Testing MarsEdit
by Anton Zuiker on December 9, 2022
This is another micropost with MarsEdit to see how it flows through to my Textpattern blog. First attempt had a blank body.
Yep, I have to open the post in MarsEdit and republish for the body to show up on my blog.
I’m sure I’ll be able to figure it out. Probably just a setting to select.
Que gran partido
by Anton Zuiker on December 9, 2022
Two exciting matches today at the World Cup. I was so happy to see the Netherlands tie the game in regular time, but bummed they lost at penalty kicks.
Plum good, says UNESCO
by Anton Zuiker on December 1, 2022
I vaguely knew that UNESCO celebrates the cultures and practices of peoples and places around the globe, but I’ve never taken the time to look over the agency’s list of ‘intangible cultural heritage’ until today. My friend, Bora, sent me a link to a news item reporting that šljivovica (we call it slivovitz) has been added to the UNESCO list, so I went looking for confirmation and I found my way to the official entry here: Social practices and knowledge related to the preparation and use of the traditional plum spirit – šljivovica.
To get to that page, I glanced through the other items added this year by the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. It’s a fascinating list that includes crafting and playing the oud, beekeeping in Slovenia, Holy Week in Guatemala and festivals related to the journey of the Holy family in Egypt, the popular folk song of Algeria called Raï, harissa and Cuban light rum and the French baguette. You can travel the world just by scrolling through those entries. Human culture and art and cuisine is just awesome.
Tonight I’m going to toast UNESCO and humanity with a bit of plum brandy. I have half a dozen bottles to choose from – backyard distilled Serbian šljivovica that Bora’s brought back in his luggage, a Romanian version a neighbor once gave me, a version made in Oregon, or the bottle of Yebiga rakija I bought at a liquor store in Georgetown. Bora was here just last Saturday afternoon; I made oven-roasted chicken shawarma (NYTimes recipe) and we sat at the dinner table, ate a meal and sipped the very good rakija, and talked until dark.
Give me steam
by Anton Zuiker on November 25, 2022
Peter Gabriel’s Us is playing on the bluetooth speaker, filling the house with his songs of love and yearning. Anytime I play this album means I must be feeling lonely. It’s just me and Tilly, the golden retriever, in the house on this day after Thanksgiving. Erin, Anna, Malia, and Oliver are in Cleveland along with most of the other Shaughnessy clan while I stayed back to keep an eye on the house under construction, to play soccer, and, yes, to watch the World Cup.
(I blogged about Us here and here, and this early post explains my first lonely but memorable moments with the World Cup.)
Friends Kelly and Andrew invited me to their home for the big meal yesterday; I contributed a sour cherry pie (see it here). I came home to the empty house and watched Philadelphia, the AIDS-era movie with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington (the soundtrack includes a Peter Gabriel song).
This solitude has been relaxing, and today between World Cup matches I’ll slowly make my way through a list of tasks and chores that I’ve been meaning to get to for months. I like the clean calm and slowed momentum of the days, but damn do I miss my family and their chaotic, kinetic energy.
It should be zero
by Anton Zuiker on October 25, 2022
Last week, Oliver was diagnosed with a fractured bone in his foot, so I have been driving him to his school. Usually we’re listening to the SiriusXM soccer talk show or U2X music station for the short drive, but this morning I tuned to WUNC. As we pulled up the hill and the school property, the hourly NPR news update came on (NPR News: 10-25-2022 8AM EDT).
“The shooting at the St. Louis school was the fortieth this year,” said the reporter at the very moment I turned the car into the drop-off lane and the school resource officer — the armed police offer who is at the school every day — came into sight.
I noticed this intersection of news and relative safety, and I knew Oliver was beside me and listening, and I recognized it was a moment to say something meaningful, but I did not know what to say and a moment later we were stopped and Oliver was getting out of the car, grabbing his notebook case and his saxophone and he was closing the door just as I uttered, weakly, “Have a good day.”
I want to live in a world where soccer highlights and rock-n-roll hits don’t have to give way to tragedy and insanity.
I want to live in a country where there are zero school shootings ever.