26 weeks is a half-year. I am way too aware of that fact this week. Having a Labor Day where nothing happened, except planning for a funeral, cut my schedule down for this week, so I'm even more enervated coming into writing this than usual.
Catie is going back to school this week, we are holding our breath. The first two weeks of this school year are everything. They are taking as many precautions as they can, but they're spending these two weeks basically teaching every kid how to work online as if they were distance learning. If they have to close the school again, the kids will be able to keep going at home. That's really the only plan that seems logical this year, but it leaves you with this weird feeling of holding your breath while audibly, angrily sighing.
That would be a sign we are returning to normal, but all the other signs are running counter to that trend; for instance, my day job is still work from home and is likely to be until at least January. I'm going to have to re-calibrate my end point for this newsletter. I had planned to reduce its scope or scale when we got through this, but I don't think you or I will recognize "through this" when it happens. I also expected to be working through writing the second book this summer, but I found writing this each week took focus. It's also true that I can't finish the book until I see what televised competition looks like this year, but that's trying to recognize "through this" again. I also have several articles which will go on the first book's facebook page, which should go there.
So I'm going to need to change things up. For a little while, I'm going to cut back on ten articles of use (because I'm consuming them faster than I'm finding a balanced plate of them) and instead give you one book that I'm sitting on. When the tournament season was cancelled, I had collected about 20 books which I was intending to give away as prizes. I'm going to show them off here for a few weeks, and use them for questions to appear here. I will not spread the book and the questions generated between two newsletters, they’ll follow why I picked up the book in the first place.
This is also the usual beginning when we think of starting school, and quiz bowl activities, so I’m going to use a crutch and recycle my advice from previous years.
If you need a lesson for your team and your new players: Go back to week 7 and review what I said about starting with capitals. Understanding why new players should start there can give them a path they can follow for their first year.
If you need a lesson for yourself as a coach: reread this article I did last year for the first book's facebook page.
Didn’t You Learn Anything from Last Time?
1
It's been called the Helvetica of England, as it's been used for the logos of the BBC and England's World Cup Jerseys.
A. Name this font, named for Eric its designer.
answer: Gill Sans
B. Gill Sans extended the lettering done by Edward Johnston for this British transportation system.
answer: London Underground
C. In 1939, Ernest Wallcousins hand-lettered posters in the style of Gill Sans bearing the crown and this five word slogan.
answer: Keep Calm and Carry On
2
Widowed after the death of the king's brother Arthur, in 1516, she gave birth to her daughter.
A. Name this queen of England, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
answer: Catherine of Aragon
B. This king of England married Catherine and then divorced her after 23 years.
answer: Henry VIII
C. This daughter of Catherine succeeded her half-brother Edward VI on the throne, and was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth.
answer: Mary I or Mary Tudor
3
In collaboration with Renzo Piano, he designed the "inside-out" Paris landmark the Center Pompidou.
A. Name this British-Italian architect, who retired from his firm in September 2020.
answer: Richard Rogers
B. Rogers was the 2007 recipient of this award, the highest award in architecture.
answer: Pritzker Prize
C. Rogers won a Stirling Prize for his work on Barajas Airport which serves this European capital city.
answer: Madrid
4
After discovering that platinum hexafluoride would convert oxygen to dioxygenyl, Neil Bartlett, attempted to react this element into a compound.
A. Name this period 5 noble gas, the first to be converted into a compound.
answer: xenon
B. Xenon could react in this way because this energy required to remove the most loosely bound electron was almost exactly the value to convert oxygen to dioxygenyl.
answer: ionization energy
C. This multi-Nobel Laureate predicted that both xenon and krypton could form compounds with fluorine.
answer: Linus Pauling
5
The recipe for the pigment caeruleum was thought lost from Roman times.
A. Caeruleum was also known as the Egyptian shade of this color, other pigments of which include smalt, a cobalt-based pigment.
answer: blue
B. The recipe for Egyptian blue appeared in this Roman's De Architectura, but that text was hidden in a monastery until the 1400s.
answer: Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
C. This artist's fresco "The Triumph of Galatea" was found to have used the Vitruvian formula for Egyptian blue, and was his only work to feature it. Other works which didn't use the shade include The School of Athens
answer: Raphael Sanzio da Urbino