Happy at work
by Anton Zuiker on September 18, 2022
I’m nearing the second anniversary of my job switch, and I’m happy to report that it’s been a great two years. I’m thoroughly enjoying my work at the Duke Clinical Research Institute on the RADx Underserved Populations project.
Last week, the Duke School of Medicine Magnify (an online news site) featured No More Guessing, a story I wrote about the Pediatrics faculty at DCRI. That group’s growth over the last 15 years is impressive, and my job is directly tied to their success in “running multi-site pediatric clinical trials and … managing major coordinating centers.”
Music and Mockingbird
by Anton Zuiker on August 14, 2022
A roundup of the last couple of weeks:
Erin and I have been rewatching Treme, the series set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Music and musicians are a key thread through the series, and a good reminder of what the city has given to our country.
Treme inspired me to look at the Cat’s Cradle calendar; Anna and I went one Friday to see/hear Blue Cactus at the Cat’s Cradle Back Room.
The next night, the family went to a backyard party at the home of Steve and Rebekah Vaisey. Their daughter, Deliah, has been recording tracks for an upcoming EP, and she performed some of her songs, with her father and brothers backing her up. Find Deliah on Spotify under Delia-h:
After Deliah and her family finished their set—they were very good!—the stage became a karaoke playground; my children sang Sweet Caroline and had everyone up on their feet singing along. Another guest sang Blue Monday, by New Order. On the way home, I told my family about the time I and four buddies performed a dance routine to that hit song. Our routine was choreographed by Danielle Crawford, we were dressed in cheerleader outfits (this was a somewhat-serious spoof of the very popular DeKalb High School girls dance team), and we got a big cheer from the student body in the gym.
Matthew Butterick, a lawyer/designer/coder who designed the fonts I use on this site, occasionally writes (and designs) long, thoughtful, connected essays. His latest is Power, Corruption & Lies and in it he focuses on the album cover designs of New Order. It’s a fascinating read.
Last week, Erin and I went to the Durham Performing Arts Center to see Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. The cast was excellent, and the dialogue crisp, but I still came away unsettled by the story and the reality of racism’s deep, deep roots in this country.
We hosted a backyard party of our own this weekend to celebrate Malia’s graduation, and we ended the evening with karaoke under our carport. Oliver and his cousin Ginny hogged the microphone but did let me and my friend Jon sing Solsbury Hill.
Ring the bell
by Anton Zuiker on July 31, 2022
Erin and I took a cruise vacation, from Seattle to Alaska and back. We had fun visiting glaciers, hiking along the water, watching for wildlife, and shopping in the towns. We also had one of the best date nights ever. Then we got COVID. But, first, a story from Provence.
Closed for inventory
In 2016, Erin and I celebrated our twentieth-anniversary in France, including a delightful stay in the seaside town of Cassis. On one of our last days there, Erin and I walked from Maison º9 into town and up the hill to Clos Sainte Magdeleine, a winery with beautiful oceanside vineyards that produce delicious white and rosé wines. When we got to the door of the shop, though, a sign announced that it was closed for the week but to pull the metal rod should you need the proprietor. I turned on my heels, disappointed and ready for the walk back.
Erin, better than me in so many ways, reached up and rang the bell. We waited.
A few minutes later, a young woman opened the door, explained that she was busy taking inventory, but she’d be happy to show us in, give a glass of wine, and sell us a few bottles.
Erin proved how good things can come to those who “ring the bell.” Ever since, that’s been the phrase we use in our family conversations to encourage our children to step up and seize the situation (with a knowing nod to my indecision).
Take a cruise
Erin and I have traveled the globe together and with our children, but we long resisted the idea of taking a cruise. There’s no way I wanted to get norovirus or jostle with thousands at the buffet. But as Erin gets closer to her fiftieth birthday, and with only a few states left until she’s visited all 50 of them, she booked a family cruise to Alaska—for summer 2020! COVID canceled that cruise, but the cruise line wouldn’t refund the full fare, so we held onto the credits. When we learned the credits would expire later this year, Erin realized we would be on our own this summer as Anna was in nursing school, Malia would be a camp counselor, and Oliver would be at back-to-back sleep-away camps.
Erin decided to book the cruise, and so off we went on an evening flight to Seattle, unplugging from our work and the new-house project, hoping that Anna and Malia and Oliver would be safe and well for the week. My task had been to arrange a hotel room, but I nearly blew that, realizing a few days before departure that the reservation was off a week. The new reservation I made, correctly, was in the Hyatt Regency Seattle, and we woke on a Sunday morning with a glorious view to Mount Rainier. We enjoyed breakfast (and bought a couple of bottles of wine for the cruise) at Mr. West Café, and then hailed a taxi to the terminal where we joined the queue and eventually found our way to our stateroom on deck eight.
As the Odyssey of the Seas began the long sail north to Alaska, Erin and I enjoyed a champagne toast on our deck. For the next two days at sea, we walked and talked, relaxed in the sauna and steam room, read books, dressed up to go to dinner at the restaurants on board (one night a somewhat-molecular-gastronomy meal, another night good sushi!).
At our first stop, Icy Straight Point, we walked past the cruise companies’ center of activities and on into the village of Hoonah with plans to get lunch at the Fisherman’s Daughter. As we approached a group of Tlingit carvers working on a totem pole, Erin’s phone rang. Back in North Carolina, Oliver was about to be sent home from camp, sick with fevers (a counselor in his cabin left the previous day with COVID, and other campers were leaving with influenza). With reception in and out, Erin managed to make a plan and give instructions to Malia to get him home. We kept walking.
We were passing one home when a woman walked around to her SUV. She was holding an empty white board, her toddler and a German shepherd at her feet. We said hello, and she asked if we had plans for the day.
“I happen to have two spots left on our five o’clock whale watching tour,” she said.
Erin stepped toward her and rang the bell, the woman put down the white board without needing to write a thing, and a little later—after halibut tacos at Fisherman’s Daughter—we were on the Thor Too with the woman’s husband, Joardan, guiding us into the strait in search of whales. Over the next two hours, we observed humpback whales, seals and sea lions, and sea otters. At times the boat drifted silently. We waited, marveling at the scenery, and minutes later the sounds of a whale exhaling nearby would redirect our gaze to see the mist of the whale’s breath floating away, and then the tale flip up and slowly out of sight.
The next day, off the ship in Skagway, we climbed into a small helicopter that gently lifted us into the air above the fjord, along the mountaintops, and onto Mead Glacier. For 45 minutes we wandered the glacier with a guide, learning about the river of ice and wandering rocks and dangers of the crevasse. I lay down to sip from the icy meltwater. I thanked Erin a hundred times that day for arranging that excursion. She’d wanted a helicopter ride to rival the ride we got on Paama and this was it.
A third day, in Juneau, with no pre-planned excursions. I’d looked at various ways to get from the dock to Mendenhall Glacier, in the Tongass National Forest, but once again it was Erin who took charge and called a taxi company. Skyler Mazon with Juneau Taxi pulled up in a van a few minutes later. On our way toward the glacier, we were looking at eagles up on the light posts when Skyler pointed to grassy marsh and a black bear, and then another! His excitement at seeing the bears made the day a success in itself. And then we had a few hours to hike in the park, learning about how much the glacier has retreated in the last hundred years. Skyler returned to get us and in Juneau he left us out to walk into Cope Park, a gem of a city park with a rushing river and tall pines.
As the ship sailed away from Juneau, we watched three paragliders soaring high above. One descended sooner than the others, landing on the tidal beach as we passed. A little later, a bald eagle glided by, and then another, and another.
After nearly two days of sailing back south, the ship put in at Victoria, British Columbia, for the shortest of the stops. It was late Sunday afternoon but the place was bustling and beautiful and warm. We dressed up and walked into town for a delicious meal at the Tapa Bar Restaurant (ceviche, shrimp in coconut milk curry, grilled carrots, chile relleno, shopped on our way back toward the dock, and stopped for wine and tiramisu at Il Cove Trattoria. Erin was gorgeous, we were relaxed and having fun, and this was one of the best dates ever, making me damn glad that I’d decided almost instantly to marry Erin when I first met her in college.
Jubilant
In January 2002, Erin and I went on a date to Raleigh to hear Jubilant Sykes sing with the NC Symphony (we’d seen him perform the year before in Cleveland as part of an MLK concert). After the concert in Raleigh, Sykes came to the foyer to meet a few of us who had waited to buy his CD, which I would end up playing for Anna, still an infant at the time, over the next few years.
One of the songs on that album: Ring Dem Bells, an angelic cover of the oh-so-good Ring Them Bells by Bob Dylan.
And, COVID
Back in Seattle early on Monday morning, Erin and I got a taxi to nearby Magnolia Village, where we parked ourselves and our luggage in front of Petit Pierre Bakery. As soon as it opened, we got the delicious pastries (one of the best pain au raisin ever), and sat at our table watching a stream of arriving customers. Soon, Kara Jackson, our fellow Peace Corps volunteer, walked up to join us. Kara is associate professor of education at the University of Washington (her field is math education), and I hadn’t seen her since 1999 in Vanuatu. Later, she and her family would take us on a hike around Seattle’s Seward Park in Lake Washington, and after lunch at their home, Kara took us to the airport.
Then we flew home to North Carolina, where Oliver was recovering from pneumonia. At the airport, as Malia pulled around to get us, we learned that her school trip to Chicago later in the week would be canceled because the hosts there had COVID. That should have been a warning to us, because two days later, Erin and I tested positive for COVID (the same day that President Joe Biden tested positive), and for the next week we were knocked down by the illness; one day, with fever and chills and my body aching about as bad as when I had dengue in Vanuatu.
But now I’m healthy again and back to work and projects around the house, and without the COVID fog I can recall the Alaska vacation and tally all the ways that Erin made that trip so special. More than ever, I am grateful for Erin. We will mark 26 years of marriage on Aug. 10, and I hope to sail through many more with her.
Clos Sainte Magdeleine, Cassis, Provence
Malia to American
by Anton Zuiker on June 19, 2022
Malia graduated from Carrboro High School last week (in a ceremony held in the UNC-CH Dean Dome). As student government vice president, she had the honor of addressing the student body with an upbeat welcome message (along with the president) and then, at the end of the ceremony, leading the class in the turning of their tassels.
I’m very proud of Malia. She weathered the interruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic that made the last few years tough on all students, and she finished with high grades and accolades from her teachers and school administrators. She also gave our home a constant buzz of activity, especially during her senior year when so many of her friends came by each day for lunch.
Malia is smart, sensitive, kind, and passionate about societal issues and world events. In the fall she’ll be off to American University to study international service. Washington is the perfect place for Malia and we know she will excel there.
Back when she was applying to colleges and expressed her interest in American, I had a hunch that there might be an interesting connection to that university. I was born nearby, at the Georgetown University Hospital, and I remembered that my mother had a relative who worked for the State Department around that time. Joseph Sisco, who I think is probably a cousin of my grandfather—I’ve spent a few hours trying to find the connection, but I haven’t been able to fill in the family tree yet—was a diplomat who served under Henry Kissinger in the Nixon Administration.
I called up my father, and then later my mother, and they both told me the same story: In 1970, just after I was born, and before we moved to California so my dad could help a friend run for Congress, they took me to Foggy Bottom and stepped into the reception area of the State Department. My mother asked the receptionist to call up to Ambassador Sisco to let them know we were downstairs, and sometime later he came down for a chat. I imagine he patted me on my infant head, asked about my grandfather and listened to my dad talk about his Peace Corps service in the Dominican Republic and my mom’s teaching in the District, and then he quickly said goodby and returned to his office upstairs to solve another crisis in Palestine or Egypt or Cyprus. This obituary in the Guardian chronicles his important role in Mideast tensions of the 1970s.
After Joseph Sisco retired from the State Department, he served as president of American University for five years.
It’s wild to think, as we mark 50 years since the Watergate break-in, that my head was touched by a hand that shook the hand of Kissinger, whose hand shook the hand of the soon-to-be-disgraced Richard Nixon.
More importantly, now my child is headed back to D.C. to start her own career in international service.
Custom kiribako
by Anton Zuiker on May 21, 2022
Last year, I wrote about the enjoyment I got in reading Kissa by Kissa, a beautiful book by Craig Mod.
One of the photos that Craig featured in the book was The Tomato Farmers, which he is now offering in a limited edition print. Since his book was so well designed and made, I have no doubt this print is high quality. Even better, it comes in its storage bin: a kiribako, or paulownia wood box. Craig quotes from a historian of Japan to explain that paulownia wood boxes have been used for a long time to store art.
Paulownia? I recognized that word. As Wikipedia explains, it’s the scientific name for a genus of trees, and here in North Carolina the princess tree is considered invasive.
Over the last few years I’ve been cutting down the princess trees I find on our land. I look for fallen leaves, which are quite large, or I search for trunks that look like tulip poplar trunks and then I peer up to identify the branches that grow opposite each other. Thankfully, there aren’t a lot of these princess trees on our property — less a dozen, though a few quite large — and once I drop them down with the chainsaw or axe, the trunks are easy to split into firewood that burns clean and hot. It doesn’t take long for the roots to push up a new tree, though, as this photo I snapped today shows.
