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.

“Chinese Virus”

There are going to be truly massive layoffs. Just gets scarier and scarier. Economy in a death spiral with everything closed for business — and the death toll about to achieve escape velocity. So what do the liberals complain about — the phrase “Chinese virus.” But where did this menace originate? I say, if the shoe fits, wear it. The phrase is accurate and just.

And where’s the liberal ire about the autocratic/totalitarian form of government in China with its truly terrible civil-rights abuses, as in concentration camps for Muslims? Nowhere — that’s where. The armchair liberals are a joke. They have nothing to add to the conversation at all.  They play word games with themselves to feel self-righteous while the world burns.  Pathetic.

China deserves the world’s acrimony, particular their communist government that attempted nothing but concealment until the truth could no longer be suppressed — only then did the rest of the world become aware of this menace, a menace that now breaks on an intentionally uninformed world with a vengeance because of the chicanery of the Chinese.

But for goodness sake, let’s not offend the Chinese. Anything but that. That would be beyond the pale, and we wouldn’t feel good about it…or virtuous.

No Travel Ban Biden

Best Drink Ever

When I was a boy growing up on Waquoit Bay on Cape Cod, there was a yacht club with a large porch and balcony facing the bay.  On one side of the porch, they kept a small canon.  You shot a blank shell when you pulled this string, and the shot would signal the start of a race for Knockabouts or Beetlecats from between two buoy markers that represented the starting line.   

If you were on one of those sailboats, you would first see this small puff of smoke made by that little canon before actually hearing the blast a few moments later — this was my first lesson in physics, although I didn’t realize it at the time.

That was on one side of the porch.  But on the other side sat this battered, bright-red Coke machine that purred a steady motor throughout the entire hot summer.  Even in the warmest part of July and August, this Coke machine would itself be cold to the touch, with a little shiver from that always humming, steady motor.

In the sweltering heat of the dog days of summer, one would be but a thin dime away from instant relief.  You put that dime into the machine and pulled this grey metal handle down hard, and then you would hear the 12-oz coke bottle rattle its way down the inside of the machine and pop out this rubberized opening at the bottom.  The thick-glass Coke bottles then had this strange greenish hue and had a metal cap.  You would take the cap off by putting it into this metal cap remover located conveniently and logically right on the Coke machine.

That first wonderful belt of really cold Coke in the intense heat of summer was the best drink I’ve have ever had or ever will have.  Nothing compared to it then and nothing has compared to it since, not the finest wine or the priciest scotch — for the price of a skinny dime.  There was such a thing as value in those day.

Waquoit Bay Yacht Club

A Sail Away Adventure

Pine Needles

All Poetry — Henry Barnard

My Story

Toast

Only one month ago, the stock market hit its all time high. How things have changed!! You’ll start to see large-scale layoffs pretty soon. I heard the other day that 1 out of every 8 people are involved somehow in the travel business. And think how many are involved in restaurants/eateries. Toast.

Not Katrina

Not Katrina

Why the stock market rallied yesterday — decisive national action. Just compare this to Katrina. No comparison. Doesn’t mean the country isn’t going to be whacked by the coronavirus — Trump isn’t god, but it does mean this administration is very responsive. Trump acts; he’s not frozen in the headlights like so many previous presidents on so many different crises. Another case in point is the terrible trade imbalance with China that has been going on now for decades due to punitive and protectionist tariffs imposed on imports by the Chinese. The last 3 presidents did absolute nothing about this and so we have this huge rust belt in the middle of the country and the middle class got hollowed out. But Trump acted — he retaliated with our own tariffs, which ultimately will lead to a negotiated and fairer trade agreement with China. The worst year for the trade imbalance with China was 800 billion. That’s with a B. That meant, bottom line, China was 800 billion richer and we were 800 billion poorer at the end of the year — because Chinese protective tariffs blocked most American products from their market. Trump is doing something about that — not previous presidents. Yes uncouth, but he acts.

Trump Takes Action

Trumped

Questioning Idealism

“…idealism is mendacity…”   Nietzsche proffers us this unique point of view.  You ask, how can he equate something so noble as idealism with lying.  Well, consider that the idealist is talking not about what is, but what ought to be, what could be, but currently isn’t — in other words, to a certain extent, a fabrication, a will of the wisp…from a certain point of view, a lie, that is, mendacity.   His vision may be a noble ohe, but it is not based on current reality.  So the issue becomes how far from reality is a particular idealism, which suggests the depth of its mendacity.

With such a Nietzschean point of view toward idealism, the right-minded person needs evaluate each particular idealism to see to what extent it is stretched irrevocably far from reality, for the further it is stretched the greater its mendacity — and perhaps the less its nobility.

A case in point might be the promises politicians make to the public.  The self-same politician is hailed as a heroic idealist by certain segments of the public, while other segments rail against him as a scoundrel and liar.  Nietzsche would understand completely.

How To View Life