hide in your shell

i had a pretty jam packed weekend.  i won't go into all of the details, but i figured that this one aspect of the weekend was worth sharing.

on friday i was invited to a meeting put on by the city of moorhead.  it basically consisted of short-term flood preparation and long-term flood mitigation strategy for the FM area.

it was pretty cool because i got to meet governor dayton, senator franken, and a laundry list of local politicians.  aside from all of the politicians, there was also the head of FEMA V (the district we are in), the head of the state of minneosta's emergency management department, the lead engineers from the army corps of engineers, the head of the national weather service's flood prediction center, and many other science/engineering experts.  the point of the meeting was basically just to give an overview of what the plans are to combat the upcoming 2011 flood.

aside from all of the leaders and officials, i think there were only about 8 of us who were invited.  i'd say 6 were from local tv stations, 1 was from the newspaper, and 1 was some graduate research intern with a sicknasty jew fro.

shortly after the meeting i met up with tday, stiche, and jeff at the OB and we were just chit-chatting.  i told them about this and they really enlightened me as to why i was invited.

me: "i think after me, the next youngest person there was at least 55 years old.  i'm pretty sure that's just why they invited me: to make sure they had the "young people" demographic covered."
stiche: "actually, i'm pretty sure they just wanted the islamic population represented at the meeting."

....and there you have it, folks.  they played the race card on me.

i was there to increase the diversity.  and it totally makes sense.  when i look back at the meeting i can say with complete certainty that i was the only minority in attendance.

thank you, fargo-moorhead metropolitan area.