Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

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  • Iditarod Musher Jody Potts-Joseph. She’s tough

    She ain’t no rookie even if it is her first Iditarod. A member of the Han Gwich’in from Eagle Village, Alaska, she’s run plenty of sled dog races, but this was the first time she had to run off a bison charging her team.

    They came upon it — a woods bison, slightly larger than a plains bison and just as unpredictable. She pulled her Glock. The gun jammed. She got out in front of her team and threw sticks at it. The bison pawed the snow and bluff charged them. Then she remembered the words her grandma used to run off a bear. Apparently it works on bison, too.

    Here’s a link to her video describing the encounter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7nQ2cyv-84

    She’s one of 30-plus racers in a run from Anchorage to Nome, just under 1,000 miles. She’s not in the front of the pack. She’s taking care of her dogs and running her own race.

    I have a soft spot in my heart for this race. For the decade that I lived in Anchorage, it was always such a highlight to head downtown the morning the race began. We’d go before it was light, when the mushers and their dogs were getting ready. Those dogs were so eager, so ready to run. I love that today many of the mushers post images along the trail: mushing in the dark, through blizzards, hunkering down at checkpoints feeding and caring for these smart, amazing animals.

    Rock the race, Ms. Potts-Joseph. I’m inspired, regardless of where you place.

  • Strap in, honey: Rick Levin’s “Off Route”

    About halfway through author Rick Levin’s novel “Off Route,” I found myself muttering, “Pick a lane, dude.”

    But not in a bad way. More in a “what the hell kind of story is this?” way. There’s no knowing what’s coming around the next narrative bend. But Levin’s voice is so real, so comfortable in its own articulations that another part of my brain shrugged and said: “Strap in, honey. This could be good.”

    Bottom line? I’m glad I rode along. It’s OK with me that Levin uses many big words. Here’s an example: “In capitalism, ontogeny capitulates phylogeny.” Might as well be Latin. And I say that after looking it up. But Levin also deploys many excellent small words. As in: “I try to be kind. It’s a world of small gestures. It’s going to have to be from here on out. The consolation of small gestures.” Because this story is about a guy who is a bus driver, and because Rick Levin is, himself, a bus driver when not writing, I think if anybody has a right to offer up human wisdom about small gestures and love, it’d be him.

    I found this book to be wondrous, full of beautiful, painful, gorgeous anecdotes. They are gemlike, sparkling with a tenderness that lingers in the heart. I’m glossing over the anger in Off Route. Please don’t think it puts a spit shine on reality. It doesn’t. But it does remind me that beauty can sometimes be an in-breath and an out-breath away.

    I know Levin’s work from his days as a journalist. I had deep knowledge about a profile he wrote for the Eugene Weekly several years ago. It was thorough and factual. I thought he was somebody who paid attention, who understood what he was reporting about and who reported with heart. Factually and with heart.

    Let Off Route come to you in its own way. You will be enriched.

  • When a Book Opens a Door: “Mom’s Cancer” by Brian Fies

    I ordered this book on a whim and it spoke to me. When the amazing and insightful graphic artist/cartoonist Peter Dunlap Shohl pointed me to Brian Fies‘s work on Facebook, I got intrigued and began following him.

    I have no previous experience with graphic memoir but as a longtime journalist I know that the best political cartoons land with a gut punch. Fies has recently been promoting the anniversary edition of his noteworthy book Mom’s Cancer. I ordered it from my local bookstore, curious to understand the mesh of words and images on a topic I happen to know.

    I had my own cancer journey 17 years ago. Cancer is one of those diseases that is huge in human consciousness. The big C. It makes us tremble. For our friends and for ourselves. But the daily experience of being in cancer has odd rhythms — plodding, waiting, hoping, despairing, paining, numbing and sometimes triumphing. It’s also strangely disconnecting. This can’t be my body, can it? Yes. Yes it can. That biopsy. This surgery. That radiation. This poison cocktail. That test. These results. What we know. What we can’t know. Circling back to biopsy, God I hate that word. It means that they cut a hunk of your flesh out to see what’s going on with it. Don’t ever imagine that it feels as tidy as that word suggests. I once had a biopsy that hurt so bad I flat passed out.

    I didn’t understand until I read Fies’s book the kind of deep skill it takes to bring the right words and the right images together. His mother’s journey was quite different than mine. Yet I felt myself in it. For anyone in any stage of that landscape, I imagine the book may have that effect.

    Here’s what happens: Your body becomes the object of someone else’s working day. You are someone else’s work product. Not all of the caregiving team see you as a person. But a few of them do. And maybe that’s why this book touched me. Through all of it, Fies and his sisters see their mother. And each other. And the care team. In all their messy imperfect human glory.

    And I now know that book-length graphic story-telling is an art I will hold in high regard.

    Here’s a link to an interview with Fies for those who want more: https://autobiographix.substack.com/p/an-interview-with-brian-fies

    And should you want to be knocked out by Peter Dunlap-Shohl, you can read more about him and his work here: https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/a-cartoonist-talks-about-how-to-be-an-artist-with-parkinsons/