Kao Kalia Yang will be discussing her book, The Latehomecomer, on KFAI’s Write On Radio, 11 a.m. this Thursday. Craig Cox reviewed the book in the summer edition of MOQ.

Thirty years ago, Kao Kalia Yang’s still-teenage parents began their new life together by fleeing Pathet Lao soldiers who were intent on wiping out the Hmong in Laos, and her stunning memoir traces their refugee journey through wretched camps in Thailand (where she was born) to the family’s arrival in St. Paul. Equally adept at recounting the young family’s harrowing escape across the Mekong River or drilling deeply into the mixed emotions of her refugee childhood, Yang invites us inside the Hmong diaspora in a way few other writers have dared.

By Jason Ericson
The University of Minnesota’s farmers market opened Wednesday, July 9, on Church Street, on the Minneapolis campus, and continues every Wednesday, from 11 til 2, through the growing season. Local growers will offer produce, berries, and fresh flowers, and the University’s Landscape Arboretum will sell maple syrup and, later, apples. But perhaps most unique among the vendors you would find at any farmers market are the students participating in Cornercopia, the University’s three-year-old student-run farm, which becomes officially certified organic this month.

Editor’s note: With the recent news reports that Hennepin County’s acquisition of the Minneapolis Public Library system is costing $3.5 million more than expected, we thought readers might find it interesting, if not illuminating, to view this whole merger business with a little historical perspective, by way of this annotated timeline from the spring issue of MOQ.

By Brett Laidlaw
This is The Locavore Moment: The trend toward eating local, in-season foods has gained remarkable momentum over the last few years, celebrated in best-selling books and championed by movements like the “100-Mile Diet,” the brainchild of Canadians Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, and Slow Food, the international group that works to preserve food traditions. Where sophisticated eaters once sought rare delicacies from distant lands -- Italian truffles, Caspian sturgeon caviar, French foie gras -- now those same savvy gourmands are likely to rhapsodize over more homely fare -- an heirloom tomato, a parsnip, house-fermented sauerkraut.

In the summer issue of MOQ, we bid a fond farewell to the Amazon Bookstore Cooperative at 48th and Chicago in South Minneapolis. But it turns out we said goodbye too soon! Today we learned that a buyer has come forward to save the 38-year-old institution from oblivion. The new owners will take possession by the end of the month, staff have started to re-stock the shelves, and they are once again taking special orders.

“In 2001, after 22 years as a magazine designer, I left my computer to go outside and paint,” says Scott Anderson. We first met Scott when he was still a magazine designer at Request (for Sam Goody record stores), and have enjoyed watching him paint (so to speak) ever since. Currently, he’s working on a series of paintings on location at the site of the new 35W bridge construction (for an MPR interview with Scott at the bridge site, go here).
The paintings will be on display this August in the Thrivent Financial Building, 625 Fourth Ave. S., in downtown Minneapolis.

By Anne Marie Pecha, Observer Washington Bureau Chief
Almost four years ago, the now-defunct Minneapolis Observer predicted that Al Franken would run for Norm Coleman’s U.S. Senate seat. Since Franken’s past words are all the rage these days, and since he won the DFL endorsement this afternoon, we thought that perhaps the politically engaged, yet nostalgic, among us might enjoy revisiting this -- may we say prescient? -- Observer Talk interview from our September 2004 issue. --The Editors

The U. of Minnesota Press just published a new book about our state’s historic bridges, Wood+Concrete+Stone+Steel: Minnesota’s Historic Bridges (University of Minnesota Press), by Denis P. Gardner, who presented a talk and slide show at the Mill City Museum last week to celebrate the book’s publication. Gardner will reprise his presentation on June 3 in Winona, June 9 in South Minneapolis, and June 21 in Stillwater (see below for details). Minneapolis Observer founder Craig Cox recently reviewed the book for MOQ.

MOQ editor/publisher Sharon Parker is now writing a garden column in
Southside Pride, the first of which appeared in the May editions and also on the Daily Planet. The overall theme is organic gardening, and the focus is on how working with nature instead of against it is not only better for the environment, but also much easier than complicated chemically based approaches.

This bald eagle was perched above Lake Nokomis this afternoon, and neighbors report that it has been seen there a lot lately. Its mate was seen sitting on the nest in Ed Solomon Park near Hwy 62 and Cedar Ave. at about the same time. Despite the crow's attempts to harass it, the eagle sat calmly preening itself for several minutes as people out for an afternoon stroll around the lake stopped to stare.