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.
Anniversary number 24
by Anton Zuiker on August 10, 2020
It is the tenth day of August, which means Erin and I are celebrating our anniversary, 24 years since our wedding in Cleveland. We spent the day working our jobs, punctuated by a few trips down the gravel road to watch the demolition of the old house. I went for a run on the trail by University Lake, came home, showered, dressed. The children went to the swimming pool, and Erin and I went to dinner at Hawthorne & Wood (General Tso’s cauliflower, tomato soup and melon salad, flounder in lemongrass-infused coconut milk, seared tuna and zucchini in Provençal sauce) and talked about the new house we want to build soon.
When we got home, the children had sweet, buttery, delicious cupcakes ready for us. We sat around the dining table, and I read them my anniversary blog posts from previous years, reminding us all how our love story and this family has grown.
More of this land
by Anton Zuiker on August 1, 2020
Three lots, ten acres.
Earlier this week, Erin and I purchased (through Paama Properties LLC) another piece of land and a hundred-year-old wood house. That house once was alone on the surrounding 18 acres, but over the decades the 18 has been divided, and we live in the brick house up on the back acres. This lot we just bought still owns most of the gravel lane that comes off Smith Level Road and up between our two properties (in June we purchased the lot across from our house.) Altogether, our three contiguous lots are a combined 10.46 acres.
The wood house has seen better days, and it will be coming down soon to make way for a new house to be built for one of Erin’s siblings.
Erin and I walked our land this morning, discussing where we might build our new house. We dream, we plan.
A friend of Vanuatu
by Anton Zuiker on July 20, 2020
There’s a new organization called Friends of Vanuatu that aims be a network for returned Peace Corps Volunteers and others with an interest in the Republic of Vanuatu. Count me in.
Not long after Erin and I returned from Vanuatu, and soon after I created my first website for Zuiker Chronicles, I also created a website for VanAmericanNius Online, my attempt to connect my fellows RPCVs. I couldn’t sustain it for long, and my subsequent attempts with Storian also fizzled, but a few years ago I ordered stickers for the tamtam icon and I have one on my laptop now, and that reminds me daily about my time in Vanuatu.
Thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, there’s a record of VanAmericanNius and Storian.
I hope Friends of Vanuatu will fare better. And I hope the Peace Corps can return to that amazing country (with COVID-19, Peace Corps suspended all activities around the world and brought home all volunteers). For Father’s Day, Erin gave me a t-shirt marking the Peace Corps’ 30 years there, and I wear it proudly as a friend of Vanuatu.
Bins, Bernoulli, and Buxton
by Anton Zuiker on July 19, 2020
The thunderstorm that almost killed me last night—I’d started on a run down the gravel drive and lightning struck somewhere near, the crack of thunder telling me I was being stupid for being out—had given way to evening, the morning dawned cool (I know because I was out there with Tilly) and I figured I could work in the basement before the heat and humidity returned.
I drank my coffee and enjoyed scrambled eggs (laid by our hens, cooked by Erin), then descended into the basement to rearrange the stacks of plastic bins and other items we’re storing down there.
My life is in those bins: a bin for report cards and reading certificates during elementary school, a bin for high school yearbooks and creative writing, another for college term papers and a couple of bins for the magazines and newspapers I edited early in my career, and at least four for the journals and letters and mementoes of our time in the Peace Corps.
As I rearranged the bins, I looked inside in search of something I’d once written about the experience in Vanuatu, and along the way I pulled out these items:
- A flyer for the Bernoulli Brothers juggling group I was in with my friends Chris and Peter.
- My college report about the history of barbed wire, invented in DeKalb, Illinois, where I once lived; the deed for the land we bought last month referenced an old barb-wire fence along the southern border, and when we walk the land we see the wire embedded in tree trunks or covered by a century of fallen leaves and branches.
- An index card with a note from Grandpa Sisco, sent to us in Vanuatu; taped to the card were two two-dollar bills—the gathering of men signing the Declaration of Independence glaring in its whiteness; the note with a suggestion from Grandpa to “have a cup of coffee and a roll when you’re in town” (Erin and I usually went to the Rossi for a pot of Earl Grey tea and croissant with scrambled eggs).
- More chronicles from Frank the Beachcomber about my grandparents’ trips to the Outer Banks, these recounting the fishing in Buxton, Ocracoke, and under the bridge of the Oregon Inlet.
- Postcards for The Long Table, a project that we hope to restart with tables made from the blackjack oak.
There are more bins and boxes to arrange down there, and more of the past to remember. The basement was getting hotter, so I finished up, put my running shoes on, confirmed there were no storms in the area, and went for a jog.
Meet Tilly
by Anton Zuiker on July 19, 2020
A puppy loves a pool on a hot summer day.
She’s a golden retriever puppy, and she will be us for years to come.
Last night was my night to sleep in the room where we’ve put her crate, and we woke a few times to step outside. At 4:30 a.m., Tilly sat calmly in the grass, and we listened to the bugs, the juvenile great horned owl, and a far-off rooster.
Outer Banks and blogging come full circle
by Anton Zuiker on July 12, 2020
Our traditional family vacation photo (Corolla, North Carolina, June 2020)
Erin and I and the children have lived in North Carolina since 2001, but until last month, we had never been to the Outer Banks. With my brother, Joel, and our mother living down in Wilmington, we’ve visited Kure and Carolina and Wrightsville beaches for the weekend, and we’ve spent a week on Oak Island (and I retreated to Southport once). Our longer beach vacations have been to South Carolina and Georgia, and to St. Croix.
All along, I thought about my grandparents. Francis and Clarice Zuiker visited the Outer Banks often in their retirement, camping and beachcombing and fishing and sending their stories back to the extended family. My 2003 blog post was about my grandfather’s letter recounting their epic fishing trip to Chesapeake Bay and Manteo, and the hurricane that chased them from the Outer Banks.
I regretted not getting to the barrier islands all these years.
But, finally, at the end of June I found myself passing through Williamston and Manteo as we made our way to Corolla, where we would spend a splendidly relaxing week in a big house with Erin’s sister, Mary, and her family. From the deck, we could see both the Currituck Beach Light House and the nearby Atlantic Ocean. Each day, as I sat under the beach umbrella watching the porpoises and the pelicans and the osprey, wriggling my toes in the sand and through the broken seashells, I said a prayer of thanks for my family nearby, far away, and gone.
I started blogging 20 years ago because of Frank the Beachcomber; this post from 2010 best tells the story.
I kept blogging for the past two decades because of my other grandparents, and because of my parents, and because of my brothers and aunts and uncles and cousins, and because of Erin and our children, and because of the people I work with and the people I invite to gather, and because of the world as it is and because of the world I want it to be.
Thank you for letting me share my memories, my travels, and my hopes. Thank you for reading.