Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

Stuff gets done here

recent posts

Category: reading

  • Honoring the Kalapuya

    I want to spend some time this month considering the people who called the Willamette Valley home for thousands of years. Congress and then-president George Bush in 1990 set aside November to recognize the contributions of Native Americans, and I appreciate that effort as a reminder for me to learn more. Here in Oregon the…

  • Reading slow and deep

    I took Betsy James’ new memoir with me on a road trip to the Canadian Rockies and found it a fine antidote to hours of driving. The world rushing by at 70 mph, the shift from rolling canola fields to jagged upthrust peaks, the rumbling trains, the smoke from fires — my mind getting edgy…

  • My curious mother

    It’s hard to guess which of us was more surprised. In our most recent book group, Irene Palmer asked me if I had read “House Made of Dawn” by N. Scott Momaday. Happens I had, thanks to a literature professor committed to diversity in the literary canon she taught. But hold on there, Irene. How…