Ayurveda recognizes three main pillars of wellbeing: proper diet, sufficient sleep and loving relationships. When kept in balance, these three pillars keep us healthy, happy and fulfilled and promote good digestion, proper detoxification and increase vitality and contentment. When out of balance we may experience digestive discomfort; feel disconnected from our partners, family and friends; become exhausted and stressed; and experience a host of other imbalances.

On March 4, 2014, one of Germany’s most popular young indie pop bands, Tonbandgerät (‘Tape Recorder’), will embark on a four-week, 11-concert tour through the United States. The first stop is Everett, for a concert at the Civic Auditorium. Admission is free, but registration is required.

In 1997, after months of anticipation, Susanne Antonetta rushed to SeaTac Airport to meet her infant son Jin. Anxiously sipping martinis with Antonetta hours earlier, a friend muses, “You could be in labor right now.” From here the book follows a loose chronology, tracing the first few months of bonding, through a playful early childhood, into a moody adolescence. Beginning at age eight, Jin is teased for being adopted as well as for being Asian, despite living in an ostensibly uber-progressive Bellingham neighborhood where children had names like “Bliss,” “Sequoia,” and “Butterfly.”

Back in the USSR!

I went back to the east coast the past few days, Boca Raton specifically (part of what’s called The Gold Coast of Florida). And no, there is no family connection between it and my family name (too bad!).