A book to hold and enjoy
by Anton Zuiker on January 2, 2021
For the last few months, I’ve slowly savored the experience of holding and reading Kissa by Kissa, a sensuous book written, designed, and produced by Craig Mod. The book chronicles Mod’s long walk through Japan as he ate pizza toast and talked with the elderly proprietors at mid-twentieth century Japanese cafés called kissaten.
The book is a joy to hold, its cloth cover and thick pages of quality paper complementing the excellent writing and moments-in-time photographs. I made it through the book a few pages each week, nearly all late at night when the house was quiet and I could sit still by myself, slow my breathing, and imagine myself stepping into a kissa with Mod as he greeted the regulars in Japanese.
I was a supporter in Mod’s first campaign to fund the book, and I received copy 0194 of the first 1000-copy print run. I don’t remember how much I paid for this, but whatever it was could not equal the enjoyment I’ve gotten from it. I’m glad to be in Mod’s Special Projects membership program, and I enjoyed reading the dispatches from his latest month-long walk in Japan (where he lives).
Scarred but thankful
by Anton Zuiker on January 2, 2021
It’s a new year, and I am grateful that 2020 is behind us. There’s a lot for me to remember — I turned 50, celebrated 20 years as a blogger, marked 10 years in my job at the Duke Department of Medicine (and then moved to a new position in the Duke Clinical Research Institute), and all that in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and its restrictions and fears and frustrations.
I’m starting this new year in a new space. Erin’s new office shed to the west of the house was completed last month and when she moved in there, I inherited the space inside the house (the former carport that we had enclosed to make an office and laundry/mudroom). My desk is set with work and personal computers, and I look south past the driveway and gravel road to the tall trees; the oaks and poplars are bare right now, but the bronze leaves of the American beech trees and the green needles of the loblolly pines are visible. The other night I stepped outside and heard two great horned owls in conversation. Inside the office, the potted Meyer lemon tree is loving the bright sunshine that fills this space each day. There are four lemons growing on the tree, and a blossom promising another.
I also am starting this year with a permanent reminder of the months that have passed. I have a new inch-long scar above my right brow, and daily jokes from my family about how I got it: too many laughs and drinks one night with a group of friends, a wave of nausea in the morning, coming to flat on the bathroom floor, and my head butterflied and bandaged by Erin. A lesson learned the hard way.
I’m thankful to be alive and well for a new year and ready to make a mark on 2021.
Diego Maradona
by Anton Zuiker on November 25, 2020
I had to drive to Durham to swap laptops (I’m in my third week of the new job, but could only arrange to pickup the computer today). On the way, I listened to the SiriusXM football channel as Ray Hudson talked about the news that soccer legend Diego Maradona had died at age 60 from a heart attack.
“A blind man on a galloping horse in a Scottish fog” could see that Maradona was talented and one of the greats, said Hudson. Soon, he was weeping, and I too, was tearing up, as I remembered watching Maradona in the 1986 World Cup—I was a teenager who talked my way into using the satellite dish at the high school across the street and I was alone in the media center as Maradona weaved through the English team for that glorious goal.
Last week, Erin and I watched and enjoyed the first season of Ted Lasso, a wonderful show about an American football coach who goes to England to manage a Premier League team. “Football is life,” says one of the players to Coach Lasso. I imagine Dani Rojas, that character, would be saying that right now to rest of the players in the locker room as they paused to honor Diego Maradona (or curse him for that egregious earlier “Hand of God” goal).
Election day
by Anton Zuiker on November 3, 2020
I voted a couple of weekends ago, waiting in line outside the Carrboro Town Hall (where the Black Lives Matter flags rightly fly). As luck would have it, I walked up to the back of the line just as my friend Beka and her son, Milo, arrived. It was Milo’s 18th birthday, and he was casting his very first vote.
My first vote was the 1988 general election. I was at college in Ohio, and I completed my Illinois absentee ballot in my dorm room on the third floor of Dolan Hall. When the 1992 general election came around, I was a new transplant in Hawaii, and I walked down to the Makiki Community Center to cast my vote. That night, I was in Waikiki for the Democratic Party’s celebration.
Now I am in North Carolina, a swing state that can determine the outcome of today’s election. I am proud to have voted for Joe Biden and many others who cherish character, decency, service, truth, equality, and hope as abiding American principles.
And I am proud of my children to exercising their rights: Anna voted at Carrboro Town Hall the day before me (her first vote for president), Malia was just elected a class senator at Carrboro High School, and Oliver regularly asks his friends what they know about the candidates.
Today is a good day. Tomorrow will be a good day for good people to stand tall and march forward.
A new job
by Anton Zuiker on October 15, 2020
After a decade as communications director for the Duke Department of Medicine, I am making a change. Next month I will take a job as writer for the Duke Clinical Research Institute, which was awarded a major grant from the National Institutes of Health to be the coordinating center for a set of studies called Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics for Underserved Populations (RADx-UP). I will be a member of the Research Communications & Engagement team.
I am excited for this opportunity to apply my editing experience, web knowledge, online community building, and interest in infectious diseases. I am especially humbled to have another opportunity to be able to serve others, especially communities most affected by COVID-19 — this continues a thread that connects my childhood upbringing (my father and mother taught me to be aware and sensitive to others) to my Peace Corps service to my BlogTogether and ScienceOnline efforts to give others the tools to express themselves and teach others.
The Department of Medicine has been a great home for me, and I will miss it. I feel I’m going out on a high note. This week we published the next in our Voices of Medicine oral history interviews with senior and emeritus faculty members. In this episode, Dr. John Bartlett talks about his four decades treating patients with HIV/AIDS. When I was in graduate school in 2004, I organized a series of events called Narratives of HIV, and so Dr. Bartlett’s story feels like a continuation of that project.
The department has given me many opportunities to share stories about science and medicine, such as a profile I wrote this month about Dr. Opeyemi Olabisi, a physician scientist in the Division of Nephrology. It’s been way too long since I put my medical journalism training to use, and I had a great time writing this piece.
Meanwhile, Medicine Grand Rounds is going smoothly, This Week in Medicine is an effective e-newsletter with leadership messages and a roundup of links to online content, and all the other ways that my colleagues and I support the 2000 faculty, trainees, and staff have made every day interesting and fulfilling. I am grateful for this work over the last ten years. I am looking forward to the years ahead.