Dinner Out

On Wednesday evening, I’ll be having dinner with strangers.

I’ll be joining other community members for a meal in a private dining room at a local restaurant for a couple of hours. 

This gathering is one of five under the aegis of the Bellingham Herald, our local daily newspaper, with support from the Whatcom Community Foundation’s Project Neighborly.

The focus is to bring local people together in a neutral setting who had very different “scores” on a PBS (public TV) online quiz about our “bubbles” — the disconnect between “a new upper class” and “the average white American and American culture at large,” according to Charles Murray, a libertarian political scientist and author.

I don’t consider myself a member of “a new upper class,” but I found the online quiz very interesting. You may read more about that quiz and take it yourself here— or try to second-guess my answers…

Each of us will be seated on Wednesday evening with a local resident whose “bubble quiz” score was quite different from our own. The Bellingham Herald folks will provide some “ice-breaker” questions to get people talking, as well as giving us specific topics to discuss during our meal.

We’ll be asked “to record some of our observations and share them with the group as the meal concludes,” and “after the event… go online and tell us more about your conversations and what you thought about the event,” said the Herald’s email.

I’ve been giving considerable thought to how I might best word my strong support of reproductive rights, gun control, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, family leave, climate change, environmental protections, and a host of other potentially contentious topics. I hope that by the end of the evening, my dinner partner and I will have a better understanding of each other’s point of view.

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