March madness
by Anton Zuiker on April 2, 2019
I set out to blog each day in March, and to ignore politics. I stayed away from Twitter the whole month, and made it to about March 25 with a blog post each day, then fizzled out as the spring break activities tired me out early every evening. But I’m back home, catching up at work, and ready to get into the groove again.
Birthday and the beach
by Anton Zuiker on April 2, 2019
Joseph and Anton at Leatherback Brewing Company anniversary party, March 2019
It’s my birthday, and I’m back home after 10 days in the Virgin Islands, another wonderful return to the island of St. Croix to visit family, the gorgeous beaches of the West End and Buck Island, and the historic towns of Frederiksted and Christiansted. We also sailed on the Roseway schooner, strolled again among the ruins at Estate Mount Washington, and ate mahi sandwiches at Rhythms Bar at Rainbow Beach.
This year, instead of celebrating my birthday with the customary tour of the Cruzan Rum distillery (we had been to St. Croix for spring break in 2014, 2015, and 2016), we joined a crowd of a thousand for the celebration of the first year of Leatherback Brewing Company, a partnership led by my step-brother Aaron Hutchins. My father with his passion-fruit frozen lindy from Rosa’s Stand and I with a Leatherback brew sat in front of one of the food trucks talking, while Oliver played soccer with other boys and my daughters waited in line for delicious mango sorbet. That night, Dad and Dot would accompany Aaron and his wife to the St. Croix Chamber of Commerce awards dinner, where Leatherback Brewing Co. was lauded as the new business of the year.
We were back at Leatherback just before departing the island. I enjoyed the tasty CocoCacao Stout, and Erin and I shared a newly canned Bush Life saison.
In between the Saturday party and our Monday departure, we met Aaron and his sons at Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge for the final public day on that stunning beach before it closed for turtle-nesting season (April through September). Aaron had named the brewery after the leatherback turtles that nest at Sandy Point. Thirty-five years ago, I’d gone with my mother to join a group for a midnight vigil to watch as a massive turtle crawled onto shore, dug a hole in the sand, and laid her eggs. I vividly recall laying in the sand next to the turtle, catching and holding one of the eggs, and then gently placing it inside the nest. Aaron had brought a thermos of cold Backyard Guava IPA made with the juice of guava grown on a tree in his own backyard. We drank that vibrant brew, watching Oliver and Nico roll in the waves. That was a perfect day.
Erin and Anna still have a few days on St. Croix before they return, so Malia and Oliver and I went to dinner at Mercato Pizzeria. Malia drove us home, and they surprised me with a chocolate cake.
Nothing tonight
by Anton Zuiker on March 26, 2019
I’ve hit a wall. I’m tired today. No ideas or stories or conversations to chronicle here. Tomorrow’s another day.
Day of sun and silence
by Anton Zuiker on March 25, 2019
The Mueller report and Washington intrigue. Science integrity and a major settlement by Duke University. Technology giants and their plans to rule our lives.
I’m not in a place to dwell on any of that. I’ve spent today with other people and with different priorities. It’s a day enjoyed for where I am, a peaceful calm far removed from those other issues.
That’s well-being, and I am grateful for this opportunity.
Intermittent contemplation
by Anton Zuiker on March 24, 2019
Colleagues keep recommending articles in the Harvard Business Review, so I picked up a copy. I had some time to read this morning and sat with a cup of coffee reading from the front of the March-April 2019 issue. Nearly every page seemed to have an insight or tip or quote that made me pause, take a sip of coffee, and consider how I might apply that idea to my work. I especially liked a short item on intermittent collaboration, a summary of a longer research study (How intermittent breaks in interaction improve collective intelligence) that recommends independent “exploration and social learning.” Basically, work on your own, then bring your ideas to the group. That’s a concept I can send to my colleagues as a way to coordinate a couple of different working groups that I’ve been invited to be on.
I expect to have more time tomorrow to sit and sip and read and contemplate. I’m not even half through the HBR, so I’m sure I’ll be full of new ideas when I get back into work.
Hear the leaves falling
by Anton Zuiker on March 23, 2019
Even with a dozen big trees now gone from our property, there still will be a lot of leaves to fall from the many dozens of oak, elm, maple, and other trees that remain. The last few times I’ve visited the hardware and garden stores, I’ve looked over the selection of gas-powered backpack blowers, expecting I’d purchase one so that I can keep the yard clear this autumn. But in the April issue of The Atlantic, James Fallows argues against leaf blowers.
Their high volume, which I had long considered their most salient feature, is only their second-most-unusual aspect. The real marvel is the living-fossil nature of their technology. And because the technology is so crude and old, the level of pollution is off the charts.
Fallows was part of a small group of people and elected representatives to successfully advocate against leaf blowers in Washington, D.C. Kudos to them for making their communities less polluted with gas fumes and low-decibel noise.
I knew that two-stroke engines weren’t great for our environment, but I thought, wrongly, that they were getting cleaner. Fallows set me straight, and that’s enough for me to not get one of those backpack blowers. The other facts he shares—about an increase in hearing loss in the U.S. and how a blower’s motor will surely damage my ears—settles the case. I’ll be looking at the battery-powered blowers from now on, and grabbing for the metal rake that’s worked quite well for the last few years.
The convenience of books
by Anton Zuiker on March 22, 2019
Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine, and she’s one of the best journalists I’ve read over the last few years. Her feature about the potential of a devastating earthquake in the coastal Northwest, and her reporting about the stink bug invasion, are perfectly excellent. The March 25 issue includes a shorter memoir about her father’s love of books, and how he stacked them up, around, and down the sides of a bedroom dresser.
There’s a paragraph in the middle of Schulz’s piece about the novel Middlemarch, which her father regarded as the greatest in the English, and others found near it. “I don’t know if he had completed either of the other two books, or even begun them. But it doesn’t matter, I suppose. No matter when my father died, he would have been—as, one way or another, we all are when we die—in the middle of something.” Sublime.
Schulz’s description of her father’s books took me back to the literary cocoon of my friend Richard Gildenmeister, whose apartment in Cleveland was crammed full of books (and more). That short profile I wrote about him in 1996 is still one of my favorites. I’m glad, too, that I recorded Richard telling me some of the stories about the famous writers he met in his long career as a bookseller. Schulz tells of the stories her father told her when she was young. “I regret to this day that none of us ever thought to write them down.”
Erin has kept a running list of the wondrous and humorous sayings of our children. She wasn’t with us tonight when, after a long day of travel, Oliver said of this place we’ve come to visit, “There are so many convenient things here that I haven’t noticed before.” I heard him later in bed, reading from a book.