Críticas Magazine

Bruce Jensen

Colombian joins library board in Spam City
July 21, 2008

I hitchhiked to Austin, Minnesota back when there was a pretty big strike going on at the Hormel meatpacking plant, and since I was lugging a guitar the Local P-9 members asked me for a song.  When they did not run me immediately out of town after the song ended, I concluded that Austinites are a tolerant people.

The news from there this weekend is that is that Colombian mother and translator Catalina Ferreira-Truong is the newest member of the library board of Austin Public.  A story in Saturday's Austin Daily Herald,  "Ferreira-Truong to take her zest for life to the library board" explains that she has taught Spanish and has translated for the school district, in addition to coordinating a foreign exchange program for students.

She said the experience of meeting foreigners is an important developmental experience for young people, particularly those confined to the small-town life.

“I think the students need to learn more from others, to share, to learn from another world,” she said. “If we bring a different race here, we’ll just learn from everybody. Everyone benefits — the student, the family, the school.”

Ferreira-Truong hopes she’ll bring benefits to the library board as a first-time member.

“Hopefully with new ideas, yes,” she said. “I think [the library] is a great place, and people should use it to be literate, for knowledge, for socializing… for events, for culture. This is a place that’s good for anything.”

Austin is the hometown of Spam, by the way, which some cooks think is also good for anything.  If you missed the National Public Radio story this 4th of July, "Classics from Hawaii, Japan Collide in Spam Sushi," about Muriel Miura, author of the book Hawaii Cooks with Spam, now's the time to spend four minutes finding out about what the story calls an "ode to Spam [that] takes foodies around the world with recipes like Spam pancit from the Philippines, a Korean dish of Spam with rice and Spam tacos."

Posted by Bruce Jensen on July 21, 2008 | Comments (1)