Another marker
On Saturday, Erin and I attended the unveiling of a second marker to recognize the horrible history of lynching in Orange County, North Carolina (and across the United States of America). This marker, next to the historic old courthouse in Hillsborough, pays tribute to Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Morrow. They were killed in 1869.
This marker, and the one in Carrboro that honors Manly McCauley, are the work of the Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition in coordination with the Equal Justice Initiative. Erin serves on the OCCRC and we visited EJI and the Legacy Sites last year.
The ugly face of racism is before us again, and still. You may take away the language of fairness and love, but we will not give up this fight.
Tattered and blue
In his blog post yesterday, Studio Notes #19, Dan Cederholm links to a video interview of the actor Walton Goggins talking about a few meaningful objects, including a particular favorite book.
I nearly jumped out of my seat when he held up a blue, tattered, paperback edition of Herman Hesse’s novel, Siddhartha. It’s also one of my favorite books from a time when I actually read whole books. I have that exact same paperback. And it deserves a re-read.
I also have a copy of Siddhartha, and still the folded pink detention slip that a high school teacher gave me at the time I was first reading the book. I blogged about it in 2006.
My other favorite paperback, this one with a cover in lighter Carolina blue, seems to have gone missing; I must have lent One Hundred Years of Solitude to a friend or relative in the last few years. I purchased a used copy recently and planned to read it again (fourth time?) but I think instead I’ll read the shorter Hesse novel about contemplation and listening, which feels like it will pair perfectly with Pico Iyer’s Aflame (as I suggested in this recent post, I did get back to the bookstore to get this).
While I was reading Cederholm’s post, watching Goggins’s interview, and holding my 1980s copy of Siddhartha, I also was waiting for a dear friend to arrive in Chapel Hill. Khaled Khan, my high school friend and Colorado hiking partner, had let me know he’d be at UNC-CH with his family for a tour of one of the graduate schools. They came by the house for afternoon tea, and I smiled.
The river dries up
I was bummed to read Dave’s announcement today that he’ll soon shut down the two public instances of his excellent Feedland.
I’ve been using that for the last couple of years to read a host of blogs and news sites; for the moment, you can see the feeds I follow at news.mistersugar.com.
I’ve also used Feedland to offer the Duke River of News, a collection of news feeds from across the university and health system. There’s a way for me to run Feedland on my own server and I may try to attempt that, and if I do get it running, I’ll use it only for my river of news. I’ll most likely end the Duke river as I’m not sure it’s been much use to anyone for quite some time. (I will offer the opml reading list to my communicator colleagues.)
Anyway, my thanks to Dave for this valuable tool (and its predecessors).
One step ahead of the other
I keep telling myself to get back to blogging each and every day, but there’s just so much distraction all around. It takes just one step to get going, and then focus to just not stop. So … on the Uwharrie Mountain Run last Saturday, a perfect morning to run—rainstorms across North Carolina the night before, but clear skies and temperatures in the 40s—I missed most of beautiful hills and woods all around as I kept my eyes on the rocky path. I chose to run the 8 mile race this year. I finished at 1 hour 53 minutes. (In 2020 I ran 8 miles at 1 hour 45 minutes; in 2018 the 20 miles at 5 hours 3 minutes; in 2002 I ran 8 miles but cannot find a record of my time.)
Be less boring
On my way to work this morning, I retrieved the Jan. 27, 2025 issue of The New Yorker from the mailbox. At my lunch break, I took that issue with me on my walk to the Durham Food Hall, where I sat with a cappuccino and slice of coffee cake, and I settled into this essay by Daniel Immerwahr, What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction? It’s an interesting take on the age-old tradition of crying danger at new technology—TikTok, television, the iron stove, novels!—and what our abilities to focus may be doing to ourselves and to society.
Just last night, I’d sent a message to a colleague offering to lend my copies of Deep Work and Slow Productivity, both by Cal Newport. Those are just two of the many books and podcasts and articles I’ve studied over the last year as I’ve changed the ways I’ve worked and played. I’ve also finally started to read my copy of The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg (mine is an advanced reader’s copy that I received at ScienceOnline 2012).
I starred this paragraph in Immerwahr’s essay:
[Chris Hayes’s] illuminating backstage account of cable news describes thoughtful journalists debasing themselves in their scramble to retain straying viewers. Garish graphics, loud voices, quick topic changes, and titillating stories—it’s like jangling keys to lure a dog. The more viewers get their news from apps, the harder television producers have to shake those keys.
A few days ago, I’d complained to Erin that I disliked how NPR news programs come back from station breaks with some version of “Elephants in Africa are…but first we’re going to hear from Senator….” I guess that’s the ‘quick topic changes’ mentioned above.
Another Immerwahr sentence: “When someone calls for audiences to be more patient, I instinctively think, Alternatively, you could be less boring.”
Last week, in interviews for a promotion, I was asked to briefly describe my career journey. Both times, I realized, I didn’t do the best in answering, so I dropped into zuiker.com/zen/ to draft a script for next time. Through habit, I’ll be ready with an answer.
In college I studied communications, then worked as a features writer in Hawaii and as editor of an arts and culture magazine in Cleveland.
After Peace Corps service in the South Pacific, I became an early blogger, web content strategist, and organizer of online community.
I earned a masters degree in medical journalism from UNC-Chapel Hill, worked on an AIDS-related global health project, and then joined Duke University, where I coordinated internal communications for the health system, lead the Department of Medicine communications activities, and now work as a communications project manager and team leader in the Duke Clinical Research Institute.
Along my journey, I also organized an international science communications network and won awards for the Voices of Duke Health podcast.
I am in my 25th year blogging at zuiker.com.
Holding up a lantern
The inauguration was yesterday. I was horrified. I watched it because this is my country and that’s what I believe I should do. I’m not going to live in the dark.
Also, Sun Tzu says to study your enemy.
Scheme so as to discover his plans and the likelihood of their success. Rouse him, and learn the principle of his activity or inactivity. Force him to reveal himself, so as to find out his vulnerable spots.
I’m angry at my family members for voting for the criminal, and I’m opposed to most of this administration’s policies—ironically, I’m for upholding our immigration laws and protecting our borders, including honoring our commitments to providing amnesty and safe harbor, just as I am for upholding our laws about storming government buildings and evading taxes and stealing classified documents.
I needed to keep my head clear of the pull of negativity.
So, I tried something new.
Free 3D printing at the Co-Lab Studio is just one more perk of my job at Duke University. I’ve known about the lab for years but never tried it. In a Discord group someone linked to the design file for a simple shade for the Sofirn BLF LT1 Anduril 2.0 Rechargeable Lantern (I have two in orange, picked up on a great sale last year). I followed the Duke instructions, uploaded and sliced the file, picked a printer, and watched as the shade grew. On my way home from work (downtown, about two-and-a-half miles from campus), I stopped by the studio to find the green shade on the table of completed projects.
At home, the shade fit nicely onto the lantern. I would have used it in the woods just now as I walked down the hill to meet Oliver walking from his friend’s house across the creek, but a beautiful snowfall is covering Chapel Hill, and the hillside is shimmering. I could hear Oliver across the way, exclaiming his joy. Alongside Erin yesterday, he had watched a lot of news coverage of the inauguration, so he understands the significance and the danger and the need to keep aware. His awe and joy as we scrambled up to our house shows the strength we have to weather what’s ahead.
When grief is on the mantle
Erin and I are still working our way through Lockerbie. I vaguely recall how the trial ended so we’ll watch to the end.
I also have a memory of a postcard in a Ziploc bag on a mantle in Baltimore.
A year or so after college, I visited a friend of mine who was a living in that city as a volunteer. He and I stopped to check on a townhouse that he was looking after while the occupants were away, and he pointed to the bagged postcard, telling me it was retrieved from the wreckage of Pan Am 103.
I’ll have to check with my friend to confirm the details of that memory. I do know I’ve thought about that many times, wondering about the grief that comes from sudden and unexpected tragedy, and whether peace comes ever for the loved ones who look at the postcard every day.
A job to die for
I took a break from blogging tonight to watch The Devil Wears Prada. Had never seen that (that I remember) but I hear references to it all the time. The takeaway: whatever job you do, do it with integrity. Amen.
Edited the next night after I thought more about two specific scenes.
In Paris, Andy tells Christian she can’t give in to his advances because she’s had too much to drink and she’s not capable of making good choices, and the lout keeps going. That’s absolutely wrong. This makes me angry.
In a less consequential exchange in a NYC street, Nate answers Andy that he’s been making port reduction sauce all day and he’s “not in the Peace Corps.” This made me chuckle. I cherished my bottle of port on Paama Island, and the pork in plum sauce is one of the more memorable, and storied, meals of my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
Connoiseur of Silence
Last night, at the reception for Kelly’s book reading, I told a friend that I’d taken an eight-day silent retreat when I was in college (naturally, I’ve blogged about that). Silence is on my list of 2025 goals, part of my move to focusing on words that start with s. Strength is another. Subtlety. Skills. Smarts. Tonight, on my way home from soccer, I caught the tail end of Terry Gross’s Fresh Air interview with Pico Iyer. They ended with talk about silent meditation at a Benedictine monastery (Iyer) and a Zen monastery (singer Leonard Cohen). Iyer described Cohen as a “connoisseur of silence.” Lovely. I happened to see Iyer’s new book, Aflame, at Flyleaf last night, but I passed by since I haven’t finished reading his previous book. Now that I know what Aflame is about, I will circle back to get it.
After Fresh Air, President Joe Biden gave his farewell address from the Oval Office. (NYTimes has transcript here.) It was a strong speech even if he faltered a bunch. I liked the focus on the Statue of Liberty and the fact that it actually moves.
Like America, the Statue of Liberty is not standing still. Her foot literally steps forward atop a broken chain of human bondage. She’s on the march. And she literally moves. She was built to sway back and forth to withstand the fury of stormy weather, to stand the test of time because storms are always coming. She sways a few inches, but she never falls into the current below. An engineering marvel.
The other day when I was testing the scanner, one of the random slides I pulled out and scanned was the image above, a photo my father must have taken of the Statue of Liberty before I was born. (This scan shows dust and more; I’ll stop by the camera store later this week to get supplies to clean this old film.)
After soccer, I returned home, showered and dressed, then waited for the UNC men’s basketball game to end. Oliver was at the game with three friends, on tickets Oliver won as prize for selling the second-most amount of fancy popcorn in the high school athletics fundraiser. The Tar Heels handily beat Cal, and pickup along Manning Street amid the crowds went smoothly.
Oliver and I home now, drinking tea: Yunnan Golden Tips Supreme, from Upton Tea Imports. Oliver was interested in how to brew tea, so I showed him the expensive golden leaves and compared them to my other go-to teas, a Moroccan green mint and Hong Cha Mao Feng (also from Upton). We shared a bar of milk chocolate.
Redefining waste
In a post last September, I mentioned Truffles and Trash, a new book by our friend Kelly Alexander. This evening Oliver, Erin, and I returned to Flyleaf Books to hear Kelly talk about her field work in Brussels and how her research focus shifted from the value of black truffles—she worked in the kitchen of a top restaurant, where she noticed all the food being thrown out—to how she might redefine what the sheer volume of food waste means.
It was an interesting, informative, and uplifting story. Kelly highlighted the European Union and Belgian policies that focused attention and resources on the topic, and she talked about some of the local innovators who created the volunteer kitchens and restaurants to feed the hungry.
Kelly was joined tonight by Sera Cuni, a chef with restaurants in Chapel Hill and Pittsboro. Chef Cuni is also the founder of Feed-Well Fridges, a nonprofit organization that takes some of the unused food, makes it into meals, and places it into public fridges in the community.
Just last night, Erin and I were watching the new miniseries Lockerbie: A Search for Truth. There’s a scene in the 1980s English kitchen, and we noticed the small fridge, so diminutive compared to the nice fridge we have in our kitchen.
Long ago I wrote this blog post, Up high, down low, about a time I was hungry and asked to be fed. Six years later, I wrote this post, Box of hungry. It’s about hunger close to home. Rereading these, I know I haven’t done enough to remember my past, reduce waste, share wealth, give attention. Hearing Kelly read from her book tonight is reminding that I can help. Indeed, I have an obligation to do so.
Malia in Madrid
Malia spent last semester in Madrid studying with American University. She checked in with us nearly every day via text, FaceTime, WhatsApp, and email to tell us about her experiences, ask questions or get help (often about the iPhone and cell service), or let us know where she was traveling next. Nearly every weekend she seemed to be going to another place in Spain or country in Europe, sometimes as part of the program and often to visit her friends studying in other cities. I honestly couldn’t keep up, and while I was a bit nervous for her safety, I also was confident that she’d make the most of every location.
When Malia returned home and unpacked, she gave me the football jersey I had requested from Atlético de Madrid, and under the Christmas tree she put gifts of small jam jars and bottles of olive oil from markets in Europe and gifts for her sister and brother. She also handed me a small crinkly brown bag filled with postcards, one from each of the places she’d traveled.
In the hubbub of the holidays, and our own family trip to the Caribbean, I didn’t take the time to look at the stack of postcards until we were back home.
Once I did, I realized that she’d written a note on the back of each card to tell us what she’d done in each place — enjoyed the views from Santorini, admired the artwork of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona, eaten a lot of cannoli in Roma, hiked volcanoes in the Canary Islands, visited the Van Gogh Museum and Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, thought of our new house as she looked at the amazing tiles in Porto, enjoyed Geneva and the French town of Annecy with her friends, and felt the history of Valencia and Sevilla and Cordoba and Toledo.
And her writing was beautiful and full of feeling.
I don’t think I can accurately put into words what this experience means to me. I went into study abroad expecting to challenge myself and step outside my comfort zone but I wasn’t sure how much I would grow. I have learned so much about myself during this experience. I have been lucky enough to travel to multiple different countries and cities. And most of all, I’ve gotten to fall in love with Madrid.
In five months, Malia packed in a lot of travel and memories. When I finished reading the set of messages, I had tears in my eyes. This pack of postcards was a beautiful and thoughtful gift to give me and Erin. We are so glad that she made the most of this opportunity to study abroad.
Mostly, I’m proud that Malia’s handwritten messages conveyed her wonder about this world and her sense of good fortune. “I’m beyond grateful for this experience,” she wrote in her final card.
Giving attention
On Micro.blog, I’ve been following Lou Plummer, @amerpie.lol, for a few years (I’m not sure if there’s a way for me to determine when I exactly hit the follow button). Lou is a natural blogger and he contributes app reviews, personal essays, and statements on current events throughout the day. I just reread his honest essay about quitting the bottle and his more recent post about the Difference Between Journaling and Blogging.
I’ve been blogging for 25 years, and journaling even longer. Similar to Lou, most of my journal entries have been about my daily activities—what I’ve done, where Erin and I traveled, how we cooked, what the kids learned. There wasn’t much writing about my emotions. My blogging even more tightly focused away from my feelings.
Or so I thought.
Part of what I have worked so hard on through therapy, meditation, coaching, reading, and long talks with Erin and friends is slowing down and breathing and taking the time to recognize all the feelings inside of me. Through this I’ve learned that I’m almost over-tuned to inputs around me, from sounds and heat to smells and yes, feelings.
And when I reread my old blog posts and paged through my old journals, reading more slowly and giving attention to the me who was writing those words, I noticed I could remember the feelings of those times. While my posts and entries didn’t usually say how I was feeling, I actually had a river of emotions that flowed through me, sometimes getting dammed up and sometimes erupting and plenty of times blossoming into smiles and laughs and love.
Now, in the morning (after I’ve sat still and breathed slowly and watched the dawn bring the day) I write in my journal and I often start with “This morning I am feeling …” It feels good to check in with myself this way.
In my blog posts, too, I’m trying to mention what I’ve noticed about how I am feeling.
As it happens, I’m excited to meet Lou. Turns out he lives in Fayetteville, just an hour away. We’re making plans to meet up for lunch. I know we’ll have a lot to talk about.
The story of the Raven's Roost
As promised, I’m posting the essay by my grandfather, Francis C. Zuiker, about the Wisconsin campsite that we called the Raven’s Roost. I can’t say that I remembered the origin story of the site, although I’m sure my father has told me his version through the years. I found this essay in a pile of typewritten Zuiker Chronicles newsletters that I’ve collected from my father, aunts, uncles, and cousins through the years. This particular essay, which my grandfather wrote (under his pen name Frank the Beachcomber) probably around 1984 (when the family gathered for a jamboree and I think an aunt’s 25th anniversary), tells how the family came to own that piece of land and to name it. What’s amazing to me is that it also answers a set of questions I’ve been grappling with over the last few years. Why won’t my 83-year-old father retire, settle down, relax? Even today dad is sending me photos of himself hacking at the bush below the house on St. Croix! This essay, though, shows that he had a formational experience alongside his own father and brothers. That drive to clear a space is ingrained in him. The crows have spoken.
Raising of the Roost
There was no way of explaining that situation. It was spontaneous, and eventually proved to change the lives of all of us forever. There I was, my four young sons grouped around me on the edge of a jungle of stumps on the Pine Creek Flowage, when Terry came out with it. “Why can’t we have a place up here for ourselves?” His voice was more of a wish than a conviction.
For a sleeping car mechanic, with six young boys to feed, it was total fantasy, but my mind never was very realistic, so I had a ready answer for him. “You kids all work at the ball games. You get your pay every day. We’ll just drop a quarter in a coffee can every day and soon we’ll have enough to buy a lot up here.” It probably was the wrong thing to say. In a split second the rest of the kids jumped on the idea and it started a life-long family project that never ended.
In reality we had a rare work situation not enjoyed by many families. Early in life by trick of fate I had the opportunity to go to work in concessions at Wrigley Field, Comiskey Park, Soldiers Field and the Chicago Stadium. The pay was commission and on a daily basis and as an added bonus it meant free passage to all the major sports events in Chicago every day. It meant speed, weariness, cash and a waiting job for each of my sons as soon as they were sixteen years old. Of course half of their pay went to mother for our existence. Half of what was left had to go into a savings account for them, and they could spend the other half any way they pleased.
It was amazing how the quarters added up. Within two years, and by the time we had located a wooded knell over the Wisconsin Flowage, we had enough quarters to pay cash for it.
Chasing a fantasy can be exciting, but as we stopped along a dirt road and stared at the mass of brambles, pines, birches, and oak that was our lot, stark reality overcame us. In the middle of the wall of brush down toward the lake, giant white pines thrust their crowns above the timber shining like lighthouses on a wild sea. They served as our guides, as, armed with machetes, we hacked a trail downhill toward water. Owning a piece of land when you were a teenager might have been prestigious, but the four boys working around me were for the most part silent and I couldn’t help notice that the sight of the lake was going to be a welcome thrill.
When we finally did see the bay, I for one had mixed emotions. It was filled with logs, lily pads, and cattails. For a long time we just stood and stared at it, watching the ebb of ripples as big fish broke water and I could almost feel the limitless expectations of future finish, future fishing running through them.
“Well. We made it!” I encouraged Joe and Larry, Denny and John. “Now all we need is a name for our place.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Names began to fly fast, until the call of a distant crow set the tone. “That’s it,” I commanded. “The way you kids are yelling you’d think a thousand crows had landed here. We might as well call it the RAVEN’S ROOST.”
It was one thing having a name. It was another turning this raw, undeveloped forest, and timber-choked bay into something livable. None of us really thought it would ever develop a character of its own and grow along with our ever-increasing family. Yet for just a moment, the lot, my sons, and I seemed to fuse together, all bent on some unpredictable goal for the future.
It was apparent that for the moment a path through the brush for our car and gear was far more urgent. Necessity proved to be the mother of finality. A place for our tent became a reality, and a fireplace began to take shape and we already had plans for a well.
The impossible problems were too gigantic for us to comprehend, so we tackled the small ones, and the big ones faded into obscurity.
Some of the big ones were a little tricky. The stones under our tent turned out to be rocks as big as bushel baskets, so we dug and lifted them out with six-inch saplings and used the rocks for foundations for our growing fireplace. Trees, we discovered, can be as obstinate as some people. In clearing our campsite we found that power lines had been strung straight through the Raven’s Roost, and notching a tree, on a hill doesn’t exactly mean the tree will fall where you want it to. With the aid of ropes and sheer will-power and a few prayers, we guided a few determined birches away from that destruction-taunting power line.
Our water supply proved to be no problem, because our coffee can was now filling up with quarters briskly, with the addition of two new sons, who had reached sixteen years.
A border fence for the Raven’s Roost was foremost in the minds of all of us from the beginning, and the hundreds of foot-long pine saplings filling the lot gave us plenty of material to work with. By the time our pump was gushing forth crystal-clear icy water, we had set up young pines all along the downhill trail to the water, and completely around the lot. Each year from then on, I watched the kids and the pines grow into stalwart beautiful creatures into stalwart beautiful characters.
Within a few years the clearing beneath the tall two tall trees have been expanded to include three more tent sites nestled on the sloping hill where the sparkling river could be seen winding through the islands, and forest in the distance. What had even a more mystic impression over me was the cragly crowns of the two giant pines looming high over our campsites. It was obvious that being the highest point within miles also had been the benefactor of lightning bolts on many an occasion. Now, for about twenty feet of the uppermost portions, bark had been burnt away, leaving the the tree scarred and stripped. I began to get the impression that the Raven’s Roost had a darker side to its character also.
The two-week annual visit left no room for fear or speculation. The shoreline itself was another challenge to our growing family. It had been choked with logs and vegetation from the start and offered a formidable obstacle to fishing or even navigation. A brilliant mind had once said, “You can do anything you want, as long you take the first step.” Armed with bow saws and axes, ropes and hatchets, we jumped into the bay and started hauling logs up out of the water high enough so we could man-handle them.
Hauling is not exactly the right word. The ends of the trees and logs did peek out above the water, but we learned early that there was a lot of timber below the water line. Hacking an eight or ten foot piece of timber from a log standing upright in the lake can be a test of physical effort. Success did have its good side. Every salvaged log became another link in our growing wharf, which eventually became insurance against erosion.
Time really flies on wings when accompanied by work you enjoy. The Raven’s Roost and my sons matured with our efforts. The wharf grew solid and was the foray point for many a battle with bass and pike and even a stray muskie. It was the training ground for a team of fly fishermen of varying ages. Meanwhile the fireplace kept growing with each rock without a home, and every time a lightning storm rolled down the river, our two giant pines scattered a few more diadems from their crowns. Yet nothing ever remains completely still. All along the trail, from the dirt road to the bay, and completely around the Raven’s Roost, the young pines kept reaching for the sky.
There was a Silver wedding held on the roost a few years ago—not ours. We’re reaching for Gold. A lot of the newcomers there were from a new generation. They were the squealing kind, and their dads now put folding money into the kitty. Every day we could hear the call of the crows along the river and I had the feeling that there were a lot more of them around too now. In a way they seemed to be calling to us every time we rolled into the Roost, and they left the impression with all of us that the coffee can full of quarters had done quite a job.
Assume the name
Francis Zuiker, aka Frank the Beachcomber, at a craft fair.
My last couple of posts have mentioned my design project to update the brand for Zuiker Chronicles. I’ve also begun a project to digitize many of the thousands of slides, transparencies, and prints that I have collected from my father and across my traveling. Over on Wan Smol Blog (my microblog), I posted two of the first images I’ve scanned, including a delightful photo of my mother with her parents on her graduation day (from Northern Illinois University). I sent that to mom and she texted back, “My dad took his lunch break during my graduation.” Grandpa Sisco worked at the pharmacy in the DeKalb Clinic at that time.
I’m still working to convert Grandpa Zuiker’s essay about Raven’s Roost, but here I want to share the start of letter that Grandpa wrote to me in September 1996, right about that time that Erin and I had started application process to the Peace Corps. He titled the letter Flight into Fancy.
Life is a tightrope—each step taken forward leads to a new adventure. When I was a tiny, fat little pre-teeny-bopper I faced my dad and said, “Why did you name me Francis? Everybody thinks I’m a girl.”
My dad was a trimmer of Pullman Cars, and a non-ending student of Knocks College. If there was something he couldn’t do, he found a way to do it.
“There is no way you have to be ashamed.” he said. “You were named Francis after your mother and Cornelius after your father, and you are a Zuiker. There are Senators, Supreme Court Judges, Actors, and Generals, and they are all named Francis. It isn’t your name that counts until you do something with it!”
I love the sea. I have probably walked 10,000 miles of beaches and for the last twenty years have gone to countless craft shows and by now the Midwest is flooded with my driftwood fishermen, owls, eagles, parrots and seabirds, and I often think of the endless number of people who are enjoying these items. That’s why in the craft world I have assumed the name of Frank the Beachcomber, but I am still a Zuiker in every other sense and purpose. I often think back to my face-up with my father and I think I have come a long way. When I was a kid at seventy-five I got a thrill out of the fact that I was learning something every day.
I blogged here about the Zuiker naming tradition—my dad is Joseph Francis and I am Anton Joseph—and the nickname (mistersugar) that I took up beginning in Vanuatu. I glad to have found my grandfather’s letter and been reminded of the value of the name I carry.
Snow tonight
The first snow flakes started to fall during my coaching session this afternoon and by the time it was done, Oliver was already gearing up for sledding with his friends down the driveway. The woods around our house are beautiful tonight. After a walk outside, I returned to my desk to look through the folder of Zuiker Chronicles newsletters my grandfather had written. I found his essay about how Raven’s Roost, the family campsite in Northern Wisconsin, got its name. I don’t remember ever reading this. It’s a good story. Tomorrow, after a morning run in the woods and a hot cup of coffee, I’ll work on transcribing it to share here.
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