For the past two years, I've been helping some very bright and motivated young people in Laos who want to publish books there. A few years ago,

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Sasha Alyson

Above: In Laos, with a boy had learned to read from a teacher with a blackboard, but who didn't know such things as fun books even existed. (Thanks to Eric Schulz for the photo.)

To contact me: You can write to the following address.

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I have a short attention span, and I were still in school today, they'd probably drug me. (In my opinion, school is enough of a drug anyway.) Here are three businesses that I started, but I no longer own or run them. If you have business with any of these, please contact them directly:

Bay Windows

Alyson Publications

Alyson Adventures.

This site doesn't try to be fancy, it's mostly a way to let old friends find me, and to update those interested on what I'm doing these days.

In 2003, I came to Laos for the first time. Laos was to me -- as I'm sure it is to most other Americans -- one of those countries we've vaguely heard of, might or might not find on a map, and that's about all we know about it.

But I learned more. Laos is a beautiful country, with a remarkably friendly population (particularly considering that the U.S. made it the most bombed country in world history during the Vietnam era), but also a very poor one. Infant mortality was nearly 10%, salaries of $25 a month were commonplace, and young people who wanted to break out of that cycle had few options. And books were virtually unknown.

Two girls reading one of our books in a rural Lao scho0l I couldn't do much about most of that, but given my publishing background, I decided I could create a publishing program, which would teach writing, computer, publishing, and business skills to a few of these young people. Our first books appeared in 2006. Since then, we've been publishing 30 or 35 new titles a year, and have begun developing ways to get them into rural villages which previously had no access at all to such books. If you'd like to know more, we're at: Big Brother Mouse.

Also on this site: For years I wanted to hike or climb on the via ferratas of northern Italy, and finally got there. Here's a report, and photos.