Look for the row of hearts
by Anton Zuiker on March 14, 2019
Look for this sign.
Rob Walker is a journalist who covers design, technology, and other areas. I learned about him when Jason Kottke linked to his forthcoming book, The Art of Noticing, a compendium of exercises and practices to “spark creativity, find inspiration, and discover joy In the everyday.”
Or, as Verlyn Klinkenborg would say, “notice what you’re noticing.”
I’m looking to see how we might incorporate Walker’s ideas at Duke, and his representative sent me a review copy of the book. I’m liking it, and I’m sure I’ll read through it page by page over the next week or so, but I also have the sense many of these practices will be part of my next decade of observation or listening or awareness (or whatever I end up calling it).
I subscribe to a newsletter from Walker with ideas and links related to his book and ways to practice observationn. In the latest edition of his newsletter (#13), Walker writes about an iconic New Orleans po-boy restaurant and how it’s a landmark by which to direct others.
Brooding over this later, I got nostalgic for the days of giving and receiving oral directions: “Stay on that road for about a mile, until you see a place that obviously used to be a Shell station but now isn’t anymore, and turn left just after that.” Nobody has to say things like that — “Look for a place to park as soon you see the big pink po-boy restaurant; you can’t miss it” — because everybody just expects that everybody else will let their phone tell them how to get wherever. I really can’t remember the last time someone said “You can’t miss it” to me!
Ah, but we still use a landmark to help people find our house in the woods. When friends come to our house, we tell them to look for the sign that says “Keep fighting, love will win.” The sign is on the side of a busy road and makes it easy to find the gravel road that brings you to our house. The sign became even easier to spot last month, because the artist who lives in the house with the sign added a row of red hearts to the top.
Last summer, during our 48 hours on Paama, we walked with the family up to see the gardens. Redy and Priscilla and Yannick and the kids knew every coconut tree and hillside and kava plant. At one point, a tree had fallen across the path, and we stopped to have a discussion about whose tree it was and how recently it would have toppled (the previous night) and when the yams nearby were last planted. I noticed their attention to the details of their island and their community, and that’s reminded me to look more closely to what’s on our four acres here in Chapel Hill. If you drive up the gravel road some weekend afternoon, you might find me out back, swinging in a hammock. Just look for the dead cedar tree nestled between the trunks of two oaks.
Marking 30 years
by Anton Zuiker on March 13, 2019
I’m lucky. Once a month, I get to walk across the Duke campus, stop in front of the Pratt School of Engineering to meet a good friend, and together we walk to the food court for lunch and conversation.
That friend is Mark Schreiner, who I first met in 1989 at John Carroll University. Mark has lived in North Carolina about as long as I have, and he came to work at Duke just a few months after I did. He’s a writer and communicator like me, also a former journalist and history buff, and I always walk back to my office educated and informed about something interesting. Today it was the origin of President Roosevelt’s famous fireside chats and how new faculty at Pratt give their Teer Talks.
Mark gives me an update about his family and tells me about his volunteer activities. These days, he’s an on-air host at TheClassicalStation.org and can next be heard coordinating the Concert Hall program on Friday, March 22 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT.
Another Scott Huler book
by Anton Zuiker on March 12, 2019
Scott Huler was on WUNC’s The State of Things today to talk about his new book, A Delicious Country. Listen here.
Scott is a great reporter, writer, and storyteller. He’s a very energetic speaker, which he proved again tonight at Motorco for the monthly Periodic Tables science talk. Scott was there to tell us about the route of John Lawson’s 1700 expedition through South Carolina and North Carolina, and what Scott observed and noticed and experienced on his retracing Lawson’s path 210 years later: “There’s nothing as comforting as a house with laundry on the line” and “the sky party that the coast throws” were just two of his colorful explanations for the photos he showed.
I bought the book, Scott inscribed it to me, and I drove home thinking about the stories I want to write. Scott is a good friend of mine, and he continues to entertain, educate, and inspire me.
See The Lawson Trek website for more about the book, and to read the blog that Scott wrote during his paddling, walking, camping, and conversing across the Carolinas.
The view from Mafolie
by Anton Zuiker on March 11, 2019
Illustration of Estate Mount Washington Plantation on St. Croix
In yesterday’s NYTimes Travel section, Jessica Francis Kane writes about the Mafolie Great House that was owned for a time by her grandparents. Kane travels to St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, in search of the place with the famous view and the story of what happened to the house since her father moved to the Mainland and her grandfather passed away. It’s an interesting slice of memoir, even if you don’t have a connection to the islands.
Kane stayed at the Mafolie Hotel overlooking Charlotte Amalie. I know that hotel well, because during my two winter-break trips to St. Thomas—my father moved back there when I was in college—I would stop by the hotel to hang out at the swimming pool, drinking soda and reading Arthur Conan Doyle.
At the NYTimes site, Kane’s article generated a lot of comments, many pointing out the sad legacy of colonial sugar plantations that were dependent on slavery, and the subsequent poverty and racial tensions in the Virgin Islands.
Erin and I have taken our children to the Virgin Islands three times to visit my father and stepmother, who spend time on St. Croix when they’re not in Hawaii. Dorothy Hutchins—Abu Dot to us (abu means grandparent in the language of Paama)—has lived on the Frederiksted side since the 1970s, and she’s shared her considerable knowledge and passion for the island and its culture, people, and places. Just over the hill from her house is Estate Mount Washington, a restored Danish cotton and sugar plantation. We’ve walked over there a couple of times, to snap photos against the picturesque old stone walls but also to discuss the nuanced history and all its pain. When we go to Christiansted, on the other side of the island, we always visit the fort where Alexander Hamilton’s mother had been jailed, and we climb down into the dank dungeon where runaway slaves were chained. A couple of years we’ve accompanied Abu Dot to the March 31st Transfer Day ceremony marking the handover of the Virgin Islands from Denmark to the United States.
Another time, Dad and Dot drove us up Creque Dam Road to see the old reservoir. (The name Creque comes up in Kane’s St. Thomas article.) We crawled with our children out on the dam to sit in the middle and look down on the water weeds blanketing the collected water. Crucians go up to wash their cars with that water. We walked up the road and swung from the roots of banyan trees.
I hope to get back to St. Croix again soon. Dot’s son, Aaron, is a partner in Leatherback Brewing Co., and I want to sit in the sun enjoying their island brews and learning more about the islands.
Mall memories
by Anton Zuiker on March 10, 2019
During my blogging sabbatical of 2014 and 2015, when I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, my wardrobe went white, gray, and black. It was easier to be monotone, and it matched my mood.
Eventually, though, I began to take notice of the colors of the world. I inched back into blogging; my first few posts featured Malia’s colorful illustration of our Caribbean vacation and my snapshots of back-eyed Susans in Cleveland and roadside goldenrod in North Carolina. Soon enough, my closet was filled with coral chinos, red linen shirts, and for work, blue oxford shirts. I also bought an orange tie that always seems to get a compliment.
Doing the laundry one day, Erin noticed a sameness.
“Don’t buy another blue shirt,” she told me that night, confirming the nagging feeling I’d been having when I get dressed for work each morning.
So, today, after brunch with friends and then Oliver’s basketball game, I drove with Anna and Malia to the mall. We split up, and I went to my favorite store to make use of the 50% sale. (A gimmick, since what I pay for a discounted shirt today is more than what a full-priced shirt cost just a few years ago.) I walked out with a few new shirts; one is a cool blue pattern on white.
Walking to meet the girls, I had this memory of the mall my mother used to take me to in Idaho (the one with the arcade.) and the taste of those visits—we always went into the Orange Julius shop for a frothy, sweetened orange drink. I hated shopping for clothes, and I think mom made Orange Julius a regular treat because it made the mall trip bearable for us both.
The color orange followed me from Idaho to St. Croix to Illinois, where I found myself in a high school with the colors black and orange. I put orange shoe laces in my black oxford shoes last week, and in doing so, one of the eyelet tabs fell off. Until then, I had never noticed that the little ring tabs were on the underside of the vamp, and until I just looked up the definition of Oxford shoe, I didn’t know that the underside ring is the defining characteristic of that shoe.
From Orange Julius to Oxford shoes. Fascinating where a memory will take you.
Seeding hope
by Anton Zuiker on March 9, 2019
I spent the morning out back, raking the yard of all the debris from the tree work and all the leaves laid down over the last decade. The pileated woodpeckers were active in the branches above. I’m physically drained.
Inside, I joined Erin and Anna to watch Instant Family, about a couple fostering a trio of siblings. I laughed-cried-laughed-cried, tears down my face the entire movie.
Then, a date with Erin to the Home Depot for grass seed and weather stripping, and the grocery store for ingredients for brunch with friends tomorrow. Along the way we talked about our own fostering experience a few years back, something I’ve not written about for a number of reasons.
We work hard, get our hands dirty, laugh heartily and love unconditionally, and plant hope where we can.
The Austin 100
by Anton Zuiker on March 8, 2019
Bronze Radio Return at Cat's Cradle
Nick, my brother, would normally be planning to listen to as much live music as he and Carolyn could during the South by Southwest festival that’s happening next week. They love live music—they live in Austin, Texas, for goodness sake—and they’re always quick with a recommendation for what I should be adding to my playlists. Nick often looks through the Cat’s Cradle schedule to tell which bands to catch here in Carrboro. That’s why Anna and I went to hear Bronze Radio Return a few weeks ago (photo above).
But, Nick and Carolyn won’t be hearing much music this month. They had a baby last month, and they are staying home to dote on the little one. Erin, thoughtful as ever, sent a Tar Heels outfit , and they dressed him in it one day and sent a photo. Given that Carolyn is a third-generation alum for the University of Texas, we were touched that she allowed Carolina blue on her child.
To pick up the music slack, I’m listening to the Austin 100 mixtape from NPR, “six hours of music, highlighting a hundred handpicked highlights from among the thousands of acts playing SXSW 2019.” It’s great so far, broadening my musical tastes, and certainly much cheaper than a SXSW festival badge.
I was in Austin last November to attend the Association of American Medical Colleges annual meeting. Nick, Carolyn, and Matt (another brother) walked me along South Congress Avenue on a beautiful day. I asked to go to Goorin Bros. hat shop and they waited while I selected a blue Fedora, then we enjoyed lunch alfresco at Perla’s, laughing about our Austin Marathon experience in 2016.
When my mother and I had visited Nick, Carolyn, and Matt in 2015, I bought a pair of black Lucchese cowboy boots at Allens Boots, but for years whenever I wore them, I would struggle to get them off, my children laughing at me contorted on the floor. On my last visit, with my new Fedora perched on my head, I stopped back into Allens and paid $15 for a boot jack. What a difference the right tool can make.