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.
Short update only tonight
I have a list of topics to blog about, but won’t be writing much tonight since I’ve spent the last hour working on a design project to update the brand for the Zuiker Chronicles. I think I’ve found a good partner to create the logo and icons I’ll need. More on this collaboration soon, and, with luck, a new brand and web design by March.
For background, the images above shows the previous brands I’ve used for this site. The first design for the Zuiker Chronicles website, which I launched in July 2000, depicted aspen trees at the family campground in Wisconsin, which we called Raven’s Roost. Then, from 2005 to 2015 I used a design featuring a raven and a font reminiscent of a vintage typewriter (my grandparents used typewriters to keep their far-flung families informed). Since I simplified my life and web activities in 2015, the site has not used a logo (although I did add a typewriter icon on a whim, never liked it but never got around to taking it off).
Celebrating craft breweries
The NYTimes has an interview with their own Joshua Bernstein who “was writing about bars and nightlife when the craft brew wave started to rise.”
More breweries closed than opened last year, explains the intro, “the first time that has happened since 2005.”
In the interview, Bernstein recalls when he recognized the craft brewing trend beginning.
Probably around 2003 or 2004, I started seeing this big wave of craft breweries opening up across the country. It felt like something was happening.
I guess the beer writer for the paper of record should know when the craze began, but I’m proud to say that I recognized the trend in 1997 when I featured 10 small breweries in a spread in Northern Ohio Live, the magazine I edited.
I blogged about that spread in 2013 here on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Great Lakes Brewing Company. (I have Great Lakes beers in my fridge even now.)
I’m still trying new brews. On my recent trip to Minneapolis, I visited three breweries (Modist, Fair State Brewing Cooperative, and Inbound BrewCo) and enjoyed the Lift Bridge Mango Blonde at the airport. My NOL spread and blog post highlighted a different Lift Bridge brewery. I’m glad the name lives on.
My brother-in-law Tom introduced me to the Untappd app for keeping a beer journal. Tom has me beat by hundreds and hundreds of check-ins (he’s partial to IPAs). Since 2019, I’ve had 102 check-ins on 97 beers with an average rating of 3.74. The styles I’ve tried the most are American pale ale and lager, German-style pilsner, Kölsch, and fruited sour.
I’m just back from pick-up soccer and on a high from scoring a hat trick. I’d love a beer right now, but Erin and I are pledged to a dry January.
Safety lights
I’m glad I went for a run tonight, but running in the dark with ice patches still around wasn’t exactly smart. Luckily, I had some moonlight and clear paths and my run was uneventful.
At other seasons, running in the dark is not safe because of the copperhead snakes that are on the move. Looks like I blogged about that before with a reminder to take my darn flashlight.
The more dangerous moment of the evening was when I was placing the recycling bins at the street. I’d just gotten the last one in place when a car with a missing headlight came precariously close to me as it whizzed down the road. The streetlight that usually illuminates the gravel driveway at busy Smith Level Road is dark because our neighbor stopped paying for it (the light does shine into his house) and I haven’t contacted the power company to ask about alternative safety lights.
Guess that should be my first phone call tomorrow.
Iolani Palace
When the January 2025 issue of the Atlantic arrived in mid-December, I immediately sat down to read the long feature about Hawaiian independence, The Hawaiians Who Want Their Nation Back.
In the early 1990s, I lived in Honolulu for nearly two years after I graduated from college. My day job was as a writer for Island Scene Magazine, a publication of the Blue Cross insurance company. Many of my writing assignments were about the history and culture of the islands, including this story I wrote about Mauna Kea on the Big Island. In the evenings, when I wasn’t playing pick-up soccer on the campus of UH Manoa, I was taking an introductory Hawaiian language class there.
My work and my studies meant that I was somewhat informed of the history of the islands. I also was aware of the desire for justice and independence. But I was haole, a temporary resident, itinerant, and I moved back to Cleveland (for love!). I have good memories of my time in Hawaii, including all the great hikes I took on weekends.
In 2021, we took the family for a surprise December vacation on Oahu. Each day, we drove past the historic Iolani Palace. It looked different to me because the gates were closed and access was restricted to visiting hours and paid tours. On that trip, and especially when I was reading The Atlantic feature about Hawaiian independence, I felt a wave of shame to realize I had added to the insult of the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani. When I had lived in Honolulu, the hiking club met on the mauka side of the Palace, which meant I often parked my beater car inches from the stone walls and below the room where the queen had been imprisoned for many months. I wish I would have brought to Iolani Palace the same reverence that I had shown the ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs and heiau around the islands.
As I’m finishing this post, I’m reminded that today is the fourth anniversary of the storming of the U.S. Capitol by the election-denying horde. Clearly there’s a through line that connects the American overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1894 to the almost-coup in 2021. My hope is that democracy and justice and peace will prevail in both Washington and Hawaii.
Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono
“The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.”
Desire: The 5 U2 songs I'd play for you
The U2X channel on SiriusXM often features listeners describing their individual playlists of five U2 songs—the U2 songs I desire the most. As the guest deejay tees up each song, we hear about loved ones, memorable U2 concerts, life and career milestones, and other short anecdotes about what the song means to the person.
I’ve been a fan of U2 since I was in high school, and here are the songs I would play:
- Where the Streets Have No Name from the Joshua Tree album.
- Silver and Gold from the Desire album.
- Mothers of the Disappeared from the Joshua Tree album.
- Stuck in a Moment from the All That You Can’t Leave Behind album.
- Bad on the Wide Awake in America record.
Here’s why:
The first U2 album I bought, on cassette tape in DeKalb in 1987, was The Joshua Tree. My cousin had lent me his yellow Sony Walkman, but I had used my summer money to buy an AIWA personal music device and so most likely listened to the cassette first on that. A couple days a week, after walking the soybean fields, I would drive my big old car to a soccer field on the campus of Northern Illinois University. I arrived early for the pick-up game, so I would sit in the car with the windows down, listening through headphones to that album. Where the Streets Have No Name was my favorite song. It was a nice interlude between work and play. When my teammates and friends arrived, I’d join them on the pitch. To this day, I remember a goal I scored on a long cross from the sideline, the arc of the shot merged with the remembered sounds of that U2 song.
I worked as a new student orientation advisor over two summers during college at John Carroll University. One of those summers, my friends and I watched the U2 concert movie Rattle and Hum multiple times. The Harlem scenes and the gospel rendition of Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For were alway good, but I most liked Silver and Gold, especially when Bono starts to lecture the audience about political and racial equality and then catches himself and says, “Am I buggin’ you? I don’t mean to bug ya.” My friends and I were committed to peace and justice; two of them would serve in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and I’d eventually join the U.S. Peace Corps. (The newsweeklies at the time were running cover stories asking if Generation X cared about anything. That fuckin’ bugged me.) When we weren’t welcoming new students or rewatching Rattle and Hum, I was watching the World Cup.
I graduated college, deferred my Peace Corps application, and moved to Honolulu. One day after work I walked to the bookstore in nearby Ala Moana Mall, where I purchased my very first issue of the New Yorker magazine. This issue was devoted entirely to a single long feature story about the 1981 massacre at El Mozote in El Salvador. At JCU, I had studied liberation theology, learned about the life and death of Archbishop Óscar Romero, and read dense, intense novels in a class called Latin American Dictators in Literature. So Mark Danner’s investigation about El Mozote held my attention. I’m sure I listened to U2’s Mothers of the Disappeared, a sombre song about killings by dictatorial regimes, at least a few times during the week it took me to read the article. (Often after listening to this U2 song, I’ll listen to these other songs that are in the family: Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits, and both Fathers Footsteps and Mother by Rhythm Corps.)
After college, and Hawaii, and Peace Corps service with my wife, Erin, in the Republic of Vanuatu, we landed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with an infant daughter. Erin was in graduate school, so during that first year little Anna and I explored campus on foot and took drives around the Piedmont. Anna did not like being in the car seat and she screamed her discomfort. I discovered that she’d go quiet when I played “Down in the River to Pray” from the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. We listened to that song more times than I’d watched Rattle and Hum, and when even Alison Krauss couldn’t get Anna to calm down, I’d play Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of but I’d change the words:
“You’ve got to get yourself together
You’ve got stuck in a car seat
And now you can’t get out of it
Don’t say that later will be better
Now you’re stuck in a car seat
And you can’t get out of it.”
Anna grew out of the car seat, grew up to be an amazing young woman, and she doesn’t seem to hold that loving taunt against me.
For Christmas 2023, Erin gave me the perfect gift—U2’s four-song Wide Awake in America on vinyl, which she found in an antiques shop in nearby Pittsboro. I had purchased a turntable, stereo receiver, and good speakers soon after we moved into our new house, and we’d begun to build a record collection. This gift from Erin included Bad, song that I hadn’t really paid attention to in the decades I’ve followed U2. But in the last couple of years, whenever U2X plays the song, I turn up the volume and sing along. I’ve also rewatched the 1985 U2 performance at Live Aid in which they sang Bad. I watched much of that epic concert on the television in the basement of my aunt’s house, though I’m not certain I saw the U2 set.
So those are the five U2 songs I’d play on the radio if given the chance.
And if you happen to visit me here in Chapel Hill, I’d play a few bonus U2 songs: Grace; Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around the World; The Wanderer; and 13 (There Is a Light). I’d close out our session with a record by Josh Ritter and a listen to his gentle song, A Certain Light.
U2 has been a constant in my life for nearly 40 years and I’ll keep listening as long as I can. (Another constant: soccer.)
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© Anton Zuiker