Laura M Browning

I’ve been a fan of John Green’s writing since his Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines days, so it was an honor to be able to talk to him recently for the @mastersinmktg newsletter. Link in bio. Best out-of-context quote that doesn’t appear in the final piece: “I mean, the genius of Piggly Wiggly in the 1920s was that the ads were insane. The ads were off the wall. They made no sense. He called his grocery store _Piggly Wiggly_ for God’s sake.” Big thanks to @elysemarshall and @johngreenwritesbooks for indulging my very weird interview request, for spreading joy and absurdity, and for answering my burning question: Is marketing tuberculosis?

It’s been two weeks since Ballew died, though I was out of town for five days of that, which skews my sense of time. He was just So Much, and I still can’t believe he’s not in the backyard right now, trying to hang on to the few remaining patches of snow. A few pics from his 2019 mayoral campaign, and one video of him screaming at a goat. The world just isn’t the same without him.

Ballew Lobo Browning 2010 - March 7, 2025 The world lost a legend today, and I lost my buddy, my Trash Wolf, my Snow King. Ballew was never an easy dog. When he first came home from @fssrhuskies , he paused to take in the stairs in my condo building, and then clambered up them — at full speed. I don’t think he’d ever been inside a house before, let alone seen stairs. In the first few years I had him, he ate: - A pan of chocolate espresso brownies (vet ER visit) - Part of a tennis ball (emergency surgery) - A peach pit (another emergency surgery) - A raw onion (not enough to merit a vet visit, but he vomited it up the next morning, and that remains the worst thing I have ever smelled in my life) - More tennis ball (vet visit, but no surgery) - A wheel of brie - Untold numbers of socks, gloves, tissues, paper towels, food wrappers, road kill, three birds, and one live cicada. We used to walk to the farmers’ market on Sundays, where the entire farmers’ market could hear him screaming in anticipation of a pup pop from @chistickup , which he’d eat in two gulps, stick and all. In 2019, he ran for pet mayor of Edgewater, my then-neighborhood in Chicago, with the campaign slogan “Keep Edgewater Ballew-tiful.” He lost to a goat, which is how I learned that he screams at ungulates. He did raise nearly $5k for the pet food pantry at Care For Real, and he remains The People’s Mayor, and the mayor of our hearts. He got his own backyard the summer of 2022, when he was 12. I set up a tripod and filmed his first romp: he zoomed from one end to another, leapt over the picnic table, and immediately got to digging yard craters under the elevated garden beds. He used to stand on that picnic table and yell at me when it was time for a walk. Fifteen years is a good run, especially for a dog his size, and he was walking a mile a day up until a few days ago. It became apparent last night, when he didn’t want a walk or his dinner, that something was wrong, which we confirmed with bloodwork this afternoon. He spent this morning in his backyard, covered in light snow, and died in my arms this afternoon, covered in tears and love.

Arches on arches on arches

Sea wall at Hayling Island

Why is America so opposed to high-speed rail networks? This is fantastic. I’m not using time-lapse—this is just plain video. I loved when we approached a train station, because there’d be more graffiti flashing by like a flip book. Eurostar, Netherlands > England

La Belle Epoque tulip. I took uh 246 photos of tulips the other day, so I guess this is a tulip appreciation account now. 🌷 #tulip #tulpen #keukenhof

Peace. #keukenhof #tulip #tulpen

When I was 20 and going to school in the UK, I spent the term breaks traveling Europe. One of my most enduring memories is a day I spent about half an hour outside Amsterdam, where there are 7 million bulbs, mostly tulips, planted on 79 acres of land. I promised myself that I’d return to Keukenhof. I had a little film camera with me at the time, and I got my photos developed at Boot’s when I returned to Oxford. Boot’s slightly oversaturated the photos, but it suited them. I got a few of those snapshots framed when I returned to the States, where I’ve seen them every day since. It took a while, but today I made good on that promise to 20-year-old Laura. A little more crowded than it used to be, but otherwise it was exactly as perfect as I remembered. #keukenhof #tulips

::pushes glasses up nose:: Thank you, @annathebold !

The house I moved into 10 months ago came with a couple milkweed plants that had sprung up in an odd little corner of the backyard, in what I think was an abandoned compost pile. I wouldn’t have thought it got enough sun for milkweed, but I decided to plant some there a couple months ago, and I think I’ve got 11 plants now. (I’ve also got aphids, ants farming the aphids, and syrphid fly larvae eating the aphids; nature is brutal and frankly it has too many damn legs for my comfort.) I haven’t seen any monarch eggs yet, but I did spot my first monarch today! She was quite fluttery (see story), and I didn’t get a good pic, but I’m too excited to not share a mediocre one. I grew a milkweed! I manifested _butterflies_!

I MADE BEETS! The one on the left is a touchstone gold, and the one on the right is a bull’s blood. They’re probably each only one bite but I cannot wait to try them. UPDATE: Delicious, oh my god.