4B- Thursday, February 7, 2013 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Aj 4B - Thursday, February 7, 2013 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom -a NMI Unremarkable Broken Egg Breakfast food is my jam (pun totally intended): It's easy, cheap, delicious and - for the most part - hard to screw up. But just like any other meal, it's about the experience just as much f as it's about the food. Isn't there something peacefully NATE quaint about WOOD starting a snowy Sat- urday at the breakfast table, wrapped in a soft blanket and peering out at the winter won- derland from your cozy kitchen? Doesn't the plate of hot food and cup of steaming coffee sitting before you warm your heart and soul as much as your stomach? Yeah, well during the school year, ain't nobody got time for that. So instead, we settle for a bitterly icy, arduous schlepp to some noisy joint where they serve us cheap coffee and watery eggs. Welcome to The Broken Egg. Situated on North Main Street just outside of Kerrytown, The Broken Egg is a humble little spot worth checking out when all of the other breakfast places in Ann Arbor have lines hanging out the door - lines of frostbit- ten, hungry people. The food is as mediocre as it comes, and the restaurant, well, it's a sight to behold. The misleadingly classy brick exterior doesn't prepare you for what lies within. Pic- ture someone eating an entire Big Ten-themed gift shop and then proceeding to projectile vomit it all over the walls in an unfathomably random manner. Oh, but it gets better: a life-size baby moose stuffed animal, year-round Christmas lights and garland, fake hardwood tables, functioning garage lights, teal vinyl chairs and - in one corner - cheap reprints of famous-ish paintings (famous enough that I recognize them, but not famous enough that I know the names ... pretty sure one is stolen from Olive Garden). Truthfully, I've seen similar-looking nursing homes. And don't even get me started on the treasure hunt that is trying to find the bathroom. If you've been here before, you know what I mean. But let's not be too judgmen- tal. We haven't even gotten to the food yet. My friends and I order an assortment of breakfast items. Some are surprisingly tasty, and some are ... not. On the whole, most are just OK. The Salute to the Bees French Toast is the day's special, so one of us orders that. There's the bad (burnt candied pecans and a disappointingly small number of banana slices), and the good (the perfect amount of caramel, a thick and gooey cinnamon topping and freshly whipped cream). The San-Francisco Chocolate Chip Pancakes are generously filled with chocolate chips but are tough, dry and altogether fla- vorless. Asa special treat, straw- berries of questionable freshness are also plopped on top. Side note: Am I missing something, or is there absolutely no reason these pancakes are named after San Francisco? The first real hit of the meal is my Bread Pudding French Toast. Made with thick, Texas-style slices of raisin bread soaked in a rich, cinnamon-scented egg and cream batter and fried on ashot, buttered griddle, this toast is not merely palatable, but a real treat to eat. It is soft and supple in the middle, crispy and browned on the edges, just the right amount of sweet and surprisingly, pleas- antly tart from the raspber- ries on top. Though it could be improved with a few toasted, slivered almonds dashed atop the dollops of whipped cream, I'm still a fan. About the breakfast meat - which is, for me, an essential component of any hearty break- fast out - I'm utterly blas. My favorite - breakfast sausage patties - are not even offered; the links are absolutely standard, though these truly are difficult to make "standouts," and the bacon is nothingbut limp and chewy. None of it is good nor is it exceptionally bad, and I'm definitely still bitter about hav- ing to be bereaved over sausage patties. Last on the list are the omelettes, which appease but don't "wow" me. I would say they're pretty comparable to something you or I could make at home. The combinations of ingredients for the specialty omelettes range from exotic to expected, coming together to form a taste falling more toward the latter. But still, a four-egg omelette, a side of hash browns and four slices of toast for just over $8 really isn't bad. The omelettes are fine, but where are the sausage patties?! So let's recap: The omelettes are decent and also a respect- ably good value; the French toast is truly delicious, and everything else is pretty much your typical small-town-diner, breakfast-food fare. So why make the arduous schlepp over? Well, I've heard the dry toast is pretty good if that's all you're in need of some Sunday mornings (or afternoons - I don't judge). But besides that, how about when those strange family members of yours come in for football games and expect you to recom- mend a place for brunch? I can think of a few people for whom The Broken Egg would be just the ticket. You know, the ones too stingy to eat at Cafe Zola, too lazy to drive to the Northside Grill and too impatient to wait at Angelo's. Your Aunt Judy, the hoarder, will feel right at home. That senile grandma who's lost her taste buds? I'm sure she'll love it. Just don't expect her to be able to find the bathroom. Wood is eating all of the sausage patties. To join, e-mail nisaacw@umich.edu I 4 MARLENE LACASSE/Daily The Museum of Natural History will feature the traveling exhibit "RACE: Are We So Different?" from Feb. 9 through May 27. RACE From Page 1B "We'll be trying to do some- thing around the Fab Five bas- ketball team," said Gordon. "The Fab Five is an important part of Michigan athletics history, and we'll look at that conversation intersected with issues of race and class." The student steering commit- tee hopes to invite a member of the Fab Five to come to campus to speak and to host a discussion about the evolving nature of race and class in athletics. Other events throughout the semester will include a LGBT community summit called Color of Change, which plans to delve into the experiences of LGBT and people of color. Additionally, the student steering committee plans to create panels, discussions and lectures that feature both people of color as well as other profes- sionals who have studied race or worked in racial issues. Outside of the steering com- mittee, the Understanding Race Project also works to implement community events that center around the theme semester. These events include monthly teen sci- ence cafes revolving around race and topics such as public health and law, hosted at the Museum of Natural History. Speakers are invited to debate such issues at these monthly conversations, fol- lowed by an audience discussion. Furthermore, the Understanding Race Project has implemented a vast array of film screenings, pan- els and discussions across local venues such as Zingerman's, the Hatcher Graduate Library and the Matthaei Botanical Gardens throughout the term. The Museum of Natural His- tory also created a supplement to the "RACE" exhibit within the museum itself. Titled "Race in this Place: A Community Con- versation," the additional exhibit attempts to highlight race in four thematic areas: education, health, the legal system and immigration. In each of the four areas, the exhibit showcases local community organizations that delve into conversations about race in those areas. "Race in this Place" includes many joint projects with community orga- nizations, including the Neutral Zone's Students Educating Each other about Diversity (SEED) program. A metaphor for identity Danny Brown, one of the co- directors of SEED at the Neutral Zone, described the mission of the program. "It's not just talking at kids about diversity," he said. "But it's bringing their life experiences into a room together and cel- ebrating difference and discov- ering how their own lives fit into larger context in society in a way that's entwined." Brown helps lead the program of Ann Arbor high-school stu- dents, who are trained to facili- tate conversations about youth with other youth in the commu- nity. "(The youth) have intense dia- logues on race that focus on, not only people understanding their own race, but how their race fits in a system and what that means in their position in society," Brown said. Within the local museum exhibit, SEED teens were also featured in a video alongside community members, in which all discussed race relations with- in the Ann Arbor community. The exhibit also features a unique art project created by the SEED youth. Lined behind a glass case, goggles were splashed with various Sharpie colors - featuring bubble letters, drawings of hockey sticks and other graphic designs. "We ask (teens) to think about their race, gender, social class and other factors, and we ask them after reflecting that to transpose some of those elements of them- selves onto these goggles," Brown said. The teens then wore the gog- gles at a weekend retreat, and looked at each other through their goggle creations - examining one another through their construct- ed identities. "It becomes a metaphor for identity - identity being a frame for how you make decisions, build relationships," Brown explained. "It's also a metaphor for how peo- ple perceive you, because while you're looking at someone's gog- gles, other people are also looking at you and making assumptions about your goggles." In this way, students are able to view their identities through interaction about race with others. Alex Kime, a senior at Skyline High School, is a SEED student facilitator. He believes working in the SEED program alongside the theme semester has helped him examine his own race in relation to others. "As a white person, it's my privi- lege to not be as affected by race as someone who's a person of color," Kime said. "You have to always think about your own privilege, and it's always an act of unlearn- ing. SEED helped me look at that." Student interactions with race are happening within classrooms at the University as well. Accord- ing to Harris, there are approxi- mately 130 theme semester courses currently being offered. For Evelyn Alsultany, associate professor of American Culture, these classes offer crucial dia- logue about race that need to hap- pen on college campuses in order to make others reflect upon the changingnature of race. "Through the theme semester, we want to shed light on the dif- ferent ways of understanding this as part of a larger history of race and racism that we are still in the process of overcoming," Alsul- tany said. "If we ignore it or deny it then how (are we supposed) to improve it?" A legacy ofunderstanding "As students at this University who are going to be future leaders and citizens, (it's important) to be able to leave here more in tune to how race manifests today. It might manifest differently," Alsultany said. "Today, race doesn't look like slavery. Race doesn't look like segregation. Race changes over time." Alsultany is teachingtwo theme semester courses: AMCULT 218, "22 Ways to Think About Race," and AMCULT 235: "From Harems to Terrorists: Representing the Middle East in Hollywood Cin- ema." At noon on Monday in her "22 Ways to Think About Race" class, 70 students packed into the Mason Hall room. Some chatted ami- ably; some yanked out sheets of notebook paper from bags; others nursed cans of fruit juice. Near the front of the room sat Anthropology Prof. Milford Wolpoff, the guest speaker for the day. Wolpoff addtessed the students with a fierce and raspy voice while presenting a PowerPoint on "The Science of Race & Racism." He discussed how race is linked to human evolution, showing slides detailing a history of race in sci- entific study. Peering at the class, he emphasized in a booming voice that human evolution and race are connected. Next, he detailed the importance of diversity in race. "Race invariably also means racial prejudice. And we're never going to get rid of prejudice ... but we can and must learn how to cel- ebrate our diversity," he said. "As an evolutionist, I can say if we all became the same, evolutionists would have nothing to work with. What we need to be successful is variety." Part of the larger signature "22 Ways" courses that accompany each theme semester, "22 Ways to Think About Race" brings in guest speakers from various disciplines - including linguistics, commu- nications and medicine - to high- light the ways in which race exists across a wide spectrum of fields. Alsultany hopes that through teaching theme semester courses, she can illuminate the pressing necessity of understanding race in our communities. "I think it's important to look at where we are and not deny the progress, but not assume that we are now an equal world," she said. For many, the ultimate goal of the theme semester is that its leg- acy will stretch beyond this semes- ter. "I really hope that we can take this model of how to talk about a very complicated subject of race, (and apply it to) how can we become less violent as a society; how we can talk about economic disparity; how we can talk about gender in an open way," Provenz- ano said. Harris agreed, noting the change already occurring on cam- pus, including the University's documentation of faculty research on race; the training sessions on race discussions for teachers and colleagues; and positive reactions to teacher facilitation in race dia- logue. "A stronger community of peo- ple committed to racial justice is already forming," Harris said. My Unions are. A I DO YOU WANT TO REPORT ABOUT EXCITING EVENTS HAPPENING IN THE COMMUNITY? APPLY TO BE A COMMUNITY CULTURE WRITER FOR DAILY ARTS! E-mail arts@michigandaily.com to request an application! 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