Trish Hermanson's Blog: Croutons - Seasoned Bits of Life, page 8

Do We Have a Defective Gene in Our Nation's DNA?

     We’re proud of our American heritage of “don’t tread on me,” but has this attitude become a defective gene in our nation’s DNA today?     
     What I mean is this: Some nations quickly and easily adapted to wearing masks and social distancing because of their ingrained value of community. But not us. The knee-jerk reaction from some has been “nobody’s gonna tell me what to do. Don’t mess with my rights and my convenience.”
     The result? We have less than five percent of the world’s...

Brenda Received Her Calling before Birth

     Brenda received her life’s calling before she was born, but didn’t realize it for years.     
     She was still in the womb when her mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Her father and seven siblings took a vote and decided her mother should end the pregnancy so the cancer could be treated. Brenda’s mother objected. “It’s my child and I won’t do that.”     
     She died five months after Brenda was born.     
     Brenda told me, “My daddy never said my mother’s name. Never sh...

Is America Threatening to Hit Its Expiration Date?

     Is America threatening to hit its expiration date?     
     If we follow the pattern of other great nations and empires, our country will reach its expiration date six years from now when it turns two hundred fifty, according to author Cal Thomas.
     Thomas bases his prediction on the research of Sir John Glubb, an English scholar who traces the rise and fall of empires over three thousand years. Glubb concludes that the average time before empires fall from grandeur is two hundred ...

The Whack Heard 'Round the World

     Danuta Danielsson had nothing but passion and a purse when Neo-Nazis marched through her Swedish town in 1985. She was infuriated because her mother had been imprisoned in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, so she took what she had and acted.     
     The whack of this ordinary woman was seen around the world and was eventually recognized with a statue.     
     Is Danuta the kind of person we should memorialize? I don’t condone violence during protests, not even with a handb...

Oh, the Places You'll Go

I don’t think this is what Dr. Seuss meant when he wrote “Oh, the Places You’ll Go,” but nature called when Duane and I visited Bayou La Batre, Alabama, recently. Recognize that name? It’s where Forrest Gump built his shrimping business.     
     I wanted to explore this fishing village made famous by the Gump movie. Oh, the things we discovered, like a rusted-out Soviet submarine dry-docked next to a drawbridge - stories vary as to why it’s there. We drove by the Perfect Alternative Bapt...

Lincoln Missed the First Juneteenth

     When I visited Denver’s Juneteenth celebration a few years ago to enjoy the hand drumming, I had no clue that the holiday carries significance far beyond honoring African American culture. I learned since then that Juneteenth is a shortened form of June 19, 1865. That was the day, two months after the Civil War had ended, that a Union general entered Texas, the most remote Confederate state, and publicly announced that “all slaves are free.”     
     Juneteenth is America’s second i...

Where's Your Refuge?

     A six-foot-long alligator growled and flashed his teeth at Duane and me from a pond on an Island off the coast of Alabama recently. If he’d attacked, I’d have scrambled up a tree, which is what this magnificent oak tree is known for. Locals call it the Goat Tree, because in the island’s past, wild goats scrambled into it to take shelter from roaming alligators.     
     Don’t we all face “alligators” at one time or another? Health issues that sneak up on us. Bosses that growl at us. ...

Will My Sand Castle Survive?

     As Duane and I strolled along an Alabama beach, leaving our footprints in the sand, we came upon this elaborate castle. Someone expended great energy building this treasure. Yet it will all be swept away with the turn of the tide, just as our footsteps behind us already were receding into the restless sea.     
     I recently received an email that two people I knew in our community died. What a shock. They were glorious castles in life. Now they’re swept away, leaving behind a moat ...

Let Confederate Myths Be 'Gone with the Wind'

     I’ll be honest, the first time I read “Gone with the Wind” as a youth, I was overcome by the pageantry of Southern plantations with their knights and ladies served by contented “darkies.” I was angered by those mean-spirited Yankees who destroyed this idyllic way of life.     
     My myopia grew worse when, as a reporter, I interviewed the woman who played the photographic double for Scarlett O’Hara in the movie version. She stood in for leading lady Vivien Leigh for long-distance sh...

Paradise Has Termites!

     Duane and I are visiting family members on what we thought was an Alabama island paradise with swaying palms and white-sand beaches strewn with shells. But then a pesky cockroach showed up in our flatware drawer. And we dodged biting ants when hiking. And a swarm of termites slipped through a crack under our bedroom window and infested the room. Even after swatting, smashing, and vacuuming I found termite body parts inside my laptop the next day.     
     It’s paradise lost. Humanity...