A new Rusty
In September 2002, as I was beginning graduate school, I officially retired my trusty burnt-orange backpack that I had purchased 20 years before and then taken with me through high school and college and around the world as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
I’ve had a lot of backpacks since then. Messenger bags, too. And GORUCK packs. And packable sacks for traveling or popping into the market.
In 2017, I needed a new daily backpack. When I learned that the Synapse 19 (from Tom Bihn in Seattle) came in burnt orange, nostalgia struck and I ordered one. The next day, a message came from the company to regretfully inform me that when they went to box my order, they’d just run out of the orange. I shrugged and replied that I’d take the Synapse in black.
This backpack has served me well for eight years — it’s just back from my trip to Minneapolis, where Joel and I attended the Vikings football game and the Golden Gophers men’s hockey game — and it is time to replace it.
I’d seen that Tom Bihn was expecting a new bundle of this backpack in the burnt orange, and that’s what I ordered last week and finally received today.
No telling where this backpack and I will go together.
Go blue
“I’m walking into town to vote,” I told Erin this afternoon.
She was reading a novel on the blue sofa. She’d voted yesterday before a visit to the nearby Carrboro Farmers Market.
With U2 in my ears, I set out for the same little house behind Carrboro Town Hall, where the Orange County Board of Elections is holding early voting.
When I stepped inside, no line, and I took my ballot to the flimsy plastic booth and I started filling in the bubbles beside Kamala D. Harris and Tim Walz (President and Vice President), Valerie P. Foushee (U.S. House of Representatives N.C. District 4), Josh Stein (Governor), and others. I entered my ballot into the collection machine, put an I Voted sticker on my shirt, and kept walking.
I’m proud to have voted. I’m grateful for the freedom and privilege and right to join in choosing our local, state, and federal leaders.
The creative class
One after the other in my inbox today, messages from three companies inviting me to purchase their new items:
- Dan Cederholm announced Hubano, “an all-caps display serif inspired by some lettering found on a Cuban cigar box.” I’m a member of Dan’s Secret Type Club, which means I get an early look at his new fonts. I’m using Free Lunch Tomorrow to design a new brand for my The Long Table project—I love the ligatures that come with this font.
- Field Notes, maker of an iconic note book, announced their 64th Quarterly Limited Edition. This edition is The Birds and Trees of North America and it features the artwork of Rex Brasher (1869–1960). I’m no longer a subscriber—I’m working through a backlog of past editions, as well as a stack of notebooks we ordered for ScienceOnline2010—but my family still jokes about how I regularly received notebooks, pencils, and hanks.
- Studio Neat announced their Patch Club, their “fun excuse to try our hand at some embroidered patches.” I’m not into patches too much, but I do have quite a few products from Studio Neat, including their great pens, mechanical pencils, Totebooks, and Panobooks. Any day now I’ll be receiving the Keen, a retractable utility knife.
I’m grateful to these teams for their quality creations. I’m sure they’re thankful for my dollars. Hope they keep up the great work.
Read the heat
The weekend’s autumn weather was perfect, with sunny days and cool nights. Erin is still getting through Covid, so we had no social activities. After Oliver’s soccer game in Durham Friday afternoon—he was at right center back and he defended well in the j.v. team’s lopsided win—I snuck out for music at Cat’s Cradle Back Room.
Saturday was glorious and I had time on my hands. I took a cup of coffee and a book to the back deck and sat in one of the modern Adirondack chairs that my brother Matt had given us for a housewarming gift last year. The book was a new teen and young-adult novel by Michael Ruhlman: If You Can’t Take the Heat. It’s a story about an injured high school athlete in the suburbs of Cleveland in 1980. Young Theo Claverback meets a girl, he gets a job in the kitchen of a good restaurant, and he learns a few life lessons and cooking habits.
I loved this book!
I spent most of the day reading it, only taking breaks to refill my coffee and to put the legs on a bench I’ve been making from a slab of the white oak that came from the trees we milled in 2019. I had a ticket to another show at Cat’s Cradle but I read right up to show time, finishing the last page and then taking a quick shower and pulling on my boots.
During the lull between opening act (Dori Freeman) and headliner (The Wildmans), I thought about what I liked so much about Ruhlman’s story: its narrator’s voice made the story flow well, the kitchen scenes were more expansive and realistic than the enjoyable but frenetic scenes from The Bear, and all of those Cleveland references reminded me of my decade or so in Cleveland.
For example, the Shaker Lakes are a key location in the story and I first kissed Erin on a bench at the Shaker Lakes. Also, the restaurant where Theo gets to work is in a house on Larchmere Boulevard, and Erin and I lived for a year after Peace Corps seven buildings over from Larchmere. And in the Acknowledgements, Michael notes that three of the characters who work in the restaurant have the names of real people who worked with Michael in Sans Souci, a great restaurant that was in downtown Cleveland for the longest time. Erin and I were invited to attend a special dinner to celebrate the Sans Souci fifth anniversary in 1997—I was editor of Northern Ohio LIVE then, and Erin and I were getting ready to depart for Vanuatu—and I remember that Michael was working in the kitchen that night and we chatted on our way out.
Now that I’m done with If You Can’t Take the Heat, I’m hoping Erin and Oliver will read it soon. Oliver surprised me this week, opting to keep his gaming computer off so he could read to the end of Between the World and Me, a book he voluntarily chose for his English assignment. Oliver and his friends have started to cook together, so I suspect he’ll thoroughly enjoy the Ruhlman story, too.
In all my forms, everywhere
Dave celebrated 30 years as a blogger, and he’s having a blast developing a new textcasting tool that connects WordPress and Mastodon and someday, perchance, the rest of the web of social media and Fediverse tools. Meanwhile, Manton has added Threads crossposting to Micro.blog.
I feel myself hesitating at this rapid interconnectedness. I’ll be slow to adopt this. I’ll not rush to be posting across Bluesky and Mastodon and Threads and other services. I’m still scarred from my online wipeout 10 years ago.
But as I’ve been watching Dave’s excitement and following the community discussion across Micro.blog, I’ve been thinking about Robin Sloan’s latest novel, Moonbound. In that, Sloan has imagined a delightful character named Clovis, a wandering robot that is wirelessly connected to other traveling robots in the world. Indeed, the robots share the same consciousness.
When the sun was high in the sky, Ariel found himself gaining on a robot grinding slowly along the Rath-road. Unlike Clovis, this robot was squat, barrel-shaped, and rolling on treads.
As he passed, the robot buzzed: “Hello, Ariel de la Sauvage.”
He looked at the rotund robot. “We have not met,” said Ariel. “How do you know my name …?”
“I have met you,” the robot said. “I am Clovis. In all my forms, everywhere, I am Clovis.”
“Where is the form I met?”
“I am walking to the coast. I am nearly there.”
Clovis was my favorite character in the novel. (Read it and enjoy.)
A lot of my early blogging, in the years 2000 to 2004, documented my own excitement at all the writing and publishing and discussion tools that were becoming available. I bounced from one to another but, in the summer of 2004, I settled on Textpattern. I’ve been using this for my main blog (Zuiker Chronicles, then mistersugar.com, then back to Zuiker.com) for 20 years now and I’m grateful to Team Textpattern for their steady development and ongoing stewardship of the CMS.
What’s cool about the textcasting and crossposting that Dave and Manton and others are building is that I can stay with Textpattern for my main blog and push my writing, if and when I’m ready, to a wider net. I do remember now that I am already crossposting to Mastodon (.@mistersugar@opalstack.social).
I will need to decide if, “in all my forms,” I will be mistersugar or antonzuiker—I am my name and I still love my nickname, but I stopped using mistersugar (explained here) during my social media sabbatical, and I’ve wanted to go back.
Kava in Durham
This is a short post only to point to a longer post over on Wan Smol Blog. I knew I wanted to raise a toast to Mereva Timante as she is getting married in Vanuatu. Today though I was monitoring a discussion in Micro.blog about the merits of that excellent system—which I use for Wan Smol Blog—and so I decided to write the post in that tonight. (Thanks to Manton for his great work in developing Micro.blog.)
Scripting News at 30
Dave Winer is celebrating 30 years of blogging at Scripting News.
Everything I wrote five years ago is still true: Dave’s posts, his podcasts, his new tools, his links, his essays, and his drumbeat of requests—textcasting and making news organizations accountable to the citizens—are my daily dose of internet medicine.
I’m still reading Scripting News every day, testing and using Dave’s writing and reading tools, and finding inspiration in the ideas Dave is developing and the questions he is asking.
Some of the ways:
- I helped test Drummer as Dave was developing this excellent blogging tool, and I’ve used it to blog at Yumi stap storian.
- I use Feedland to read RSS feeds from all over and to manage the Duke River of News, as well as to keep a linklog (see the links tab on storian).
So, once again, a heartfelt “Congratulations, Dave, and thank you!”
Prairie pride
The Allen Family farmhouse and prairie strip.
In the NYTimes, this article (gift link, so read it free) highlights the growth in replanted pieces of farmland across the middle of the United States.
The restored swaths of land are called prairie strips, and they are part of a growing movement to reduce the environmental harms of farming and help draw down greenhouse gas emissions, while giving fauna a much-needed boost and helping to restore the land.
Last month, when I visited Illinois, I spent an afternoon with my Aunt Ginger and Uncle Stoddard at their farm in Cortland. Stoddard, my cousin Tom, and I walked outside for an hour, talking about the chicken coop and pigeon roost, the concord grapes, the black walnut and other trees Stoddard has planted over 50 years, and the strip of wildflowers and native grasses that he put between the house and the corn field to the east. You can clearly see Stoddard’s prairie strip in the satellite image above.
As he identified the cone flowers and bluestem grass, pointed to a butterfly that landed nearby, and demonstrated how to crush a seedpod and scatter seeds, he was visibly proud of this strip of life. I knew he would be—he’s been teaching me about flowers and trees for more than half my life. In 2002, I wrote this on my blog:
Back on the highway, I frequently tried to snap pictures of the swatches of wildflower color that burst into my vision as I sped along. The red poppies were my favorite, but the fields of yellow or purple or white were pleasant, too. These wildflowers reminded me of my Uncle Stoddard Allen, who loves to plant flowers and trees. When I worked with him on the farm 10 years ago, my favorite task was to sprinkle wildflower seeds among the fields of prairie grass. Uncle Stoddard, the husband of my mother’s sister, Ginger, is the one who arrested Uncle John Zuiker when he chained himself to a condemned tree at Northern Illinois University, where Stoddard was a policeman. Uncle John these days takes care of trees for Fairfax County in Virginia.
Stoddard is still inspiring me. (Uncle John is retired from the tree work, but he’s the one who was in Raleigh last week for bluegrass.) Behind my own house, in view from the bedroom window, is my own patch of wildflowers, planted with seed from Garrett Wildflower Seed Farm (a North Carolina company). This week, I’ll be working on a strip of land for yellow Indiangrass.
In another sign of the times, the field to north of the Allen house, land once owned by Stoddard’s parents, is now a solar farm (look again at that photo above).
Tasting wine around the world
Our local wine shop, just over the hill in the Southern Village development, is called Rocks & Acid. Erin and I were there a few months ago for a tasting of “wines from the Levant” (Cypress, Lebanon, and Israel). We were there again last night, invited by friends to celebrate a birthday with tastings of New Zealand wines—a few Sauvignon Blanc (the Sandy Cove 2023, with a vibrant scent of kiwi, was quite drinkable), a Gruner Veltliner, and the excellent te Pā Pinot Noir made by a Maori winemaker.
Erin and I once toured New Zealand by campervan, stopping into wineries in Hawkes Bay and Marlborough. I feel damn lucky to have seen those islands alongside Erin.
Much of the discussion around the tasting table last night was about the destruction and rebuilding in Western North Carolina, along with talk of music; our hosts were off to see a favorite band at the Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance in nearby Pittsboro. Considering my love of live music, it’s a shame I’ve never made the effort to get to this festival.
With the tasting done, I went to the shelves to look for a Slovenian wine similar to the one I’d had at dinner earlier in the week. What caught my eye, though, was a bottle of white by Domaine du Bagnol, a winery Erin and I had walked to during our fabulous stay in the French town of Cassis. Ever since that 2016 trip to Provence, I have searched the wine shelves here in North Carolina for bottles of the wines we enjoyed in Cassis. I walked out of Rocks and Acid with two bottles
Laura, the shop’s general manager, also showed me a Slovenian bottle, so I took that, too.
Hooray for HuZu Law
This month, Erin is marking the 10-year anniversary of her boutique law practice and partnership, Huggins & Zuiker, LLP, but also known as HuZu Law. Erin and Molly are quite good at what they do, and I am in awe of how hard they have worked to serve their clients.
There’s no special anniversary event planned so Erin and I will celebrate throughout the month.
So, the two of us went for an early dinner at Tesoro, a cozy restaurant in Carrboro. I had a great view of the open kitchen and watched Chef David Peretin and his sous chef calmly, quietly, cooly prepare and plate our dishes and others. The foccacia to start was delicious, and the Slovenian wine I selected — Vina Stekar Sivi Pinot 2021, somewhere in the rosé and orange world — was dry and simple and earthy. Our pasta dishes were tasty, although the smokiness of the rigatoni with tomato and eggplant (the eggplant had been smoked) dish I ordered surprised us. Another glass of that wine would have been perfect.
I quite liked Tesoro and look forward to returning.
Notes from the weekend
I almost made it through the month of September with a blog post each night, but last night I was too tired to formulate a coherent sentence, let along a few paragraphs. It had been an active day in a busy weekend: Friday night with Ed Sheeran, Saturday at the bluegrass festival, and then Sunday for soccer, hot sauce, and more live music.
On my way to the regular pick-up soccer game (we’re playing in Chapel Hill for a few months while our usual Durham pitch, which had deteriorated to unsafe conditions, finally gets renovated), I listened to the Planet Money segment The billion dollar war behind U.S. rum about the ‘rum wars’ in the USVI and Puerto Rico. Given my regular visit to the Cruzan Rum distillery whenever we visit St. Croix, I was interested in this.
Back home, I made another batch of homemade hot sauce in the garage. The final step is to fill the canning jars. I did this in the kitchen, but Erin and I agreed I should find a way do the canning step in the garage as well since even a few minutes fills the house with the vinegary fumes.
After the kitchen was cleaned and I’d watched the Tottenham-ManU match, Erin dropped me in town for the Carrboro Music Festival. For a few hours I walked from stage to stage, enjoying the bands and short conversations with few co-workers I came upon. We had beautiful weather.
Later, when I sat down to check the news, even more photos and videos documented the devastation in Asheville and Boone and the NC mountains. I felt happy from the weekend’s activities but sobered by the destruction. One of my best NC memories (and possibly the best photo I’ve ever taken) is the week Erin and the girls and I spent in West Jefferson, NC, where we attended the Ola Belle Reed Festival.
Now Ashe County is reeling from the rains of Helene. Soon as it is safe to visit western NC again, I hope I can get there to help in one way or another.
A day for bluegrass music
Raleigh had perfect weather for the final day of the IBMA Bluegrass Live! Festival, even as many commented on the devastation in Western North Carolina (floods and mudslides from Helene).
I got downtown around 2:30 and headed straight for the Come Hear NC Stage on hear Unspoken Tradition. Then, into the convention center to listen to the youngsters. Later, I met my uncle John at Red Hat Amphitheater for the evening performances: Danny Paisley (IBMA male vocalist of the year), Amythyst Kiah (amazing voice, reminded me of seeing a young Tracy Chapman), Sierra Hull (fabulous!), and Raleigh’s own Chatham County Line to end the night (Steep Canyon Rangers was supposed to be the top billing but the storm kept them from traveling).
This annual bluegrass festival in Raleigh for the past dozen years has been much fun to attend. The musicians are so damn talented!
Next year, this festival will be in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Duke at 100
The remnants of Hurricane Helene came through this morning, dumping a couple of inches of rain on Chapel Hill. As Erin I and I left our dental appointments together, our phones buzzed with tornado warnings. We got home safely, and the skies cleared by noon. Western North Carolina, and Florida and Georgia, got hit much worse.
The clear Piedmont skies meant that Duke University could go ahead with its centennial Founder’s Day Celebration and Concert starring pop star Ed Sheeran. I barely got tickets so Erin and I were able to go though we were confined to the end zone area without a view of the stage. Still, we got to watch Sheeran on the big screen and hear the one-man show just fine. It was fun and even the short rain squall didn’t matter. As I noted over at Wan Smol Blog, I loved Sheeran’s duet with Andrea Bocelli. Sheeran did sing Perfect tonight.
Walking back to our car across Duke’s West Campus, I told Erin I am proud to have worked for this excellent institution for 17 years. I’m glad to have contributed to the Duke story in my own small way (and as a Tar Heel, to boot).
Reading Shogun
I’m watching the series Shogun, a couple of episodes each night after the day’s work and cooking and cleaning and other activities.
There was an earlier television miniseries based on James Clavell’s novel of 17th century Japan. For the longest time I’ve remembered that I watched that during my first few nights on St. Croix—we had moved from Idaho to Frederiksted in late March 1983 (just before my 13th birthday) and I was allowed to join a neighbor to watch on a small black-and-white t.v. in the shared open-air courtyard. Over the next few years I read that novel and Clavell’s others (King Rat, Tai Pan, Whirlwind). I still have Clavell’s version of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
But looking in Wikipedia to confirm this memory, I now understand that the miniseries playing in America that week in 1983 was actually The Thorn Birds. I’d eventually read that novel, too.
I was a voracious reader as a teen. We didn’t have a t.v. for much of my youth in Idaho, on St. Croix, and Illinois. Now I have subscriptions to multiple streaming services, though this year I have given myself time to enjoy reading once again (here and here).
A list of profiles I've written
I was looking for a link to a feature story I wrote about a sea turtle researcher but I didn’t find it in this blog, so I want to list some of the articles I’ve contributed to Duke publications to make it easier to find the links in the future.
- In June 2024, The Duke School of Medicine posted my profile of Charles Muiruri, a health care researcher and globetrotting soccer player. I’m inspired by Charles and how he finds a pick-up game wherever he lands — when he’s in Durham, he often plays in the Sunday pick-up game that I’m in.
- In September 2022, my story about the Pediatrics faculty at DCRI appeared in the med school’s Magnify section.
- The Winter 2021 issue of Duke Magazine ran my feature about sea turtle researcher Kelly Stewart and Aaron’s Leatherback Brewing Company in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
- The SOM Magnify featured my profile of new faculty recruit Opeyemi Olabisi and his mission to revolutionize the prevention and treatment of kidney disease.
The “vivid vision” for my next five years, which I mentioned in my recent post, includes this goal:
Each year, I write a profile of an interesting and accomplished individual. This helps me more fully see the diversity of humankind.
I’m on the search for my next subject and open to suggestions.
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