found land!” Name the metaphysical poet (1572-1631) who composed those lines.
10. What is the title of the 1908 E.M. Forster novel whose action centers around a young tourist who is not 100% satisfied with her accommodations in Italy?
11. Before becoming one of the first fatalities in the Spanish Civil War, he had produced such poems and plays as “Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter,” The House of Bernardo Alba, and Poeta en Nueva York. Who was this author (1898-1936), the best-known modern poet and playwright in Spain?
12. A suburban husband abandons both job and family in hopes of a rosier life with one of his daughter’s classmates in this 1999 movie which captured five Academy Awards. What is it?
13. And finally, in which Lerner and Loewe musical would you heard the phrase, “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain?”
Answers
1. Rome
2. The Spanish Tragedy
3. Coming to America
4. The Decameron
5. The Brothers Karamazov
6. Brave New World
7. Venice
8. The Barber of Seville
9. John Donne
10. A Room With a View
11. Frederico Garcia Lorca
12. American Beauty
13. My Fair Lady
Thanks, Auntie. I got numbers 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, and 13. I should have gotten 7 as well, but didn’t pay enough attention to your clue.
I get so far behind on these and I'm not sure how. In summary:
Nine correct on High/Low - 1, 2, 4, 5 (what a flyer on the guess on this one), 7, 8, 10,11 and 13.
Nine on the Weather Report and I'm still kicking myself for missing the Sandberg question - 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9 (better have this one correct), 10, 11, 12
Ten on the Columbus Day - 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, and 13. I'll admit to the flying guess on the Dostoyevsky question.
I did great on this one Aunty. Being Italian-American i think I made Columbus proud. :)
I got nine correct: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13. I'm kicking myself for not getting the Barber of Seville. I knew that, but it just wouldn't come to me.
I'm so gratified that folks are doing better on these things.
Finally, finally, maybe the questions are getting better --but you LitNetters keep getting smarter all the time!
Perhaps others, but you can't possibly be referring to me. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
Viva Hispanic Heritage Month! Way, way, way back in my schooldays the only multi-cultural items you could find were a can of chili con carne and an occasional Perez"Prez" Prado tune on the AM radio. The teachers spent mucho tiempo telling us about European male explorers and the white-washed exploits of the conquistadores. There was never a word about José Marti (1853-1895), the great Cuban poet and essayist, or novelist George Lamming from the island of Barbados, or playwright Francesco Arrivi from Puerto Rico. Back then the curriculum not only failed to recognize the literary contributions of Latinas, but also made a point of mostly ignoring women writers of every ethnicity. Recent years seem to have brought recognition to the works of Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat and Jamaica Kincaid, born in Antigua as Elaine Potter Richardson in 1949. But if we had depended on the former “establishment” in the U.S. to teach us about inclusiveness, all we would know about the rich, diversified culture of some our neighbors to the south would be the pejorative term (and retail clothier) “Banana Republic,” voodoo dolls and zombies, and the Johnny Depp pirate movie franchise.
This week features Caribbean and Central America along with as a more northerly group of colonizers in a little ditty we like to call:
“Yanqui, Go Home!”
1. The word “Yankee,” a diminutive of “John,” derived from the language of Europeans who settled in New Amsterdam and the Hudson Valley, as well colonizing much of the West Indies. What was the nationality of the people who called the
British colonists "Yankees"?
2. Cuban refugee Nilo Cruz won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for a work about immigrants who work in a Florida cigar-factory while a “lector” helps to relieve the tedium by reading to them a novel by Leo Tolstoy. What is the name of this play?
3. What is the body of water whom the Spanish colonizers named after their word for the indigenous people who lived on its islands, which in their own language meant “brave?”
4. What’s the title of a simple song popular during the American Revolution which features a foppish British soldier, a pony, and a feather?
5. Starring Yves Montand, a 1955 masterpiece by French film director Henri-Georges Clouzot depicts a Central American town whose people are exploited by an American oil corporation and focuses on a small group of men who try to escape by transporting a truckload of nitroglycerine, ostensibly to extinguish a fire in a remote oil well. What’s the title of this movie, remade in 1977 by William Friedkin as The Sorcerer.
6. Mostly known as having been on the losing side of a famous duel, who was the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, the only American founding father who had been born in the West Indies?
7. Jean Rhys (1894-1979), born in the West Indies of Welsh and Creole parents, achieved acclaim in 1966 with her novel, The Wide Sargasso Sea. Though setting on a Caribbean island, the chief character is the first Mrs. Rochester, so this book could be considered a latter-day “prequel” to which prominent Victorian novel?
8. Beginning his life in 1930 on the island of St. Lucia, Derek Walcott grew up to write poems such as “Crusoe’s Island” which attempt to move toward a reconciliation between diverse, or often antagonistic, cultures. His poetry blends native rhythmic patterns with more conventional verse forms. A recurrent theme is an intense personal responsibility tempered with peaceful resignation, as in these lines in “Codicil”:
"To change your language you must change your life./ I cannot right old wrongs." What is the distinctive literary honor which Derek Walcott shares with only one other person in the world? (So far.)
9. What is the two-word phrase that can refer to, among many other items: a New England sailing ship of the 19th century, a Boeing seaplane, a specific major league baseball player from the 1940s and 50s, and the Apollo 12 Command Module?
10. What is the geographical term for the type of narrow land area on which the Panama Canal was constructed?
11. In his later non-fiction travel pieces Mark Twain was a champion for the Third World nearly a century before the term was first coined. But he was best known as a comic novelist. What is the title of his time-traveling satiric novel whose chief character is a superintendent of a Hartford factory?
12. In 1816, an ocean away from Central America, the Victorian poet John Keats wrote the stirring sonnet, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” The poem is gorgeous throughout, but – like all of us! – Keats made one little factual error in these lines:
“Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes/He star’d at the Pacific– and all his men/Look’d at each other with a wild surmise–/Silent, upon a peak in Darien.” What was the mistake?
13. And finally, in a Broadway musical and movie based on a 1954 novel by Douglas Wallop, a middle- aged baseball fan makes a Faustian deal with the devil in order to get on the starting roster of the Washington Senators. Name this show, in which you might hear these lyrics sung in the clubhouse locker room: “So what’s the use of cryin’/ Why should be curse/ We gotta get better/ Cause we can’t get worse!”
Answers
1. The Dutch
2. Anna in the Tropics (as in “Anna Karenina”)
3. Caribbean Sea
4. “Yankee Doodle”
5. The Wages of Fear
6. Alexander Hamilton
7. Jane Eyre
8. Along with V.S. Naipaul, a British novelist born in Trinidad who received the honor in 2001, in 2003 Derek Walcott is the only other person born in the West Indies to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
9. “Yankee Clipper”
10. Isthmus
11. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
12. Keats had the wrong explorer. Balboa, not Cortez, is credited with having discovered the Pacific Ocean.
13. Damn Yankees
Thanks for another great entertaining quiz, Auntie. I got numbers 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13.
Please give yourself credit for #1, DickZ. It wasn't worded clearly, but I have since corrected it. --AS
I got seven correct: 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11. I should have done better though. I should have gotten Yankee Clipper and Damn Yankess. Shame on me. ;)
I never knew that "Yankee" was a variation of John.
Thanks for taking the quiz, Virgil. In the Yankee Clipper question I thought about actually mentioning Joe DiMaggio's name, but I wasn't really sure of how to spell it.
By the bye, your blog is a GRAND SLAM!
Why thank you. I probably would have gotten Yankee Clipper if you had mentioned DiMaggio. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by AuntShecky
Sometimes I wonder why I get all worked up over the fact that the proper use of the apostrophe is virtually unknown anywhere in the contiguous United States (as well as Hawaii and especially Alaska.) After reading an article from a link in Virgil’s blog, I've discovered that I may be a “Snoot.” --
http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarf...atisasnoot.htm
If I am indeed a full-fledged member of Snoothood, I would be proud to count myself among such great Snoots as the late William Safire and Lynn Truss, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.
Instead of gassing over grammatical gaffes and directing diatribes toward the punctuation-deprived, I should perhaps direct my passion and energy toward more culturally significant issues, such as why does the NHL insist on calling Toronto’s team “The Maple Leafs?” Additionally, this time of year renews my confusion over distinguishing between maples and sycamores. So far the only difference I can see is that you don't have to apply for a third mortgage in order to buy a bottle of sycamore syrup.
This week we're attempting to tell the forest from the trees with questions and answers about things arboreal, some deciduous, including a few stems just beginning to sprout. Since I'm already “past peak” and couldn't be less “poplar,” it “wood” be best to start climbing down to the quiz, which we like to call
Trees, Shoots, and Leaves
1. What is the title of the hit song from 1955, a real “fall classic,” which includes Johnny Mercer’s lyrics about the seasonal phenomena that “drift by my window?”
2. Like comets, meteors were once thought to be bad omens, as described in Hamlet, I,1: “. . .with trains of fire and dews of blood/Disasters in the sky.” What is the two-word term for these celestial streakers in the night sky?
3. Name the playwright whose Desire Under the Elms (1924), inspired by Greek tragedy, concerns a patriarch and his much-younger second wife who seduces her stepson in order to conceive an heir.
4. “Song of Myself” is one of the most famous of Walt Whitman’s poems, collected in a volume whose first edition appeared in 1855. What is the title of this poetry collection?
5. A (necessarily) gigantic tree binding together all of heaven, earth, and hell was thought to be the Tree of Life and Knowledge, as well as of Time and Space. In which mythological tradition would we find this tree called “Yggdrasil”? (Be still, Spell-Check!)
6. Throughout his spectacular career, he had won such honors as the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes, but his 1950 novel, Across the River and Into the Trees, drew mostly yawns from the critics. Who was he?
7. Name the kind of leaves from which the ancient Greeks fashioned wreaths to crown their athletic heroes, who in turn could “look to,” but never “rest on” them.
8. At Fredericksburg, a 96-year-old Civil War heroine confronted Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson with the lines: “ ‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head/ But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.” What is the 1863 eponymous poem by John Greenleaf Whittier in which those lines appear?
9. Speaking of the Old Line State, Maryland-born Munro Leaf (1905-1976) was a former English teacher who wrote, among other children’s books, Grammar Can Be Fun. What is the title of Leaf’s most famous work about a Spanish bull who prefers smelling wildflowers to fighting?
10. Name the poet who begins one of his 154 sonnets with the lines: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold/When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang.”
11. Because of its references to “God” and “prayer,” it probably no longer appears in the syllabus of public schools, but years ago the poem was a huge favorite in elementary classrooms, though literary critics abhorred it. What is the one-word title of this 1913 poem by Joyce Kilmer?
12. Who wrote the 1907 short story, “The Last Leaf,” about an ailing young lady who resolves to cling to life as long as a single autumn leaf remains attached to a branch outside the window of her Greenwich Village apartment?
13. And finally, the American playwright and raconteur George S. Kaufman (1889-1961) once wielded power as the drama critic for the New York Times. When a press agent asked how he could get the name of an actress he was representing printed in the paper, what was Kaufman’s two-word reply?
Answers
1. “Autumn Leaves”
2. Shooting stars
3. Eugene O'Neill
4. Leaves of Grass
5. Scandinavian (Norse)
6. Ernest Hemingway
7. Laurel(s)
8. “Barbara Frietchie”
9. The Story of Ferdinand
10. Shakespeare
11. “Trees”
12. O. Henry
13. “Shoot her!”
Sources: Brewer’s, Reader’s Encyclopedia, The Portable Curmudgeon (Jon Winokur,ed.)
and “Why English Teachers Can't Read Poetry,” by John Kilgore:
http://www.eiu.edu/~ipaweb/pipa/volume3/kilgore.htm
Great quiz, Auntie. I'm always amazed at how you pick such timely topics for your quizzes. You certainly put lots of thought into these quizzes, and I hope everyone recognizes this fact.
I got numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, and 11, but I have to admit that the only reason I got number 10 is the fact that Shakespeare is the only writer I know of who wrote so many sonnets. I am not familiar with the particular one you cited here.
That one would be #73, which, according to some interpretations, could be an allusion to aging. But what's remarkable about that second line:Quote:
Originally Posted by DickZ
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
is that the reader can see the speaker (the "I" of
the poem) actually changing his mind before our eyes. More prosaic writers may have had the leaves in a more or less chronological order, (leaves. . .none. . .few), but here he defies logic; it's as if he's saying, no -- "let's leave a few leaves left on the trees,I don't want to go as far as
having the tree totally bereft of leaves, i.e., I'm aging, but I do have a few years left."
It has been said that one of the reasons Mozart is so great is that when we're hearing one of his works, we think we know what the next note will be, but Mozart throws in something entirely different -- but one that is exactly right!
That's what art,music, and poetry is supposed to do-- surprise us, even confuse and perplex us! That's especially true of Shakespeare --and of Frost, which is exactly what John Kilgore says in that article linked in "sources" above.
What's interesting about that sonnet is the way the metaphors move from seasons, to a leafless tree, to the setting sun, and finally to a dying fire. It gets gradually more hopeless as you realize that the speaker is not only speaking of aging, but of death. Then you get that sweet little couplet about how that all makes loves so much better ;).
Anyway, I got 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, and 13.
As to the name of the hockey team, the official story is that it is named after a regiment from the Toronto region that served in WWI called the Maple Leaf regiment. Thus, as a proper noun, people who belong to the Maple Leaf regiment are Maple Leafs.
Well, for the Phillies quiz I got 1, 4, 7, 10, 12, and 13.
And for this one I got 1, 4 5, 7 8, 9 and 10.
I should have gotten 2 and 11, of course! I've read that story in 13, but couldn't bring his name to mind, nor Eugene ONeill's name. Doh!
Don't get me wrong -- I like chocolate and pumpkins (eaten separately, of course), but if I ever said that Halloween was my favorite holiday, I'd have to have my gourd examined. I don't want to sound like a calendar-challenged Ebeneezer Scrooge*, but All Hallow’s Eve is just an excuse to cause mayhem with the alternative of shaking down folks for free junk food. Around here we call that “legalized extortion.” Anybody who celebrates Halloween should be lit like a candle in his own Jack o’ Lantern with the pointed end of a piece of candy corn staked through his heart.
Nah, I kid, I kid. But the most disturbing fact about how the ancient pagan ritual is commemorated in the US is the high percentage of adult celebrants! Among those superannuated revelers, many actually dress up in costumes. They would look ridiculous dressing up like their children’s favorite animated characters, even if they could find a Tickle Me Elmo or a Bratz doll in Size XXX Lrg. Adults occasionally go in a really scary costume, like a monster (a bank that’s “too big to fail”), or a vampire (the “deductible” on their health insurance plan.) They could rip their outfit, Law and Order style, “straight from the headlines “-- such as a mask of Bernie Madoff, whose face might not be instantly recognizable but whose multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme certainly rings a bell. Or maybe they could get really creative by going as a hot air balloon – either as the reality-show obsessed family or the instantly-inflated monthly payment on the adjustable rate mortgage. In any event, every adult who dresses up for Halloween ultimately looks like the same creature – an overgrown kid. And that's really scary!
To this week’s quiz, in which each q and/or a in our hair-raising (er, hare-brained) haunting has something to do with a sweet snack or devious hijinks, such as practical jokes and the like. So before some ghoul throws toilet paper all over the lawn or pelts me with eggs that didn't even come from free-range chickens, let’s go to the fright-fest, which we like to call
Trick or Treat
1. Found in the myths from Africa and Native Americans of both continents, this shape-changer was a god, a human, or an animal, whose raison d’etre was to make trouble, or to shake up the status quo. Often given the name of Raven or Coyote, what is the one-word general term for this archetypal prankster?
2. A folk song about these delectable treats can be found on an album by Peter, Paul, and Mary (the recently-departed Mary Travers.) What were these edibles distributed to the poor in front of many a church door in Britain on November 2, the day after All Hallow’s Day?
3. This American author wrote a whale of a book as well as several tales set in the South Seas, but one of his masterworks concerned a master of disguises who succeeded in fooling the passengers on a riverboat cruise. So who was the novelist who created The Confidence Man?
4. There are two movie versions of Roald Dahl’s fanciful book about a confectioner and the young lad who wins a contest to tour his manufacturing facility. What’s the original title of this book?
5. Who was the Homeric hero known for his 20-year quest to return home, but especially known for his cunning and devious tricks, such as pulling the wool over the eyes (or eye) of the Cyclops?
6. An “Abram-man” or a “Tom o’ Bedlam” was the name of a beggar, who, dressed in a distinctively strange get-up, engaged in crazed behavior in order to elicit alms from passers-by. What exactly was “Bedlam”?
7. An early 20th century American song by Harry McClintock which referred to “lemonade springs where the bluebird sings.” Far from being family-friendly, however, the lyrics also extolled cigarette trees and whiskey trickling down the hills. What is the name of this song? Fans of Wallace Stegner might know it as the title of his first novel.
(What? You're not a Wallace Stegner fan? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Stegner)
8. Known for a novel about Paul Gaughin as well as his masterpiece, Of Human Bondage, who was the British author (1874-1965) who wrote Cakes and Ale, a comic novel about Rosie Driffield, the long-suffering spouse of a “Grand Old Man of Letters” the character thought to be based on the real-life Literary Light, Thomas Hardy.
9. What was the “squat, plump little cake,” the “cookie” which served as the memory- trigger for the narrator of Swann’s Way, the opening volume of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past? (Hint: the name of the cookie is also a feminine name, which doesn't necessarily mean that a female carrying that name is squat, plump, and little.)
10. Characters in this “iconic” American author’s books were no strangers to tricks, pranks and practical jokes, such as using reverse psychology to get out of an unpleasant painting chore or witnessing one’s own funeral. In his later years, the writer, truly a “media celebrity “a century before that term appeared, never appeared in public unless he was wearing his trademark costume – an elegant white suit. Who was he?
11. Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) wrote a long, fantastic poem about two sisters tempted by the sweet and delectable wares sold by a group of little troll-like traveling salesmen. Though lines such as: “ ‘Come buy, come buy,’/with its iterated jingle/Of sugar-baited words” sound as if they came from a 21st century commercial, critics believe the poem itself is a religious allegory full of sexual undertones. What’s the three-word title of this poem?
12. “The pennycandy store beneath the El/is where I first/ fell in love/ with unreality/ Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom/of that September afternoon/A cat upon the counter moved among/the licorice sticks/and tootsie rolls/and Oh Boy Gum” begins a delicious poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Born in New York, he relocated to San Francisco in 1951, where he established the City Lights Bookstore and Publishers, which first published the works of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, and Burroughs – a group of poets known by what term?
13. And finally, in his 1956 hit, what did Screamin’ Jay Hawkins say he did?
Answers
1. Trickster
2. Soul-cakes
3. Herman Melville
4. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
5. Odysseus
6. A mental hospital, or a lunatic asylum. (In order to free up space, the seemingly less dangerous inmates were let out onto the street and left to their own devices. Sort of an “early-release” program, I suppose.)
7. “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”
8. W. Somerset Maugham
9. Madeleine
10. Mark Twain
11. “The Goblin Market”
12. The Beat Poets
13. “I Put a Spell on You”
Sources: Reader’s Encyclopedia, Brewer’s, Youtube.com, referencecenter.com
*and “Boo, Humbug,” by Michael Elliott
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/e...525415,00.html