Looking upon rings and craters
by Anton Zuiker on September 8, 2019
Nearly every day for the last 20 years, I have visited kottke.org to see what interesting video or article or book or inquiry Jason Kottke has encountered on the web. Jason is interested in astronomy, among many other topics, and he regularly encounters awe-inspiring photos of space, such as the Entire Plane of the Milky Way Captured in a Single Photo.
During my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Vanuatu, I was awed by the brilliance of the Milky Way; Paama Island had zero light pollution, so every night was spectacular, whether a flood of moonlight or the effervescent Milky Way a bright blanket overhead or the red glow of Ambrym’s volcano mesmerizing us as we sat on the black-sand beach.
Friday night, after dinner, we walked down the gravel road to a neighbor’s house. Kumar, the father of Oliver’s friend, is an astronomy enthusiast and telescope collector. He’d texted earlier in the week to thank me for the jar of homemade hot sauce I’d left on his porch, and to invite us to look at the night sky. He was excited to be able to see Saturn, but the planet wasn’t yet clear of the tall trees, so he had a telescope focused on the half moon. Wow, each of us exclaimed as we peered into the eyepiece—the craters along the line of shadow were especially eye-catching.
While we waited for Saturn to move higher in the sky, Kumar pivoted us around to locate Polaris, the North star, and to identify the handle of the Big Dipper. Eventually, Kumar found Saturn in the scope, and I looked in, found the right way to hold my head and focus on my eye, and there was a small circle of light surrounded by a bright ring of light. Amazing.
I once visited the most powerful (at the time) telescope, but didn’t get to see anything because of the weather conditions atop Mauna Kea. That was a memorable experience nonetheless, just as looking up at the moon, the stars, the planets whenever and wherever possible should be. I’m in my place among a vast and beautiful universe.
On track
by Anton Zuiker on August 31, 2019
Anna wanted to come home for the long weekend, so she caught Amtrak’s Piedmont train in Greensboro and got off in Durham, where I was waiting. As we drove to Ninth Street, where I needed to pick up some feed and supplies for our backyard chickens, Anna asked me if I’d ever taken the train.
“Yes, when I was in college [at John Carroll University], I used to take Amtrak between Cleveland and Chicago,” I replied.
I didn’t have time to tell her about the night I got kicked out of the Cleveland station, where I was waiting for the 4 a.m. train. I also didn’t have time to reminisce about the family trip when I was a boy, the seven of us boarding the train in Winnemucca, Nevada, and marveling over the next days from the observation car as the train climbed through the snowy mountains then the arrival into the Bay Area. When we returned to Winnemucca in the middle of the night, we discovered the station wagon had had its gasoline tank siphoned dry, and I helped my dad push the car through the empty streets to a gas station.
Today, I parked the minivan on Ninth, and Anna and I walked across to the Regulator Bookshop, where I wanted to buy a copy of Save Me the Plums, the delightful memoir by Ruth Reichl. I had listened to the audio book a few weeks ago, and was mesmerized by Reichl reading her account of the years she was editor of Gourmet, that stellar but now-gone food magazine.
I never reached the professional heights that Reichl did, but her love of putting good writing and food and story into the pages of a magazine resonated with me, made me recall my time as a food editor for Northern Ohio Live and my own tussles with the publisher. (I wrote about my love of magazines here.)
Another book I read recently was The Library Book, by Susan Orlean. It, too, was wonderfully written. Libraries, like magazines, are all over my blog archives. I’ve written about libraries in Caldwell , Cleveland, and Copenhagen and in Frederiksted, Paama, and Chapel Hill. If you’ve ever been in a library—decades ago or last week—read Orlean’s book!
Next door to the Regulator is Hunky Dory, a record shop. We stopped in to take a look. I was hoping to find a used turntable so I could play the Bruce Springsteen records I have at home. I went the other night to see the film Blinded By the Light, about a boy in the U.K. who finds direction through the words and music of Springsteen. Such a good movie that I cried big tears, my face dripping. A few weeks ago, Anna and I had seen the film Yesterday, a fun take on the timeless music of the Beatles.
We still don’t have a way to play our records in the house, but I do have a new Yamaha guitar and the goal to learn to play this instrument, and I have inspiration from writers and singers and chefs and countless creative individuals who fill our libraries and cinemas and stomachs and souls.
Walk and talk
by Anton Zuiker on July 12, 2019
The U.S. Men's National Team scores another goal.
June was a whirl, as it is every year at work as the fiscal year comes to a close and we scramble to compile a year-in-review presentation about our massive and complex department. We also completed a research strategic plan. At home, we threw a graduation party for Anna, then took a road trip to Cleveland to celebrate Dan’s 80th birthday. It was a gorgeous weekend in Cleveland, perfect for a lunch cruise on the lake, then drinks along the Cuyahoga and a walk on the underside of the Veterans Memorial Bridge, an Indians baseball game, and (for me, Tom, and Michael) the UNMNT win over Trinidad and Tobago.
Somewhere along in the month, the ABIM Foundation announced the winners of its inaugural Trust Practice Challenge, and Voices of Duke Health was on the list. The foundation’s leader wrote about our project earlier this week, and invited me and the other winners to fly west next month to participate in the foundation’s forum at a mountain resort. I’m looking forward to demonstrating our podcast and discussing the joys of listening.
Yesterday, my friend Dave Winer called, finding me at my desk with time on my hands. We had a long, enjoyable conversation—the kind that ambles along and feels relaxed and deep at the same time—and afterward Dave posted this nice note and mention of Voices of Duke Health.
I have much more to report, and now that I’ve moved the Zuiker Chronicles to yet another host (Opalstack, this time), I’m ready to write and write and write.
BTW, yay U.S. Women’s National Team for your World Cup championship! We watched and cheered and celebrated your victory.
Backyard update: Wings
by Anton Zuiker on June 17, 2019
A hummingbird visited the flower bed in the front of the house. On the back deck, sitting with a friend for breakfast and a leisurely chat, I watched a variety of wasps and flies buzz through, interested in the underside of the big umbrella. The other day, as I walked in the woods, a pileated woodpecker flew up from a fallen tree trunk, the bird’s size astonishing me. The cats chase fireflies in the evening.
The chicks, meanwhile, have been moved from the laundry room to the deluxe chicken coop out next to the garden. Their feathers are coming in, and they race across their yard flapping their wings.
We’ve worked hard on this house and land, and only in the last few days have I been able to pause to look and listen and notice. I delight in the morning bird chorus, and am mesmerized by the late-day sunlight angling through the tree trunks. There’s a peacefulness all around, even as life is busy in its many ways.
Benign neglect and hands in dirt
by Anton Zuiker on May 6, 2019
Deer antler found in the woods
Home after a full day of work, already dusk, but some unexpected sod to lay down and a garden box to get leveled and filled with new soil. I finished in the dark, feeling with my hands in the fragrant dirt to place four young tomatillo plants. A smell of the farm, the blanket of night, and a satisfied calm within.
Yesterday, Sunday with afternoon rain showers forced me to rest. I sat with the paper on the front porch. Erin and the girls went out to shop and sighted the first box turtle of the year crossing the gravel road. I’m still delighted in my find from a couple of weeks ago, a deer antler that was in the back woods. Another deer ate the leaves off the apricot tree I’d just planted. The squirrels have visited the cherry tree, and the pileated woodpeckers continue to pound at the downed yellow poplar tree behind the abandoned shed.
Last month, Randall the sawyer brought his mobile mill up to the house to slice the blackjack oak, red oak, and white oak stacked on the edge of the road since the tree trimming in March. We finished stacking the boards only yesterday, a big pile out in the shade of the woods. “Stack them, cover, and let benign neglect take over,” said Randall. In a year or two, we’ll take some of the slabs to his Fireside Farm workshop so he can make tables, including a long table for backyard dinners with friends. For sure there will be tomatillo salsa and maybe fireflies as dusk settles over us.
Appreciation and birthday cake
by Anton Zuiker on May 2, 2019
April is over, which means all our birthdays are past for another year. We ate a lot of cake, and now we’re working off the calories with a lot of work in the yard. Oliver helped me build another cedar garden box to go in the large enclosure that’s been erected out back. Anna, who turned 18 and selected a college—UNC Greensboro been mowing the green grass in the reseeded yards. (She just walked in from a track meet, where she competed in the shot put and 200-yard race, and reported her best throw and run yet.) Malia’s been busy every night for a few weeks preparing for her part in the high school play.
Erin, of course, has been behind all of the progress at the house, and helping each of us in our activities. We wanted to to show her how much we appreciate all she does for her family, friends, and community, so we planned a surprise birthday party for her, and asked friends and family to show their appreciation by sending a letter of love or other creation. The surprise worked, and Erin enjoyed the shower of love (cards are still coming in). She deserved it. She’s amazing.
For Erin’s party, I bought cupcakes. She expected a birthday cake, but understood the change. For years, we’ve gotten cakes at Whole Foods Market in Chapel Hill the day of each birthday. We craved the buttercream frosting, put the uneaten half under the glass dome of the cake stand, and finished it the next day. But now that Amazon owns Whole Foods, the cakes are almost always frozen when we buy them, and there’s less of the yellow cake inside, and the service at the counter is poor.
“We’ll just have to bake our own cakes from now on,” said Erin.
I do want to spend more time in our kitchen. Oliver requested his favorite chicken with Asian-style sweet-and-sour sauce (we call it Burn Your Lips Chicken), so I cooked that for him this week. This summer, there will be garden vegetables to cook for dinner, and cherries and plums and pears (the deer got to the apricot tree I’d planted before I could get a protective fence around it), and other occasions to celebrate with a cake or pie. We’ll sit on the back deck and appreciate it all, and each other’s presence, and life all around.
Pulchritude and opprobrium
by Anton Zuiker on April 12, 2019
Evening yesterday was warm and calm, everything coated by the yellow pine pollen that has covered North Carolina the last week. I stepped out onto the back deck to survey the grass that’s coming up around the house. Carpenter bees were buzzing about, bumping into the flashing above the screen porch and crawling up into their holes.
Today, rain. I got home from work as a deluge was flooding the road and yard, overwhelming the new French drain and rock path along the house.
We settled in for family movie night. Erin selected Akeelah and the Bee, which we’ve watched time and again though this was Oliver’s first. When Akeelah was at the state bee, I went out with the flashlight to meet Malia down at the park to walk her home. I tiptoed slowly down the path through the woods, expecting to meet a copperhead at any step. Thankfully, no serpents were in the shadows.
Back the bee, as usual, I cried. Such a sweet movie. But I was also crying from sadness, having read the short poem Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini, calling humanity to witness the flight of refugees trying to get across the water to some place, any place, of safety and hope.
And this on a day when news from the southern border of the United States is more and more dire, and our country continues its refusal to be humane, and the hopeless man who is president plays with fire.