1. We had another snow storm blow in this morning. I'm not much for knowing the depth of the snow, but I do know I deeply appreciated Everett coming over with his snow blower and clearing our sidewalks.
The Deke and I stayed indoors and listened to the last couple of episodes of Slow Burn. Now that the series on Watergate is done, the makers of Slow Burn have a second season in the works. It will examine the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
We decided to listen to another podcast's episode. I've been wanting to listen to a recent episode of Reveal. It's created by the Center for Investigative Reporting and Public Radio Exchange. Reveal plays on WAMU, in Washington, D. C., on Sunday afternoons. When we lived in Greenbelt, on several occasions, I was out doing this or that on Sunday afternoons and listened to Reveal.
Today, I knew that a recent episode of Reveal, "Kept Out", investigated banking and lending practices that deny conventional mortgage loans to people of color at a much higher rate than their white counterparts. The episode explores that even though legislation passed forty years ago to eliminate government-sponsored housing discrimination or redlining, a new form of redlining exists in cities across the U.S.A.
My interest in what this episode uncovered goes all the way back to my studies at Whitworth College over forty years ago. It helped me understand systemic or institutional racism better and furthered my understanding of what theologian Reinhold Niebuhr identified as corporate sin. Niebuhr, by the way, wasn't referring specifically to business corporations, but to the way we as members of communities, states, institutions, or any other group (labor unions, police forces, colleges and universities, churches, countries, etc.), including business corporations, participate in sin that is collective.
By the way, Reinhold Niebuhr also wrote the Serenity Prayer!
I have posted links related to these podcasts at the bottom of this post.
2. After taking a day off from having a stock bubbling away in the crock pot, today I emptied one of the gallon ziplock bags of crab shells I brought home from last week's Elks Crab Feed into the crockpot along with a coarsely chopped onion, some vegetable scraps, and a couple of bay leaves. By this evening, our kitchen and living room smelled sweet, like a fishmonger's shop, and I've begun to imagine just what kind of soup, stew, or chowder I might make later this week with this most promising stock.
3. The Deke and I drove out to Hunt Gulch and parked the Sube in the driveway of friends of Sue and Cleve. Sue picked us up and drove us up the hill they live on and the four of us sat down to a delicious dinner of salad, ham and bean soup, lasagne, and a butter crumb-topped berry pie-like French cake for dessert. I didn't catch the name of it. We had a lot of fun talking about all kinds of things, ranging from elementary education to life in the Silver Valley to music to things related to France, West Africa, and the French language. The four of us are interested in a wide range of things and it was fun getting a lot of those things out and talk about them.
If you'd like to listen to the last three episodes of Slow Burn, here are the links:
"Saturday Night" is here.
"Extra, Extra" is here.
"Going South" is here.
You can read about and listen to the episode, "Kept Out" on Reveal, here.
You can also read some follow up stories to "Kept Out" by clicking here.
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