Michael Ruhlman's new book and new podcast
by Anton Zuiker on October 20, 2019
Michael Ruhlman has a nice new look for his website to coincide with a new book out last week: From Scratch. I’m hoping to pick up my copy at The Regulator Bookshop tomorrow. Michael also has a new podcast, From Scratch.
In his first episode, Michael’s guest Krishnendu Ray ends with a thought about the sensory memory of food, and how we externalize the world through food. I was listening to that as I was driving home from Greensboro tonight, and I reflected on my food memories, and immediately thought back to the smells of the tortilla shop in Caldwell, Idaho, where we often stopped for a bag of warm, fragrant, soft corn tortillas. I also remembered working beside migrant farmworkers as we planted Christmas-tree saplings in a dusty field, and my father driving me out to the simple living quarters where the workers ate their meals at the day’s end. My father worked to ensure that migrant farmworkers across Idaho get a toilet to pee in.
I wrote a longer post, Beside the farmworkers, about these Idaho experiences. I learned a lot from those hard-working Mexican farmworkers. I learned a lot from my parents as they treated these men with dignity, respect, and often a meal in our home. I should be telling these stories more.
Back to Michael’s podcast.
In his second episode, Citrus, Michael features an interview with Miami chef Michelle Bernstein, a name familiar to me. Erin and I celebrated an anniversary with dinner at Bernstein’s restaurant, Michy’s, in 2008. I blogged about that delicious meal (and others in Miami Beach) here and here.
Here in North Carolina, the nights are getting cooler, so I’ve brought the Meyer lemon tree in from the porch. Two lemons are turning yellow, three more smaller green fruit have months to grow.
Sweet silence
by Anton Zuiker on October 16, 2019
I work in a hospital, and the HVAC systems are in a constant whirl. My desk sits underneath an air duct that constantly blows out air to cool or heat my office. There’s a thermostat to control the temperature, but there’s no way for me to stop the flow above.
Except, on rare occasions and for unknown reasons, the air stops, and my office becomes silent, and I become calm. It’s always an unexpected moment of relief, lasting but a few minutes.
I appreciate the quiet, the stillness. I crave it.
Finally, a rainy day
by Anton Zuiker on October 13, 2019
My brother, Joel, and I are going to camping soon. All the North Carolina state parks were booked up, so we reserved a campsite at a park in Virginia. Earlier this week I got an email alert from the park about a burn ban, reflecting how dry this part of the country has been. So no campfire conversations.
Here at home, our cars have been perpetually coated in dust from the gravel road, and I’ve worried about all the fallen leaves and dry branches in the woods around our house.
Today, though, it’s finally raining in Chapel Hill, a nice steady light rain. I’d just sat down on the deck with the NYTimes travel section—a 52 Places essay about Marseilles mentions nearby Calanques National Park and Cassis, where Erin and I celebrated our twentieth anniversary a few years ago—and a cup of Yunnan tea when the first drops fell. The white ginger lily at the base of the deck seemed to perk up immediately, the fragrant white flowers spreading for the moisture.
I retreated to the kitchen to prepare habanero hot sauce. Our garden has been abundant these last weeks, and each evening I’ve come home from work to pick cayenne and roselle and heirloom tomatoes, and the orange habanero. I donned gloves to take out the seeds, then layered chopped onion and yellow pepper and fresh pineapple and torn habanero inside the fermentation crock. I purchased this crock two years ago from the Duke Arts Health Network holiday sale that features pottery and jewelry and other items from local artisans. The crock has been up on a shelf, and I was embarrassed to have not used it yet. It’s full now, the lid on and water in the moat, sitting on the counter next to the cocktail cherries and cherry pit-infused vinegars from this summer.
Scripting News at 25
by Anton Zuiker on October 8, 2019
Dave Winer celebrated 25 years of Scripting News yesterday, marking an anniversary that perhaps no other person can match: two and a half decades of daily writing on his blog.
I’ve been reading Dave for about 20 of those years, almost every day going to his site to see what observations and insights, and links and images, he’s putting up. And I’ve documented here on my own blog—on the About page and in many posts—how influential and useful his many software tools have been been to me. Just the other day, I was telling my colleagues about our epic bicycle ride through Times Square, and how it’s because of Dave that we have the Duke River of News to see in one place what’s happening across Duke University.
I am grateful to Dave, thankful for his friendship and example. I salute you, Dave.
I hope you’ll read Scripting News, too. Dave’s made it super easy to get his daily writings sent directly to your inbox. Subscribe on this page.
It's her climate
by Anton Zuiker on September 20, 2019
Malia Zuiker on Global Climate Strike day
Malia joined the Global Climate Strike today. I’m proud of you, Malia!
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.