Mo Palmer

Mo Palmer moved to Albuquerque from Artesia when she was in 7th grade, and graduated from Highland High in 1961.

Mo worked as an EMT years back, as the photo-archivist at the Albuquerque Museum for ten years, and as a history teacher at Sandia Preparatory School for seven.

Somewhere in there, she got a master's degree with a focus on local history and archiving.

For seven years (until it folded) The Albuquerque Tribune published a monthly history feature by Mo, and those articles are the reason this blog was created, so that they can have an audience beyond those who clipped and saved the stories years ago.

Nowadays, Mo says, she does a lot of speeches.

She wrote, "I'm not very interesting. I rescued dogs for a long time." If I were as good a writer as Mo is, I could make her seem as interesting as she has made so many other local characters.

In the 1990's, I was Mo's next-door neighbor. Her grandkids played with my kids for a few years. What I loved best about her was her ability to tell the history of any building, and sometimes of what was there before that building. The Circle K was where the brickworks used to be, and so forth. Her mind has a map of Albuquerque that can be dialed to any date.

—Sandra Dodd