escapingbabylon.com

From the Star Tribune today: Long Way Back To Normal

Sprawled on his stomach outside a gas station in Golden Valley, Al Hixon had a police officer’s boot planted on his neck and pepper spray shot deep into his nostrils, scorching his lungs. Moments earlier, Hixon had been pouring oil into his blue Jaguar — a quick stop on what was going to be an ordinary Saturday of shuttling his daughters to birthday parties

“I couldn’t breathe and was vomiting mucus and gasping for air,” he said. “I thought I was going to die, and asked: ‘What did I do? What did I do?’”

Police were responding to a report of a robbery at a bank outlet inside a supermarket near the gas station. And Hixon — civic-minded, well-educated and black — had suddenly become a suspect.

“If this is a black thing, you’ve got the wrong black man,” Hixon remembered telling the officers. He said that one of them told him to shut up, adding: “That’s what you all say.” Except the 911 dispatcher had told officers repeatedly that the robber, who took $7, was white.

This happened, in 2005 in Golden Valley, MN. About 20 minutes from St. Paul.

From Newsarama:

“If you tell a kid he’s worthless once, you won’t really cause much damage. You tell a kid he’s worthless every day for six months you’re going to mess with his head.”

I wanted to point out the article linked above because it talks quite well about the crux of the problem with the portrayal of minorities and women in the media. The images are most often the same and most often negative (or subordinate at best). The crux of the problem is that the reverse is true- If you tell a kid once that he or she is valuable, it does only does a little good. If you tell a kid that he or she is valuable every day for six months, then that kid will grow.

We need a more balanced portrayal of all “types” in popular media. What we are telling kids now is that unless you are this particular type, you are always the sidekick, or the comic relief, or less intelligent, etc, and we are telling them this everyday of their childhood lives.

So September, thus far, has been insane to the highest degree, and I’m glad I finally get a little time to breathe. I have to write a newsletter (and maybe post the one I wrote at the end of the summer too) but here are some of the highlights.

1. A New Student Outreach that involved us extending our borders:-
   Thus far we’ve had a barbecue, we’ve partnered with another org (we provided Ice Cream for their root beer), and we’ve had a Video game party. I think in most of these events, InterVarsity students were outnumbered about 3 to 1. I’ve gotten some new insight on Hamline too from the Video game party that may be useful.
2. We are launching three non-”Core Leadership” small group bible studies and a small-group bible study for our student Core Leadership Team .
3. There are some very interesting opportunities for growing our ministry emerging. I’m very excited about them and am looking forward to seeing how they develop.

It’s been really great, and really tiring as I adjust to being the point staff at Hamline for logistics and organizing and the like. I’m still growing into my role, there are some things that went well, and some things that I can see that I may have misjudged. I do love my student leaders though. They have been very resourceful and very willing to stretch themselves, even in those cases where I haven’t provided enough/timely support.

I’m glad for a mini-breather this weekend. I may attempt to purchase (or to arrange for the purchase of) some furniture this weekend. Or I may just hang out in a local coffee shop. I honestly don’t know, and sort of like it that way.

I absolutely love pesto. It’s the easy thing to add to a dish to make it really good. The recipe I’m going to post is incredibly easy, but ends up being very good, and looks impressive (mostly because people tend to be awed by shrimp). The best part of it for folks who are busy/lazy/non-cooks is that you can buy most of the ingredients premade.

It’s also really similar in form to the previous recipe, so without further ado:-

Shrimp and Pesto Pasta

Ingredients (for one serving):

• One cup (or whatever you consider a serving) of pasta (Penne is good, macaroni shells work well too)
• A tablespoon of Pesto (never too much pesto)
• 6 or so regular sized, shelled and deveined shrimp (adjust for size of shrimp)
• Chopped, minced, or pressed garlic
• a touch of olive oil.

Cook the pasta according to the directions on the package. When done, put in a colander and drain. Heat oil in a skillet that is big enough to hold and stir the pasta, and add the garlic. This time, you don’t want to cook the garlic for very long.

Add the shrimp to the skillet. Stir and cook the shrimp until it is turning pink (should take about 30 seconds). Never overcook shrimp!!! Overcooking makes shrimp chewy and tasteless, and is easy to do. Just as the shrimp is beginning to turn pink, add the pasta and the pesto. Cook stirring until the shrimp is pink. Remove from heat and serve.

Note on ingredients. Feel free to buy precooked shrimp, and pesto from a container (or even pesto powder). Or feel free to make the entire thing from scratch. If you are making pesto from scratch, you don’t want to make a recipe that contains Parmesan cheese. I tried that once. It melted badly and didn’t have much flavor. This recipe actually works very well with regular packaged ingredients, which makes it perfect for impressing people with little effort.

If people ask me if I can cook, I usually answer yes – with qualifications. I don’t have a formal repertoire of recipes, but I have a decent instinct in the kitchen for how things combine. So I fake dishes, and I have a couple that end up looking like I know what I am doing, but are really easy, so I figure you all could use them if you are in college or recently post college, or just enjoy easy recipes. I also want some feedback as to what would make the recipes better. So without further ado, I’ll let you know what I had for dinner tonight.

Pasta Dish 1 (I completely improvised this, so I don’t have a name for it)

Ingredients: (please note that I generally don’t measure, so these are my approximations after the fact, adjust to taste)

• 1.5 Cup Pasta (I used whole wheat penne)
• One large tomato (try get this from a friend who has plants, apparently there’s an overabundance of Tomatoes in Minnesota right now, and I guarantee you it will taste better than supermarket tomatoes. Oh and don’t you dare store it in the refrigerator)
• 2 medium cloves of garlic
• Mozzarella cheese (maybe 1/3 cup, I really can’t figure out how much)
• A handful of Spinach
• Olive Oil
• salt to taste

Directions:

Cook pasta as you normally would, stopping just on the firm side of doneness. Drain in a colander. While the pasta is cooking, chop the garlic and tomatoes (keep them separate for now). When the pasta is done, on medium-high heat, saute the garlic in the olive oil (with some salt)until they become a little transparent, or until they start smelling delicious. At this point you want to add the pasta to the pot, and mix it with the garlic. Then do the same for the tomatoes. Mix again a bit, and then add the spinach. You don’t want the spinach to completely die, so this will probably be the shortest amount of mixing (about 5 seconds). Now turn down the heat and make sure your pasta is spread relatively evenly over the bottom of the bottom of the pan. Add mozzarella on top of the pasta, and then cover the pan. Let simmer until the cheese is melted, then turn off the heat and serve. When you’re done, you’ll want to keep the cover on the pan as much as possible so that the cheese stays melted. This should make 2 servings.

*Notes: If you wanted to, you could add some grilled chicken breast to this recipe. And with this recipe in particular, since there is very little in the way of seasoning, the quality of the ingredients makes the quality of the recipe, particularly the tomatoes and the spinach.

Try it and let me know what you think, and how I can make it better (I know some of my readers are pretty good cooks, so share your wisdom)