Trish Hermanson's Blog: Croutons - Seasoned Bits of Life, page 15

Can I Get a Bit of Leonardo daVinci's Genius?

     Can I get a bit of Leonardo da Vinci’s genius?     
     The guy was centuries ahead of his time with his inventions of flying machines, submarines, scuba suits, machine guns, and military tanks. And his paintings are a standard by which art is still evaluated. Could I have just a part of his brain?     
     I can! We all can!     
     At an exhibit commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of Leonardo’s death, I learned we can gain a piece of his brilliance by practicing unquenc...

My Kind of Cookbook

     I love writing so much I’ve sometimes forgotten to eat. If it weren’t for my husband, a great chef, I’d turn into a scrap of dried leather. (He thinks I compliment his culinary skills only to keep him in the kitchen, but I relish every meal he creates - especially because I’m not making it.)     
     It’s not that I’m a bad cook. It’s that I’m distracted. My mother used to concoct a twenty-four-hour salad - prepare it a day in advance so the flavors meld. I never start it until it’...

All I Ever Needed to Know about Mom Revealed in a Moment

     It happened in a moment, but the memory has stayed with me for a lifetime.     
     I was about twelve, waiting with my mother in a packed auditorium lobby for the doors to open for a concert. In the crowd, a woman on crutches lost her balance and clattered down the stairs. Everyone froze in silence, embarrassed as she struggled to reach her crutches and hoist herself up.     
     And no one did anything.     
     Then Mom broke from the throng and stepped forward. “Are you okay?”...

Mending Our Brokenness with Rivers of Gold

     Ever since I met artist Makoto Fujimura I’ve been longing for “rivers of gold" to fill the cracks in my life that formed when my six-year-old granddaughter Lydia died. She left us a year ago after a mysterious seizure, and I still ache as I recall her dimpled grin.
     Fujimura, a Japanese-American, showed me this Fifteenth Century bowl that was used during tea ceremonies. It was shattered, possibly from an earthquake, but family members held onto the fragments for centuries “to be...

Take the Social Media Pledge?

     More than 100 years ago, folks in my Colorado community with their new-fangled telephones forgot that words matter, wherever they’re spoken. Others gently reminded them about the Golden Rule - to treat others as you want them to treat you.      
     This concept dates back thousands of years and can be found in nearly every ethical tradition. It hasn’t gone out of style either. One hundred forty-three leaders representing the world’s major faiths endorsed the Golden Rule in the 199...

You Talk Like a Sumerian?

     Do you talk like a Sumerian?
     That ancient civilization developed humanity's first written communication through pictograms. But our ancestors soon discovered that pictures weren’t enough to get their point across, so they created a code for words - the alphabet. With that, communication spread onto clay tablets, papyrus, and paper, then exploded through printing presses, typewriters, copy machines, and emails.     
     But everything was TL;DR (too long; didn’t read), so dialog...

What My Turtle Taught Me

     Every spring my turtle Ned was a walking billboard about a mystery much bigger than that little guy in a shell. In the fall he’d disappear in the backyard, and throughout the snowy Colorado winter, I’d wonder, “Is Ned dead?”     
     Then when robins returned, Ned would struggle out from the vinca vines, his head covered with clods of dirt, like someone escaping the grave. This reminded me of something more remarkable than hibernation - the death, entombment, and coming back to lif...

What Happened to the Boy in the Window?

     This week our Columbine community gathered to remember the massacre twenty years ago at our local high school where two students killed thirteen and injured twenty-four. I recalled our shock at that time as we wondered, “How can these traumatized students go forward in life?”     
     Take, for instance, Patrick Ireland, “the boy in the window.” He’d been shot twice in the head and once in the foot and lay bleeding to death for nearly three hours. With one side paralyzed, he crawle...

What Gloria Steinem and I Have in Common

     When I met Gloria Steinem years ago, she was the well-known leader of the radical feminist movement and I was far from radical - just an unknown reporter assigned to cover a speech of hers. I agreed with her that women ought to receive equal opportunity and pay (I could barely make my rent and buy food). But beyond that, our beliefs diverged. She didn’t wanted to marry; I did. She sought to elevate women through careers; I gave up my career to raise three daughters.     
     Now I...

Learning to Walk (Again)

     My grandson recently learned to walk for the first time, and I learned to walk for the second time.     
     For him, he’d grown so adept at crawling that the awkwardness of walking didn’t seem worth it. For me, I’d grown adept at dragging a heavy boot around after I broke my foot. But as my foot healed, the thought of trying to walk again was scary. Would I have the strength? The balance? The answer was “no.”     
     For both of us, walking meant giving up what we’d grown accusto...