The Race Files: Thanksgiving: A time to be thankful and a time to be mindful

The Race Files are brought to you by Hamline’s 2004 delegation to the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, the NCORE Network. Our goal is to engage, inspire, enrage, and enlighten the Hamline community about racism and privilege. We hope that this series of articles will challenge the community and provide them with tools to confront the realities of our racialized world.

Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate with family and to be thankful. But can we really be thankful for our turkey and our company without also being mindful that someone else is sleeping outside with an empty stomach?

Over 2,000 people in Minnesota will be without homes or warm meals on Thanksgiving Day.

St. Paul could be first in the world to use Personal Rapid Transit

No, Personal Rapid Transit didn’t take place in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Despite the
“personal” part of its name, this new mode of transportation has nothing to do with a person’s ability to blink twice and catapult him or herself into a new dimension.

Instead, Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) is a newly developed, never-before-used public mode of transportation that some people are pushing to appear first in St. Paul.

That’s first out of anywhere in the world.

Robert Jacobs, an independent marketing consultant, wants PRT functioning in the area as soon as possible.

Letter to the Editor: PC? Ha. Don’t make me laugh.

The other day I was watching the movie Saved and I saw Macaulay Culkin in the wheelchair and almost laughed. Not because it was Macaulay Culkin but because there was someone in the wheelchair.
I know that’s bad, but it was for a reason. His character’s sister called him “differently abled.” That was funny.

Of course I then directed my thoughts to some other politically correct terms that we all know. “Mentally handicapped,” “physically challenged” and a few others. Those terms have sure got their reasons to exist, but there are others as well.

Eminem used to be fun. Now he just disappoints fans

Thanks to popular demand - and ability of fans like me to pirate music - Eminem’s newest album’s release date was bumped up four days, from Nov. 16 to Nov. 12.

I rushed to my local Target store to grab a copy of Encore (as well as a bag of Fun Size 100 Grand bars) with high hopes.

I studied the CD booklet all the way back to my dorm room. As my mom chauffeured me in her luxury
Plymouth Breeze, I tried to ignore the strange gut feeling I got while flipping through the pages of lyrics filled with rather graphic photographs.

Sports Briefs

Aaron Swanum
Sports Editor

Swim teams continue strong start with wins over St. Kate’s, St. Mary’s

Hamline’s swimming and diving teams continued their strong performances with recent wins over St. Kate’s and St. Mary’s.

The Hamline women’s team took eight of 13 races to defeat St. Kate’s by a score of 130-113.
Seniors Thyra Jagger and Adrianne Walls each won two events for Hamline. Jagger dominated the diving events, taking the one-meter d and three-meter dives with respective scores of 185.7 and 210.3.
Walls swept the distance freestyle events, winning the 1000-yard freestyle in 11:33.83 and the 500-yard freestyle in 5:39.3.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Some fun facts about Thanksgiving:

1) Thanksgiving wasn’t declared a national annual holiday until 1863, when Abraham Lincoln instated the custom.

2) Canadians also celebrate Thanksgiving, but much earlierčon the second Monday in October.

3) America exercises no restraint on Turkey Day -according to the Calorie Control Council, Americans may consume as many as 4,500 calories on this holiday, about twice the general recommended amount.

4) In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to move the holiday to the third Thursday in November to extend the shopping season for stores, but too many people were upset by that idea, so Congress made the fourth Thursday of the month the official day.