Blog Archives - trish hermanson

Our Excuse to Go Cuckoo

10/31/2019

Twice each year we have the perfect excuse to go cuckoo.
     To crash our cars. Or injure ourselves on the job. Or cyberloaf at work. Or develop a debilitating headache that lasts for weeks.
  All these incidents increase when we go on or off Daylight Saving Time. That’s because when we reset our digital clocks, our internal clocks go haywire. Adjusting can take weeks because our circadian rhythm - the natural process that regulates the sleeping-waking cycle - doesn’t like to be messed with.
     Daylight Saving Time was adopted during World War I and II to conserve energy. Perhaps we should consider dumping it now to conserve OUR energy. But until we do, I’m trying to trick my circadian clock and avoid falling apart by heeding the advice of experts to:
     * Turn off all electronic screens an hour before I go to bed because they emit blue light, which suppresses melatonin and makes me think it’s still day.
     * Avoid caffeine after lunchtime because it may cause me to lose a full hour of sleep.
     Ease into the time change by adjusting my bedtime by fifteen minutes over several nights.
     Stick with a set sleep schedule once I've eased into the time change.
     *Nap if I need to, but avoid sleeping in the mornings and near bedtime, and never longer than thirty minutes.
  If I do these and I still go cuckoo, well, I guess then it’s my own dumb fault.

Pat Showed Me How to Live and How to Die

10/28/2019

My friend Pat showed me how to live and how to die. I met her in a women’s study group, where Pat impressed me that she was committed to BE INVOLVED all her life. She dressed smartly, completed her assignments, and was always the first to answer questions.
     Then the cancers she’d fought for fifteen years caught up with her. When doctors told her she had three months to live, Pat kept her PRIORITIES. A friend asked her how her life would change. “Why should it? I’m still listening to God and loving people.”
     She kept her PERSPECTIVE. A pharmacist asked Pat how she was doing, and she answered, “Great. I have three months.” The pharmacist gasped and said, “I’m sorry.” Pat replied, “Don’t be. I’m going home.”
     Pat kept her HUMOR. She called the OxyContin she took “oxymoron,” and on an ambulance run, she asked the two good looking paramedics, “Do you have to be handsome to get your job?”
     When Pat was released to be home, we moved our study group to her living room where she mentioned she wanted the song “I’ll Fly Away” sung at her memorial service. After our study finished, we wheeled her to her bedroom and tucked her in.
      The next day Pat suffered a stroke. No more smile dancing on her face. No more quick quips. Paralyzed on one side. But Pat remembered her DESTINY. At her bedside I read the scripture that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Her eyes fluttered open, and she lifted her right arm heavenward and flapped it, ready to fly away home. Four days later she flew away.
     There’s an art to living and dying. Pat taught me both.
***
The song "I'll Fly Away" is here.

Getting to the Bottom of this Outhouse

10/24/2019

How weird to spot this outhouse on a lot next to an upscale home in my Denver metro neighborhood. Why is it there? So like the investigative reporter I once was, I decide to get to the bottom of it.
     I step inside the funky barbecue joint that sits in front of the outhouse. The aroma of smoked meat wafts over me as I ask questions. An employee wipes his hands on his black apron and points to a tattered photo on a tack board, a picture of the building with handwriting scrawled on the back: “Filling station & store on Morrison & Bear Creek Roads 1948.”
     So this was a gas station seven decades ago that eventually morphed into a smokehouse. But nobody bothered to dismantle the outhouse.
     I walk outside and try the door of the weathered wooden outhouse with its decorative half moon. Locked. It’s nothing but a quaint anachronism now, certainly not a place I would choose when I have the option of modern plumbing. But metaphorically, I do find myself still heading to decrepit “outhouses" in my life that aren’t as quaint as this one. Places in my mind where I shut the door and perch on personal grudges. Or hang out with bitter hurts. Or retreat to old regrets. Foul-smelling cesspools I should have stopped exploring long ago.
     Why do I visit these pity pots when I can dismantle them through forgiveness and hope?
  Manure occurs, whether I bring it on myself or others bring it on me, but I don’t have to keep it company. And perhaps, left alone, it will turn into fertilizer.

Will Impeachment Lead to Civil War?

10/17/2019

Will impeachment of the President lead to civil war, as some assert? Not from what I’ve observed as I’ve lived through two previous impeachment proceedings in our nation’s history. When I was a congressional intern in Washington, D.C., I sensed something creepy swirling through the corridors of power in the White House. An air of arrogance, secrecy. Only through an impeachment inquiry did we realize the extent of the abuse of power. Richard Nixon resigned, and as a nation, we pushed a reset button as our government sought to cleanse itself of corruption. And life went on.
   Then when I was a mother patching knees on jeans, impeachment charges came against Bill Clinton. His presidency survived, but the process revealed his lying. Reset button again, and life went on.
Now as I chauffeur grandkids around, I listen to reports about Donald Trump. Once again I’m grateful for this instrument in our Constitution’s toolbox of checks and balances that calls for inquiry, yet at the same time makes it difficult to remove a president from office. Without such a tool, the fever of executive power can burn unabated. Government conducted in the shadows can grow, and what is illegal can become the norm.
     Historian John Dalberg-Acton observed, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” With unchecked power, the temptation toward corruption is great. So let’s honor the wisdom of our forefathers. For the protection of our nation, let’s embrace this inquiry into whether impeachable events have occurred.
     We’ll learn if it’s time for another reset.
     ***
     Photo of me as an intern with U.S. Congressman Mark Andrews.

Toppling the Myth of Columbus

10/12/2019

Pop quiz: who discovered America? It wasn’t Christopher Columbus. He wasn’t even the first European to establish a New World settlement. Viking Leif Erikson did that five centuries before Columbus at about the same time that Polynesian mariners crossed the Pacific, taking South American sweet potatoes back to their islands.
     So who were the first explorers? Ancestors of modern Native Americans who arrived fifteen thousand years ago by crossing the land bridge that then connected Alaska with Siberia.
     We can certainly credit Columbus for opening the way for European exploration, but at what a high price. Against his queen’s orders, he enslaved more than five hundred Natives and shipped them to Spain. He required other Natives to deliver a quota of gold every three months. Those not making the quota had their hands cut off and bled to death. This led to thousands committing suicide because they had no gold mines. Columbus’ governorship became so cruel that at one point he was shipped back to Spain in chains.
     Then why do we feed Columbus’ fable through text books and annual parades? Is it because we prefer a white-faced, Eurocentric myth rather than honoring the true first explorers, whose descendants were eventually forced onto reservations by descendants of the Europeans? Do we prefer to call our land grabs “manifest destiny” - God ordained - rather than admitting they were a travesty?
  Truth matters in our patriotism, and I applaud the boldness of some states and cities in changing Columbus Day into a celebration of our actual first Americans.
     *** Image: Jorge Silva/Reuters/Corbis. Text added.