Happy Vietnam Veterans Day

By Dan Barber

A young me on the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) in Vietnam.

During my career with the U.S. Navy, spread out with 20 years on active duty and as a civilian employee for another 20, I attended countless military celebrations marking one thing or another, for many of these events I was there to provide photographic or journalistic coverage.

I have lost count how many of these events that I’ve attended over the years, but I think the most memorable event that I covered was in fact my last, a Hospital Corps Birthday Ball, not long before I retired.

The guest speaker, at this event, was retired Marine Sergeant Major Ray Wilburn, a veteran of World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. The Sergeant Major was 92 years young and still ramrod straight and fit and trim in his Marine Corps dress uniform. He was asked to be the fill-in guest speaker at this Hospital Corps Ball because the individual originally booked was unable to attend because his flight was cancelled back east due to bad weather.  The Sergeant Major rose from his seat, next to his wife Erma, climbed the stairs to the stage without assistance or even the use of a hand rail. He stood tall at the edge of the stage and delivered a 30 minute talk without a podium, notes or microphone to a hushed crowd. He brought tears and laughter through telling the story about his military and life experiences. 

Many of the young Sailors and Marines in the room knew what this man was talking about because they know of the camaraderie they feel with their fellow brothers and sisters in uniform, and many of them have also witnessed and shared first-hand the devastation that war can bring.

These military events are held to celebrate the milestones of the military organizations that the attendees belong to. Mostly the young people attend so they can show the pride they have of serving their country in uniform.

As I looked around the room at the many young people, I noticed many were still in or barely out of their teen years, and also many of them already had a chest full of medals that were awarded to them for actions they took on the battlefield.

As I write this, I wonder how many Vietnam Veterans are celebrating their day… today March 30, 2014 is actually March 29, 2014 in Vietnam. I have always had mixed emotions about being a Vietnam era veteran. I’m proud of my service, but I don’t feel that anyone owes me anything for that service except for what I’ve actually earned for serving on active duty for 20 years… my military pension, health care for my wife and I and shopping privileges at military exchanges and commissaries.

A few years ago I noticed that my community established a “Welcome Home” party for Vietnam Veterans. I’ve never attended this event because I was already welcomed home from Vietnam by my family… I never felt that I was a victim of Vietnam except maybe for the time I was beaten unconscious by someone who disliked what I represented, a proud young sailor on liberty wearing his uniform, or someone with money in his pocket. In either case the perpetrator’s effort was hollow for them because I had not yet been to Vietnam and if they were looking to rob me I had no money because at the time I was paid but a little more then $100 per month for my service. I never learned the identity of the perpetrator of my beating or what their motive was, and never cared.

I have never set foot on a battlefield, but over the years I’ve seen many young people who have. Years ago I worked with a Sailor who served in Vietnam with the Army. He decided to reenlist in the Navy. In hindsight, this Sailor suffered from severe and untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Which is better understood, and better treated today. Back during Vietnam those returning home from war with this disorder were many times treated like outcasts or criminals because of their “bad” behaviors. My co-worker was very polite and respectful to everyone; he never got into trouble or tried to hurt anyone. The reaction this Sailor had when he heard a loud noise was extreme fright… I don’t know what ever came of this Sailor, but I hope that he received help for his crippling wounds of the mind.

I don’t consider myself as a veteran from any era… I’m just a veteran.

The Age of Enlightenment

By Dan Barber

One of our ancestors discovered that they could use a rock as a tool to crack open nuts and smush up fruit, vegetables and berries for the toothless old clan grandpa… the birth of the stone-age.  

Then someone got tired of just eating veggies, nuts and berries so they added meat to the diet. If anthropologists have it right, this act caused our ancestors brains to grow a bit larger... life once again got a little easier. A new method of food preparation probably happened when someone accidentally dropped the leg of Ground Sloth into the boiling hot springs outside the cave. By the time they found a stick big enough to scoop it out of the scalding water the meat was cooked, and it tasted better after soaking in the hot springs.  

It was then discovered that you could tie the rock tool to the big stick to give a little more power in cracking bigger nuts, and cooked sloth bones to retrieve the high protein marrow. The larger brain led our ancestors to invent even better tools with the sloth bone splinters, and according to the experts in evolution, our ancestors were now able to speak, and started thinking in the abstract… life again got a little easier.  

Then we started speeding along the evolutionary path through the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Middle Ages, Dark Ages etc.

Presently we are in the Silicon Age… I don’t know if life got any easier, but definitely more complicated.  In my humble opinion, life is ever evolving in many different ways in every second of every minute of every hour of every day. 

Some might define their existence by the quality of their life… they measure their meaningful being with skills developed to obtain money or material things. Others search out the spiritual or mystical meaning of their birth by meditating or attending church or participating in retreats in the desert for only $800 per person per day, where they can wallow in a mud puddle with other naked people… or they might even pay a motivator thousands of dollars to guide them to a better understanding of themselves… hopefully without dying in a sweat lodge in an Arizona desert.  I might even start my own motivating business if I could figure out a way to get people to pay me to chase them around the block with a stick to motivate them into doing something. I would have to get a golf cart or scooter because I'm too old to run anymore...Also, I would need a business license so I wouldn’t get arrested for assault.

Uncountable generations of people have hoped for something better than just life since our first ancestors climbed out of the mire of ignorance or the community mud puddle and started to think perhaps there was something better than just living.

Maybe what we have is the best there is… Didn’t God create the heavens and earth?  Maybe when we die we get to replay our earthly experiences over and over again in the realm that God created.  Look around you, what you see could be your heaven… or your hell.  We do have free will to live our lives as we wish -- good or bad. Maybe we should strive to live everyday as if it were the last… sooner or later it will be.  What will your inventory of life experience hold?

      

Those with inflated egos might believe that their life has to have a mystical meaning. They probably can’t or won’t grasp the thought that their parents just had sex, which resulted in conception.  Most of us, me included, just don’t want to dwell upon that disturbing scenario.

My advice…when your children, who believe they are the reason for the universe, grow up, and they try to blame their neurosis on you, just tell them “Your problems are due to a genetic disorder that you inherited from your birth parents”… then walk away.  That bit of information will probably keep them occupied for a while, and they might leave you alone, if that’s what you wish.

      

Even the government is increasingly trying to improve our quality of life or maybe even attempting to define life by telling us what we should or shouldn’t do… from who we should fall in love with (now resolved for the most part except for the legalization of polygamy... the next civil rights case) to what we should eat or drink (still being debated).  

If we were born sometime before 1950, the chances are, our mothers drank and smoked while pregnant with us… most of us turned out OK.  Some of us even went on to become productive citizens who put man on the moon, and discovered that mothers who smoke and drink during pregnancy are potentially harming their unborn children.

We improved society by inventing cable TV so the children of the future wouldn’t be deprived of unlimited cartoon channels like we were… we invented computers and video games so children also wouldn’t have to use their own imaginations for entertainment purposes.   We even created fruity breakfast cereal without even having to use one bit of fruit! We invented fast-food and quickie-lube places for our fast-paced lives and instant gratification.  We even remodeled the old movie palace with the seats covered in plush red velvet into the multi-plex theater complex today, where several shoe-boxed shaped black boxes offer several of Hollywood’s latest releases and endless sequels of past hits, instead of the regular double feature.

     

We cemented in the dangerous creeks running through our neighborhoods and turned them into storm drains to prevent flooding and to keep children from drowning in their favorite swimming hole… they were becoming way too polluted for fishing or swimming anyway.  In their places we built huge water parks with death defying slides with young lifeguards, earning the minimum wage, hanging around talking to other young men or women and waiting to save a child from drowning… all of this for only a nominal entrance fee.

      

After Vietnam we eliminated the draft so now there is no need for junior to move out of Mom and Dad’s comfortable home and seek a deferment from the draft by going to college… after all there are over 100 cable channels to choose from and a multitude of video games to play, and thanks to our lawmakers junior can even stay on his parents health insurance policy until he reaches 26-years of age. Jobs are also plentiful, if junior attended a four-year college. There are the water park life guard openings, lube technicians, or at one of the fast food places on darn near any corner of any city in the country, of course the minimum of a Bachelors degree would be required to compete for those entry level jobs.  Life’s not so bad, is it?

       

Many find life so enjoyable they want to extend it for as long as possible by only eating a healthy diet of uncooked fresh vegetables, fruit, berries and nuts smushed up by an electric food processor into a smoothie, "no meat please!" Also no teeth needed to enjoy this modern meal... in addition it can be consumed at a clothing optional restaurant somewhere in the Bay Area of California.

I'm hoping Heaven will be reruns of good times... I'll met ya'all at the old swimming hole under the Azua Avenue Bridge, or the California Oak Tree grove on Chaulk Hill.

Every One makes a difference to someone

By Dan Barber

Have you ever wondered, what’s your purpose in life?

Be a role model.

My purpose has been defined by my wife, children and grandchildren. Part of that purpose is to love them and to try and set an example for my children and grandchildren to follow as my parents and grandparents did for me. I witnessed my maternal grandfather, Norval Hersh, perform countless unconditional kindnesses to others over the years. He spent most evenings writing letters to everyone he knew, keeping them posted on the events of his life. When I was in the Navy I could look forward to getting at least 3 letters a week from grandpa.

My maternal grandmother, Orby Hersh, who would have turned 111 years old yesterday if she was still alive, started showing me how to be self-sufficient when I was but 5-years old by teaching me to cook. I loved helping her in the kitchen, because she was an exceptional cook. Her pantry was always full of preserved fruits and vegetables. I don’t believe that she ever bought any processed foods at the grocery store. On some weekends my grandfather would drive us out to the country in Nebraska where we would find farmers selling seasonal fruits and vegetables. My grandparents would buy a bushel full of whatever was in season for my grandmother to preserve. Sunday dinners at my grandparents house, was always a very special treat. Happy birthday grandma!

I remember my Dad getting up early every morning during his working life for the commute to his job. I never heard him complain, he always seemed to be cheerful and happy to have a job. My Mom was mostly a stay-at-home Mom until us kids were old enough to take care of ourselves then she started working at a Nursing home as a cook. She too seemed to enjoy what she was doing.

My purpose today was to take two of my youngest grandsons to Knott Sky Park, just a couple of blocks from our home here in Twentynine Palms, Calif., so they could wrestle in the grass and run off some energy. We stayed there until they begged me to take them home…it seemed that it was video-game time. 

Another purpose for me today was to be a driving instructor for a teenaged granddaughter...Then it was my purpose to unwind from an exciting white-knuckle morning by sitting by my pool while enjoying a beer and the spring weather for the rest of the afternoon.

Whenever you get the feeling that no one cares… your loved ones do, because your love for them has an effect, even if it is just a “Butterfly Effect” which in time can grow wings and give you immortality through their memories.

Take notice of people around you, be a role model or mentor in your family, work and neighborhood. Always be ready to perform unconditional kindnesses to others.

Your purpose in life is to make a difference in someone else’s life.

The Cause and effect of human history

By Dan Barber

When I look in the mirror I see that my nose and ears have grown as I’ve aged. It would make me feel better about it if my sense of smell increased rather than decreased and my sense of hearing increased rather than decreased, but no… when did cause and effect go out the window on that evolutionary question?

Maybe if we humans survive on earth as long as the dinosaurs roamed the globe our kind will improve through the evolutionary process… if our growing intellect, intelligent aliens from another world or an asteroid doesn’t destroy our planet first. If that happens then our colonists on Mars will start a heated debate on whether it was God, humans, aliens, or an asteroid that destroyed earth.

If the anthropologists have it right our ancestors climbed out of the mire of ignorance about 200,000 years ago to start the climb on to the evolutionary family tree. From what I’ve read, our forefathers/mothers only started putting down the record of human activity when a clan member decided to spruce up the cave with paintings of animals and other creatures. This activity may have been brought on by the hope of improving the hunt or from ingesting some hallucinogenic berries. Then about 6,000 years ago someone figured out that the doodling they were doing in the mud with a stick could be letters, language and symbols they could use to express an idea to other members of their tribe just by drying out the mud doodles to show them. I personally believe that all of these human activities have caused science and religion to butt heads.

Some orthodox theologians believe God created humans about 6,000 years ago. Maybe they confuse the beginning of human life with the advent of the written record of the human experience. If this is the case it would be much easier for the orthodox to make their case for divine creation by simply saying “metaphorically speaking…” before making any bold statement about what God created. If those believers try to argue their religious points as fact with scientists then they will lose every time. On the other hand when some scientists state that all knowledge is gained through observation or through the use of laws of nature, laws of physics or through experiments demonstrating cause and effect. I would ask them who created the laws of nature, who created the laws of physics and the big one, “what or who created the big bang?”

A couple of years ago I had a conversation about faith with one of my granddaughters when she asked me what I believed… Did I believe in God or Science?

I explained, and wrote in a blog afterwards, that I believed in both because I feel that science cannot exist without God, and God can’t exist without science. 

At about that same time a news story was broadcast about some physicists working on trying to recreate the Higgs Boson also known as the “God particle”… or the spark that science claims created the universe in a “Big Bang.”  The scientists stated that they discovered the particle… but couldn’t really see the spark because it was rediscovered in a mathematical formula… we just had to believe they were right, in other words we just had to have “faith” that their discovery was real.

On one of my favorite TV programs, one of the physicist characters told his physicist roommate that his mathematical formula only worked because he had to create several other universes to make it work.

“Faith,” a belief in something, or maybe the hope, that something exists without physical proof. I was told in my Sunday school class when I was a child that no one could see God, but we know that He exists, we just have to accept Him and have faith.

I have a conversation with God everyday. I thank Him for allowing me to wake each morning so I can have another day of doing what I really enjoy.  I thank Him for the beauty of the Universe that he created from the wonderful “God Particle.”  I thank Him for creating this great planet for all his earthly creatures to live on. I thank Him for the conversations that I can have with my grandchildren who have the faith that their grandfather is mostly right in what he says. I thank God for the laughter of my grandchildren when they laugh at my stories and jokes. I thank God that I can still learn from the wisdom of my family and friends.

Yes, I believe that God and Science are inseparable… without one it is not possible to have the other. And yes, metaphorically speaking, God has a sense of humor; why else would He give old people bigger noses and ears without the added benefit of better smell and sound?

Where have all the memories gone?

Dan Barber

I often hear people exclaim, “Back in the good old days…” I want to ask, what was so good about them? Back in the day…I recall that I was extremely self-conscious; totally unsure of myself; awkward and really shy to the point where I found it difficult to even speak to anyone. I don’t think I had an issue with self-confidence because I remember being full of hope that my future was going to be adventurous and I was immortal.

I’m sure most of my high school classmates at John A. Rowland High School were suffering the same issues with self-image that I was, however, they seemed to be much braver then I. It seemed that they took the chance to have fun, to speak to others, to make friends, some of which turned out to be life-long friendships. The biggest regret that I have from my childhood is that I should have been less afraid to make a fool of myself and to have more fun.

I enjoy listening to people reminisce about the experiences they had in their lives, I even enjoyed writing about the adventures of people I interviewed over the years because it gave me the opportunity to experience those adventures with them even if it was just by proxy. Today when I attend social gatherings it is fun for me to watch others in their easy conversation with their old friends, but it also gives me that pang of regret that the friends I made in my life are pretty much just acquaintances because the only thing we had in common was our military service… and we might have only been stationed together for a short period of time…our community was not a place, but a state of mind, a group of people who were located in a strange place with different cultural norms then our own.

When I retired from the Navy I returned to my hometown of Rowland Heights, Calif., mostly because I thought that I missed the place. I quickly discovered that I didn’t miss the place at all, what I missed was my youth and the friends I had played ball with, went to school with or just hung out with. Rowland Heights had become a strange place filled with lots of people that I had nothing in common with. It seemed that the span of years and distance had made me a stranger in my own mind and in my own hometown. When I again moved away from there to, Twentynine Palms, Calif., where I had never visited in my life, I discovered that I had come home. Most of my new neighbors were in the military, or they were military veterans or military retirees that I had never met but felt that I had known my entire working life.

I guess the “Good old days” are in fact just good memories we are reluctant to give up.

Saturday Morning Post: What’s wrong with being old?

Saturday Morning Post: What’s wrong with being old?: By Dan Barber From all of the television commercials I see proclaiming the latest “anti-aging” face cream, juice, dietary supplements o...

What’s wrong with being old?

By Dan Barber

From all of the television commercials I see proclaiming the latest “anti-aging” face cream, juice, dietary supplements or surgical/non-surgical procedures to “turn back the clock” makes me think that there might be something wrong with growing old.

Let’s face it getting old is incurable! Once this fact is accepted, the more life can be enjoyed. For example, you can really tell young people what you think of them when they are acting dumb… they will consider you just a grumpy old person. I think the older I get the less I can tolerate bull stool. People need to understand that I speak from experience because I used to create a lot of bull stool that my elders thought was stupid!

My brother, Rodney, jokingly tells complainers who grouse about something hurting them to go out in the back yard and smear dog poop on it which would immediately cure their “owey”.  The problem with this sound advice would be a gullible young person who would actually go out in the back yard in search of fresh droppings! I wonder if a healthy dose of bull stool can cure age related issues.

Once you are old you can guilt-trip your children or grandchildren into taking care of the chores you should be doing. But don’t overdo this age benefit because once they catch on you might be headed for the assisted living facility/nursing home.

Another perk of old-age is we can actually take naps whenever we want…but don’t let anyone catch you napping while sitting behind the wheel of your car while at a traffic light, you will then lose your driving privileges and no longer be able to cuss traffic lights that turn red for no apparent reason, because your fellow bus passengers might take offense at your foul language!

Sleeping in every morning is an option for retirees. Most people look forward to this luxury during their commute to work. However, now that I’m retired, I can’t sleep in. After 50 years of rolling out of bed every morning to head off to work has broken my body clock. This might be the reason for all of the naps I now require.

Fashion is no longer an issue for old men. Young people might laugh at the sight of them with their pants hiked up above the belly, but the alternative would make them shudder if the old man wore his pants below the belly and suffered a wardrobe malfunction.

When I was a young person I used to sit for what seemed like hours politely listening to the sea stories of old retired sailors. I always thought that I would never bore a young person with my sea stories…my recollections aren’t at all boring. I know this because my wife often comes into my den to ask, “What are you laughing at, and who are you talking too?”