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The Extrovert Chair

Tackling social isolation by sitting in a chair

The Extrovert Chair – San Lorenzo Library Edition

I’ll never forget my mom hauling us four kids to the Napa Children’s Library each week. Eagerness made me breathless as I hurried through the alley, lugging the previous week’s pile of books. I’d pause out front and marvel at the library’s cornerstone, which proclaimed the year of the building’s birth in1906. Then I’d enter…

by Sue Granzella

Winter Bells

For the first time in months, I dragged the Extrovert Chair into the front yard today, and in less than a minute, I was in tears. I guess I’m out of shape. Oscar is a SUPER-friendly man from the Philippines. He gets around on a beat-up bike, and almost always wears flip-flops. He does handy-person…

by Sue Granzella

Extrovert Chair Hits the Road: Back-to-School Edition

Twenty-nine years ago, a student teacher was placed with me. She was skilled in working with curriculum, and my fourth-graders liked her. But one day, she confessed that teaching was much more difficult than she’d realized. “I’m an introvert,” she said. “I’m comfortable engaging with one person at a time, but performing in front of…

by Sue Granzella

Party Edition

Within the first few weeks of sitting in The Extrovert Chair, I was invited to two parties. One of the parties is a weekly event, and last Friday, I finally decided to go. That day was a particularly fitting one for attending a party of strangers. It was my father’s birthday, and Dad was the…

by Sue Granzella

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18 thoughts on “Blog”

  3. Hello Sue,
    I have enjoyed reading some of the FB posts filled with entertaining short stories of not only your students whom by-the-way, are very lucky to have you as their educator for the nine months of a school year but also, those little life experiences that seem to spar that creative literary mind of yours!
    And I would like to also just say, that a year in your classroom with these inquisitivley young students whom have become I’m sure, part of your little “school family”, will one day when they have become fully functional adults in society, will recall the one single educator that actually made a positive influence in their educational life; This teacher will surely be you that they remember with a smile 😊. Susan, this I am sooo sure of! ❤

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    1. Thanks, Ann! Yup, always a treat when you stroll past. (And when Lucy is with you, such predictable sounds come from inside my house… 🙂

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  9. Hi Sue – Mary Eastham, Flash Fiction Judge in Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition. Your house looks so charming, like the doll houses of Carmel. A friend and I meet in a parking lot down here in San Jose and talk to one another from inside our cars, so we’re social distancing. Your sitting in the chair on your lawn is so inspiring. Whatever gets us through. I’ve never lived thorough anything like this. A gal I took an online writing course with, who lives in Brooklyn, every night at 7:00 all the families in her neighborhood come out onto their lawns and wave to one another. Because it’s a borough of NYC, there are artists and musicians everywhere, so there’s one gal who posts poetry every day on a board in front of her house. Others sing and play their musical instruments, everyone trying to be fully who they are while still social distancing and also keeping community spirit going. We are all a resilient bunch, aren’t we???

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