🎙️ 🕊️ Episode 29 – Chaplain Linda Palmer 🕊️🌿 (Solvang History, Preparedness, Inner Purpose)
Chopping It Up with Keith Saarloos · Released January 17, 2026 · Santa Ynez Valley, California
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About this conversation
This one felt like stumbling into a living library… and realizing the book can talk back.
I met Chaplain Linda Palmer at Good Seed Coffee and within two minutes I knew I’d found one of those rare people who has lived ten different lives — and somehow woven them into one purpose.
Linda is a community chaplain, a preparedness teacher, a trolley storyteller, a Solvang historian… and an engineer who helped build oil platforms, worked on major infrastructure, and somehow still ended up being the “Grandma Geek” at Barnes & Noble after hacking a Nook in public.
And then she casually drops this:
Her dad was Mayor Ken Palmer — three-time Mayor of Solvang.
She helped write The Spirit of Solvang.
She knows the town down to the bricks… literally.
This wasn’t an interview.
It was a download.
We talk about:
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What a chaplain actually does (and why it matters more than ever)
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“Still points” — how to stop reacting and start thinking
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PTSD, resilience, and building inner purpose before outer preparedness
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How Solvang didn’t start looking Danish until 1947 (yep)
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Why Buellton changed everything when Highway 101 arrived
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The founders, the land purchase, the train line, and the business logic that built the town
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Windmills, haunted houses, mission bricks, and why Solvang’s “USP” is worth protecting
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And why this valley needs to record its elders before we lose the stories
Linda isn’t trying to be famous.
She’s trying to make people stronger.
And honestly… she might be the most useful human I’ve had on this show yet.
If you love the Santa Ynez Valley…
If you care about history…
If you want tools for calm, safety, and purpose…
This one’s for you.
🎧 Chopping It Up — Chaplain Linda Palmer
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Saarloos + Sons archive host Keith Saarloos. Context photograph; not a portrait of the guest or a photograph of this recording.
