Have a Majestic and Magical New Year!

By Dan Barber

Well, another year has passed. In the “big picture” what does that mean?

We are just a speck in the infinity of time and space traveling on a planet that is speeding through the universe along with our galaxy at nearly 830,000 miles per hour which means in the past year we have travelled a distance of more than 72 million miles…if my calculator has it right.

In addition, the earth has been spinning at the equator at around 1,000 miles per hour and orbiting our sun at more than 660,000 miles per hour. That is something that can make us dizzy, if we felt the motion.

Some people expect magical things to happen in their lives during the New Year. I posit the view that magical things are already happening to people all the time. We have an opportunity every day to witness a beautiful sunrise and sunset. In my own case,

I can view the majesty of millions of suns shining in the dark and clear desert sky. We can welcome the birth of our children and grandchildren giving us the opportunity to exist until the end of time. Everyone has the chance to find love or to live their lives in whatever fashion they chose.

To all, I wish for you to take the time to have the majestic and magical New Year you expect!

Happy Christmas Memory rerun: What I didn’t get for Christmas was the best gift of all

By Dan Barber

When I was six years old I asked Santa for a sled… When Christmas morning arrived I was bitterly disappointed because Santa mixed up my request. Instead of a sled, I got a pair of skis!

I lived with my family in Iowa at the time and I knew even at 6-years old that Iowa didn’t have any mountains where I could learn to ski! We had miles of corn fields, but not even a large enough hill as far as I could tell where I could use my new set of skis. We did have small hills that would work great for a sled, though!

To add to my disappointment that year I had begun to suspect that my parents were responsible for my Christmas gifts, not Santa! Mom was always so excited about Christmas and us kids getting gifts she would always break down and ask Dad to ask Santa to give us at least, one early gift if we were good. I kind of suspected that wasn’t an approved Santa rule, but I played along anyway because I always tried to be good so I could get an early present.

But on this particular Christmas morning after my Father, seeing my sad face about not getting a sled reassured me that we would put those skis to good use.

I had come to suspect that my Dad wanted me and my two brothers… no sisters or baby brother yet, to be athletes or bronc-busters because the previous summer he obtained two really mean untrained Shetland ponies. He told us that we could train those horses to give us rides. Our backyard became the hangout for all of the neighborhood boys. We would lasso one of the ponies and drag it to the picnic table and take turns trying to ride those mean horses. When we were thrown, which was all of the time, those horses would try to kick us, stomp on us or try to bite us before we could scramble back up on the picnic table! We never did train those ponies to give gentle rides like we were used to getting at petting zoos or carnivals. But Dad did convert our large garage into a horse barn to keep the ponies in during the winter.

That “barn” also became a great play area for us because we had hay to keep us warm during the winter and for the ponies to eat and straw on the dirt floor for the ponies to poop on. One of my jobs was to clean out the horse poop and pile it up next to the garage or barn so Grandpa could use it to fertilize his plants.

That “barn” also became an important part of my Christmas story.

To remedy the “no mountain to ski on in Iowa” my Dad started building a “ski ramp” from the roof of the barn to the back yard… he worked on it every afternoon after work and for a couple of weekends until he finally had it finished. My Mom was really worried about the dangerous looking thing in our back yard, but Dad reassured her not to worry because he would try it out before letting us kids play on it. Keep in mind that my Dad had never skied a day in his life, but he figured that he’d seen it done on TV and it didn’t look all that hard. Our Mother had totally gone gray haired by the time she was 30 years old. Dad said a lot of people go prematurely gray, Grandma said she went gray because of our Dad and us boys! By the way, Mom’s favorite color of hair dye was red.

Dad shoveled snow on our ski ramp and packed it down, I thought it looked kind of dangerous too. But after Dad piled on what he thought was the right amount of snow, he carefully surveyed his work, told us kids to stand back then he put a ladder up to the eve of the barn and carefully climbed up to the peak of the garage. He sat down and strapped on the skis. These skis were designed for really beginner kids from the State of Iowa… no ski boots, no bindings, no ski poles! Dad tested them to make sure they were properly attached to his feet, he then stood up and immediately turned around backward and slid off of our barn roof and landed in the snow-covered pony poop up next to the barn.

We kids were really concerned, we’d never seen anything like that before, Mom was really strange that day she was laughing and crying at the same time. Dad carefully got up, brushed the snow and pony poop from his backside and limped into the house and refused to allow Mom to call the doctor. But, before going to his easy chair, he did tell us to stay away from that dang ramp because it was too dangerous for us to play on.

We boys spent the rest of that Saturday trying to nail those skis onto a box so we could build a useable sled.

I didn’t get what I had asked for that Christmas I got something much better, knowing that I had loving Parents who really cared.

Merry Christmas to all!

Happy Birthday and Happy Anniversary Punkin!

By Dan Barber

The fun part of genealogy research is when searching through our ancestors roots we discover distant twigs on a family tree that spans an entire nation and maybe spreads across the oceans to foreign lands.

If the anthropologists have it right we are all related through our human DNA.

When I discover a “cousin” in some location where I have visited I think wow so close I wish I’d known then what I know now.

Perhaps our lives are planned out for us before we are born. I graduated from John A. Rowland High School in Rowland Heights, California in June 1968. Just a month later, on July 8, I obligated to join the United States Navy and met my future wife on the same day. How that happened is easily explained,  I visited my cousin Dale to tell him what I’d just done at the Navy Recruiting office in La Puente, Calif.

 To help out my other cousin Linda’s, new husband Lou, who she just eloped with to California from Nebraska I volunteered to drive him around so he could find a job.  Lou’s old car had broken down, therefore, the need for a ride to find a job so he could get his car fixed so I offered to help out. Lou said, “Hey, why don’t we stop in the Armed Forces recruiting office to see what they have to say.” 

The Navy Recruiter sold me on a career with the Navy, but Lou and Linda decided to move back to Nebraska to pursue other career opportunities, and to raise their growing, and successful family.

My future wife, Diane, was visiting her sister Cathy who was married to my cousin Dale. At the time, Dale and Cathy were living in an apartment in Baldwin Park, Calif. Diane was attending Poly Technical  High in Van Nuys, California and lived in the San Fernando Valley and I lived in the San Gabriel Valley. Geographically we were separated by about 50 miles with the huge city of Los Angeles in between. Diane was born in Santa Monica, California and I was born in Nebraska. The odds of us meeting were astronomical. On top of all that, in six months I was going to enter Navy Boot Camp on January 15, 1969. But in the interim everything worked out and we were married on December 13, 1969, in Norwalk, California.

At the time, I was stationed at Barber’s Point Hawaii. No, I couldn’t find any family connection, in my genealogy search, with old Captain Barber who sometime in the 1700s got lost and crashed his sailing ship into the point on Oahu that carried his name.

Because Diane was born in Santa Monica and grew up at the beach surfing she was thrilled to join me in Hawaii! We enjoyed a year-long honeymoon where we lived on a small farm, owned by an ancient old Japanese couple. We stayed in a cottage eaten up by termites and was only held together by the surplus paint I would drag home that Diane kept slathering on the place to make it look presentable.

The color was whatever was available from the dumpsters behind the hangar where I worked. It was the 60s so psychedelic was the "in motif" with alternating blue and yellow ceiling tiles and green trim around the windows and doors. Once, when I came home from work I sat down on the “throne” only to find myself stuck…Diane failed to warn me that she had just that afternoon decided to paint the toilet seat! She thought it was funny… however, I got a laugh once when I came home from work and found Diane stuck between two refrigerators we had in the corner of our living room. She fell there while painting the ceiling…again. Note: we had two refrigerators where we stored our food to keep the bugs and termite wings out of our food.

One time our Granddaughter overheard me tell Diane that if our heaven is where we spent our happiest time on earth then maybe we could spend our eternity in our Hawaiian cottage.  Our Granddaughter asked if she could come too.

Our Hawaiian home was a real paradise… we had a 10” black and white TV that we could squint at to watch the original “Hawaii Five-O” and wonder where those scenes were filmed. We had a large pillow we sat on in front of the TV. We also owned four wooden boxes that served as moving boxes when not being used as a bookshelf.  We could carry all of our earthly possessions in those boxes and they fit neatly in the back seat of our Volkswagen bug. Mr. and Mrs. Onahara supplied the two refrigerators and an ancient double brass bed with a lumpy mattress that made a huge racket “when we turned over in our sleep.”

I think that Mr. and Mrs. Onahara adopted Diane because she actually loved helping them take care of the farm animals. In the mornings, I would head off to work at NAS Barber’s Point and she would help slop the pigs, milk the goats and feed the chickens and a bull named “Fred.” After her farm chores were done, Diane would head off to the beach with her surfboard and her neighbor friend Laura. The beach was just across the Farragut Highway from where we lived in Waianae.  

Being in the Navy, we couldn’t expect to stay in any one place for very long. I received orders to report to a squadron at Whidbey Island, Washington. Shortly after our arrival there Diane found out we were pregnant! We were assigned Navy housing in a small cottage on a hill with a postcard view of the small town of Oak Harbor. I was promoted to Second Class Petty Officer so the Navy decided that we had to move to “better housing” which turned out to be “lousy housing” because we lost our postcard view and moved very close to the noisy runway at NAS Whidbey Island.

In December 1971, we celebrated our second anniversary and a month later our son Brian was born. Shortly after that, I deployed with my Squadron to Vietnam.

After about four months on deployment, a career counselor in my squadron informed me that I could reenlist in the Navy while in the war zone to get a “tax-free” bonus and orders to someplace else…done deal! I got my tax-free bonus and orders to NAS Sigonella Sicily.

Diane and I used most of the bonus to buy a new car (Ford Pinto) and a bunch of baby furniture to include a new washer and dryer…Diane only used disposable diapers on long trips, around the house Brian wore cloth diapers with rubber pants. Diane has always been very conscious of environmental hazards facing humans, except for sharks while surfing…she never thought about them back then. She left that worry up to me.

While in route to New York to ship our new car and catch a flight to Italy we stopped off in Arkansas for a visit with my paternal grandparents who had yet to meet their new Great-grandson and granddaughter-in-law.  Of course, my grandparents were interested in Diane’s family. She mentioned that her father Thomas Politz was from Greece and her maternal Grandparents names were Donald and Bernice Deeds, all now dead. My grandfather said that he had a buddy in Nebraska when he was a child by the name of Don Deeds…we thought what a coincidence.

Years later while working on our family history, I discovered in the 1910 Census  that my wife’s maternal grandfather and my paternal grandfather, were in fact, neighbors when they were children living in Nebraska.

While in Sicily we celebrated our third wedding anniversary a month earlier on November 15th we were blessed with a second son, Christopher…perhaps we were influenced in naming him after another famous Italian, who got lost searching for a shorter sea route to India but instead “discovered” America.

Christopher was born at the Naval Hospital in Naples, Italy because, at the time, Naples was the only place in Italy where military people could have babies delivered. Diane’s doctor sent her there two weeks before the due date of our new baby to make sure she was at the hospital. The nickname for all of the pregnant women waiting for the birth of their children was "The Belly Brigade"… Christopher decided to show up two weeks late!

Diane expected me to keep Brian’s diapers laundered in her new American made washing machine that ran normally on American 60 cycle power… but ran real slow on Italy’s 50 cycle power…when the power was on. 

Diane instructed me to keep Brian clean and to keep a supply of clean diapers ready for frequent changing while she was off to Naples Italy to give birth to our second son. I had to hang the laundered diapers off our balcony like all the other Italian ladies in our Italian neighborhood did to dry. I didn’t see any husbands out hanging laundry.

 On the weekends, Brian and I would take a road trip from Sicily to Naples to visit Mommy.  I would drive our Ford Pinto as fast as it could possibly go up the auto strata while really fast German and Italian sports cars zipped past us. 

I still catch hell from Diane today, over 40 years later, for allowing our near naked two-year-old son wearing a droopy diaper and his ever present Army hat to become stinky and sticky on our road trips where I had to allow him to try to pluck out my arm hair. If I told him to stop, he would just start crying brokenheartedly. She even accused me of allowing Brian to become un-potty trained while she was gone… I swear I didn’t know he pooped in his Lincoln Log container while I wasn’t watching!  Those memories are still precious to me.

While in Sicily, I decided to try to teach myself how to write. It was an uphill battle to change myself from being borderline illiterate to literate. One of my shipmates in Sicily can attest to the fact that I was not a literate person. Once,  while on a Temporary Additional Duty assignment to Crete, with my shipmate and hotel roommate,  Joe, grew increasingly irritated with me while I was reading my English textbook out loud and had trouble pronouncing the word Adjective.  Actually, it was Joe’s fault that I became a writer. I once overheard him tell someone that I was intelligent! I wanted to prove to him and myself that I was.

Diane spent hours, days and weeks trying to help me master grammar. Thank goodness there were some really good editors who helped me out in my eventual career as a Navy Journalist, Publisher and finally as a civilian Navy Public Affairs Officer.

After a couple of years living in a wonderful and beautiful place, we had to say goodbye and head back to our “civilization” in California. Shortly after returning home we found out that we were going to have yet another baby. Our daughter Kimberly was born in Escondido, California on Friday the 13 of August… a blessed day for our family and four months before our sixth wedding anniversary.

I could go on about the experiences we had of being assigned to some great and some horrendous duty stations, but year after year 20 years flew by like nothing. Diane became a pretty good handyperson able to fix broken appliances as needed. She would haul kids to school, practices and to doctors appointments while she was not feeling well… it was the job of a Navy wife to take care of the family while I was off doing something else. I didn’t mean to take Diane and our family for granted because they gave me everything and they made my life have a purpose.

We had our ups and downs, but mostly ups because we had our family.

I thought that after I retired and settled down in the dusty little military town where I now live, my children would find their own adventures far from Mom and Dad. I was wrong, they also choose to live near Mom and Dad in a dusty little military town...I like to think of that as a tribute to the closeness of our family growing up in the Navy.

My children grew up strong and successful and despite moving as Navy Brats every couple of years they made lasting friendships with other Navy Brats and still talk and visit them when possible.

Just a couple of years ago I asked my daughter Kimberly what she remembered growing up as a Navy brat. I expected her to tell me about all of her adventures, but instead she said that she remembered me being gone all the time.  

I’m home now.

Happy Birthday, Punkin 12/12/XX and Happy 46^th Anniversary 12/13/69! Congratulations on making such a wonderful family as ours!

Love you!

Small town politics can expose small town emperors

By Dan Barber

There are small towns across American that has a local “personality” who may be a legend in their own mind. These people are mostly harmless unless they try to destroy people socially, financially or physically who accidently or purposely attempt to rock the pedestal the local celebrity is perched upon.

Years ago my grandparents lived in a small town in a Southern state that had their “living legend” that was rumored to have shot a man to death in his youth while delivering moonshine. This gentleman, we will call him Mr. Smith, was both feared and loved mostly because he would befriend outsiders from the “big city” who were trying to escape to small town America.

He would offer to sell these “city people” an old inexpensive farmhouse on a nice piece of property, Mr. Smith owned, via a land contract. These “city dwellers discovered that during the first winter in their new home they could quickly become snowbound and unable to get to their jobs, so they would fall behind on their mortgage payments to Mr. Smith. He would tell them not to worry…he would offer to help them with a vacation away from their worries.

However, while the “big city country dwellers were off enjoying their vacation, paid for by Mr. Smith, their old farm house would mysteriously burn to the ground because the local fire department couldn’t get to the property due to bad roads.  Mr. Smith  would notify the homeowners of the bad news with “good news” he would help the unfortunate family by personally supervising the construction of a new modern brick home from the insurance Mr. Smith carried on their home… “Here is some extra cash, enjoy your vacation and I will keep you posted.”

When the innocent victims of Mr. Smith return to their new country home, low and behold they find a nice red brick home awaiting them with a smiling Mr. Smith holding the keys to their brand new modern house.

However, the very next winter when the poorly maintained country lanes were once again impassable due to heavy snow the “country homeowners” would fall behind in their payments once again. Mr. Smith informs them that he has already done more to help them than he can afford. He evicts the family from their nice modern red brick home they and the insurance company paid for.

Mr. Smith uses his influence with the local politicians to ensure the country lanes to the properties he owns are made passable during the winter months so people can get out to their jobs and emergency vehicles can gain access when needed. He is lauded locally as a visionary community developer and philanthropist.

I heard that Mr. Smith met his maker at the hands of his own son who shot him to death.

Local “celebrity” personalities aren’t hard to spot. They are constantly self-promoting themselves and they are very protective of their image. They work hard at controlling the message of what they represent even if it is just a “big fish in a small pond.”

There are without a doubt truly good people who work tirelessly to improve their communities or the lives of their neighbors by doing altruistic deeds without any expectations of return other than self-satisfaction.

Life is an adventure

By Dan Barber

Life in the Navy was an adventure… during my career it seemed that time just moved so slowly, but after 20 years it didn’t seem that bad, but what has really whizzed by since then has been the last 26 years since I retired from the Navy.

I think that everybody complains about some of the duty stations they’ve been assigned to and then can’t wait to get orders to another assignment. But, when the transfer is completed, they wind up missing the duty station that they just left. I found out that regardless of the duty station, whether it’s a great place or crappy one, when you leave it you’re going to miss it.

What I discovered when I returned to a crappy place that I thought I missed… it was still a crappy place, and it wasn’t the place that I missed, it was the people that I knew at that duty station that I missed. I discovered that a place does not make a community, people make up the community.

I spent 20 years pretty much being homesick for the community of Rowland Heights, California where I grew up. When I retired and moved back to that community I discovered that I had very little in common with anyone in the old neighborhood. My childhood friends moved on in their lives with family and new interests, just as I had.  I then realized that I became homesick for the Navy.

Fortunately, I was able to get a good job back in a military town, Twentynine Palms, California. When I moved here it felt like I had come back home. My neighbors were either retired military like myself, or they were active duty, or they worked at the base. There is nothing like the camaraderie you have with your co-workers and in a military town your neighbors.

I see young people coming out here to the desert for duty, and if they don’t have a family or a car there isn’t much for them to do except hike in the desert… which they probably do as part of their training at the base. Many of them try to stay fit so they run, play sports and run some more. If they have a young spouse, they might get involved with other young couples. One night my wife and I went to the drive-in to see a movie here in our town, which is probably only one of a very few drive-ins left in the United States.  We saw young couples and young families arriving before dark to get set up for the movie. They had brought their pot-luck dinners to share with each other and later to enjoy the movie together… as a community. 

That took me back to when my family and I would get together with our friends at those crappy duty stations… we might have a potluck dinner then play board games or cards because the duty station didn’t have English language TV. Or we might all get together to go camping somewhere.  One time we even caravanned up through Italy and camped on the side of the road at night. We got to share a great adventure by visiting Taormina, at the Messina Straight, Pompeii, Naples and Rome all during a four day road trip.

Out here in Twentynine Palms you can pretty much tell where a retired Marine lives… if they don’t have the National Flag and the Marine Corps Flag flying on a pole in their yard, you just have to look at their garage… if the door is open you tell that they were a Marine… a place for everything ship-shaped and squared away. On the other hand, if your children followed you out to the desert to live near Mom and Dad, then they need someplace to store all of their stuff… so in my garage, there isn’t any space to put anything else… For a long time, I had to carry my golf clubs around in my vehicle because they wouldn’t fit in my garage.  My wife and I are now way too old to try and ride a bicycle… yet up until recently we had half a dozen of them stored in our garage. After a period of about 15 years I was recently able to move the children’s things into their own garages so now I have a 1969 VW bug parked in the middle of my garage waiting for rebuilding…when I get up the energy to take on that project.

My Grandfather was a Marine for maybe two years, but the discipline he obtained in the Marine Corps stayed with him for his entire life. His garage was always squared away. Oil was not allowed to drip from any car that dared park in his driveway.  Weeds were not allowed to grow in his lawn or around his prize roses.

When grandpa was still working before retirement, his shoes were always spit shined and his suits neatly pressed and his tie tied with a double Windsor. Come to think about it, after he retired his gardening clothes had to also be pressed, and his work shoes shined.

Life in the Navy can be measured in duty stations… during this time we were here… then this other time we were over there.  We think that we missed the disco 70’s all together because we spent most of that time overseas somewhere or moving to or from a military base in the states.

There were movies and TV shows that came and went that I am just now discovering online or in the discount video bins at my local super duper discount stores.  Some of the fashions that were around in the 70 have also seemed to come from the clown acts of the circus… Big shoes, Neon suits and Big Hats…  We did witness a streaker at a ball game on a Navy base in Sicily in the early 70’s… the guy didn’t run very far until he was apprehended by the base security officers.

Our two sons had no idea what TV was until they were nearly 3 and 4 years old. We arrived at my parent’s house after being picked up from the airport following a trip half way around the globe. The TV was tuned to some program about cavemen fighting dinosaurs. Our oldest son became very upset that those cavemen were going to hurt the dinosaurs.

Back in California I was stationed at Naval Air Station Miramar… now Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.  We were close enough to be able to drive up to Rowland Heights on the weekends to visit family there.  We found a great house in Poway, not too far from work at the air station.  Then the news came that Diane was expecting our third child… on Friday the 13th of August 1975 our daughter Kimberly was born at a civilian hospital in Escondido, California. Now we could mark our duty stations by where our children were born… Brian at Oak Harbor, Washington; Christopher at Naples Italy and now Kimberly in San Diego.

The Navy wasn’t satisfied by just leaving me alone to work at Miramar; they decided that I should go to North Island Naval Air Station.  Not too far from Miramar, but a mess to have to drive through during rush hour traffic in San Diego.  We decided to move down to Coronado to be closer to work.  We found a relatively cheap house to rent while waiting for Navy housing.  I saved money by riding my bicycle back and forth to work at North Island, and when we were finally assigned base housing in San Diego I learned how to use the public transportation system so I wouldn’t have to drive in traffic and to save money on gas.

With almost ten years of active duty behind me, I decided to enlist in the Navy Reserves and go to school full-time on my GI Bill and Weekend drill pay.  I quickly learned that I needed to make a bit more money, because we no longer had health insurance, which was badly needed when our daughter broke her collar bone when she fell off a swing and then a short time later she came down with pneumonia and had to be hospitalized.  

I got a job at Beckman Instruments in La Habra, California. A short time later my old scout master and brother-in-law’s uncle introduced us to the union so we could get a job on the back lot of Disneyland.  Tim went to work on the cars of autopia and I went to work checking the air pressure on the tires of the Monorail train... of course I had other duties, like trimming the tree branches away from the monorail track and cleaning stuff off the track that patrons tossed there during the day.  I made good money doing this, and really enjoyed working in an environment very similar to the military.  At the time, Disney had a dress and grooming code for employees…I had no problem adapting to those rules with my ten years of military service.  My children really liked the fact that Dad worked at the coolest place in the world, especially when I would drop them and their Mom off in the morning before I would report to work… after I got off in the afternoon, I would scoop up some very tired kids from a bench by the Small World attraction and load them in the car at the employees parking lot.

My shop and the parking lot was just behind the Small World attraction… the only drawback about working in such a location was the “It’s a Small World” tune… many years later it is still embedded in my brain!... I think that I should get disability compensation for such an injury.  Now that I’m old the “Happiest Place on Earth can really PISS me off!  You have to pay a huge admission fee to stand in line for two hours for a two-minute ride.  But of course, you can make a reservation for that ride and report later in the day.  If I wanted to take all of my grandkids to Disneyland I would have to get a second mortgage on my house to buy the tickets.

Thank goodness that my wife made me reenlist in the Navy so we could retire with a pension and inexpensive medical coverage. We are happy with our life… we have our children raised and we get to see our grandchildren quite often… I don’t think that we will ever move again, we have found paradise and the grass isn’t greener here on the other side of the hill that I have to mow, because we don’t have any grass here in this beautiful desert.  The air is clean, we are in small town America where it isn’t over-crowded and everyone knows everyone else and it’s not possible to have traffic jams in town unless the Marines schedule one at the Main Gate to the base… which they do most every morning now that we have terrorist threats to worry about.  We also have a couple of Little League fields where I can sit with my neighbors, friends and family and watch my grandchildren play ball.  

My wife, Diane, and I can literally walk out to our back yard and explore the vast Joshua Tree National Park’s hiking trails and sites… life can hardly get any better.

Deep in thought

By Dan Barber

Another Friday night and I sit in front of my computer and try to think up something clever to write about. But, alas the only thing leaking out of my brain is this drivel about nothing.

Last week I wrote about living life in my imagination… Perhaps everyone does that. When I was young I would sit in my math class in school and instead of paying attention to how division or algebra worked my mind would wander off and I would day-dream about exploring the distant hills I could see outside my classroom window. That is the reason to this day I can only divide using a calculator that was invented by some kid from my generation who actually paid attention in math class.

The reason I believe that everyone day-dreamed in math is because of the popularity and abundance of calculators now available everywhere, including calculator apps (applications) on smartphones and any computer. I remember when these magical devices were very expensive, but now they can be bought for just a couple of bucks in any convenience store. When I was a kid a wrist-watch calculator would have come in handy for math tests.

Today, if kids are caught day-dreaming in class they might be labeled as suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).  However, they may have laser-focus on any subject that is of interest to them. All of my grandsons are expert video game players and all of my granddaughters can type with just their thumbs faster on their smartphones than I can type with all ten of my fingers…but they are all smart because I believe they inherited their ADD from me, or they could just be human.

One time when my son was in high school he asked me for help with his Algebra homework I started to panic until he explained the purpose of the Algebraic formula the teacher tasked him with… to find the number of newspaper pages that were needed in a tabloid sized publication to meet a 40 percent news copy to 60 percent advertising ratio!  At that point  in my career, that was the first thing I did on Monday mornings after my newspaper’s advertising manager gave me the week’s run sheet for ad copy! I thought, “Crap, I’ve been doing Algebra for years and didn’t know it!” The lesson here is to pay attention enough in math class so when you use your smartphone's calculator later in life you will know what you are really doing.

The best classes I had at John A. Rowland High School where I had laser focus were Remedial English (because the regular English teachers thought I was too stupid for their regular English classes), Drama, and one year of typing. 

Perhaps I’m still too stupid for regular English classes, but that’s why editors were invented and excelled in regular English classes. Drama gave me the confidence to “act” like I knew what I was doing in life which allowed me to perform in a successful and award-winning career as a professional journalist/writer/day-dreamer. Typing gave me the tools which allowed the information or day-dreams to leak from my brain to the empty page.

The lesson from this blog to parents is…If your child’s school counselors tell you that your son or daughter is suffering from ADD, immediately request they be enrolled in Remedial English, Drama and Typing (today they call it “keyboarding” because another smart kid paid attention in math class and invented the computer with spell & grammar check for all of us slow learners to use in our careers).

In the Human Race which team are you on?

By Dan Barber

My daughter and I had a conversation the other day about whether we were poor or not. I advised her that economic advantage is always on a sliding scale. Meaning that residents in any community are divided up in the haves, have-nots, wish-we-had-more and maybe even those who wish-to-have-less.

Our community here in the Mojave Desert is the same. Many people are comfortable in what they have and can be viewed as being content. We have those who are in a rush to earn more. Then there are those who are just barely scratching out their survival and are viewed as being homeless or on the verge of being homeless. There are people who are too ill or handicapped to be able to take care of themselves. We also have those who are too lazy to earn their own living so they rely on others to provide it for them.

That conversation sparked a thought in my head that is now searching for a safe place to land among all of the cobwebs. The thought is what team do I run for in the Human Race? Can I make the roster using custom and convention through birthright; or through earned or natural talent or through the perception of others?

I think of myself as being energetically lazy. Now that I’m retired I think that I prefer to run the course of the human race mostly in the quiet solitude of my head. I’m not too concerned about material things anymore; I have my family close by, my health is OK and I have food to eat. I much prefer the silence of the desert than to the noise of large population centers. Others would disagree they need the close-by bright and noisy attractions. All I need is a shady spot to sit where I can use my own imagination for entertainment or where I can participate in another favorite pastime of watching nature such as a lizard do pushups on a hot rock…if I’m successful someone will actually check my pulse to see if I’m OK (which actually happened).

Where do I place myself in the Human Race? I consider myself as winning as others are racing past me at top speed to achieve their own goals…is that confusing to you?

Which team are you on in this Human Race? The rich, middle, or poor team; blue collar, white collar, intellectual elitist or high school dropout; what is your sexual preference; which ethnic team do you identify with? How do other Human Race team members view you? How do you want others to see you…As a man, woman or either? I want to be viewed as an American with a bunch of ethnic heritages thrown in. In a previous blog I mentioned that I had a very talented nephew who viewed himself as an American with Mexican heritage...he told his Dad that he was born here in the U.S. so he wasn't a Mexican American... he was an American first.

Then we all have other options within those team “requirements” to deal with…which are divided up by religious and political ideology and geographic locations broken down by country, state, city neighborhood, street and even directions of Northside, Southside, Eastside, Westside. Don’t forget to consider the decade we all belong to, baby boomer, millennial, etc.

If Freud were alive today he would probably opt for a different career choice, rather than trying to figure out the collective mind of the evolving human.

May you be successful in your Human Race…

The Evolving Digital Human

By Dan Barber

As we age our ears and noses continue to grow…have you ever noticed that? Perhaps it is to allow old people to counter the effects of losing the ability to hear or to smell.

Other stuff also appears to evolve for humans as we grow older. Young folks can mistakenly blame old people of being crabby, out of touch and a bit, or a lot senile.  In fact, old people just lose the patience to deal with young people’s bull stool. We used to be young people ourselves and know more about life now than we let on.  There is not enough time in the world for old people to explain the really important stuff to young people so they would understand.  What’s there to understand you might ask? I would suggest that you check out the “memes” posted by old people on social media sites about the “good old days.”

Young people today are being “digitized” into expecting instant gratification. The human brain is being rewired with the over-abundance of electronic media and video games that replace reality for many children today. Back in the “good old days” people had to rely on their imagination to escape their reality. However, imagination can be very dangerous if it’s made into reality! For example, it created the “happiest place on earth” where people can pay more than $100 to stand in line for 2 hours for the excitement of a 2-minute thrill ride. My imagination caused some dangerous situations in my life… I imagined that I could ride my bike down a very steep hill which resulted in some really serious lacerations and a bruised reality. There were other incidents that are too many to mention here.

 Imagination created the video games of today which allow a very dangerous contagion to latch onto a young brain to cause reprogramming to take place. I witnessed medical researchers trying to use that technology in an attempt to reprogram the brains of military personnel, to help relieve the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), i.e., altering or blocking the reality a human being actually experienced. I predict that in the future someone will be able to figure out how to make a bowl of oatmeal think just by sticking a couple of wires into it that are hooked up to a laptop computer. 

In a busy world today people can multi-task by listening to a book being read to them while commuting in rush hour traffic. Or they can tackle a big deal on an international conference call on their hands-free smartphone while driving… I would still worry about distracted driving because hands are still connected to the brain, and disconnecting the brain from the task at hand is a dangerous thing. But people mistakenly think that taking away all of the modern electronic devices would only create a very disadvantaged human and place them on the verge of madness.

 The trouble of having all of this wisdom in old age is the fact that we are now too old to do anything with the important stuff our elders tried to teach us in our youth!  If we were to try and explain the important stuff to young people they would just ignore the advice.

It’s time for me to ask my computer to check my nonsense here for spelling and grammar errors, silence my smartphone and turn off my large flat-screen low energy TV with a couple hundred channels to choose from and take a nap where I can dream about the “good old days” when I would complain about not having anything to do.

Something is still rattling around

By Dan Barber

I have stuff rattling around in my head constantly… I can be easily distracted which causes me to sometimes take a little longer in accomplishing assigned tasks, so I apologize to my four or five followers of my Saturday Morning Post blog for being late, or sporadic with my posting. And please forgive me if I am repeating myself, or becoming abstract in my thoughts… I am starting to do that more and more these days.

I think the older we get, the more we start thinking about the “after-life” or the hope for one. I do believe that we have an after-life, or a “forever-life”. A few years ago my father was being kept alive with medical devices. My mother, along with my siblings knew that he didn’t want to continue living like that so we decided to have the hospital turn off the equipment and let our father pass.

For a few weeks after that action, I worried about my part in the decision until I dreamt that I was having a conversation with my Dad and I asked him, “If we can bring you back to life, do you want to live again?” He said no, he added “I am able to relive the joyous moments of my life all over again as if it were the first time.”  After that, I was able to find peace in the knowledge that my Dad was having the“Times of his life” in his Heaven.

Many years ago I thought it would be a good idea to write a science fiction story about some ancient alien beings that created a device to gather all knowledge that would never be lost and these alien beings would be immortal if only in memory, or “knowledge”. The title I thought about was the Gathering of Data… or the acronym G.O.D. I thought that a good way this device could use to collect the data would be to implant a soul into every living thing or being. So upon death, the information could then travel back to the creators to be downloaded into the Gathering of Data… told you I had weird stuff rattling around in my head… Now whenever I watch the “Discovery” or “History” channel on TV, some of the stuff aired rekindles some of my ideas that I once had about my story idea. One physicist, Stephen Hawking, claimed on one of these TV programs that nothing can escape a black hole, not even knowledge… I thought well there you go, the Gathering of Data!

The more I wrote my science fiction story the more I thought about the need for a conflict. I decided that to create a conflict, the Gathering of Data would download the information from the recently arrived soul and then send out the recycled and hopefully blank soul to other living beings to gather more information. Here is where the conflict starts… some of these souls weren’t blank, they retained some memories from their previous lives or even the memory of being with the Gathering of Data… GOD!

I also had another dream. This dream involved my grandmother who passed right after my daughter was born. I remember the day my grandmother died. Earlier in the day she sat in a lawn chair holding my infant daughter while watching me work on my car. Later that night I got a call from my Mom telling me that my Grandma had died.

In my dream, I was viewing my Grandmother in her death bed with a person holding a baby next to the bed. It was like viewing a painting through thin gauze, but my Grandmother was moving and the person holding the baby was comforting her by telling her that this was the resurrection of life.

So you see I know that we have an after-life or a life forever… enjoy your today-life, and please forgive me if you believe I am being blasphemous… I do believe!

Heaven is Here and Now...

But can only last if we follow the commandments of God.

By Dan Barber

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

It seems to be agreed upon that there is only one thing that created everything. Scientists are still trying to figure out what caused the spark of creation resulting in the “Big Bang.” Some string theory advocates believe that we even have multiple universes existing all at the same time, which would explain how God would be able to be everywhere at once…past, present and future and even at the beginning of  “our” universe.

Science knows and has proven that our universe is several billion years old and some people have glommed onto people of faith who take the story of creation literally and believe our existence is only about 6,000 years old. That belief makes sense in a certain way because the art of writing was created just about 6,000 years ago which started the ability to record our history. Many writers then and now use the art of the metaphor to simplify their ideas. Those people who disbelieve and make fun of people of faith risk damnation metaphorically speaking.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 

According to the Bible, we were created in the image of God so there is no need to create a weird interpretation of the image of God because all we have to do to see the face of God is to see all human beings as we view ourselves. If we can do that without regard to race or appearance then we will always be with God.

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain

This means that we should not demean God by acting on his behalf for selfish reasons or to do harm to His creation. When a person kills in the name of God that is a serious sin, just as an utterance of asking God to damn someone or thing just because you might be angry. No human is perfect and according to the Bible God recognized this fault in his creation so he sent his son Jesus to earth in an attempt to teach humans how to ask for forgiveness even in the face of grave circumstances…Jesus had to die on the cross just to emphasize that idea. He also rose from death to show us that God will forgive us if we just ask.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy

We should take the time off from our labor to relax and view God’s work as a gift, and while we’re at it maybe we should thank the Lord for what He has provided to us.

Honor thy father and thy mother

Perhaps we should extend out this Commandment to mean that we should honor all of our ancestors, because of them we exist today.

Thou shalt not kill

To kill is to destroy God’s creation. What if every living thing has a soul within. Many Christians believe that life is created at conception. Suppose that a human is aborted that may have been destined to benefit humankind in some way, granted no one but God can tell what is to come, what I don’t understand is how someone can be so selfish as to deny all of humankind the opportunity that child may have offered.

Thou shalt not commit adultery

Perhaps our partner in our life has been planned out by our Creator for some reason we do not yet understand. I feel that we do not own our own lives; the people who love us and know us provide a great comfort to our wellbeing as well as a true purpose in our life. Love is actually magical if you pay attention. Sometimes love grows stronger when challenged by hardships or sickness or tragedy.

Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor; Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.

People who work hard for their possessions should not lose them to thievery or those who are capable of working but chose not to.

The last three Commandments are tied together to mean that we should be happy with what we have been given or earned. We should also celebrate the successes of our fellow humans rather than envy them for their accomplishments through their own hard work.

I don’t mean to sound so presumptuous to know anything about theology or what God thinks or what his plans are, these are just my ramblings or philosophy for living the best life I can.

The Stepping Stones of Life are very Slippery

By Dan Barber

From the time we take our first steps to become a toddler we are launched on a quest for adventure. I recall living in a world where everything was big. The house I lived in with my parents and grandparents was huge, the walk I took with my grandfather to the corner store seemed like it took forever… Of course my grandfather was walking and I was running to try to keep up with him. The amount of time I had to wait for Christmas took forever. Also, while in school the day seemed to drag on and on until recess or the end of the day. Summer break seemed like a forever blissful playtime because the days were so much longer than in the winter…more light from the Sun, same amount of hours in the day…I know that now.

Many years later when I took my children by the old house and neighborhood where I spent my toddlerhood I was amazed by how everything in my young life had shrunk. The house was much smaller than I remembered, the distance to where the corner store once stood now seemed to be right next door to the small house! Somehow my universe shrunk.

Time also seems to be speeding by faster and faster. It seems like just I graduated from high school but in fact I just turned 65 and had to sign up for Medicare! With nine Grandchildren and a Great Grandchild on the way makes the time between birthdays and holidays way too short a time to get caught up.

I’ve been told a number of times over my lifetime that I was “wasting my time” by “doing nothing.” I counter that it isn’t possible to “waste time” because time will continue on until the end and there isn’t any clocks or calendars around to measure it. Also, it’s not possible to “do nothing” because just the act of doing nothing is in itself is doing something.

A couple of years ago I wrote something about my 3-year-old, at the time, grandson. We spent a morning just sitting on a bench at Knott Sky Park here in our neighborhood watching a park and recreation employee riding around on a mower cutting the grass while my grandson was breathing in and out on his harmonica. We could have been mistaken for wasting our time doing nothing, but we were being hypnotized by the beautiful morning and the hum of the riding lawn mower and my grandson’s out of tune musical experiment. What I was doing was working on my immortality, at least in the memory of my grandson. In addition we were soaking up some Sun and the vitamins it provided.

I suspect that a lot of people can equate the waste of time and doing nothing with our political leaders we elect to represent us. We all know, or should know, that politics is always local, which means a Senator, who was voted into office by the population center of Las Vegas to represent the State of Nevada will no doubt be very popular with the people of Las Vegas, but could be considered a total moron by the folks who live in Elko, Nevada or some other small town in the state.

I suspect that I need a lot more time to work on my immortality with my other Grandchildren and, soon a Great Grandchild, so I’d better stop wasting my time by rambling on here about doing nothing and get busy doing something!

Genetic Memories rerun

By Dan Barber

I do believe that we possess some genetic memories from our ancestors.  When I start reading about or researching my ancestors, I can almost travel back in time and imagine what my ancestors had to go through just to live... They had an impact on me and an impact on American society.

My 11^th Great Grandfather, Henry Bull, and several others had a falling out with the Puritans in Massachusetts back in the early 1600s so they left and moved south to Newport, Rhode Island.  There they didn’t want to be judged or harassed just because of their religious beliefs, so they drafted and signed the Newport Compact creating a community free of religious persecution.  This doctrine allowed the first Jewish Synagogue and the First Baptist Church on this continent to be built in Newport, R.I.  The Newport Compact was probably one of the precursors leading to the idea to ensure separation of Church and State as it’s spelled out in our Constitution.  And people have been fighting about the intent of the idea ever since.

In 1839 a young Martin Hirsch, a recent German immigrant, left civilization behind in Pennsylvania and joined the other westward bound German settlers and homesteaded a claim on what was then the edge of the American frontier in a relatively new state called Missouri.

Missouri was annexed as America’s 24th state only 18 years earlier in 1821. Martin found a fine and productive claim located about 12 miles southwest of present day St. Joseph, Missouri. He met 17-year-old Mary Jane Raney and they were married on August 7, 1845. During this period of time in history, England was threatening to recognize Texas as an independent country, this forced the United States Congress in 1845 to annex Texas as the 28th state which led to the Mexican War which began May 8, 1846, and lasted until 1848.

As with many other homesteaders of Missouri at the time, Martin and his new bride spoke only German.  While surviving in this rural isolation, with the threat of the Mexican’s from the south, and the Indians all around, Martin built a home, cleared the land and created a farm, got married and raised a family.  His children grew up, survived a Civil War, and Americanized the spelling of their name to “Hersh” and moved on to other parts of the country to build their own legacies in Kansas and Nebraska.

My great-grandfather, William, homesteaded near Broken Bow, Nebraska where my Grandfather, Norval, and his brothers were born… they all lived through snow storms, locust infestations, tornadoes and illnesses that took many lives.   I’m quite sure that if I were placed down in the 1839 wilderness of this country that I would soon starve to death or die from exposure to the weather.

William spent many months away from home as he worked for the Union Pacific Railroad, as a superintendent of construction, building many train depots in small communities on the spur lines of the railroad… many of which survive to this day… albeit as museums or relics of the past.

Grandpa Hersh wasn’t interested in farming or ranching… after a stint in the United States Marine Corps during World War I, he returned to Nebraska and moved to the big city of Omaha, where he worked and lived until he retired.  He then moved to California to be closer to his children and grandchildren.

My Grandfather’s short Marine Corps experience provided him with the Marine Corps discipline for the rest of his life.  I adored my Grandpa and Grandma Hersh and spent every minute I could with them.  Grandpa Hersh always seemed to be very business-like and always impeccably dressed and groomed.  Whenever he walked anywhere, which was almost always, his pace was always brisk.  If I was with him, he was always telling me to “pick up your feet.”  When I was five years old, I could never figure out how to pick up my feet without falling on my behind.  But, because of that experience, I never wasted any time in getting to where I was going while walking.  It also seemed as though Grandpa was always cleaning or polishing something… again this was probably something he got from his Marine Corps experience.

He was also an avid collector… he collected stamps, coins, and rocks.  Grandpa’s favorite hobby was Rock Hounding.  His collection had specimens from all over the world.  If he spotted a rock while taking a walk, he couldn’t resist bending over and picking it up to inspect it.  Every rock in his collection had a number on it, and Grandpa kept a ledger with the number listed from the rock with the common and scientific name for the rock or mineral and where it was found or who gave it to him.  After he retired Grandpa had more time to clean and polish, garden and collect things.  Grandpa even got into polishing rocks and making jewelry.  At Grandpa and Grandma’s house, it was impossible to find one weed in Grandpa’s lawn or garden, or anything out of place in their perfectly maintained home.  Their home and garden was the pride of the neighborhood.

I can see some of my Grandpa Hersh in my children and grandchildren today.  My oldest son is an avid Rock Hound, and when I would take my oldest granddaughter out for a walk when she was younger, she couldn’t resist stooping over to pick up a rock to inspect to either reject or put in her pocket.  It’s that genetic memory thing…  Now she is very impeccable in her dress and grooming… and she is always cleaning or polishing something… today she is an accomplished photographer and proud Army wife living with her husband in Washington state.