Kava in Durham
by Anton Zuiker on October 10, 2024
This is a short post only to point to a longer post over on Wan Smol Blog. I knew I wanted to raise a toast to Mereva Timante as she is getting married in Vanuatu. Today though I was monitoring a discussion in Micro.blog about the merits of that excellent system—which I use for Wan Smol Blog—and so I decided to write the post in that tonight. (Thanks to Manton for his great work in developing Micro.blog.)
Scripting News at 30
by Anton Zuiker on October 7, 2024
Dave Winer is celebrating 30 years of blogging at Scripting News.
Everything I wrote five years ago is still true: Dave’s posts, his podcasts, his new tools, his links, his essays, and his drumbeat of requests—textcasting and making news organizations accountable to the citizens—are my daily dose of internet medicine.
I’m still reading Scripting News every day, testing and using Dave’s writing and reading tools, and finding inspiration in the ideas Dave is developing and the questions he is asking.
Some of the ways:
- I helped test Drummer as Dave was developing this excellent blogging tool, and I’ve used it to blog at Yumi stap storian.
- I use Feedland to read RSS feeds from all over and to manage the Duke River of News, as well as to keep a linklog (see the links tab on storian).
So, once again, a heartfelt “Congratulations, Dave, and thank you!”
Prairie pride
by Anton Zuiker on October 6, 2024
The Allen Family farmhouse and prairie strip.
In the NYTimes, this article (gift link, so read it free) highlights the growth in replanted pieces of farmland across the middle of the United States.
The restored swaths of land are called prairie strips, and they are part of a growing movement to reduce the environmental harms of farming and help draw down greenhouse gas emissions, while giving fauna a much-needed boost and helping to restore the land.
Last month, when I visited Illinois, I spent an afternoon with my Aunt Ginger and Uncle Stoddard at their farm in Cortland. Stoddard, my cousin Tom, and I walked outside for an hour, talking about the chicken coop and pigeon roost, the concord grapes, the black walnut and other trees Stoddard has planted over 50 years, and the strip of wildflowers and native grasses that he put between the house and the corn field to the east. You can clearly see Stoddard’s prairie strip in the satellite image above.
As he identified the cone flowers and bluestem grass, pointed to a butterfly that landed nearby, and demonstrated how to crush a seedpod and scatter seeds, he was visibly proud of this strip of life. I knew he would be—he’s been teaching me about flowers and trees for more than half my life. In 2002, I wrote this on my blog:
Back on the highway, I frequently tried to snap pictures of the swatches of wildflower color that burst into my vision as I sped along. The red poppies were my favorite, but the fields of yellow or purple or white were pleasant, too. These wildflowers reminded me of my Uncle Stoddard Allen, who loves to plant flowers and trees. When I worked with him on the farm 10 years ago, my favorite task was to sprinkle wildflower seeds among the fields of prairie grass. Uncle Stoddard, the husband of my mother’s sister, Ginger, is the one who arrested Uncle John Zuiker when he chained himself to a condemned tree at Northern Illinois University, where Stoddard was a policeman. Uncle John these days takes care of trees for Fairfax County in Virginia.
Stoddard is still inspiring me. (Uncle John is retired from the tree work, but he’s the one who was in Raleigh last week for bluegrass.) Behind my own house, in view from the bedroom window, is my own patch of wildflowers, planted with seed from Garrett Wildflower Seed Farm (a North Carolina company). This week, I’ll be working on a strip of land for yellow Indiangrass.
In another sign of the times, the field to north of the Allen house, land once owned by Stoddard’s parents, is now a solar farm (look again at that photo above).
Tasting wine around the world
by Anton Zuiker on October 5, 2024
Our local wine shop, just over the hill in the Southern Village development, is called Rocks & Acid. Erin and I were there a few months ago for a tasting of “wines from the Levant” (Cypress, Lebanon, and Israel). We were there again last night, invited by friends to celebrate a birthday with tastings of New Zealand wines—a few Sauvignon Blanc (the Sandy Cove 2023, with a vibrant scent of kiwi, was quite drinkable), a Gruner Veltliner, and the excellent te Pā Pinot Noir made by a Maori winemaker.
Erin and I once toured New Zealand by campervan, stopping into wineries in Hawkes Bay and Marlborough. I feel damn lucky to have seen those islands alongside Erin.
Much of the discussion around the tasting table last night was about the destruction and rebuilding in Western North Carolina, along with talk of music; our hosts were off to see a favorite band at the Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance in nearby Pittsboro. Considering my love of live music, it’s a shame I’ve never made the effort to get to this festival.
With the tasting done, I went to the shelves to look for a Slovenian wine similar to the one I’d had at dinner earlier in the week. What caught my eye, though, was a bottle of white by Domaine du Bagnol, a winery Erin and I had walked to during our fabulous stay in the French town of Cassis. Ever since that 2016 trip to Provence, I have searched the wine shelves here in North Carolina for bottles of the wines we enjoyed in Cassis. I walked out of Rocks and Acid with two bottles
Laura, the shop’s general manager, also showed me a Slovenian bottle, so I took that, too.
Hooray for HuZu Law
by Anton Zuiker on October 1, 2024
This month, Erin is marking the 10-year anniversary of her boutique law practice and partnership, Huggins & Zuiker, LLP, but also known as HuZu Law. Erin and Molly are quite good at what they do, and I am in awe of how hard they have worked to serve their clients.
There’s no special anniversary event planned so Erin and I will celebrate throughout the month.
So, the two of us went for an early dinner at Tesoro, a cozy restaurant in Carrboro. I had a great view of the open kitchen and watched Chef David Peretin and his sous chef calmly, quietly, cooly prepare and plate our dishes and others. The foccacia to start was delicious, and the Slovenian wine I selected — Vina Stekar Sivi Pinot 2021, somewhere in the rosé and orange world — was dry and simple and earthy. Our pasta dishes were tasty, although the smokiness of the rigatoni with tomato and eggplant (the eggplant had been smoked) dish I ordered surprised us. Another glass of that wine would have been perfect.
I quite liked Tesoro and look forward to returning.