This will be my final post to this 1999 blog. 

I am removing 1999 from my server but will continue to have the html files visible so I can look back at old posts. 

I will continue to blog at the Zuiker Chronicles, Wan Smol Blog, and Yumi Stap Storian.

I was looking to see if I had ever blogged about the time I heard Andrea Bocelli singing on the radio in Vanuatu. I searched my blogs at mistersugar.com, zuiker.com, storian.org, and smol.zuiker.com. Couldn't find it. Then I remembered my 1999 blog, and I found the post.

I was glad to return to Sunday morning soccer. Had fun until my tired mind made some dumb passes and a couple of guys yelled at me. Dug down and played for another 15 minutes, hustling my butt but still getting beat at the goal. I'll be back there next Sunday.

Dave opened up Drummer to the world. I'm using it to blog daily. See me over on storian.org.

This is a test of the Drummer glossary: "microblog"

I am testing Drummer. It's very nice.

I reposted (and edited) the sour cherries post to my main blog at zuiker.com.

I am happy to report that I was able to pick sour cherries again this year. 

My usual cherry companions are my friends Rose Hoban and Steve Tell. Rose was traveling, and my family opted out of this unique experience, so  Steve and I drove to the Levering Orchard in Galax, Virginia. We arrived at the gate at 8 a.m., but there were already 10 cars waiting in front of us. The word was out: Frank Levering had made clear in his daily answering message that this was a bad year for the orchards after a double freeze this spring. "Come early, because we'll be done in a couple of hours." 

While we waited for the gate to open at 8:30, I chatted with the man who had pulled up behind us. He'd driven up from Cary (20 minutes farther east of where Steve and I had started), and he told me his father used to deliver milk in my area of Chapel Hill. I'm sure he would have come up the gravel driveway to deliver milk to the McCallum family in this brick house.

Once into the orchard, Steve and I found our trees and started picking. The trees had cherries, they were ripe and plump but dispersed, so the picking was slow, and the competition fierce -- 20 or 30 other cars pulled into the orchard after us, some older individuals, some young families (my first time picking was with my three children). A couple of hours later, all the trees were bare, and I had a bucket three-fourths filled (about 6.5 pounds of cherries). In past, better years, I could fill a bucket in an hour. 

At home a few days later, Anna and I pitted the cherries and I prepared three quarts of cherry pie filling, and one pint of sugary cocktail cherries for my old fashioned drinks in the year to come. The cherry pits are flavoring a jar of white wine vinegar and will make salad dressings that much more interesting.

Climbing the Ladder

Steve and I were not in a hurry to end the experience, and we were reluctant to leave as long as we could see any cherries high up in the leaves. We found a tree up the slope where an orchard worker was willing to move the ladder every 15 minutes. I was up high reaching for a last cherry or two when Frank pulled up in his pickup and stopped to chat. I thanked him for investing in new open top ladders, which felt much sturdier than the aged and weathered ladders we've climbed in the last few years. 

"I drove to the Baldwin Apple Ladders Company in Brooks, Maine for those -- 2200 miles!" said Frank.

Climbing those ladders is one of the best parts of my annual pilgrimage to Levering Orchard. I love to pause at the top, flip myself around so I'm sitting on a rung, and look down into the valley and toward North Carolina.

Frank invited us back in August, when his outdoor Orchard Theatre will feature his play, Tales of a Waterless Sea. I told him that sounds fun. And I told him I was already praying and hoping for a bumper crop of cherries next year.

The Duke River of News is up and flowing. Hooray!

Going on the assumption that the podcasts section of the opml file has a bad feed. So I rebuilt the river files and while I was at it separated my personal reading list to its own river and moved it and the Duke river to Opalstack.

But I am having problems with the Duke river, and the app even disappeared from the server. Not sure what happened.

Still digging into the Duke River of News downtime. I now think that the the opml file has a bad rss feed.

• I determined that the myReadingList opml file loaded fine. So, I've since split that off to my own river.
• I will have to rebuild the allDukeFeeds file.
• I may move the River5 install for the Duke River over my my personal web host.

Yesterday I noticed the Duke River of News was down, maybe because of a Digital Ocean issue. I was able to get River5 started again with Forever, and the river was up all day. Today, though, down again. But I've gotten adept at using the terminal to restart the software, and I'm reading the river again.

Well, shoot, that didn't last long. Something is not right in the river.

Coffee break

Malia texted the family to ask if anyone wanted to go for coffee, and since it was 4 o'clock and I had been going nonstop for days, I jumped out of my chair and into the car. We drove south to Pittsboro to Aromatic Roasters, which we discovered last week on our way through Pittsboro. It was a nice hour with my daughter, small talk and Taylor Swift on Spotify, checking my phone for the latest alert about the sever weather that is sweeping across North Carolina.

A test

I'm not sure the live-blogging feature of 1999 is working for me. This is a test.

More rain today. Erin and I went out for a quick look at a house that is getting built in Carrboro. We also stopped by Gray Squirrel Coffee Shop just before they closed, so I got my daily flat white.

I'm tinkering with an updated design for The Zuiker Chronicles, using the Mustard UI.

This morning, I took Tilly for a walk in the woods on our land. The air was cold, the sky was clear, and the early sunshine filled the area with light. Kivu, one of our cats, followed us all around.

I logged into Radio3 tonight to post a few links to CSS frameworks to consider as I update my website. But in Radio I saw a Test menu with two commands I don't remember: Apocalyze Link and Build Linkblog JSON. I've searched the Radio3 blog and docs, searched Duck Duck Go and Google, and even checked the old Google group with no luck. I'll have to ask Dave what those commands are for. I did get my linkblog embedded into a page on my site: zuiker.com/cube.html.

In the photos

I wrote a blog post about the Jan. 6 Insurrection (putsch) and the U.S. flag patch and shemagh that I proudly wear to counteract that mob.

My father sent me a couple of photo albums in which he collected photos from my life.

• A picture of me standing with famous architect Philip Johnson at the iconic Glass House.
• A picture of me and Erin during her first visit to Hawaii, when I was living and working in Honolulu.

And, I'm back.

I liked using 1999, but had a few years of web host nomadism. I'm home now with OpalStack, and I tried anew to get 1999 to work, with success. I moved the files from before into the new folder, and my previous posts are below.

My thanks again to Dave for this software.

My boss came into my office at the end of the day, sat down, and told me his idea for how the Department of Medicine can address the issues of burnout and resiliency that the health system is focused on these days. Dr. Rogers wants to relieve the various stresses on our faculty, clinicians, and health care providers. We can do this. I told Dr. Rogers how, the day before, I'd been annoyed by the painful screech that a highly-trafficked automated door made every time it opened, and how a call to Engineering and Operations got it addressed the same day. That's the kind of availability and responsiveness that can help reduce frustrations throughout the medical center.

I'm on a few committees exploring these issues and the innovative solutions - simple or systematic - that we can implement. I'm not quite sure how best I can be involved, so I'm thinking about how I can evolve to be a park ranger, or a community builder and culture creator.

Over my morning cappuccino, I reread Duke's recent academic strategic plan, Together Duke. It's clear, ambitious, inspiring.

Oliver was to have a friend spend the night, and he was brimming with excitement because it was to be the first sleepover. Alas, the friend wasn't able to come over, and Oliver was quite bummed. So Erin decided we needed a family movie night, and off to the theater we went, to see Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

I wasn't sure I was going to like this update of the 1995 movie with Robin Williams. But this new film, with Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart and Jack Black and Karen Gillan, was hilarious. I laughed so much that I was crying. Through my tears, I heard Oliver busting up, too.

Fun night.

On the Football Show on Sirius XM yesterday, Charlie asked Ray to name the best soccer books.

"The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, by the late, great Joe McGinniss," Ray said, launching into a long answer about why McGinniss, who'd written a bestseller about Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign, had gone to Italy to write about a small team newly elevated to Serie A.

The book sounded interesting, so I requested it from the Duke Library, and picked it up today.

I'm a few pages in, and wanted to note this passage on page 30:

The sidewalks, in fact, were filled with walkers spilling out into the street. "This is the time of the passeggiata," Barbara said. "Everywhere in Italy, in early evening, almost everyone turns out for a walk. No destination. No purpose. Just to walk slowly and to look and to talk occasionally with one's friends. Maybe to shop, but that is usually an afterthought, not the purpose. The charm of the passeggiata is that it has no purpose beyond itself.

What a great idea. A daily walk, to be outside, with people without purpose.

I see from the McGinniss entry on Wikipedia that Hudson spoke at McGinniss's funeral.

Duke Health is building a new bed tower, and the construction crane is in the process of being installed, the pieces lifted and lowered into place by another, mobile crane. This morning, men are walking up there, guiding the heavy counterweights into place.

This is fascinating to watch, engineering in the open, and it made me think about all the amazing medical procedures that happen in the operating rooms and intensive care units above my desk (my office is on the ground floor of one of the older bed towers of Duke University Hospital). I wonder if we made more of medicine visible, would we inspire more wonder in ourselves and those we serve?

Last week, I attended a Duke Health resiliency ambassadors workshop, with excellent presentations, activities, and tools to help managers infuse wellness into our teams.

Bryan Sexton leads the workshop, and opened the second morning with a presentation about awe -- he showed stunning, inspiring photos from around the world. These were great examples of visual awe.

That got me thinking about the awe I feel from music, and smell, and even the touch of a breeze or sun's ray on my skin.

Today the Health Arts Network Duke had a jazz duo playing in the hospital concourse. As I walked by, they were singing Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World.

That reminded me, yet again, of my brush with the angel Israel Kamakawiwo'ole.

When I got back to my desk, I found (via Kottke) this awesome video of a choir singing Toto's Africa.

It was a day of uplifting sounds. I feel good.

The new Ed Sheeran and Andrea Bocelli 'Perfect Symphony' duet is beautiful listening, and there's a new movie about Bocelli, The Music of Silence.

This brings back a great memory: During my Peace Corps service in Vanautu, I was in the capital, Port Vila, sitting outside, eating a hamburger, and Boccelli's Time to Say Goodbye was playing on the cafe speakers.

Erin and I have planned our return to Vanuatu, and we're excited to get back to Vila, and Paama, and to hear the sounds of village life again.

Last Sunday, too cold to venture out to Durham for the weekly soccer game, I sat around with a mug of coffee and a pile of magazines.

A few of the engrossing articles I read:

• In Saveur (Dec/Jan 2018), The Midwest's "Finnish Triangle" is a Land of Saunas and Squeaky Cheeses 
• In Modern Farmer (Issue 18), The Long Shot: Building a Grass-Fed Lamb Operation from Scratch in Montana. A good look at the hard work, and sometimes sadness, it takes to run a farm.
• In Christopher Kimball's Milk Street (January-February 2018), Lablabi: The Best Soup in the World, about a Tunisian chickpea dish. I made this for the family, cutting back a bit on the harissa. Erin and I loved it. I'll make it again.

That article in Saveur had me thinking the food magazine was regaining some of its previous heft. Even though I previously decided to discard my many-years' collection of Saveur issues, I still have the boxes (more procrastination from Anton). Now that I see Saveur is cutting back – half the staff laid off, and moving to quarterly publishing – I may just save these back issues for their history.

The annual Turkey Bowl is a football game played by the Duke internal medicine residents since 1973. My friend Scott Huler stopped by this year to watch, and he produced this  audio postcard for Duke Magazine:

Another nugget from McPhee's Draft No. 4:

The worst fact checking error is calling people dead who are not dead. In the words of Joshua Hersh, "It really annoys them."

I gave dukeriver.co a new river icon.

Today's Eno River Run was fun, though challenging. The trails present many rocks and holes and roots. The morning was chilly, but once we were running, the air was perfect. I ran the 6-mile race, finished in 1:12, 10th for my age group.

Have been trying to get another instance of 1999 working on my Webfaction server space, for the Duke Narrative Medicine Colloquium blog. I can log in and write a post, but when I try to view the blog, 1999 crashes. Don't know if Webfaction doesn't like competing instances of 1999, or whether I've got a bad setting somewhere in the colloquium 1999.

President Kennedy.

Here's a fun TEDx talk by Tess Walraven about the joys of speaking Bislama:

It's time to review my blogging habits:

• My original, and current blog, is Zuiker Chronicles, at www.zuiker.com, running on Textpattern. It is for short essays. (The archives of my mistersugar.com blog, which I wrote for more than 10 years, are here.)
• My more-fluid blog is Island Times, at blog.zuiker.com, running on 1999. It is for 'small just, just ahead' blogging.
• My untitled microblog is at smol.zuiker.com, running on micro.blog. It is for short notes and images.
• My linklog, at radio3.io/users/mistersugar (and mirrored at zuiker.com/sugarcubes.html), runs on Radio3. It is for links.

Today, on a walk across the Duke University campus, I saw my friend Mark Schreiner standing in front of the engineering school where he works, and I asked him to accompany me to the coffee shop. Mark and I have been friends for nearly 30 years, since our days at John Carroll University.

From work, over to watch Anna's final volleyball game. The team won, a few points after Anna had a block and a tip over in quick succession.

Then, to the home of my friend Russ Campbell to chat and join his family at the dinner table.

Earlier this week

A conversation with Jeffrey Baker, MD, PhD, director of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine, about his recent presentation on the history of Duke Hospital and Durham (watch here) and the many activities across Duke Health relating to health disparities and helping our trainees and students understand the history of Durham.

Lunch with John Rose, PhD, associate director at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, about the Arete Initiative exploring ‘characteristics of a life well lived’ and Rose's expertise in Aristotle's philosophy of a virtuous life.

Following on the heels of the successful Narrative Medicine Colloquium plan, I  have submitted a proposal to the Duke Institute for Health Innovation pilot projects program, for a Voices of Duke Health listening booth and podcast.

I want people - staff and visitor alike- to leave Duke Health thinking, "They listened to me."

Erin read my proposal, and had me listen to Really Long Distance, a segment from This American Life, about a "phone booth in Japan that attracts thousands of people who lost loved ones in the 2011 tsunami and earthquake."

In the Harvard Business Review, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy writes about the loneliness epidemic and the workplace.

At work, loneliness reduces task performance, limits creativity, and impairs other aspects of executive function such as reasoning and decision making. For our health and our work, it is imperative that we address the loneliness epidemic quickly.

I finished reading that article, which urges companies to  "create opportunities to learn about your colleagues's personal lives," after I submitted my Voices proposal. I think I'm onto something.

Our proposal for a Narrative Medicine Colloquium at Duke University has been approved.

The Narrative Medicine Colloquium will be a year-long exploration of the activities and programs already in place at Duke that give faculty, caregivers, students, and others the opportunity to reflect on their lives through stories. The colloquium is also a focused effort to look for new ways to build narrative into the research, medical education, clinical care, and employee health at Duke. It's especially a chance to ask how narrative can strengthen the resiliency of us all.

This colloquium will be one of many interdisciplinary activities funded by the School of Medicine that bring together basic science, translational and clinical faculty members with common interests in a biomedical problem or area.

Blogging where?

Now, where to put our narrative medicine blog to keep track of our discussions and explorations and events?

For example, the David M. Rubinstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library will present an Oral History Workshop with Craig Breaden on October 20.

Maybe we'll use the MedicineNews blog, or maybe we'll use 1999.

Over there

I bought the domain dukenarrative.blog.

Yesterday, drove through the rain to work with Guns N' Roses playing on the radio. Today, on my way in through the fog, played Resphighi's Ancient Airs and Dances. Glanced up to see a cyclist, sitting up on his seat, silhouetted against the mist.

I know I'm living in the Matrix because each fall the algorithm provides more and more roadside goldenrod and tickseed sunflower for me to enjoy.

Went with my daughters last night to see Wonder Woman. Enjoyed the film very much.

Went today with my daughters to the mall, then to Gray Squirrel for coffee and chai. Enjoyed spending time with them very much.

With Erin, my wife, we are doing our best to raise our daughters to be strong, energetic, and kind-hearted. Our world needs saving, and I believe they can be part of the answer. 

After a series of good conversations at work, I'm really itching to have a place to blog more of activities as a Duke park ranger. Should it be the MedicineNews site? The Threedot Duke Health blog? Zuiker Chronicles? Or right here in 1999?

Dave, always digging, is developing Electric Outliner, and the Old School node app, to take his blogging back to pre-Twitter and pre-Google Reader days. Exciting.

Sure, there are plenty of others documenting the insanity of the new administration in Washington, but here's my contribution:

From Presidential Memorandum Regarding the Hiring Freeze (1/23/2017):

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order a freeze on the hiring of Federal civilian employees to be applied across the board in the executive branch.

From Executive Order: Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements (1/25/2017):

Sec. 16. Hiring. The Office of Personnel Management shall take appropriate action as may be necessary to facilitate hiring personnel to implement this order.

Earlier this week, I updated the outline with my list feeds of the sites I regularly read. I'd previously set up my reading-list river, at my.zuiker.com, to watch for changes to that opml list, but the river stopped working once I had changed the outline. I guess I was expecting River5 to work in a way it's not meant to, though I think the Duke River is doing what I wanted my personal river to do.

Anyway, I tried to restart the river, getting an error every time, so then recreated the river on my webhost trying to remember the steps I'd previously taken, and finally figuring out that I needed River5 to use the opml list directly and not via an include.

All this, by the way, as I prepare my short presentation about the "river of news" concept for the AAMC GIA17 professional development conference I'll attend this spring.

UPDATE the next morning

I've borked it again:

• I added a new feed to my Little Outliner opml file.
• I stopped river5.js.
• I replaced the list.
• I started river5.js using forever, and briefly saw the river page at river.zuiker.com. Then it went to a 502 bad gateway message. Forever list shows the process is stopped.
• Trying to start river5.js with node reports an error. I suspect there is a problem feeds in my list. So I take out the 2 feeds I changed this morning, and reloaded the list. Still errors. 
• This is frustrating. I don't know what I'm doing, or doing wrong.

Restarting the 1999 server, which seemed to have been down.

1. Commander: Fight To Retake Mosul Progressing Faster Than Expected
Major General Gary Volesky, who is leading U.S. forces in Iraq, gave clear, direct and reasoned answers on what's happening in the fight against ISIL.

2. Just In Time For The Election, It's Time For Some Family Political Therapy
This week's StoryCorps segment featured a father and daughter honestly addressing the way politics has divided them, but also how respect and love keeps them connected. Brought tears to my eyes.

3. 'Loving' Tells Story Of Supreme Court Ruling Legalizing Interracial Marriage
Jeff Nichols, writer and director of the new film Loving, talks about the amazing, down-to-earth couple at the heart of the constitutional case against miscegenation.

I'm cheering for the Cleveland Indians this World Series.

It was a tough choice. My family has a long history with the Cubs (and other Chicago teams). My father and uncles, and my grandfather, worked thousands of games selling popcorn and soda and beer. I watched a lot of Cubs games on WGN with my other grandparents, hoping Ron Cey and Larry Bowa and Ryne Sandberg and Shawon Dunston and Leon Durham might break the curse. I walked on the Wrigley infield one spring day along with other Illinois high school honor roll students.

But then I moved to Cleveland for college, and that city became my home for the next 10 years or so. My first Indians game was a $5 upper-deck ticket that actually let me sit anywhere in the massive Cleveland Stadium. I met and married Erin, who worked Indians and Browns games as an usher. Since moving to North Carolina in 2001, I've visited Cleveland at least twice each year. I consider Cleveland my home.

So, I'm cheering for the Cleveland Indians this World Series. 

Race day was cold, but clear. The Twin Cities Marathon course was beautiful, through downtown Minneapolis and around a few lakes and into neighborhood streets lined with thousands of cheering spectators. Quite a few were holding out boxes of tissues, a rarity at other races I've run.

Mike and I ran the first half fast, but then I faded, and struggled through the rest of the miles. I approached the finish line with a painful cramp in my left calf, but I came in at 4:21:10, a personal record (by 5 minutes). Mike beat me by 10 minutes.

This was my third marathon this year, fifth in all (previously Tobacco Road 2016, Austin 2016, Honolulu 2014 and 1993). I'd still like to finish in under four hours, but I'm not sure how I'll fit in more training over the next six months, as I have plenty to focus on at home and work. Still, I'd run the Twin Cities Marathon again.

I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota this weekend with my brother-in-law, Michael Shaughnessy, MD. We're here to run the Twin Cities Marathon. 

Mike was here last year as an honoree of the Medtronic Global Heroes program, which each year brings two dozen runners from around the world to run in the 10-mile race or the marathon here. Each of the runners has a Medtronic implantable device or part: pacemaker, insulin pump, urologic device, or other. Each of the runners has a heartwarming, inspiring story.

In 2011, Mike discovered he had a life-threatening aortic aneurysm. He had open-heart surgery and received a new valve, and got a new perspective on living.

Here's Mike's story:

And here's Mike's Heart Beat Report, where he blogged his surgery and recovery and headlong dive into running and triathalons and living life to its fullest.

Mike decided he wanted to return for the marathon this year, and I offered to run with him. It's an honor to do so.

Here's another good video about the Global Voices group last year.

More troubles with the Duke River, so I'm taking this opportunity to update the main opml file in Little Outliner for a combined listing of all the Duke feeds I've collected.

Hope to have the Duke River home page, dukeriver.co, back to normal sometime in the next couple of days.

A postcard in the mail informs me that my number for the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon on Oct. 9 will be 6182.

I've updated Zuiker Chronicles to Textpattern v 4.6.0, which was released earlier this month. As expected, upgrading went smoothly. The new admin layout is much more intuitive and conducive to writing. I like this CMS, and am supremely grateful to the volunteer developers who have nurtured it all these years.

I tried to add a couple of newsfeeds from the new Duke Today to the Duke River, but one of the feeds is not quite right, and so I attempted to backtrack. Not sure I did it right, or thoroughly, but the display of Duke River seems to be coming back, albeit slowly.

If you want to see all of the rivers with Duke River, see river5.dukeriver.co.

Follow up

Looks like it's all back to normal, and the Duke River is reflecting all the interesting news from around campus.

The house smells of hickory and vinegar this morning, with a pork shoulder slowly roasting in the oven, after searing and smoking on the small Weber grill in the backyard. Thanks to the instructions from Michael Ruhlman, making Eastern North Carolina barbecue at home is simple.

Once the meat was in the oven, I sat on the front porch to read more of the Sunday NYTimes. The Travel pages, my go-to section, included a Q&A on shopping the markets of Provence — Erin and I did that in June — and also a long essay about Amtrak's California Zephyr train that goes between Chicago and the San Francisco area.

Riding the Zephyr

When I was 11 or 12, living in Idaho, my family drove south to Winnemucca, Nevada, where we parked the station wagon on a side street, and boarded the Zephyr for a trip west. I spent much of that ride in the observation car, watching the desert and mountains and valleys roll by. I fondly remembered that train trip when Erin and I were whizzing through France on the TGV this summer. I love trains.

On that earlier trip, my family visited relatives in San Jose. They lived in a geodesic dome. We went to San Francisco one day, and I enjoyed the waterfront but was frightened by the homeless veteran ranting in the middle of the street.

We took the train back east, and disembarked at the Winnemmucca station in the middle of the night, to find that someone had siphoned the gas from the station wagon. I helped my dad push the car down the hill, while my mother steered and my four brothers slept in the back. We eventually found a gas station, filled up, and drove four hours to our home in Caldwell.

Following the How to customize the editor docs, I was just able to update my 1999 server so that the template displays BlogTogether in the menubar. This should be the default menubar product name across any blogs on my 1999 server. You'll see it when logged into the editor.

The icon at right is part of the BlogTogether logo.

I walked into Flyleaf Books, in Chapel Hill, to buy a box of Blackwing pencils, and I walked out with just two pencils — a grey Blackwing 602 and a white Blackwing Pearl — but also a copy of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, by Mary Norris.

Norris is a query proofreader at the New Yorker, and I've been enjoying her short videos on grammar and style here's a video of her at the C.W. Pencil Enterprise (a pencil boutique New York City!), talking about reflexive pronouns.

I'm testing the Blackwings, and liking how they write, so will probably be back to Flyleaf to stock up soon.

Department of Handy Haystacks

By the way, see the cool Search page at newyorker.com.

I like to search for the writings of Joseph Mitchell.

From Dave's Podcatch.com, I found the Incomparable podcast talking about the stunning 1996 novel The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell . I read that book soon after it first came out, because Northern Ohio Live, where I was editor, got to excerpt a bit of it. Russell lives near Cleveland, close to the Jesuit university John Carroll University, my alma mater.

Listen to the podcast: Just Add Jesuits!

A few weeks ago, I ordered a vintage manual typewriter from Amsterdam Finds on Etsy, and after a minor snafu with the ribbon remedied just now by transferring a new ribbon to the old spools, I now have my caramel-brown Tippa 1 portable typewriter on my desk and ready for the typing.

I also recently purchased a Cole Steel typewriter, from Craigslist in Raleigh. This machine isn't advancing, so will need the attention of typewriter repairman Chris Shaw, who operated a business machine repair shop in Chapel Hill for decades.

Yes, I have succumbed. While I'm blogging like it's 1999, I'm also about to compose old-school Zuiker Chronicles the way my grandfather, Frank the Beachcomber, did it for so long.

The family-and-friends vacation on Tybee Island was great fun. 

Highlights for me:

• Preparing red beans and rice for a group dinner on the beach, where the adults and kids sat on blankets under the moon and stars.
• Stepping into Inferno, a tiny shop with hundreds of bottles of hot sauce -- I bought a smoky jalapeno sauce that was quite tasty on the beans and rice. 
• Good pizza and cold beer on the deck at Huc-a-Poo's Bites and Booze, which is in the same cluster of shops as Inferno. 

Peace Corps and back

Three of the four friends who joined us on Tybee -- Kevin Anderson and Erika Rundiks, and Bridgit (Greene) Adamou -- were our fellow Peace Corps volunteers in the Republic of Vanuatu in the late 1990s. Kevin and Erika went back to Vanuatu with their daughter seven years ago. As we at beans and rice on Tybee beach, they talked about the experience of going back, and gave us tips for our return. Erin and I are getting serious about taking our family back next summer.

My mentor and friend, David Jarmul, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal in the 1970s. He met his wife there. David retired from Duke University in 2015, and then he and Champa joined the Peace Corps again. Now they're in the Republic of Moldova, and David is blogging his experience at Not Exactly Retired.

Someday, maybe we'll re-up ...

A fine way to celebrate 20 years of marriage with the woman you love is to walk with her and your children through the streets and squares of Savannah, Georgia -- this is where you strolled a few days after you were engaged in 1995 -- then head over to Tybee Island to rendezvous with good friends, whom you've known since  your Peace Corps service in Vanuatu, and sit around a table for a simple meal, good conversation, and deep sighs of contentment. 

Life is good, friendships are strong, and your love is deep.

Thank you, Erin, for 20 wonderful years.

The family is watching the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 summer Olympics. Loved the music and dancing. Now the athletes are parading in. Vanuatu's team of four athletes will be at the end, eh, but they'll be there!

Apple's new commercial came on, with the poetry and voice of Maya Angelou.

I'll have to head to bed soon. I'm training for another marathon, and I need to meet the running group at 6:15 a.m., and then run 14 miles. These Olympians will be my inspiration.

 This is the weekend for more blogging, and I'll be digging into the 1999 updates I've planned for too long.

• The publishing callback is working, and we can read this blog at blog.zuiker.com. (Can't recall if that will reflect live edits. I don't expect it to. Holy cow, it did. 1999 is awesome! )
• Next is to customize the editor.
• Then to stylize the template.
• Then to set the Google Analytics ID.
• Then to write a story every day.

The past month, since we returned from our delightful trip to Provence, was one of the more intense we've had in quite a few years. Kids in camp, work super busy for both of us, the weather hot and humid, and then Oliver developed a serious staph infection on his arm -- bully impetigo, he called it, making the pediatricians smile (the medical term is bullous impetigo) -- with a viral infection and high fevers at the same time.

But Oliver is healthy again. A new month has begun, and another short, family-and-friends vacation is imminent.

And I caught the first glimpses of goldenrod along the country roads this week, and I stopped into the florist to get a bundle of sunflowers for my lover.

It's Friday, I'm in love with life.

Listening to NPR on WUNC today, I heard the following:

• News from San Diego Comic-Con that Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang won the Eisner Award for best new series, for Paper Girls. My daughters and I have been reading this series from the start. We know Brian, who has been a friend of Erin's family in Cleveland for decades. (Brian was a summer intern when I was editor of Northern Ohio Live.)
• Weekend Edition Saturday featured a report from Marfa, Texas, about the artist Robert Irwin, by Tom Michael. Tom is married to Erin's sister, and he's recently left Marfa Public Radio, which he founded a decade ago, to become general manager of Boise State Public Radio.

Congrats to Brian and Tom.

Blogging from Looking Glass Cafe this morning, after shopping at Carrboro Farmers Market. Last week at the market, I recognized Melody Kramer, and stopped to introduce myself, and tell her I appreciate the writing she does on Twitter and for Poynter.

Erin and I attended a pop-up dinner at Crook's Corner, in Chapel Hill, earlier this week, organized by Pableaux Johnson, a New Orleans-based photographer. He is on the road this summer with his #redbeansroadshow, in which he cooks up a simple meal of red beans and his grandfather's cornbread, along with tomato-and-mayonnaise sandwiches and deviled eggs. 

My friend and mentor, Paul Jones -- he's mentioned in my Zuiker Chronicles post about our dinner in Paris earlier this month -- snapped a pic of Pableaux explaining the reason for the night: Put your phones away, food is served family style, enjoy and talk with your tablemates.

So we did. The food was delicious. I talked at length with Sheila Neal, project coordinator for NC Choices. Sheila is organizing a conference for Carolina women working in the meat business. Just a couple days before, I'd made osso buco with beef shank I'd bought from Chapel Hill Creamery, a women-owned business that sells really good cheese at the Carrboro Farmers Market. Sheila and her husband, Matt, are owners of the acclaimed Neal's Deli in Carrboro, and they're friends with a couple couples that Erin and I know well.

So, it was an enjoyable evening on the humid patio of Crook's, where I had enjoyed brunch and a conversation with Dave Winer back in 2005. That conversation led to my many BlogTogether activities. The red beans dinner this week reminded me of my previous The Long Table dinners, and rekindled the back-burner idea to do my part to bring people together for good food, good conversation and stronger community.

BBQ

This week, I also made pulled pork barbecue, using a pork butt I bought at the farmers market, and following the Eastern North Carolina BBQ technique of my friend, Michael Ruhlman. I first seared the pork butt on the hot side of the small charcoal grill, then moved it to the cool side, added wet hickory chips, and smoked the pork for 30 minutes, then moved it to the oven for six hours. The next day, when we dug in, it was delicious. Of course, I'm lucky in that I have at least three good BBQ places within a 10-minute drive. But this home BBQ technique is a winner.

Yesterday's news out of Nice, France is tragic, horrifying. When I learned of it, a physical memory of the Mediterranean air, warmth, smell and serenity washed over me, briefly. I wish that feeling could last, for me and all those in Nice, forever. Wishing for peace.

My blog post about the holiday in Provence is on the Zuiker Chronicles.

My holiday in southern France was quite enjoyable. A longer post to come this weekend. Meanwhile, I'm back at work. Also testing the new version of Little Outliner, announced by Dave here.

Today's reading in Peacemaking: Day by Day, Vol. 2 (Pax Christi USA):

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. - Elie Wiesel

Cherries! Sour cherries, and lots of them, are in my kitchen today. We took a road trip to southwestern Virginia yesterday to pick cherries at Levering Orchard.

The Duke River is a success. I've been wanting to create my personal river for a long time. Dave's post today, Rivers are still the best way to get news via the web, made me think today was the day to just do it.

So, I did it.

I'm building my personal reading list at river.zuiker.com and displaying it at my.zuiker.com.

The itinerary for our trip to Provence later this month is filling out. Still left to determine is where we'll spend our final night there, in Paris. But what a city! I'm overwhelmed by the choices. I know we'll arrive at Gare de Lyon around 2pm on a Sunday, and we'll need to be at CDG by 8am the next morning.

Where to stay? What to do that afternoon? Where to eat? How to have a romantic night in the city of light? How to get to the airport in the morning?

What a lousy position to be in.

Apropos of my post yesterday about writing is this essay in the NYTimes today: Unless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice. I'm most certainly a high self-monitor.

Icons used on this blog are coming from 365cons, and other sources of icons, which I find via the Codrops Collective weekly newsletter.

I'm a very cautious, and slow, writer.  I often start a draft in one of my blogging tools, copy and paste into an editor on my laptop and edit and revise, and copy back into the blog editor before publishing.

I'm a cautious writer because I like to be as grammatically precise as possible, and because I want my writing to be as clear as possible.

I'm a slow writer because, well, I'm a slow thinker. I'm smart, not brilliant, but thoughtful. I try, too hard, perhaps, to be not opinionated.

1999 is a great tool, noted before, because its simplicity offers so little barrier to free-flowing writing. That free flow of words, I suspect, would help me think faster and deeper, and write more, and more fluidly.

So here's to more writing, in 1999, and finding more to think, and say, and write.

Around and around we go.

The Duke River has been flowing for the last few months. Now it's time for me to set up my personal river, with a collection of the blogs, sites and feeds that I rely on for news, links, perspectives and more.

For 1999, I'd like to set up the publishing callback, customize the editor, map a domain, and style my templates.

The pileated woodpecker has been working on a nearby tree for the last week, knock-knock-knocking each morning around 6 o'clock. A couple of days ago, I heard its laughing call.

I needed a quick way to make a list, and remembered Little Outliner. It still works, and works well! Thanks for a great product.

David and Champa Jarmul left yesterday for their Peace Corps service in the Republic of Moldova.

This is David's second stint as a Peace Corps volunteer. He first served in Nepal. That's where he met Champa.

David has been my friend for the last decade. We share a Peace Corps connection (I was a volunteer with my wife, Erin, in the Republic of Vanuatu), and we're both interested in science writing. David helped me get a job at Duke University, and he's been a trusted mentor. I miss him already, but am delighted he's venturing out again. I'll be reading his blog, Not Exactly Retired, to keep track. 

In April, my uncle, Larry Zuiker, took me hiking near Mesa, Arizona.

Larry is a serious hiker. He formed a group 20 years ago, called AZHIKRS, and he wrote a book about his favorite hikes in the Southeast. The day I visited him, he drove us into the Superstition Wilderness Area, readied his hiking poles and turned on his GPS unit, and led us along a stony riverbed and onto the Black Mesa Trail. The expansive desert was breathtaking, and we stopped often just to look around and see the contours of the hills. Larry had baked bread the day before, so we had hearty PB&J sandwiches when we stopped for lunch in a cool, shaded canyon. I wanted to see a rattlesnake, but none were out. The plentiful cactus, and the vistas, and the conversation along the six-mile hike made for a perfect day.

Next month, I will hike in the Parc National des Calanques along the Mediterranean near Marseilles, France. I may even wear the AZHIKRS shirt my generous uncle sent me.

It's been an intense week, with barely a moment to sit and reflect and write. So I'm hoping I can find a few hours this weekend to get caught up on my blogging.

Peace Corps is having a storytelling contest. I'm a returned Peace Corps volunteer (Republic of Vanuatu, 1997-1999), and since I'm still in my Decade of Narrative, I must enter this contest.

I will soon be traveling, with Erin, on the new Delta nonstop from RDU to Paris. Then, a TGV to Marseille, and car to Cassis. Reaching out to friends for recommendations to fill a few more nights elsewhere in Provence, and a final night in Paris.

Discovered today, too late, that UEFA EURO 2016 will have games in Marseille's Stade Vélodrome, but no tickets available.

The other night, I heard barred owls caterwauling across the street. Listen to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology recording (Pair caterwauling) of what this sounded like. 

Discovered the Netflix original series Marseille last night, and since I'll be in that city in about a month, I've started to watch.

Sunny Saturday morning in North Carolina. Anna's helping me make cedar garden boxes, and, the swimming pool at the UNC FARM opens today, so we'll be diving in soon.

Here's how I spent a glorious Spring day in New York City.

On foot

Woke up early in my small-but-tidy Yotel New York room, or cabin, as they call it. Dressed in my running clothes, and walked down to the W. 30th St. gate of the High Line, a rails-to-trails elevated urban park that I've been reading about for a decade. The gates open at 7 a.m. this time of year, and I was early, so I waited with a cortado at Think Coffee. Then I climbed the steps and walked south on the High Line, mostly alone.

I exited the High Line at its end, and continued, running south on the Hudson River Greenway and Pier 45. Snapped a photo of One World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty. Turned back, ran to the High Line, walked to its north end at W. 34th St., then back to my hotel.

Showered, dressed, packed, checked out, stopped downstairs into the Swedish coffeeshop FIKA for  yogurt and granola and cappuccino.

Walked over to my meeting with Thinkso Creative, to discuss the publication and e-newsletter design needs for the Duke Department of Medicine, where we're drafting our next comprehensive, five-year communications plan.

Walked up 8th Ave. to Central Park. Sat in the grass near the USS Maine Monument. Temperature in the 70s, sunshine a light breeze. Could New York on a spring day be more amazing? Took a timelapse video of the walkers, bicyclists and horse-drawn carriages passing by.

At the appointed time, met Dave Winer by the monument.

Let's pedal

Dave and I had biked the American Tobacco Trail -- also a rails-to-trails project -- in North Carolina back in 2012. A few weeks ago, I'd asked if he'd have time to meet when I was in NYC, hoping he'd introduce me to the Citi Bike system of which he's such a huge proponent. Happily, he said yes.

First, Dave led me a short way into Central Park, past the sheep meadow, and we sat at the cafe for lunch and talk of politics, and 1999. Then, more strolling, to the Bethesda Fountain, over the iconic Bow Bridge, up and down the path, along the lake, Dave stopping a time or two to give directions to a stranger, or to point out a feature of the park. I don't think I said much, and I didn't snap any photos. I was stunned by the serenity of the park, and the warmth of the day, and wanted to soak it in. (The last time I was in Central Park was on a frigid day in February 2005, to see the Gates art installation.)

We were at a Citi Bike station. One minute to swipe my card, get my code, and pull out my bike. So easy. Thirty seconds more to adjust the seat, and then we were on our way, coasting down West Dr., pedaling past the Maine Monument again. At W. 59th St., Dave glanced over and asked if I was up for an adventure. Let's go. 

"We're going to ride through Times Square," he said. 

That meant riding with traffic.

Sounds dangerous as hell, I thought, but fun, too. 

Green light

Down 7th Ave., alongside yellow taxicabs and snaking through big tour buses, stopping at red lights, into the maelstrom of Times Square. I've walked there amid the throngs of people on previous visits, but it was exhilarating to be on wheels in the heart of it all, rolling through the artery. I was super alert, trying not to get killed, and having a grand time.

We continued south, and east, over to Midtown East. Our 30 minutes up, we returned the bikes to a Citi Bike station, and walked over to the 2nd Ave. Deli for dinner. For me, matzo ball soup, baked knish, fresh lemonade. Delicious. For dessert, a shared plate of blintzes and rugalech.

Dinner over, Dave planned our walk up and over past the Empire State Building, to the subway. Said thank you, goodbye, and thank you again, and I was on my way back to JFK Airport, and home to North Carolina.

Winning the lottery

Earlier that morning, I'd entered my name in the Hamilton ticket lottery, hoping I'd luck out and get to catch the smash musical from the first row. Dave and I were enjoying our lunch when the 4 o'clock drawing came round, but I didn't get the your-ticket's-waiting message. No matter.

When I finally stepped into my quiet home back in small-town Carrboro, at midnight, I was feeling damn fortunate.

I'd spent a beautiful, full day in a great American city. I walked, ran, biked, ate, listened, talked and rode through it, with a generous and knowledgable guide.

I won. What an immensely enjoyable day that was.

I'm confused about 1999 version numbers, and will have to ask the server list. I'd like to be sure I'm running the latest editor. I think my server should update automatically.

My browser menubar is currently reporting v0.93q and v0.89r. (Dave responded on the server list that the numbers toggle between the server version and the editor version.)

I see that the version for nodeStorage is close to the version in my window. My server should automatically update, so I'll need to figure out why I'm not in sync. Probably need to reload the editor.

Here's where I'm looking for answers:

• nodeStorage - currently shows 0.94 for storage.js
• 1999-project - currently shows 0.51
• 1999app - April 16 update mentions 0.40a

UPDATE 5/30/2016: Dave's post about a new feature for 1999, month archives, mentions the editor version is now v0.89r, and server has been updated to v0.94s. My 1999 editor is showing v0.89r, so that's good, but it's also showing v0.93q, so that means my server has not been updated yet. 

A couple of months ago, Dave Winer brought out 1999.io, a new blogging system. 

As I've chronicled for more than a decade (and noted on my about page), I read Dave's Scripting News daily, and I attempt to follow and implement most of his software. For example, I'm running River5 for the Duke River. 

I'm loyal to Textpattern as my blog CMS, but 1999 promised to be just the simple, let-the-ideas flow writing tool I have needed (I was on a blogging and social media sabbatical for two years, started blogging again last November, but am struggling to get writing). 

When I set up 1999 on my own server last month, I quickly discovered that 1999 helped me get over the hurdle.

1. My first story on 1999 reflected my return from the family's annual spring break trip to St. Croix.
2. In another post, I shared my first impressions of 1999. And I noted the immediacy of corrections. I found it super easy to add an enclosure, making my 1999 blog a podcast, too.
3. Then, in a series of stories, I took notes during sessions at the AAMC GIA professional development conference. The session on GME alumni was especially enlightening and pertinent to my main (Duke) work project.
4. And yesterday I spent the day in New York City, and look at the blog post I just wrote in 1999: My visit to New York City.

I'm really liking 1999, and I'm really liking blogging again. 

Though it's cool and overcast this afternoon, the garage door at the new Cocoa Cinnamon coffeeshop on Hillsborough Road has gone up, letting in the fresh air. Nearly two dozen students and others are here, peering into their laptops, quizzing each other on infectious diseases and their treatments, and even reading books.

I came here for a cortado and a chance to write a few blog posts, wanted to write a story about the many coffeeshops I've visited across the country over the last couple of years. My notes are on another laptop, so will have to work on that tonight.

Wendell Berry, farmer writer and philosopher, interviewed in the Fall 2015 issue of Modern Farmer:

People who talk for pleasure, as opposed to people who talk to communicate, become wonderful talkers over the years. They have eloquence. That whole thing of looking somebody straight in the eye and saying something—my goodness. What a fine thing. Who would want to miss it?

I loved this quote. But I can't figure out why Modern Farmer edited it one way for the print issue (as above), and another way for the online version. Sure, edited for space, but look at what they edited out for the print version:

That whole thing of looking somebody straight in the eye and saying something—my goodness. 'I love you,' right into somebody’s face, right into their eyes, what a fine thing. Who would want to miss it?