It's been nice to be able to add multiple stories about my early childhood advocacy work to the press page on my website this week! www.lauranortoncruzconsulting.com/press

I garden most every year, but once Trump got elected a second time, I knew our food safety infrastructure was going to get dismantled & I needed to grow as much as I could or buy local as much as possible. It’s not the kind of thing I wanted to be proven right about, but my fears were well-placed.

My daughter & I went up to Fairbanks for a friend’s wedding, met @arcticgoddess.bsky.social, hung out w/ @haharuffo.bsky.social & other activists + visited family, took in lots of breathtaking landscapes & explored a few small towns, danced for hours w/ @princessdaazhraii.bsky.social, got ☀️, swam…

I am low-key in love with Interior Alaska 🥰. #AlaskaSky

A little of both! (Dark humor though.)

I’m glad I’m not alone in enjoying cooking content here. It sometimes feels like if I’m not posting reactions to national politics every hour, I’m irrelevant. Anyway, here’s 1 of the 2 flavors of what I made w/ the spoon-scraped carcass scraps from dipnetting Copper River sockeye salmon. 😋

I want México to beat England for Obed alone, our Alaska ⚽️ hero, but also because I lived in & I ❤️ México & because of colonization & bc the memes are so good:

2 more from Kachemak Bay in the Southern Kenai Peninsula & from the Copper River/Copper River Basin from this last week. Alaska is so vast & so beautiful, & I feel so lucky that I get to experience it.

I love swinging from one part of Alaska to another, watching the trees & flowers change, the water & quality of light. I feel so lucky to get to see this. Spent Sunday - Monday on a Copper River dipnetting trip & am now taking my kids camping ~ Kachemak Bay. #AlaskaSky

Tonight I made shawarma sandwiches & salads with herbs from my dad’s garden, beets from the farmers market, an Ottolenghi recipe, and a 🐓 I butchered myself this week. It was heavenly.

A few highlights of what #AKgov line-item vetoed from the operating budget & mental health budget. He & his staff are wicked, cruel people. Everything here is pretty small $-wise (esp compared to what he wants to give resource corps) but has a HUGE impact on children, families, communities.

There's been a deluge of news, then the anniversary of the Dobbs decision, & I've been home working on house & garden projects with my 9-year-old. Being a mama & worker -- & the sole breadwinner for my kids & in charge of house/yard -- & activist & sometimes writer is a hard balance to strike.

I get my hair soaking wet & comb thru it (now that it’s longer) & then soaking wet again & kink it w my hands & then w a towel. While it’s still quite wet, I use DevaCurl, either the coconut curling balm or the other curl up gel & kink it into my hair. In that photo, my hair is wet still. When dry:

I love working with a team of inspired, hard-working, not-driven-by-ego women on a project, wow! I did my part & Christina did the major haul & we got it submitted! Then I finally got to head to Juneteenth festivities with my daughter.

This unexpected cold weather is making it easier for me to force myself to stay home and write the grant application I have to write when I want to be at Juneteenth festivities instead.

Movements/social change efforts that rely heavily on a figurehead or a single person tend to burn out & can't to get as broad or as deep. Like @gwensnyder.bsky.social & @adriennemareebrown.bsky.social have pointed out, movements require deep trusting networks of motivated people, which this ^ had

June 18th at 11:58 pm in Anchorage Alaska. Just a shade darker than daytime.

That reflects real buy-in & behind the scenes work from a lot of different people w/ a lot of different belief systems -- but among all of them, a shared belief that supporting families to meet their kids' needs as early as possible & as well as possible will be good for Alaska.

And it's a great example of the vital role that art plays in creating culture & policy change!

Plus, some really good stories by public media folks. And very importantly, it's a story about finding the right champions for the cause *in the right places*. I doubt this could've passed & became law w/o Rep. Jubilee Underwood championing it, especially for the Mat-Su Valley where it was filmed.

& personal legislator meetings, comms, & media outreach that Nunakins & Mat-Su Health Foundation made possible for me to engage in (seriously! When you pay to make it possible to do effective outreach, it works!)

& many other families who also allowed us into their 🏠 & lives. And it's about artist-organizers/filmmakers me & @joshalbeza.bsky.social who told the stories beautifully in film. And then it was about getting the right audience to watch it though direct constituent outreach from Mat-Su Valley folks

It's a story of non-profits (Mat-Su Services for Children & Adults & CCS Early Learning) who took on legwork, time, & risk & who believed in us artist-organizers. It's the story of a woman (Yulia Smith) who opened her professional & personal life to us to make this film in a way that had heart --

It worked!!!!!!! Tonight, the AK gov allowed SB 178 to become law w/o signature. This is the bill to expand eligibility for the Infant Learning Program (ILP) & fund that. Its success is such a beautiful example of the kinds of strategies & partnerships that create lasting change. 🧵 on what worked

But credit where credit is due — they let these vital vital pieces of legislation become law!!!! (Without signature). HOW MANY years of work are represented here!! — by advocates; by #akleg @andrewgrayak.bsky.social, @lgtobin.bsky.social, @forrestdunbarak.bsky.social…so relieved.

Mike Dunleavy & Jordan Shilling (I learned I need to give him credit too) are evil evil men.

This is a recent photo of me biking in the first bike jersey I ever got, back in the summer between 6th & 7th grade, 32 years ago.

I tried so hard to record it! First I made a bajillion videos waiting for wolf to howl & then it would howl when I was fussing w/ my phone, lol. So then I just hiked while recording. I finally got a bit of the howl but when I listened again, it was faint. Can you hear it? I can, but VERY quietly.

He told me there is an urban wolf pack that lives over there & it's not unusual behavior for them, & offered some potential reasons why I might've heard a single wold howl (versus a conversation between wolves). That was such a cool experience, wow!

Partway up Nearpoint ⛰️today, I went over to play on this snow patch, & from the valley heard what sounded like a wolf howl. Once, then a minute or few later, another. And so on as I hiked --soulful howls every few minutes & a few other noises similar to barking. Called ADFG after & biologist was 😀.