Blog Archives - trish hermanson

Garbanzos and Other Gifts

1/18/2022

How my tastes have changed.
     I was a college student the first time I tried garbanzos. Yuck! A stranger named Marge, who was the age of my mother, served them on a salad to a group of us students she had invited to her home. Didn’t she realize we’d prefer pizza?
     Another person I didn’t appreciate during my college days was Olive, a woman the age of my grandmother. She lived in my home town and wrote notes to those of us studying away from home. Sweet, but I wasn’t interested in what she had to say.
     Then there was Stan, a guy I met as a college student. He was quiet, never married, worked for the same company for decades, retired, then died. But he proved to be a steadfast friend to those around him.
     Over the decades my appreciation of the ways of Marge, Olive, and Stan has grown. Their soft footprints across life’s stage went mostly unnoticed, yet they left behind gifts - hospitality, encouragement, and friendship. These days I want to follow in their steps and leave simple gifts behind, too.
     And sometimes I serve garbanzos on salads.

One Problem with Believing the Earth is Flat

1/4/2022

The problem with believing the Earth is flat is that you can’t in good conscience enjoy a snow globe, as my granddaughter Eve and I do. Why? Because the globe is round.
     I met a Flat Earther who seemed normal otherwise, but could I reason with him? Or for that matter, could I reason with someone who says that coronavirus is a hoax? Or that climate change doesn’t exist? Or who insists all vaccines are bad?
     “Of course, it is next to impossible to get someone to change their beliefs against their will,” says Lee McIntyre, author of “How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason.”
     “Remember that when you challenge someone’s beliefs, you are challenging their identity,” he says, because they hold their convictions “to resolve their fear, or to feel less alienated, or to embrace a coveted social identity.”
     McIntyre says deniers won’t change their positions based on “new facts or even a new way of thinking.” They are “not just ignorant of the facts but also of the scientific way of thinking. To remedy this, we must do more than present deniers with the evidence; we must get them to rethink how they are reasoning about the evidence.” This means not confronting, but building trust by asking questions, he says.
  McIntyre’s thoughts make me wonder whether I’m willing in this New Year to engage with people who believe differently than I do. Also, whether I’m deluding myself in some way in what I believe.