Susan Browne's Blog
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Sep.05.2008
Wow, it is so beautiful out right now, close to 5pm on a warm September day. I was just watering my wild garden. During rougher times in my life, I lived in many hovels, so I'm appreciative of this house and yard. We even have a palm tree! In the spring, the finches make nests there, and Zooey...
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Sep.04.2008
Do you ever have trouble getting things out of the packaging? I just bought an external portable hard drive, and the first challenge will be getting it out of the large cardboard-with- Fort-Knox-like-plastic-shields deal it's encased in. The actual hard drive is small, but it was delivered in a...
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15 comments
Sep.03.2008
A friend sent this to me this morning, and I wanted to share it:
Subject: This is America. We don't jail journalists here.
Jailing journalists is unacceptable in a democracy. But that's exactly what is happening at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Award winning journalist...
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8 comments
Sep.01.2008
A few days ago, when it was ninety degrees in Oakland, I walked out the front door of my house, down the porch steps, out the gate, and stood by the mailbox, watching a tiny tornado of leaves swirl across the air. The first leaves of the season falling. They were a brassy russet against the hot...
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2 comments
Aug.30.2008
I once lived in a two-story house that looked like it belonged in Tuscany, but it was in Berkeley. After a year of dating, this is where Kenneth and I lived together for the first time. We had two balconies in our bedroom upstairs that looked down on a backyard covered in waves of bougainvillea...
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6 comments
Aug.20.2008
First day back at school: sky August blue, puffy scudding clouds. I walk away from the classroom, feeling...what is it? I put my heavy book bag in the trunk of my car. I've been a bag lady for years. Twenty-four of them. Count them. I count them. Twenty-four. Loneliness moves through me like wind....
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2 comments
Aug.17.2008
Last spring, I joined a tennis team. Our team's home court is at Davie Stadium in Oakland. Actually, half of the property is in Piedmont. Davie is public, has five courts. You can call and reserve a court, eight dollars for an hour. It is well worth the money for the gorgeous surroundings. ...
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Aug.15.2008
Today I go back to work. Since last October, I've been on sabbatical, so I haven't stood in a classroom for almost a year. It has been wonderful, my focus only on writing. Teaching takes up a huge amount of time, and time is one of the writer's most valued tools. Still, I feel excited to return...
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Aug.14.2008
I once lived in a renovated garage painted bright yellow. I was twenty-one and divorced. The garage was in an alley, and my front yard was my landlady's back yard of emerald lawn and tidy flower garden. I'd been writing poetry since I was about ten-years-old, but now, in my last year of college...
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2 comments
Aug.11.2008
‘Round midnight last night, I was sitting on my porch steps after washing the dishes for two and a half hours. My husband Kenneth and I had our friends over for dinner. Kenneth is a chef, so here's what we had:
Heart of Romaine with anchovies
Roasted beet salad with oranges and slices of...
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10 comments
Aug.04.2008
Thank You, Redroom, for selecting my blog post, "Living The Questions," as one of the winners in the summer reading contest. A bouquet of appreciation for creating this special place and for the opportunity and inspiration to write things that might never get written if Redroom wasn't...
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4 comments
Aug.04.2008
Just returned from a great trip to Carmel with my family for my sister's birthday. We also went to a wedding. My sister Cheryl, her husband and three children lived across the street from the Montague family for many years. I spent many Christmases and other vacations with the Montagues; they...
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Jul.30.2008
Last night, I took a friend to Yoshi's in San Francisco for her birthday. We saw Shawn Colvin, and it was a terrific performance. An all-acoustic set, just Shawn, her voice, guitar, and amazing lyrics. "I'm riding shotgun down the avalanche." Beauty, beauty, beauty. And I loved her...
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2 comments
Jul.29.2008
The semester had just started, a brilliant blue day in early September. I sat on a bench underneath the beauty of the maples, their gold-green leaves turning a blazing red. I should have been in class, but I was twenty years old and in despair. I was unhappily married: working at Longs Drugs and...
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9 comments
Jul.20.2008
The Mouse and the Human by Tryfon Tolides
The mouse doesn't really bother anyone. It doesn'tgo around holding up banks or shooting peoplein the face or locking them up in dank jail cellsand sticking electric prods to their genitals. It doesn'tbuild jet fighters and bomb our cities in the nameof...
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6 comments
About Susan
Born in Long Beach, California, Susan Browne has lived most of her life in the Bay Area. Her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Subtropics, River City, The Mississippi Review, Gargoyle, Margie, American Life in Poetry, and other literary journals and...
Connections
Causes Susan Browne Supports
Unicef
Amnesty International
Run Together, A Race to Raise Money for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society