Round the point
by Anton Zuiker on March 21, 2026
Sandy Point Beach, St. Croix, USVI
In February, I was back on St. Croix for a week of vacation. Erin was already on the island for a three-week experiment in working remotely, Malia had been with her for the first week, then I joined her for week two, and her sister followed for the final week.
While Erin worked, I relaxed through the week in my hammock under the usual sea grape tree at Sprat Hall Beach. I read, I slept, I swam. It was splendid.
The highlights of this vacation came from being on the water.
The islands had had stormy weather for the previous week, but that Sunday was beautiful and calm and clear. Erin and I joined family for a boat ride, leaving Green Cay Marina on the north shore in calm seas (later, we learned from a fisherman holding two large and colorful mahi mahi that the day before the seas had been even better, glassy).
Our boat went west, past Christiansted harbor, along the coast to the Annaly tide pools and the Maroon Sanctuary Territorial Park, with the rusted-out Hamm’s Bluff lighthouse. Years ago, we’d hiked up there and climbed up into the lighthouse; Oliver tripped and nearly tumbled off the cliff but Erin had jumped down and grabbed his arm. Now I was looking at where he would have perished. Beauty and peril, hand in hand.
We rounded the bluff and went past Sprat Hall, Rainbow Beach, and Frederiksted pier, to the always stunning Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge. (Read my Duke Magazine feature about the turtle research there.). We anchored, swam, and most of the family went to walk along the beach. Then, after a bit of debate about whether to go back or go round, Aaron and Will kept us going along the south coast, a slow visit to a rusting dredger and then Ruth Cay, and a big detour out into open water to get past the security zone for the port. Still motoring, we rounded Point Udall, the easternmost point of United States territory, went past the easternmost antenna of the Very Long Baseline Array, and over to Buck Island for a late-afternoon swim at that amazing beach. We arrived back to the marina at dusk.
I have a 40-year history with St. Croix but I’d never circumnavigated the island. Few people get the chance, Aaron told me; we were drinking Leatherback Brewing beers, naturally; Aaron is a co-founder of that brewery, going on eight years now. (On my last day, at the brewery for lunch before my flight, Aaron gave us a taste of the just-ready Guanabana Double IPA.)
What a treat that day was. I thought about that while I was swinging in the hammock the next few days.
Then, my week almost up and Erin needing a break from the stresses of work—not just the intensity of high-stakes clinical trials contracts but also the power and wifi going in and out—we headed down to Sprat Hall Beach with our inflatable kayak. This is the kayak we’ve had in North Carolina and taken out on University Lake, but Erin wanted to use it in the USVI so she’d checked it as luggage when she’d flown down. So, we inflated it, pushed out, and paddled down the coast toward Frederiksted Pier, where passengers were returning to the Valiant Lady cruise ship for the evening departure. We were sitting low in the kayak, drifting, trailing our hands in the water, enjoying the views.
Turning back, we realized we were going to have to fight the current. When we got back to Sprat Hall, we were tired and delighted and ready for drinks, so a quick drive to Rainbow Beach and were sitting at Rhythms bar, drinking mojitos and eating the wahoo tacos. Just perfect.
So, it was another memorable visit to St. Croix. I can’t wait to go back.
Put away the red pen
by Anton Zuiker on March 21, 2026
Recently, someone sent over a draft document with a request for feedback. I printed the document, got out my red pen, and marked up the text with edits, comments, and questions. I’ve got nearly 40 years of writing and editing experience (since I was editor of the award-winning literary magazine at my high school), so my feedback was comprehensive and insightful and decisive (so I thought). The printed page had a lot of red, and when I tracked the changes to the Word file, it reflected a lot of my feedback. I sent it on its way through our internal review process.
Eventually, my version of the draft made it back to the requestor. But, they were not happy. This was not what they wanted.
What happened?
I had made three mistakes.
First, when the request for feedback came over, I didn’t respond with curiosity. What kind of feedback do you want? What level of editing, comments, and questions are you expecting? How will you use our input? When do you want this back to you?
I had forged into the forest of words armed with my red pen, but I had not asked the project leader just how this particular document should work its way through our organization before going back to the client. Who should see and touch this document first, next, last? Who decides what of our collective notes to include in the draft that gets sent back?
When we didn’t get that clarity, I allowed a colleague to send my marked-up draft, with little other input, back to the requester. I didn’t listen to my intuition that my thoughtful comments and questions, which I’d meant for our internal team to answer, would be received with less than gratitude from the client.
I had missed three chances to seek clarity.
A shift in focus
I’ve spent a couple of months reflecting on those mistakes and adjusting, mainly by recognizing and now controlling this deeply tuned habit to edit with granularity.
And, I’ve been rereading The agile comms handbook by Giles Turnbull. It’s an excellent how-to manual for organizational communications. On page 176, for example, Giles gives this advice:
Feedback—especially feedback on first drafts—should mostly be about the big stuff: ideas and structure.
And over in this blog post he condenses the process of writing and editing to one word: clarity. That’s what I’d learned, again, through the incident above, and it’s a goal I’ve set for myself this year, at work and in life. I’ve been learning to do this, through conversations with my career coach and with my therapist, and in reading books like The agile comms handbook or listening to podcasts such as Coaching for Leaders.
What’s become clear to me is that, on this path from writer to editor to manager to leader, it is time for me to put down my red pen. But old habits die hard: I did order the Studio Neat Limited Edition 018 red pen). So, just as I decided five years ago to “get out of PowerPoint” and spend more time helping others clarify their message instead of refining the spacing of their bullets, my role now is to focus on ‘the big stuff’.
How will this be used? Who will use it? What do you want to happen? What’s the goal? What’s the simplest way you can say this?
You can help me, and maybe yourself, next time you see me. Ask me, how have you reached for clarity recently?
Go open
Why am I writing this blog post? It’s what I’ve done for 25 years, being open about what I’m trying and where I’m failing and what I’m learning when I stumble, or when I do succeed. It’s what Giles calls ‘doing open’ (start here). I highly recommend the approach.
Test article
by Anton Zuiker on March 7, 2026
Searching for a bug in my Textpattern configuration that is making an article go 404 when a capital letter is in the URL-only-title. Forum discussion is here.
Search the archives
by Anton Zuiker on February 8, 2026
I’ve been blogging for nearly 26 years.
I’ve written a lot (though not as much as many others).
Here on the Zuiker Chronicles, I’ve fixed the Search page so we can now search the archives.
Click the icon at the top of any page to find the site menu, or this link, to get to the search.
For the time being, I’ve put most of my mistersugar.com blog posts behind a login, but I hope to restore most of them soon.
Shows I attended in 2025
by Anton Zuiker on December 26, 2025
The Heavy Heavy at Motorco, Sept. 2025
In my Vivid Vision, the five-year plan I wrote in 2024, I included this goal for a set of habits I’ll develop by 2030:
I find awe, beauty, and wonder from nature (hiking, camping, touring) and from people (music, arts, culture). I spend 5 full days outside and I attend 12 concerts, shows, plays, and other live entertainment each year.
This year, I met that goal with a handful of hikes with Erin in Ireland, a bike ride with Anna and my father in Rhode Island, and the following shows, some by myself and others with members of my family:
- In March: Patterson Hood, Abi Carter, and Sierra Hull, all at Carrboro’s Cat’s Cradle
- In April: The War and Treaty at Cat’s Cradle
- In May: Oliver’s high school jazz band
- In June: Telebox in Clonakilty and the Irish music-and-dance extravaganze Riverdance 30 in Dublin
- In July: Chirp at Byrdland and Ducks Ltd at DC9, in Washington, D.C., and Primo Arrasco at the amazing House on Fire dinner in Marfa
- In August, the musical A Good Boy at UNC’s Playmakers Repertory
- In September, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram at Cat’s Cradle, the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle on the green at Southern Village, The Heavy Heavy at Durham’s Motorco, and multiple acts at the 28th annual Carrboro Music Festival
- In October, Salt & Smoke & Sound festival near Hillsborough, and Nation of Language at Cat’s Cradle (and we saw the biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere)
- In November, Vincent Lima at Cat’s Cradle, Ketch Secor at Haw River Ballroom, Ginger Jones-Robinson at the Snap Pea pop-up dinner, the mind-expanding dance performance Is It Thursday Yet? at Duke University, and The Beths at Cleveland’s Globe Iron
- In December, the North Carolina Symphony Holiday Brass and Raleigh Youth Choir for A Candlelight Christmas, and I finished the excellent podcast Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, and on the last day of the year, delia-h and her band of brothers at Cat’s Cradle with a surprise cameo tenor saxophone solo by Oliver on the last song
The music category over at Wan Smol Blog has details on most of these shows. The best of them? Certainly The Heavy Heavy, Kingfish Ingram, The Beths, and Ketch Secor. I’m fortunate that there are excellent music venues so close. I expect 2026 to be similarly filled with good music.
Where I traveled in 2025
by Anton Zuiker on December 26, 2025
I’m lucky, I know, privileged to be able to travel to visit family across the country and to tour other countries.
Here’s where I went in 2025:
- For Spring break, and my birthday, I was with a group of friends at Ocean Isle Beach on the NC coast. Erin, Oliver, and I took a day to visit Wilmington and finally toured the Battleship North Carolina
- On June first, my annual drive to Galax, Virginia to pick sour cherries.
- In June, Erin and I spent a fabulous couple of weeks in Ireland; blog post here has all the details.
- In July, I was back in Washington, D.C. for a couple of work meetings and two shows, then drove with Anna and Malia to Cleveland to spend time with family and friends; blog post here.
- Then an impromptu trip in late July for art and more in Marfa, Texas; blog post here.
- In September, a quick trip with Anna to visit my dad and Dot in Jerusalem, Rhode Island. Dad took us on a long bike ride one day.
- In October, back to Washington for a family weekend, including the Washington Spirit women’s soccer match.
- In November, over to Boulder, Colorado, for the funeral of my uncle, Dennis Zuiker; it was sad, but also a celebration of his life, with most of my aunts and uncles there, and a cousins happy hour and then the CU Buffs Stampede on Pearl Street.
- Then, back to Cleveland for Thanksgiving, with 10 inches of beautiful snow that day (after we ran the Turkey Trot in frigid downtown).
In 2026, I’ll be traveling to familiar places and some new cities.
Textpattern keeps goin'
by Anton Zuiker on December 23, 2025
Short but important update: This site now is running Textpattern 4.9.0. As you’ll see on the Changelog, Zuiker Chronicles Online has been using the Textpattern CMS since 2005. Kudos to the developers who have kept Textpattern going and growing for more than 20 years.
Read | posts, or go to the ARCHIVES.