Brian Freeman & the KAXE Bookclub

I'm excited for tomorrow night - the KAXE book club is getting together at 5:30 to discuss MN author Brian Freeman's latest mystery (set in Grand Rapids) "The Burying Place".

So what's the big deal? There's a couple of big deals about this meeting.

1. Brian Freeman will be AT the book club meeting
2. We're meeting at a book club member's house - near where the action/mystery in "The Burying Place" takes place
3. It's summer in northern Minnesota! Bookclub is meeting outside overlooking Pokegama Lake!! What's not to be excited about?

So how does the KAXE book club work? Good question, and I get asked it a lot. This is the first book club I've ever been in - and we are a no-guilt, everyone-is-invited, all-fun, come-when-you-can-even-if-you-haven't-read-the-book kind of book club.

This means YOU are invited. Even if you haven't read the book. And like any good Minnesota get-together, it's a potluck, so we are asking that you bring something to share. Here's a sneak peek at the food/beverages on board for the party: buster bars, beer, sandwiches, thai fried rice, wine, brownies, potato salad and who knows what else!!!

We'll eat, hear from the author, ask questions of the author and enjoy each others company.

If you want to attend and need to find out the mystery location, call Heidi at KAXE 218-326-1234 or email heidi@kaxe.org.

Be Honest

Do you ever go to bookclub without having finished the book? Do you admit it? Or do you nod alot?

The KAXE bookclub is meeting this Tuesday at 5:30 and though I'm reading a lot between today and Tuesday, it's possible I'm not going to get it done.

What should I do if I don't finish it? What have you done?

Final week of the Fall Fundraiser at KAXE!

It's the Northern Observer Fall Fundraiser at KAXE and what better way to observe the world than to read? On this week's episode you'll get to hear the conversation that John Bauer and I had with Vicky Myron about her life as a librarian with a library cat. Her book is "Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat That Touched the World". We've got copies available if you pledge your support to KAXE at $10/month - $120/year or above. You'll get "Dewey" along with your regular thank you gift of a KAXE totebag or t-shirt.

Call us 218-326-1234/1-800-662-5799 or pledge online!

You'll also hear an essay by our contributor Aaron Brown. Aaron's book, "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range" is also available as your thank-you gift for supporting independent community radio in Northern Minnesota.

What are you reading lately? In honor of Dewey Readmore Books the library cat - here's what I'm reading:

"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak (for the KAXE bookclub discussion on 11/11/08 at 5:30pm)
"Sugar Plum Ballerinas - Plum Fantastic" by Whoopi Goldberg (I'll be talking with Whoopi later today!)
"The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland" by Bill Holm
"The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry" by Kathleen Flinn

The Travels of a T-Shirt

Never underestimate the power of a reader. Or a book group. Or a librarian. I'll stop now, but you get my point, people read books - they talk about it to others - they get together to discuss - and it makes a difference. Reading, participating in something, it is important. We start thinking about topics we had never entertained before. We ask questions. And maybe we read the tag on that t-shirt we bought, wondering how it got into our hands.

Yes, I'm a word nerd who values reading, but more on that some other time....

Jeff Wartchow from the Grand Rapids Men's Reading Group joined me in KAXE's studios today to tape an interview with Georgetown University professor and author Pietra Rivoli about her book "The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy - An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade" (that fuzzy book I'm holding). You can hear it tonight on Realgoodwords as well as Sunday morning or in the archive.

Pietra's book encompasses the global economy but it also gets to the fundamental questions of where do we spend our money? Does it matter if we buy clothes at Wal-Mart or buy food from the farmer's markets? How does it all affect the global economy?

Do these questions interest you? What questions do you have? What is your bookclub reading?

The KAXE Bookclub is getting together next Wednesday May 7th at 4pm to talk about Pietra's book, everyone is invited. If you want, bring a snack to share!

National Public Radio's Adam Davidson followed Pietra on her travels and you can read about and hear the series here.

KAXE's Next Bookclub Meeting!

The KAXE bookclub is getting together on Wednesday May 7th at 4pm to discuss Pietra Rivoli's "The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy - an Economist Examines the Markets, Power, Politics of World Trade"Here's an essay by Pietra Rivoli about her book:

When I decided to follow my T-shirt around the world, what I wanted most of all was to tell a great story. I didn't start out trying to prove a point or convey a lesson, though lessons surely emerged from my travels. I just had a sense that this very simple thing had a complicated, fascinating story to tell, a story that could resonate with anyone who gets dressed each morning, and I wanted to tell that story.

I found that all over the world people like to be able to explain things to professors. It must be some kind of perverse thrill. Whether I was at a Texas cotton farm or an African T-shirt stall, people wanted me to understand their place in the global economy, wanted to explain to me how their small microcosm of globalization worked, they wanted me to understand how complicated, how hard, but also how interesting it was to face their challenges each day..

As I traveled around the world doing interviews for the book, I heard a lot of contrary views, opinions about cotton subsidies and trade policy, about China and about job losses. But I didn't meet any villains. There are no bad guys in my T-shirt's life story. Every business, every entrepreneur, every politician involved in my T-shirt's life was just trying to make their way in a competitive market, a market that often changes under their feet.

I wrote this book through tumultuous and often tragic times, through 9/11 and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, through terrorist bombs in Europe and through a bitter contested election in America. But as I traveled from a Texas cotton farm to a Chinese factory, from Washington bureaucrats to a third-generation used-clothing dealer descended from Jewish immigrants, to Muslim importers in East Africa, I kept marveling at how well everyone got along. While bombs were dropping, these Muslims, Jews, blacks, and whites stayed friends because of my T-shirt. The yarn and cloth and clothing bound them together, world trade bound them together. They had no choice but to keep talking to one another. The little guys got along just fine while the big guys were fighting. Whatever the debates about trade, it was clear to me after my travels that trade is very clearly an instrument of peace and understanding. I feel privileged that everyone I wrote about is my friend now, and I hope the readers like all of the players in my T-shirt's life story as much as I do.

I have been teaching in a business school for a long time, so I know how easy it is to bore people with talk of trade deficits, or competition, or unemployment. But everyone loves a good story. Some business professors avoid stories in their teaching and research, concerned that stories lack credibility or intellectual heft. But as long as we do our best to tell the whole story, not simply anecdotes selected to prove our point, stories can go a long way in helping us to understand the complexities of trade and international business. I hope my T-shirt's story has done just that.

As a first time book author, I have had a few "pinch myself" exciting moments since the book was released. The first was when I learned that Time was reviewing the book, and the second was when I picked up the phone and found NPR international business correspondent Adam Davidson on the line. He loved the book, he said, and wanted to make an NPR series out of it. And then he gave me the highest compliment for a professor when he said the book had changed the way he thought about globalization, and even how he would report on international business in the future.

The National Public Radio series came together over a month or so, as Adam and I traveled back to many of the places that I had written about, back to Texas cotton farms and Chinese factories. On the radio, we had just twenty-four minutes to condense my work of five years and travels over thousands of miles, just twenty-four minutes to tell the biography of this most complicated simple thing. As I listened to the background sounds that Adam recorded for the radio series — tractor noises, sewing machine noises, cotton gin noises, and the creepy silence of a padlocked T-shirt factory in Alabama — I realized that I had never thought about the sounds that globalization makes. If you close your eyes and listen, you can hear it all working.

Click here to read/listen to the NPR series.
Everyone is invited to come to the KAXE bookclub - bring a snack to share!

Animal Vegetable Miracle recipe

I've finished the audio book of Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Mirace: A Year of Food Life" for tomorrow's KAXE bookclub. This book really got me thinking about where my food comes from. As we've heard Maggie's Local Food segments on KAXE, I've been inspired to incorporate more local foods into my diet - it's not that much yet (especially this time of year) but I do get milk, butter, potatoes, cheese, wild rice, berries, honey, venison, beef and maple syrup locally.

How about you?

I checked out the recipe section of Animal Vegetable Miracle and found one I want to try this summer, assuming the blackberry crop will be better than last year's.

BLACKBERRY CRUMBLE
2-3 apples, chopped
2 pints blackberries
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 large handful of basil leaves, chopped
¼ cup honey – or more, depending on tartness of your berries

Preheat oven to 400. Combine the above in an oven-proof casserole dish, mix and set aside.

5 tbsp flour
3 heaping tbsp brown sugar
1 stick cold butter

Cut butter into flour and sugar, then rub with your fingers to make a chunky, crumbly mixture (not uniform). Sprinkle it over the top of the fruit, bake 30 minutes until golden and bubbly.

Hope you can make it to the bookclub meeting - it's at 4pm on Tuesday March 11th.

Check out Maggie's latest post on the Morning Show blog!

We're talking Locavores next Tuesday!

Locavore is defined as:

Someone whose diet consists of food grown or produced within an area most commonly bound by a 100-mile radius of their home. Locavores usually shun large supermarket chains, opting for farmer's markets and local gardens instead. It is also a current trend for many high-end restaurants as well.

This word was just declared Oxford American Dictionary's 2007 Word of the Year. It was coined in 2005 by a group of four women from San Francisco. It's also sometimes spelled localvores.

Is Locavore/Localvore a word you are familiar with?

If you are reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life" like I am, it's a word/concept I'm coming to understand more and more. We're getting together next Tuesday, 3/11 at 4pm to talk books and food. Everyone is invited to join us - whether or notyou've read the book - and talk about the concept of eating locally -specifically how to eat locally in Northern Minnesota. Maggie Montgomery will be on hand totalk about how she has been eating locally since last July.

Not only am I considering a more extensive garden this year, making cheese
has actually crossed my mind after reading the book! Kingsolver writes about the New England Cheesemaking Company where she learned to make homemade mozzarella and other cheeses. Have you ever made cheese? Let us know! What local food do you eat?

KAXE's Next Bookclub meeting - Local Food

It's going to be on Tuesday March 11th at 4pm at the 91.7fm KAXE studios. We're located on the Mississippi River, next to the Grand Rapids Library at 260 NE 2nd Street.

I'm really excited about our next bookclub choice because

a) Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors

b) food is involved

We're reading "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life" by Barbara Kingsolver, along with her husband Steven Hopp and daughter Camille Kingsolver. It's their story of a move from Tucson, Arizona to rural Appalachia. They are not just moving; they are rehauling their life and changing where they get their food from.

"This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air."

Not only are we reading this book (or listening to it as I am), our very own Maggie Montgomery will join us for her perspective on what it is like to eat locally in Northern Minnesota. And, we'll gather together, 'round the KAXE fireplace with local food to share.

Join us on Tuesday March 11th at 4pm at KAXE!

Have you already read this book? What do you think?