TUESDAY, MAY 7 2013 >>>

1. For those green-thumb-challenged folk who haven't quite got growing seasons down, the 6th Ave Farmers Market opens today at 3:30 p.m. Learn to grow a secret garden of your own and see it blossom. Not a gardener? Well then just visit the world's most productive gardener, the farmer, and pick up a bunch of their "fruits of labor" until 7 p.m. at Sixth and Pine in Tacoma.

2. The Grand Cinema continues its Tuesday Film Series with screenings of The Silence, the story of 13-year-old Sinikka who vanishes on a hot summer night. Her bicycle is found in the exact place where a girl was killed 23 years ago. The dramatic present forces those involved in the original case to face their past.See it at 1:40 and 6:55 p.m.

3. Sidney Rittenberg toured China during WWII, witnessed the birth of the People's Republic of China, got to know the Republic's founding fathers, and subsequently spent 16 years in solitary confinement. His documentary, The Revolutionary, screens at 3 p.m. in Tacoma Community College's Building 2 Auditorium, followed by a presentation at 4:30.

4. "My father's mother, Abuela Evila, liked to scare us with stories of La Llorona, the weeping woman who roams the canal and steals children away. She would say that if we didn't behave, La Llorona would take us far away where we would never see our parents again.My other grandmother, Abuelita Chinta, would tell us not to be afraid of La Llorona: that if we prayed, God, La Virgen and the saints would protect us from her. Neither of my grandmothers told us that there is something more powerful than La Llorona - a power that takes away parents, not children. It is called the United States." ... So begins the prologue of The Distance Between Us, as Reyna Grande, a 4-year-old with a fractured heart, says goodbye to her mother in Iguala, Mexico. Tonight, author Grande will discusses her immigration memoir, The Distance Between Us, at 7 p.m.inside the Olympic Room at the Tacoma Public Library Main Branch in Downtown Tacoma.

5. On any night of the week at 9 p.m., one can meander past the main bar in Olympia's China Clipper Club Cafe, to the back room where a disco ball, stage, stellar PA system, extensive song list, savvy DJ and lively, often tipsy, crowd scribbles on tiny, colorful paper then waits ... for Clipper Karaoke.

LINK: Tuesday, May 7 arts and entertainment events in the greater Tacoma and Olympia area