Snow tonight
by Anton Zuiker on January 10, 2025
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
by Anton Zuiker on January 9, 2025
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
by Anton Zuiker on January 8, 2025
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
by Anton Zuiker on January 7, 2025
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
by Anton Zuiker on January 6, 2025
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.”