just laura

After getting laid off in January during the height of the economic bust, my life was full of uncertainties. It’s gotten crazier since then (work, life, boys, housing, finances), but I’m also taking steps to make it feel calmer too.

I’ve since then started a new job, and my contract keeps getting extended by 2-3 months at a time. It’s great to have a job I love where I feel like I’m doing positive work, but not knowing my employment status for more than a month or so in my future makes it hard to plan trips. I recognize I’m quite fortunate that this is the least of my problems… but it’s still something I’m passionate about and I do want to keep actively exploring the world around me.

My last international adventure was 24 days in Vietnam during November 2008, which means it’s high time to book a flight for this year’s adventure. However, I’m at a bit of a standstill on long adventures while on contract basis instead of full time employment (or a return to unemployment). I’m always tempted by the elusive Festival in the Desert, happening in Mali every January. I’m always tempted by Argentina and Brazil. Thailand remains on the list, despite my attempts to travel with Caroline getting postponed time and again.

No decisions to be made today… just a frequent musing of mine lately.

For now, I was lucky enough to take a week off to attending Burning Man again this year. It was a very different experience than my first burn, and was differently fun and exciting and beautiful all at once. I’ll be sure to post pictures at some point. For now, I’m needing to unpack, catch up on sleep, get groceries, and return to the real world before work tomorrow. :)

I fell far behind the baby happenings this summer… so here are a few belated posts!

June and Frank are happy to introduce Joshua Frank Bascio.

Born on July 28, 2009 at 5:57 am. 1.87 feet long, 8.06 lbs heavy. If June and Frank weren’t still in Taiwan, I’d be all over the chance to hold the baby in person! Big hugs across the ocean to June and Frank and little Joshua!

Kat and Steve welcome baby girl Avery Elizabeth!

Born on June 07, 2009 at 4:05 AM. Avery was 7 lbs, 5 ozs and 19 inches long. I’m so thankful I got to see Kat and Steve, even briefly, in Austin last month! They’re showing themselves to be amazing parents (but of course!) and I was delighted to spend time with wonderful Avery! Next time in Austin: visiting the happy family in their actual house… long overdue and I can’t wait!

Dawne and baby girl Noelani!

Dawne and Daryll had Noelani on August 5, 2009 in Oakland, CA. I was lucky enough to spend a few weeks staying with the amazing couple during my last work trip to Oakland in January and am soooo glad to see this baby has arrived! How lucky to have D&D as parents? They’re some of the best people I know and I can’t wait to get back to SF to see them in person to offer congrats!

Sweet Lucy!

I’ve known Keven and Kenzie since elementary school… so exciting to see their fourth little one arrive! (And how exciting to have a girl after three awesome little boys?!). Lucy Paige was born May 20 – 6 lbs. 5 oz. and 19 1/2 inches. Big hugs to the whole family on the arrival!

I’m eating tons of tomatoes these days and they just keep coming! I’m harvesting lots of chocolate cherry tomatoes, chadwick cherries, sweetie cherries, yellow pear cherries, and a wide variety of large colorful heirlooms. Yum! Yesterday I ate the last of my onions from my garden. I need to pick some of my beets very soon and need to keep eating all of my salad greens. It was my first gardening experience and I’ll call it a successful summer! Not everything was perfect (like my chard that never sprouted and my row of bok choy that was eaten alive by slugs once it got to be a decent height). That said, enough of my seeds grew into wonderful producing plants to make me very happy and proud of the results!

Three new additions to the front porch: prayer flags, red kale, and spicy mustard

Edmonds Beach: Jess, Suzanne, Brian, David, Cat

Last week I saw lots of David… we did sushi on Wed, Alison’s 999 birthday party Wed night, film planning on Friday, bike riding on Sat, and brunch on Sunday. Who knew? Also exciting… this weekend was my first weekend home in six weeks! Whew! I was so excited to be home… I had some friends over Friday for a BBQ, went for a 38 mile bike ride up to Edmonds on Saturday, went to the Tilth’s Harvest Festival for some plant shopping and live music, hit Mae’s bachelorette party Saturday night, did brunch with David and friends today, and had tacos with Brandon tonight. I also started some of my playa unpacking and worked in my garden a fair amount. Good times! Mars and I also did some decorating around the house… hung up two teak pieces we got at a recent garage sale, hung prayer flags out on the front porch, put a framed map over the piano, rearranged some of the many plants, replanted my cedar box with fall edible plants, etc. Amazing how much you can fit in when you’re in one town the entire weekend!

‘Half the Sky’: a wholehearted story of courage among women
By Paula Bock, Special to The Seattle Times

You’d expect a world tour of sex slavery, wife beating and death-by-childbirth to be a nonstop downer.

Instead, “Half the Sky” introduces us to some of the most courageous and inspiring girls and women on the planet.

Fans of co-author Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times’ op-ed columns will recognize Mukhtar Mai, an impoverished Pakistani girl raped by a rival clan. She confronted culture and courts, won compensation and built schools, a women’s shelter and a free legal clinic.

You’ll also meet extraordinary “everyday” heroes: Cambodian girls who dared escape sex slavery; a battered village wife empowered through microfinance; an Ethiopian teen who suffered bowel and bladder injuries during childbirth and learned how to surgically repair the fistulas, or ruptures, to help others.

There’s even a chapter on Overlake School in Redmond, where students raised $15,500 (talent shows, gourmet dog biscuits) to build a school in Pailin, Cambodia, a town rife with brothels. “Overlake Pailin” now has books, computers, an English teacher — and 270 barefoot students with Yahoo accounts. Educating poor girls helps protect them from sex work; Redmond students learned life lessons. Principal Frank Grijalva called it the most meaningful project of his career.

It’s no accident that husband-and-wife journalists Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn focus on compelling characters. Kristof’s blog frequently cites University of Oregon professor Paul Slovic’s research on psychic numbing: Most of us are willing to rescue a flailing individual, but faced with mass atrocities — statistics — we turn away.

Still, the journalists deftly weave relevant stats and political context throughout.

Consider: One million children are forced into prostitution every year; an estimated 3 million women are sex slaves. Every day, the number of women who die from childbirth could fill five jumbo jets. Every 10 seconds, a girl’s genitals are sliced, usually by a woman with no medical training nor anesthetic. Women ages 15 through 44 are more likely to be maimed or killed by male violence than by cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined.

Is there hope? Women need protective laws, of course, and the right to hold property and bank accounts, but the authors write, “Westerners invest too much effort in changing unjust laws and not enough in changing culture, by building schools or assisting grassroots movements.”

Education, microfinance and vaccination are key. Other surprising solutions: a warning video about “sugar daddies” shown to girls in western Kenya worked best at preventing unwanted pregnancy and HIV/AIDS. Deworming pills, iodized salt, uniforms and sanitary pads boost school attendance. Sweatshops, though harsh, provide alternatives to brothels and home abuse.

The book is written mostly in the affable voice of Kristof, who grew up on an Oregon farm before continuing to Harvard, a Rhodes scholarship and two Pulitzer Prizes — one for his Darfur columns and the other for covering China’s pro-democracy uprising with WuDunn, a New York Times foreign correspondent turned investment adviser.

Intellectual credentials and a down-to-earth tone let them cross politically incorrect boundaries. They tell us the world’s poorest families spend 10 times more on alcohol, prostitutes, candy, sugary drinks and feasts than on educating their children. Certain United Nations agencies (lauded for other reasons) spend more on photocopying than on anti-poverty programs. A chapter title: Is Islam Mysogynistic?

Educated, emancipated factory girls fueled China’s economic rebirth, they posit, but the strongest reason to support oppressed women and girls is moral. Kristof and WuDunn hope “Half the Sky” will ignite a grass-roots revolution like the one that eliminated slavery. They offer dozens of concrete suggestions about what you can do to tackle the “paramount moral challenge” of the century.

Former Seattle Times reporter Paula Bock is working on a book about a refugee clinic on the Burma border. The Seattle Times Company

I was lucky enough to see Pearl Jam with my friend Matty this week on Monday night… the opening night of their new tour to support the new album Backspacer. It was AWESOME! It was one of those nights that made me feel alive and feel gratitude for all I have. Ah, live music. Must get more of this into my life. I might try to write more later, but for now, here’s the set list and here are two pics.

Pics by Shawn at seattle.metblogs.com

Pearl Jam concert, September 21, 2009 Seattle, Washington, Key Arena

Set List: Long Road, Corduroy, Gonna See My Friend, Got Some, Hail
Hail, Amongst The Waves, Daughter, Even Flow, Johnny Guitar, Unthought
Known, World Wide Suicide, Small Town, Off He Goes, Down, Save You,
The Fixer, Life Wasted

1st encore: Just Breathe w/the Octava String Quartet, The End w/ the
Octava String Quartet, Inside Job, Rearviewmirror

2nd encore: Given To Fly, Do The Evolution, Better Man, The Real Me
(Townshend) w/ the Syncopated Taint Horn Quartet, Indifference, Alive

Other pics from Seattle PI: Pictures from the Seattle PI

Like pretty much everything these days, this makes me want to travel and ride my bike! :)

Cyclists’ 3,000-mile journey through rural Africa an awakening
By Nancy Bartley, Seattle Times staff reporter

The dust from the miles of dirt trails through Africa still clings to
his well-worn bike, which leans against the wall in his Green Lake
apartment. For Aaron Bodansky, it was his vehicle for a journey to
change Americans’ views of Africa and its people.

Bodansky and a friend, Eric Silverman, were studying in Capetown,
South Africa, and quickly came to realize that the Africa they knew
from occasional travels around the continent was a safer and
friendlier place than most Americans realize. So the two created a
nonprofit called Cycle for Understanding, raised several thousand
dollars and planned to spend 70 days cycling from South Africa to
Kenya.

Dozens of flat tires, many new bike chains and rims, several
illnesses, lots of fatigue, and many new friends later, Bodansky and
Silverman flew back to the United States — Silverman to school at
Skidmore College in New York and Bodansky, a Lakeside High School
graduate on a break from Washington University in St. Louis, home to
Seattle.

Now the 22-year-olds are writing about their experience and turning
the film they shot en route into a documentary to share their image of
an Africa few in the West know — a primarily rural Africa filled with
caring and friendly people.

When they began the journey, they discarded the idea of traveling by
car, which would have given them some protection, and instead decided
to ride mountain bikes 3,000 miles from Capetown to Nigeria. The
mountain bikes meant they would potentially be exposed to climatic
extremes, wild animals, political instability and crime. But they’d
also be among, instead of isolated from, the African people.

“We didn’t want to sugarcoat anything. We wanted to give people a
chance to see what Africa is really like,” Bodansky said. And it was a
place where “you can ride your bicycle safely, being pretty much as
vulnerable as you can get.”

The U.S. State Department had issued precautions for virtually all the
countries through which the two traveled.

But Bodansky and Silverman instead relied on the opinions of locals in
making their travel decisions. And there were places they avoided,
such as parts of Sudan, Somalia and Congo. But the most dangerous
place, Bodansky said, was South Africa, because of the racial tension
and segregation.

The two left in June — with bicycle panniers stuffed with energy bars,
cornmeal, solar panels, a tent and a small video camera — and traveled
through South Africa to Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya,
with a side trip to Zimbabwe.

Just that month, the State Department warned U.S. citizens to defer
all travel to Zimbabwe, reporting cases of vote tampering, attacks on
opposition supporters, farm invasions, arrests and beatings of
election officials.

And yet, when Bodansky and Silverman traveled there, “we made friends,
hung out with soldiers. They are just like us, if not friendlier.”

Camping along the road at night, drinking water wherever they could
find it (after treating it with iodine tablets) and cooking their
cornmeal in a pot they carried, they journeyed deeper into the
continent to places where they said some of the Africans had never
seen a white person before.

“Children were fascinated and yet fearful,” Bodansky said.

One morning, the two heard sounds outside their tent and opened the
flap to see 50 Massai waiting outside.

Bodansky spoke enough Swahili to tell them the tent was their “moving
house” and afterward there was a friendly exchange, Bodansky leaving
with gifts of a lion’s tooth and a pair of Massai shoes.

While urban areas came with problems — including graffiti and
corruption — in the country, the rural people were similar everywhere,
he said. “They were friendly, generous people and safety was not even
a concern,” Bodansky said.

The cyclists’ parents understandably were frightened, but as the two
began to call home — cellphone coverage being readily available even
in remote areas — parents turned into supporters.

“As the trip progressed we got more and more comfortable,” Joel
Bodansky, Aaron’s father, said. “We were impressed with how much
thought and energy they had going into it. We were quite supportive of
them.”

Yet, the trip was not without its harrowing moments.

In Malawi, “We decided to try and save time and avoid mountain ranges
by taking a dirt path along the lake. The path was fine at first, but
we came to a point where the path turned unrideable and instead of
going back and losing a day of riding, we decided to keep on going,”
Silverman said.

They said they reached a point where they were dragging bikes up steep
hills of rocks and across rivers, hoping to find a village a few miles
down the path by night.

“However, our calculations were incorrect and we were still walking
our bikes long after sundown.”

The next day they ran into several men who took them to a village.

“We were fortunate to run into these men because I don’t think we
would have made it out of the mountains that night, and we were short
on food,” Silverman said.

Back in New York, Silverman is in class. In Seattle, Bodansky, who is
doing research here before returning later to the university for his
pre-med studies, talked about his views before the trip and after.

“I definitely had a negative view of those countries. It’s really just
a huge misunderstanding,” he said.

First time the Obamas did a joint interview since the inauguration is about national service… love my job and love knowing my president loves my job! The article talks about our new Kennedy Serve America Act that just passed and about volunteerism in America. :) I’ve been involved in national service since 2001 and am a big fan!

Exclusive Interview: The Obamas on The Meaning of Public Service

Doing Well by Doing Good

New Ways to Make a Difference

25 Responsibility Pioneers

I finally made it out to see the Grand Archives this week after almost two years of planning. They’ve got members from Carissa’s Wierd and Band of Horses, Samantha knows the band, Maggie’s been dating the drummer for almost two years, and they’re on Subpop, and they’re local, and well, the list could go on. It was both more mellow that I expected, and also much richer/louder/more rocking that I was expecting. Good times!

“So perhaps you’ve heard of this band called Grand Archives who play multipart new americana harmonies that we’re all so incredibly fond of? And by now you must know that they released a new album this month called Keep In Mind Frankenstein? Last night, they partied it up at the Crocodile with the Most Serene Republic (a septet of heartfelt young Canadians from the Arts & Crafts stable) and special guest S.”
-Josh/Seattle.metblogs.com

And in case you’re wondering, I’m still eating piles of tomatoes on a daily basis… in salads, with mozzarella, on veggie platters, for breakfast, sharing with coworkers, whatever. :) And my salad greens are still doing well too! Yay gardening successes!

(Lovely pic of Sondre Lerche taken by someone else)

Yesterday David and I went to midday concert for KEXP VIP Club and it was good fun! He was young, energetic, eager, pretty funny, bouncy, and opinionated in sweet, idealist ways that didn’t include anything about government but focused more on love and the radio. It was a lovely escape from work and a good concert all around! This was quick on the heels of last week’s stellar music week… last week I saw Pearl Jam on Monday and the Grand Archives later in the week. This week Sondrew Lerche, and this Sunday I’ll see Bob Dylan (even if he is born again and plays mostly country these days instead of his 60s classics). It’s been a very good stretch for live music!

Sondre Lerche
Tuesday, September 29th
The Triple Door

Born and raised in Bergen, Norway, Lerche was inspired by the music he heard emanating from his older siblings’ bedrooms – be it A-ha, Elvis Costello or classic rock. Inspired, he picked up the guitar at the age of 8, and was later signed to Virgin/EMI before his 16th birthday. Heartbeat Radio, his most current offering, is Lerche’s boldest and most challenging record to date. The songs mix acoustic guitars with grand gestures of orchestral pop, with elements of anything from ’50s Jazz, via ’60s and ’70s Brazilian psych-folk to state-of-the-art ’80s pop masters.