Author: Henry Barnard

I am a voracious reader and also enjoy writing. I often have a very different point of view than the popular one. I do see value in debate, and thought it might add to the public debate on controversial issues if I were to express my contrarian opinions. I also started keeping my poems recently (I've written little pieces my whole adult life but never kept any); and I've been a photographer now for over 25 years. So I will be adding an occasional poem and hopefully interesting photograph to the blog along the way, just to spice things up.

Death and the Afterlife

Is there an afterlife? Religious people always think so, and how you are treated in the afterlife is based on how well you behaved while alive, so for them there is even a kind of morality involved in death — good people are rewarded, while bad people pay a dear price — for an eternity no less. Fine.

I know we can’t peek beyond the grave, but let’s just think about what is undeniable about death. For one thing, you won’t have the 5 senses you have now to interface with whatever the reality is after death. You won’t be able to see anything because you won’t have eyes; you won’t be able to smell anything because you won’t have a nose — in fact, all 5 senses are not going to be available to you. Another thing that is certainly missing is the brain. You won’t be able to think any thoughts because you won’t have a brain anymore to think them.

So exactly how is such an afterlife existence supposed to work with the 5 senses and your brain missing? Just try to imagine that — that’s not so simple. When I do, I come up with zero, that is, I can’t imagine any kind of existence without the 5 senses or a brain. You might say something like it’s like you are lying in bed in the middle of the night, and you close your eyes and see pitch blackness. But that isn’t believable either because without eyes, you wouldn’t see blackness — you wouldn’t see, period.

Frankly, an afterlife is ridiculous from the get go because it is simply not practical. And that you would be rewarded or punished in the afterlife based on your behavior while alive — please!

My Story

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Vanish

Henry's Views

Generations come and go —
The only permanence the flow.

Little waves lap upon the shore;
They thrive a moment and are no more.

Your time on earth a blink —
Even your memory long extinct.

So how to live the issue
When life itself mere tissue?

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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Thirsty

thirsty

Manhattan, A Photographer’s Journey by Henry Barnard

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Bread and Circuses

Two thousand years ago, Juvenal characterized Roman society as needing only two things — bread and circuses. For bread, there was the grain dole to all Roman citizens, and for circuses, the gladiator in the Coliseum and the chariot race in Circus Maximus (there were four teams to root for, identified by the colors of their jerseys, white, red, green, and blue). American society isn’t all that different. For food, we have our food stamps and welfare programs, and for circuses, we have televised professional sports where everyone has a home team to root for. Has anything really changed? Juvenal would be right at home in modern America.

“Bread and Circuses”

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The First Eye

Henry's Views

Light from the sun created the first eye.
Millions, perhaps billions, of years ago,
A creature evolved a light sensitive set of cells,
And so emerged from sightlessness.

This creature had an advantage over its blind competitors,
Which led to the breeding of offspring with the same mutation.
So it was the lit world became visible.
Let there be light also meant seeing the light,
Not just groping in the dark.

So, now, millions, perhaps billions, of years later,
Many creatures are endowed with highly evolved eyes —
Eyes that, furthermore, can see deep into the universe with telescopes
Or deep into the once invisible, microscopic world with microscopes.

Our vision has become transcendent over time,
One of the great achievements of the species on Earth,
Having evolved from a brutish, dark world
Where there was light, but no sight.

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

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Brooklyn Bridge Pedestrian Walkway

brooklynbridgewalkway

Manhattan, A Photographer’s Journey by Henry Barnard

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Flatulence

As reported in a highly respected and very impartial liberal newspaper, the Democrats are now demanding yet another supplemental investigation by the FBI based on the reference to flatulence in Kavanaugh’s high-school yearbook. The Dems want to know just how much Kavanaugh farted as a teenager, and demand that the FBI investigate every known acquaintance, friend, and teacher to get a complete picture of this very unfortunate and disturbing inclination when Kavanaugh was a young man 35 years ago. The Dems feel that excessive flatulence are grounds for turning down Kavanaugh’s bid for the Supreme Court in order to protect the odor of that august body, not to mention the sensibilities of the current justices.

In a followup report by the liberal newspaper, it was revealed that, as a young man, Kavanaugh was partial to eating the flatulence-inducing Golubtsy — so there may be a Russian connection here as well. Democrats call for further investigation of this Russian angle, for why would Kavanaugh actually want to eat Glubtsy unless the Russians had something on him? The Democrats are eager to prosecute anyone who sold Kavanaugh Golubtsy so that they can convict them on every conceivable crime imaginable and then make them flip on the nominee — that’s American justice. The Democrats also want the Justice Department to ignore attorney/client privilege and subpoena all the records between Kavanaugh and his private attorney so that these records can be used against the nominee — still more American justice.

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Cathedral Canvas

Manhattan, A Photographer’s Journey by Henry Barnard

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Swing Vote

American politics has come down to two very dogmatic parties. This is reflected also in the political map of the United States, where the two coasts and their cities are liberal, while the heartland is uniformly conservative. The two countries within the United States couldn’t be any more different.

People say it is unfortunate that we don’t have more bipartisanship, but realistically we haven’t had any of that going all the way to the 60’s. And right now the two parties couldn’t be more opposed to each other on a whole host of key issues: immigration, healthcare, welfare, climate change, gun control, taxes, abortion, tariffs, etc. You name it, there’s just a clear black and white divide between the two parties, so that to hope for more bipartisanship, although it may sound like an attractive alternative, is merely pie in the sky thinking.

I would argue instead that, now, the block of voters who call themselves Independents are the key to the direction of the country. They are the pivotal swing vote for either of the dogmatic parties to gain an advantage over the other party. How the Independents vote from this point on will determine everything, so the two parties would be wise to focus their attention on winning them over — that’s a winning strategy today, not the hope for more bipartisanship, which, perhaps sadly, is a thing of the past.

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It’s A Boy!

Henry's Views

O joy! O joy! The bells are ringing!
Our bonny boy arrives, we are singing.
His future, that remains unclear,
But our hopes, they are in the stratosphere.

Might he become another Einstein?
Will age produce a very fine wine?
Or perhaps another Shakespeare?
Certainly someone without peer.

But, alas, our hopes quickly dashed by time.
What he becomes in a flash a crime.
By the age of ten, surly and fat,
Our bonny boy an ordinary brat!

All Poetry – Henry Barnard

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