On the way to the parking deck
by Anton Zuiker on April 25, 2021
I’ve been too busy to check in on Medicine Grand Rounds each Friday at noon, but I made sure not to miss last week’s presentation by Robert Lefkowitz, MD, professor of medicine and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012. His talk, A Tale of Two Callings, was just as funny and insightful as I expected. He even extolled the virtues of chocolate, and he broke into song — West Side Story — at the end. Watch here.
During my 10 years in the Duke Department of Medicine, at least once a week, on my way to or from the Research Drive parking deck, I would pass Dr. Lefkowitz. Sometimes he we’d exchange a greeting, but most often he seemed deep in thought. When he explained his keys to success in science, focus was at the top of the list.
In 2011 I had accompanied a photographer to the Lefkowitz Lab to get images for the department’s annual report. I used photos from that shoot to celebrate his Nobel Prize, and in my blog post Nobel connections, I recalled part of the conversation in his office from the year before:
“I tell jokes, and the [research] fellows laugh. And when they laugh, they’re making connections. And that’s what science is, making connections.”
I’ve started his memoir, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm: The Adrenaline-Fueled Adventures of an Accidental Scientist. I’m reading it slowly, trying to focus, and of course I’m eating chocolate while I read.
Planting seeds
by Anton Zuiker on April 11, 2021
A big rain last night washed away the blanket of yellow pine pollen, and then a sunny, breezy beautiful day bursting with color — the green leaves already a curtain across the woods that surround us, and the red azalea and white dogwood and bridal wreath and purple lilac attracting bees and wasps and butterflies — drew me outside. I fed the hens, turned the compost, pruned the grape vine, and prepared another bed with some of last year’s compost and packets of seeds: cosmos and sunflowers and daisies and poppies and roselle and Rocky Mountain bee plant.
I came inside for water and a snack. Malia was at the dining table, where she does most of her high school homework, and she was listening to a presentation about the Wilmington, North Carolina massacre and other injustices done to Black Americans.
I stepped out the front door to chat with Erin, who was weeding the front flower beds with Oliver, our fifth grader. He was saying to Erin, “I’m glad they created podcasts, because Malia and the rest of us can learn about racism and other important topics.” I immediately thought of Dave Winer, and wished he could have been there in that moment to hear how all the digging he’s done, and development he’s outlined, and MLK pins he’s worn have helped to make this world colorful and vibrant and on the way to justice.
For sale: Hawk's Landing
by Anton Zuiker on March 23, 2021
Erin and I are inching closer to building a new house here on our nine acres in Chapel Hill. One part of the plan is to find a partner to help us develop the land with a few other houses and the infrastructure (water, sewer, road) needed to support them. Or, we’d be happy to find someone who wants to buy our house and some of the land for their own living. We’re open to the options and flexible to making use of this beautiful corner of Chapel Hill that we are fortunate to own.
Our agent brought a drone a few weeks back to make a video showing the land, which we’ve affectionately dubbed Hawk’s Landing in honor of the red-tailed hawk I extracted from the fencing near our chicken coop. The hawk had swooped in to nab one of the hens but had flown right through the fence and was enmeshed in it, thrashing in the leaves. Once free, the hawk stood with its wings outstretched and glared at me. I took a step back and it turned and flew off through the trees out toward the spot we hope to build our new house.
What’s not for sale
Someone reached out to me recently to ask for this domain. I declined. The zuiker.com domain has been an important and valuable part of my life for the last 20 years. I intend to be blogging at this domain, writing posts from a patio looking out onto Hawk’s Landing, in another 20 years.
Watch this
by Anton Zuiker on March 21, 2021
In 1999, as Erin and I traveled the globe on our way home from our Peace Corps service, we used a credit card to buy souvenirs and locally made products, filling our large orange REI duffel bags along the way.
In New Zealand, we bought wool sweaters, a rimu cutting board, and a leather wallet. In Thailand we bought a beautiful mango-wood vase. In Norway, on a visit to an IKEA store, a steel insulated vacuum flask (inspired by the kayak guide in New Zealand who served us tea from his thermos). And in Geneva, Switzerland, we purchased Tissot wrist watches and a Henckels eight-inch chef’s knife.
The mango vase is in our dining room, I still wear my wool sweater on very cold days, and the cutting board (although it is beginning to split) and chef’s knife are still in use — I used them last night to prepare the delicious spiced chickpea stew with coconut and turmeric for a friend who is soon to head to Alaska for the summer. The leather wallet wore out a long time ago, as did the seal on the flask. And my watch was stolen in the house burglary the day of the Triangle Bloggers Bash.
Now, fifteen years later, I’ve replaced the watch with another Tissot. It’s a joy to look down at my wrist and see this beautiful piece of time keeping, and it brings back good memories of younger days globetrotting with Erin.
Describing a train wreck
by Anton Zuiker on February 1, 2021
I’m reading Caste: The Origin of our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson, and here’s just one of the new insights I’m getting from this book. On page 54, Wilkerson writes:
The overarching rule was that the lowest caste was to remain low in every way at all times, at any cost. Every reference was intended to reinforce their inferiority. In describing a train wreck, for instance, newspapers would report, “two men and two women were killed, and four Negroes.”
I immediately recalled my blog post from Jan. 1, 2019, Streets of danger, in which I wrote about an accident involving a street car on which my great-grandmother, Frances Zuiker, had been a passenger. The 1936 Chicago Tribune article that described the accident did exactly what Wilkerson explains.
In my blog post, I understood the article to be reflecting the racism of the time.
Now I better understand that that newspaper was actually reinforcing the “living, breathing entity” that is caste in this country.
More insights to come as I slowly read this book.