SusanvilleUp

My earliest memory of my brother was him hanging out on the hill beside the feedlot house where we lived.  I would make up elaborate stories with my Barbie dolls there and he would sometimes hangout and watch.  He and I were born two years apart; he was born before me the day after Halloween. As I sat at a patio table at UC Davis hospital last July trying to make sense of previous week or so, I couldn’t help but reflect on the last time I’d been in the UC Davis hospital with Robert.   It was the most dire challenge I’d witnessed him face roughly 30 years ago when he attempted to end it all by stabbing himself in the heart.  I’d just attended Monet exhibit at the DeYoung Museum with friends when I stopped by a gas station with a phone booth outside of Golden Gate Park to let Dave know I was headed home.  Yes, this was before we all had cellphones.  Dave informed me of the unbelievable reality of what Robert had done.   Right after he’d stabbed himself h...

In a few weeks, our country will celebrate our country’s hard won victory for liberty from English tyranny. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to visit the Liberty Bell with my sister.  This humble bell is a symbol of freedom for our country in addition to minority groups and people from other nations throughout the world.   As we celebrate our freedom on the 4th of July,  a battle for another type of freedom is being fought, the battle for freedom from human trafficking.   This July 4th weekend, the movie “Sound of Freedom” is being released to raise the awareness regarding the severity of the problem of human trafficking.  It’s difficult not to watch this trailer and wonder what can be done to address this massive problem.  One simple way to fight this problem is to support the Freedom Challenge. A few days later after the “Sound of Freedom” movie is released,  the  Tahoe Freedom Challenge will be taking place in Tahoe to raise funds for t...

As individuals throughout the world celebrate New Years, we all tend to consider what the upcoming year will hold for us and ponder the past year.  The past few days, I have been faced with the difficult decision of how to move forward with the nonprofit Feel the Joy in the new year.  The nonprofit was created as a California corporation when I was living in California and evacuated by the CZU lightening complex fires.   I couldn’t have known I’d be moving to Nevada.  I have initiated the process of dissolving the nonprofit with the plan of reestablishing it in Nevada. The past two years, I have learned a significant amount about what’s required to manage a nonprofit from the legal perspective. I remain committed to the original vision of Feel The Joy / Susanville despited the setback of needing to reestablish it in another state.

  Recently,  I lost more than an aunt , for my Aunt Gloria meant so much more to me than that.  This photo of us seated together was taken about ten years ago in front of her cabin near Antelope Lake where our families shared so many memories.   My aunt welcomed me to stay with her at the family ranch at a time just before I became a teenager when my family was struggling to stay together.  She rooted me in my Father's extended family making up for his absence. By educating me about our family ancestry, she gave me a sense of belonging and identity. Her great grandfather, my great great grandfather, Benjamin Leavitt had settled in Susanville in the early 1800s.  Our family were pioneers. It was the second summer that I recall the most reverence.   Aunt Gloria and I made curtains for the cabin and school cloths for me.  Mom had moved us from Nevada to California.  It was so special to have new school cloths to wear to the new sc...

Hi, my name is Susan.   I  registered Susanville.com for fun in the last '90s, since my name is Susan and my father was born and raised in Susanville.    Initially, I hosted the Susanville.com website from a Unix server connected to a DSL in my San Jose, California home where I published my favorite recipes, created the first California Alliance For the Mentally Ill website and was an affiliate for Amazon recommending my favorite books. After one of the startup companies I worked for folded, I decided to consider pursuing my passions of helping nonprofits raise money using my technical experience.   I signed up for the weekend hackathon TechRaising and out of convenience used my Susanville.com domain to prototype the website for the weekend.  The local Santa Cruz newspaper featured Susanville in their article that weekend.  I then applied and was accepted into the National Science I-Corp Lean Startup program.   The program encourage...