barrymcguire's Xanga

Stain Free Media Interview, Nov 18, 2007

Fri, 09 May 2008 18:12:15 GMT

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2007
Barry McGuire Interview - November 16, 2007

-Copyright 2007 Stain Free Media-

SFM: Speaking to us from his home in Fresno, California, we're very happy to have Barry McGuire. Barry, how are are you?

B: Good morning, good morning, I'm great. I haven't had my first cup of coffee yet, but that's alright.

SFM: Well, this oughta be interesting then.

B: Yeah, exactly.

SFM: Let's jump right in. What exactly is "Trippin' The 60's"?

B: A friend of mine, Terry Talbot, came up to me nearly a year ago, maybe ten or eleven months ago and said, "Ya know, McGuire, you have all these great stories that you tell, so why don't we do a show where you tell all your stories and we'll sing all the songs that take place around all those moments in your life?" And so we put together the show and at first I thought we'd call it "Trippin' On The 60's" and then Terry said, "Let's just call it "Trippin' the 60's". Its just taking a trip through the 60's. Actually, it's not nostalgic. It's taking the songs and the truth that was in those songs from the 60's and bringing them into the present moment. Living the truth now. It's not going back to the 60's, it's pulling the 60's into the present moment. I still sing "Eve of Destruction", not to go back, but because the song is more valid today than it was in 1965 when I first recorded it. Every one of the songs that we sing are more valid today than they were when we first sang them 40 years ago. So that's what it's all about. And there's a lot of great songs that were written and recorded during that time period. And we only sing songs by the people that we hung out with, like Stephen Stills, David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, the Loving Spoonful, John Sebastian, Hoyt Axton, Tim Hardin, John Denver. People that we knew personally and were on stage singing with them. It's not a cover pack, it's us singing songs that we sung with a lot of our friends that aren't around anymore to sing them.

SFM: You alluded to "Eve of Destruction". When you recorded that song written by Phil Sloan in 1965, it went to #1 on both the Cashbox and Billboard Charts. How did that change your life?

B: Well, it didn't. (laughing) Not even a little bit. When I sang "Eve", I had left the Christy's (New Christy Minstrels) having already had a gold album with a song I had written called "Green, Green" and I recorded that song with them and it became a huge hit for us. And because of that I hung out with people that I would have never been able to hang out with otherwise. And I saw that most of them were unhappy. Most of them were empty and unfulfilled. One time Sinatra had a little gathering at his house in Palm Springs. And at the end of the evening , he had his forehead against the wall and his drink in his left hand, punching the wall with his right hand, saying, "I'm bored, bored, bored", 'punch, punch, punch', and I'm thinking, "Frank is bored?" I mean, what's it take to not be bored? Why should I spend any more of my energy trying to get what he had if he's not happy? And so I left the Christy's and went looking for value in life and to find what brings contentment to the human soul. "Eve of Destruction" was really just pointing out the hypocrisy of our society; the spiritual, political, military, industrial and social hypocrisy. "You hate your next door neighbor....You're old enough to kill, but not for voting." Nobody was asking any questions and the song was filled with questions. No answers, just questions. Well, it was labelled a 'protest song', and I thought, "Well, that's silly. It's not a protest song, it's a diagnostic song." If you go to a doctor and he tells you that you have cancer, do you call him a 'protest doctor'? That's what "Eve of Destruction" was, a diagnostic of societal hypocrisy.

SFM: I believe you actually referred to it as a 'love song' at one time.

B: Yeah, well, it was. It was gently trying to wake people up, ya know? "Hey folks, we have a major problem here." If somebody is driving a car and they go to sleep at the wheel, the most loving thing in the world you can do is wake them up. (laughing) So the song was trying to wake people up and it woke a few people, but like I said, it had no answers, only questions. So then I got a call to go back and do "Hair", on Broadway because somebody had seen me in "The President's Analyst" (with James Coburn). It was Tommy Smothers. They had money invested in the show. So I went and did "Hair" for a year and I thought there were answers there, and there were a few, but the very lifestyle we were living at the time was killing us. In a ten year period I had lost 16 of my personal friends from drug overdoses, suicides and sexually transmitted diseases. Something was missing so I left New York and came back to California looking for the answer and actually reached a point where I gave up. I didn't think there was an answer. And then I just stumbled into the Person of Christ, and it wasn't Christianity or religion, it was just understanding Who and What Christ is and what the universe is all about. What time and space and matter and energy is all about. Where it came from and what my opportunity at this moment is. It's a long journey and it's impossible to put it into one little conversation. Basically it just comes to living in the moment. Living now. Now is the only source of life in the universe. Right now. The past is dead, the future's a fantasy, 'now' is reality. So if you live in 'now', you're living in Christ because Christ is 'now'. I ask people, "Where is Jesus?" They usually say, ".......uh.......Well, He's living in my heart." You mean there's a little bubble in your heart with a tiny little person living there? "Well, no...." C'mon, think this through. Let's ask some real questions here. (laughing)

SFM: What happened to you, as you tell it, "in that house just off Mulholland Drive in Stone Canyon up in the Hollywood Hills"? What happened to you that day?

B: Well, I had been struggling. I read the words of Jesus in this little modern translation of His story and the thing that caught my attention was when He said to love God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. And I thought, man, if there's an answer to the "Eve of Destruction", then that's it. If everybody lived according to those two little bits of instruction we wouldn't need the military, the government, lawyers, jails or welfare systems because we would all be taking care of each other. We would realize that 'you're me, I'm you and we are all together, (singing) goo-goo-g'joob'. Right? (laughing) That's the truth. (singing) 'Close your eyes and point your finger on a map and let it linger. Anyplace you point your finger to, there's someone with the same blood-type as you." Isn't that amazing? We're all brothers and sisters in blood. And the 'lie' is what separates us. To think that I'm different from you or that the Muslims are different from Buddhists or Buddhists are different from Christians or white is different from black or Asians are different from Indians is the stupidity of human thinking that's brought the world to the brink of annihilation.

SFM: If I'm not mistaken, you've released about 20 albums since becoming a follower of Jesus. How did life change for you as a folk singer who suddenly started following Christ? How did the 'old friends' react?

B: They were happy that I had found something that turned me right-side-up. I was a capsized ship that was slowly sinking into the depths and all of a sudden they saw me right-side-up, sails full, racing off over the waters of life. And they were all very pleased for me. It wasn't THEIR cup of tea. They didn't understand Christ. See, the problem is, and this is tragic, it's almost like the Name of Jesus has become the enemy of the Person of Jesus. So many acts of hypocrisy, self-aggrandizement, greed, empire-building have taken place and so many millions of people have been slaughtered, burned alive, skinned and then boiled in oil in the Name of Christ; from the Crusades all the way through to the 'Christian' gunmen in Beirut, the Catholics and Protestants murdering each other in Ireland.... There's nothing more divided in the world than Christianity because everyone thinks that their little take on it is the right take and they're the one who has the Word of God. Christ said, "Call no man 'rabbi' or 'teacher' or 'father'." But, "the Holy Spirit will come and dwell within us and lead us into the fullness of Truth". "In the counsel of many is wisdom", but the Kingdom of God lies within us. And so many things have gone on in the Name of Jesus that have nothing to do with the Truth of Christ. And as soon as they mention His Name, this preconceived image of fundamentalist Christianity with all the finger-pointing and condemnation is all people see. So at that point they don't hear another word we have to say. That's why I wrote "Cosmic Cowboy" because I was trying to paint a verbal picture of Christ in a way that would allow people to catch a glimpse of Christ before they actually knew Who it was they were looking at. We have Christ dressed up in this Western uniform and in this little box. The Scripture says, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life". The word "Truth", as it appears in the original Greek language means "Reality". The Word also tells us to humble ourselves under the Mighty Hand of God. Well, what is the 'Hand of God'? Is that the 'Hand of God' painted on the ceiling of the Sisteen Chapel reaching out to touch Adam's hand? Is the 'Hand of God' the clergy or doctrine? Where can you go and escape the 'Hand of God'? Nowhere! Ok, so what IS 'Reality'? You cannot escape 'Reality'. Wherever you go, there you are. You can go to the moon and there's still 'Reality'. We are in the inescapable grip of 'Reality'. To me, 'Reality', itself, is the Hand of God. And if I just surrender to 'Reality', I'm surrendering to the Hand of God. I'm surrendering to what God is providing for me to experience. Things happen to me that are uncomfortable because God is trying to show me that those areas of discomfort are nothing more than entities living within me that are not true. Anytime I'm emotionally upset, that's just something within me that's not true. It's telling me a lie and at that moment I'm living a lie. This is my perspective. You may have a different perspective, but this is mine. Jesus is the Way, the Reality and the Life. Life itself is Christ. Life itself is the Godhead. The 'Way' is nothing more than the unfolding of the present moment. The 'Way' is surrender to 'Reality'. And then it's at that moment we discover Life. So, it's been an incredible journey for me. I've never known a peace that I'm starting to slip into. I'm just trusting God no matter what happens. I'm saying, "Bring it on, Lord!". I don't want any of these untruths, these enemy strongholds living within me. And 'Reality' exposes them. My wife and I used to say at the beginning of our relationship, "If something gets your goat, it's because you got a goat to get." (laughing) It's not the 'something', it's the 'goat' that lives within me. How can I help someone get a splinter out of their eye when I've got beams and logs in my own eye?!? These 'goats', these 'dragons', these 'splinters', these 'strong men', whatever you want to call 'em, they're all the same thing. 'Multiple personalities' that dwell within us. Psychology and everyone's saying the same thing, they're just using different words. You can call it a 'demon' or you can call it a 'multiple personality' or you can call it a 'stronghold' or you can call it an 'altar to something that dwells within us' or you can call it a 'parasite'; a psychological thought-parasite that's sucking the life out of us. The 'Reality' of Christ will deliver us from our parasites. To be totally parasite-free, wouldn't that be awesome?!? (laughing)

SFM: I'm shifting gears here, Barry.......Recently I saw a beautiful picture of you and your lovely wife, Mari (pronounced 'Mah-ree', as I was instructed) obviously laughing and giggling like a couple of kids on Prom Night. I mean, c'mon, Barry, get a room!! (Barry laughing hysterically, thank goodness)

B: It's been 34 years and she's my best friend.

SFM: How did you first meet?

B: She first came to California from New Zealand with a team of about 18 other people to go through a discipleship training school in Fresno. We met casually and probably over the next six months saw each other maybe a half dozen times in the office or out and about. And then the day before she went back to New Zealand, she was with her boss, my dear friend, Winky Pratney and he was taking his wife and his mom and dad to Disneyland. I had a concert in Anaheim that evening, so I joined them. The whole thing was God just weaving our lives together. I didn't know she was going to be with them and she didn't know that I was going to meet Winky, so there I was sitting in front of the Magic Castle when up they walked. And when we rode the rides, there was Winky and his wife, Faye, and Bill and Lynn, Winky's mom and dad and Mari. So, Mari and I would ride all the rides together and she was so beautiful, but I had so totally violated that part of my life. I thought there was no way I could have a healthy relationship with a lady. I thought I had totally destroyed that part of my life. That was my big sin. My deep addiction was sexual promiscuity. So I had given up and thought I'd live celibate the rest of my life. Then one year later I met Mari and a year after that we got married. So we just talked while hanging out at Disneyland. She was going back to her brother's the next day and I told her to drop me a line and let me know how it's going. About a month later I got a letter and we starting writing back and forth. And about a year after that I wrote and asked her if she would marry me. She wrote back and said she would. So the first time I actually kissed her was when she got off the airplane two weeks before we got married. She was with her mom and I kissed her, too; about the same amount of passion in both kisses. (laughing) We were all just standing there, dumbfounded; "Well, what do we do now?" So I took them over to my mom's house and dropped them off and two weeks later we got married.

SFM: You spent a considerable amount of time in New Zealand in the 80's, didn't you?

B: We lived there for about six years, but we didn't want our children to grow up with a New Zealand mindset. The world is a lot bigger than the New Zealanders believe it to be.

SFM: Could you tell me a little bit about your children and grandchildren?

B: Well, my daughter is a high school teacher working on her Master's in Counseling, because there are so many hurting kids with destroyed homelives. How can you take kids who have experienced nothing but violence and alcoholism and drug abuse and profanity and sexual promiscuity and expect them to learn anything at school? It's insane and then the teacher gets blamed because the child is not graduating. She has two little girls, Michaela and Meguire. She wanted to keep the 'McGuire' name, so we call her 'Meg', for 'Meguire'. She's delightful. And Michaela can walk out into the yard and hold her finger up in the air, call out, and a praying mantis and dragonflies will come land on her finger. She's such an 'earth-angel'. She's awesome. We just spent the whole day yesterday with those two little ones and had tons of fun. My son is suffering from bi-polar disorder, an associative disorder, altered personalities, multiple personalities because he was abused by a family member when he was a young child and it's totally shattered him. So he's struggling up out of that hole. And he's also 'wired'. He's a genius. He sees reality as it really is. He sees all the leeches and the parasites and the lies that people tell, just through kinesiological body language and facial expressions. It's all there to be seen. Some people have that gift and he's one of 'em. And he writes the most incredible poetry and music that we've ever heard in our life. He's the keyboard player.

SFM: Well, I'm going to close with a brief quote from your website, www.barrymcguire.com. You write, "I spend hours, days and weeks just hanging out with my wife. 34 years married. She's my best friend. We laugh, talk, read and play with our grandchildren. Life has become a wondrous thing for me."

B: It's true! (laughing)

SFM: 'Legacy-building' seems to be a big thing these days. In closing, could you share with us what it is you would like people to say about Barry McGuire years from now?

B: Yeah, I would like it to be said that, "from his perspective, he spoke the truth." From MY perspective. If you had a thousand people holding hands and standing in a circle and you put an elephant down in the middle of the circle, and said, "Ok, what does the elephant look like?" Well, you don't tell what the person standing next to you says or what the person 50 people down the row says just so you'll be accepted. You tell what you see; an honest description of what the elephant looks like. A lot of us don't tell the truth. We say, "Oh, look at the beautiful clothes that the king is wearing." The king doesn't have a stitch on. But since we don't want to be rejected by the crowd, we go along with what everyone else is saying. The thing is, if everyone tells the truth about what the truth looks like and we all get to know the other person's view, then we'll get a pretty good understanding of what the elephant looks like. We have such a narrow perspective. I mean, God is a pretty big elephant and I just have my little narrow perspective, but if I tell the truth about what I see, and you tell the truth about what you see and then we compare our truths, our picture gets a little bigger; a little more accurate.

SFM: Barry, thank you very much and send our love to Mari.

B: I will. She just walked in from cutting some roses and has a bouquet she's putting on the table.

With that and a few more comments on how to go about getting "Trippin' The 60's" to come to Texas, we ended our conversation.

Thanks, Barry.

Posted by STAIN FREE MEDIA at 9:26 AM

INCOMING EMAIL

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:38:03 GMT

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

INCOMING EMAIL

I just received an email from a lady, thought it might be interesting for some of you to read.

It seems too many Christians are looking for Christ\'s return as an easy out as far as the worlds problems go, particularly environmental problems i.e. global warming. As a self described "old hippie", hopefully you're not one of them.

Hi Lisa,

Well, I don't know about Christ's soon physical returning. People have been thinking He's going to be coming back any minute for the last two thousand years. For me, and Mari, He's already come back! He lives within us and we live in Him as best we can. The ancient scriptures say, "we live, breathe, move, and have our being in Him." Our constant goal is to stay focused on this present moment, and to pour one hundred percent of our energy and attention into the demands and requirements of each moment we experience, like answering this email right now. Taking no thought of yesterday or projecting nothing into the mysteries that await us tomorrow. This present moment is all we have. If we can't find our salvation NOW, the second coming isn't going to do much for us.

Although I am a surrendered disciple of Christ, I can't call myself a Christian. To me, that would be like calling myself a "humble". Like saying, "Oh yes, I belong to the church of humility. We're all humbles over there." I would be honored if someone saw enough of Christ in my life to call me by His name, a Christ-ian. So many acts of hypocrisy and greed and depraved murder have been perpetrated in the name of Jesus, it's very difficult these days for anyone to see Him as He actually IS. A forgiver of all mankind, every one, every single soul in the world has been forgiven, the problem is, so few know it. And guilt and greed seem to be the killers of mankind and all life on our planet.

Wow, I didn't know I was going to get on a roll, but the question you asked got me going.

Barry

Monday, April 17, 2006

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 00:24:08 GMT

Easter Sunday, April 16th, 2006

9.25 p.m. Pacific time

I just received this Easter Peace Poem from a dear friend who lives in Wisconsin. I asked him if I could post it on my blog page for all to read and he graciously said yes. So as you read it, what does it make you think about?

“I submit the attached and pasted writing for your consideration. May the

blessings of Peace be with you this Easter season.”

Joe Hovel

Easter Peace Poem

Somewhat routine-

tanks in the desert,

fighter jets,

cluster bombs,

cruise missiles.

Painful agonizing death,

torturous death.

Macabre reality-

living human beings,

bleeding , groaning,

suffering.

Torn from family and friends,

collateral damage or grim witness.

A nasty job-

ordered to soldiers,

but necessary ?

Business of killing-

part of maintaining empire.

WAR-

population control,

absolute power,

corporate dominance,

valueless life.

The bottom side of capitalism,

in public display.

Signature event:

PAX AMERICANA.

Peace American style.

render to the USA

or face the consequence.

Business as usual,

another day,

another killing.

HO-HUM !

But alas;

Jesus crucified;

Jesus resurrected.

All nations take notice-

a greater power upon us.

Oppressed peoples;

awaken,

a new way is available,

PEACE is promised.

Only one option-

[ to power and authority, mislead no more]

Non violent resistance.

Faith in the living GOD ,

is resistance.

Jesus, revolutionary-

exposed governmental rulers

as bloody murderers,

as illegitimate usurpers of Moral authority.

Jesus calls us;

count the costs,

weigh allegiances,

recognize a Greater Power.

PAX CHRISTI or pax americana.

Life or death.

Choose life eternal.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 16:40:48 GMT

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Why my Wife and I Have Cell Phones

In 1977, Mari and I lived in Silvercreek, Washington with our six-month-old son Brennon. We lived on an isolated, twenty acre piece of land in a little five room farmhouse that shook when you walked across the floor.

Silvercreek is about five miles down the road from Mossyrock, just fifty miles or so North of Mt St. Helens.

In those early days of our marriage, we had only one car, a Dodge panel van; it was a hundred miles to the nearest airport. I was doing two concerts a week on a pretty regular basis, Friday and Saturday nights, so that meant leaving home early Thursday morning and not returning until late Sunday evening. That left Mari (no cell phone) stranded without a car for four days a week. We only knew two or three families living in the area and of course, there in southern Washington, it rained for weeks at a time without a break.

It was early spring, and I was singing at a youth convention in Oshkosh Wisconsin. My part of the program ended on a Saturday night. I had been talking with Mari (no cell phone) on a land-line (that’s all we had in those days), and I knew she was really feeling alone, vulnerable, and abandoned. So I told her I’d try to catch an earlier flight the next morning and do my best to get home before dark.

So, instead of leaving Oshkosh at 9:A.M., I left at 6:A.M. That meant I had to leave my hotel room at 4:30 to catch the shuttle to the airport. Not wanting to wake up my roommate, I didn’t even turn on the lights that morning. I just tiptoed around the room getting my stuff together and then quietly pulled the door shut behind me as I left.

On the connector flight from Oshkosh to Chicago O’Hare, I realized I had left my van keys back in my hotel room. As soon as we landed, I called Mario, my roomy (no cell phone), to tell him about the keys, but he was already off into his day. So, I left a message for him at the desk, telling him what I had done and asked if he could send the keys out to the Portland Air Terminal (PDX) on the next flight. Then I called my concert coordinator, Jerry (no cell phone) Melrose, who lived in Los Angeles. I told him about my situation, and asked if he could follow up on my call to the hotel in Oshkosh and try to get my keys sent out to PDX. Then I called Mari (no cell phone), telling her all that had happened and I told her I would do my best to get home as soon as possible.

They called my flight to Portland and off I flew.

Upon my arrival at PDX I once again called the hotel in Oshkosh, trying to get in touch with (no cell phone) Mario. I was out of change, so I asked the operator if she would charge the call (no cell phone) to my home number. She went off line for a moment and then came back on saying, yes, the charge had been accepted, and my call was put through. Mario was still not in his room and nobody knew where he was. So I asked the desk attendant if anyone there had received a call from Melrose about my car keys. He asked around and came back with a big “NO”, nobody knew anything about a phone call from a Jerry Melrose.

So there I was, at the Portland Air Terminal, nearly a hundred miles from home with no keys to my van.

I went out to the gas station located in the airport parking lot; and asked the attendant if he knew how to hot wire a car. He said, “no, he didn’t”. I asked if I could use his phone (no cell phone) to call the Police station, maybe they could tell me how to get my car started. The Police told me they didn’t give out that kind of information. I told them I couldn’t find any car thieves listed in the phone book and that’s why I’d called them. Then the officer got a bit snippety with me and that was the end of our conversation.

The gas station manager had a thought saying, maybe his boss might know how to hot wire the car. So he gave him a call (no cell phone). Yes! His boss came right over and wired up my car. Then using a screwdriver to short the starter motor, zoom, zoom my car was running. The only problem was I had to break the wind wing on the passenger’s door to gain access to the inside of the van, but hey, I was on my way home, so I really didn’t care.

I pulled out onto I-5 heading north and I was one happy camper… thinking all my troubles were behind me; I was on my way home.

Then it started to rain... Hard. A hard, hard, downpour. I couldn’t use my windshield wipers because my ignition wasn’t turned on. I could barely see where I was going so I thought I’d better turn on my headlights so no one would run into me. But because my van was hot wired, when I turned my lights on, a full charge from the alternator totally bypassing the voltage regulator, zapped its way into my electrical system through the light switch. Instantly, every light bulb in my van blew out. As soon as I saw the lights flaring I turned off the lights, but it was too late. The electrical surge had fused the points in the distributor and I was now running on two barely firing cylinders.

Popity, popity, Chugady, pop, Chugady, pop, chug, chug. I was driving a doomed automobile and I knew it. The best I could do was get this thing off to the side of the road. As I pulled onto the apron, the rattling engine gave up the ghost and totally died.

In order to try and restart the car I knew I’d be getting soaking wet in the downpour. So, I popped the hood, grabbed my screwdriver and opened the door. Just as I swung the door open, a big eighteen wheeler doin’ about sixty-five miles an hour went roaring past and the back draft caught my door and slammed it all the way forward, springing the hinges and warping the door. So, now my driver’s side door is sprung and won’t close properly. I get out of the van and slam the door shut half a dozen times trying to bend the hinges back so the door will stay closed. Then I’m off around the front of the van with my screw driver and start shorting out the starter motor, trying to get the engine running again. It’s like standing under a waterfall but I do get the engine, cough, cough, sputter, sputtering and I run around trying to get my foot on the gas peddle before the motor stops. I’m pump, pump, pumping the peddle like crazy, the engine rattles and sputters and then it backfires to a stop. So I get a packing box from the back of the van and wedge it against the accelerator, grab my screwdriver and I’m back out in the rain doing my newly learned car starting trick. This time when it kicks over, it actually starts to rev up a bit, so I slam the hood and charge around leaping into the van slamming my right foot down on the accelerator and pop sputter pop I have a barely running engine and it’s five miles to the next off ramp. But I had just passed an off ramp so I decided to back up and exit off the on ramp. It was still raining so hard I couldn’t see what I was backing into so I ran into the guardrail and wiped out the right side of my van.

Finally, I got back on I-5 heading south and found a service station that was open. As I pulled into the parking area my van once again died a horrible coughing and wheezing death.

I used their phone to call Mari (no cell phone) at home. She was worried sick, not knowing what had become of me. I found out that when I called Oshkosh and billed it to my home phone, the operator had phoned her and asked if she would accept a long distance charge from Barry McGuire. She said, yes she would, and then waited for me to say “hello”. She waited and waited. She thought I was calling home. I wasn’t, I was calling Oshkosh, but she didn’t know that. She wanted to tell me that she had Kathy take a set of van keys to the Greyhound bus station and they were waiting for me at the Portland bus station. Also, Jerry Melrose had called her and asked if I had picked up the keys that were waiting for me at the United Baggage claim at PBX. He had reached Mario after all, and the keys had been sent out on the next flight to Portland.

Mari called Kathy, asked if she would drive down to pick me up, and give me a ride home.

I finally got home that night about midnight. Three days later, they called me and told me my van was ready for me to come and pick it up.

And that’s why my wife and I have cell phones.

That’s it for now.

BMcG

Friday, December 16, 2005

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 02:12:59 GMT

Thursday, December 15th, 2005

11.10 pm. U.S. Pacific Time

NEW ZEALAND ADVENTURE

2003 – 2005

In December of 2002, my wife, Mari received news from New Zealand that her middle brother, Peter, was in an intensive care ward with a staph infection that had seated itself in his spine. At that time he’d been in a coma for several days and the prognosis was very dim indeed.

There was no question or conversation, we both knew she had to go to be with her family. The earliest flight she could book left LAX early January and she spent the next two weeks with her Mom living at the hospital in Whangarei. Her other two brothers, Ian and Graham were in constant attendance. Pete was in a drug induced coma and on every life support system in the ICU.

Mari returned home at the end of January, thinking Peter was on the mend, but within a few days, his condition worsened and she thought she would have to fly back to New Zealand again, but this time to attend his funeral.

We spent many mornings in prayer for Pete and somehow I was prompted to tell Mari that Pete was going to get well, I just knew it in the depths of my being that God’s Spirit was at work within Pete healing his body. I knew if God’s Spirit hadn’t been there doing its healing work, Pete would have already been dead.

One morning Mari told me she felt like she was being torn in half, half of her wanted to be in New Zealand with her 80 year old, widowed Mom and her brothers, and the other half wanted to be here in the States with our family. So I, not hearing all that she had said, half here, half there, only heard the part about living in New Zealand.

The following few weeks gave us some direction as to what we were to do. First of all, I had a concert booked in Salt Lake City, I got a call from Randy Sparks asking if I could do a date with him and the New Christy Minstrels, and that date fell on the SLC date. So I called Salt Lake. They said they could move the date to another time. I called Randy, said it was a “go.” About a month later, Randy called me and said the date had fallen through. So I had nothing on that weekend. A couple of days later, I got a call from an old friend I hadn’t heard from in several years inviting me down to his church in Carlsbad, California. I told him I guessed I was supposed to be there because his was the third booking I had for that weekend. The other two bookings had fallen through.

After the concert was over in Carlsbad, I was standing in front of the church talking to folks. A young man came up to me and as soon as he said hello, I knew he was from New Zealand. He said he knew Mari. I said, “Well, she’s standing right over there selling cds.” So he walked over, struck up a conversation with her, reminding her of how they had met and reminiscing about all their mutual friends. Mari told him we were planning on moving to New Zealand, where we would probably be building a house. He said, “My brother’s a builder, give him a call.” We thought, “How amazing!” He told us he’d seen a promotional flyer in a bookstore for the concert, he didn’t even go to this church.

So, we called his family who put us in touch with some old friends who lived in the very area we were planning on moving to. One of them was a phenomenal architect, and the other, a master builder.

We arrived in New Zealand at 6 a.m. on a Friday in November of 2003. We had a quick reunion with Mari’s Auntie and family, brothers, cousins, uncles and aunts and then off to Orewa to our motel room. We had a 2 p.m. appointment with the bank who told us they were unable to open our account unless we had proof of an address in the States. Well, we had sold our house in the States, so we didn’t have an address, except for a box number. About a month before, I had lost my driver’s license in California, something I haven’t done in 20 years, so I had to get a new one, and it had our box number address on it. I just had the temporary license in my wallet. The bank manager said, “That’ll do,” and opened the account.

From the bank we went back to our motel room, where Mari’s youngest brother showed up with the real estate section from the local newspaper. As the girls knocked some food together for lunch, I was looking through all the different pictures of properties that were available. And lo, there it was, the perfect place. We drove up, had a look at it, Mari’s Mom said, “This looks like McGuire land to me.” We drove back to the motel, called the real estate lady, and said “We’ll take it.” So, by Saturday night we had purchased the property and found our architect and builder, all within 48 hours of landing in Auckland.

We spent another couple of weeks with family and friends and returned to the States to finish my concert commitments before moving to New Zealand.

It took from April 2004 to January 2005 to build, and so we moved in. All was going along fine until I started getting negative feedback from the New Zealand Immigration authority, inferring that because of my age and the fact that I had a pacemaker, they thought I would be a burden on the socialized health care system.

The New Zealand system forces you to actually be in New Zealand before you can apply for a permanent resident’s visa. Because Mari and I had been married for 31 years at the time, and she’s a citizen, we didn’t think there would be any problem at all with me getting a permanent resident’s visa, it wasn’t even a consideration for us. But they had me jumping through all these medical tests, with months of waiting and then more tests and papers and more waiting.

One of the test results showed my cholesterol was a bit high. My whole family has high cholesterol and they all lived well into their eighties and even mid-nineties, but the doctor wanted to get my cholesterol down to where he thought it should be, so he put me on a cholesterol lowering medication.

The second pill I took, blew my heart into arrhythmia so off we went to the hospital where they hooked me up to all the machines and put a drip in my hand to give me some more medication, (amiodarone) that was supposed to level out the arrhythmia. But instead, I went into a violent reaction, thrashing around on the table, vomiting, my heart went berserk, I had huge red blotches come up all over my body, my lips swelled up like somebody had punched me in the mouth, the whites of my eyes went totally bloodshot.

Meanwhile the doctor and nurses were banging on the medication dispenser because it wasn’t working. It had only managed to put a drop or two in my veins when it broke down. If it had continued working, I’m sure it would have killed me. Another miracle in our adventure!

After vomiting the poison out of my stomach, and the doctors detaching the intravenous feed to my hand, my body settled right down, heartbeat went back to normal, red blotches started disappearing, breathing was normal, blood pressure was normal, and the doctor’s comment was, “This appears to be an anomaly, we’ve never seen anything like this before.”

They did tell me I was only the second person in that hospital that had ever had a violent reaction to that particular medication.

I wanted to go home, but they said, “No, you need to stay for observation.” I said, “Who’s going to pay for it?” They said, “Aren’t you a resident?” I said, “No.” They said, “Don’t you have medical insurance?” I said, “I do have private insurance, but it doesn’t cover my cardiovascular system because of my pacemaker.” That was the end of the conversation.

Three days later, they put me on a treadmill, and released me with a discharge letter stating, “Next line of investigation would be coronary angiogram. This has been discussed extensively with Mr McGuire but he has opted not to have further investigation in this country and would pursue this further in America due to financial reasons. On discharge, he was well and had no symptoms of chest pain or palpitations.”

So after this little episode, we felt it was time to “get out of Dodge” before something serious happened. Since I’m fully covered with Medicare and Aarp here in the U.S. we thought, that’s the next step for us.

We sold our brand new, just built, beautiful house, set Mari’s Mom up in a lovely little two-bedroom cottage where we can go visit her two or three months every summer (winter in the US). We packed the rest of our stuff into a twenty foot container and shipped it on to Fresno.

Somebody just asked me, “How does it feel to be back in Fresno?” I told him, “Well, you really don’t go back to anywhere, you may go to some place you’ve been before, but it’s not the same place it was when you left, everything is changing all the time, including us all.”

So, that’s the sequence of events from start to finish on the New Zealand episode. We wouldn’t change a minute of it. Relationships have been established and nurtured. We now have a US winter/NZ summer place to go to for holidays and time with Mari’s family, so it’s just win, win, win. Only God could do something like that – what a great ride this last couple of years has been, and it just keeps on coming down the pike.

Hope this satisfies any of you who might be wondering, “What happened?”

Blessings on you all.

I’ll be back, maybe?

BMcG

Friday, November 11, 2005

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 19:32:42 GMT

Saturday, 12th November, 2005

1.31 p.m. N.Z. time

Hello everybody,

We've just packed everything into a container and shipped it off to California. I'll be flying from Auckland to Fresno on the 16th November and it'll take me a few weeks to get a new office up and running, so please be patient while we make this transition. There may not be any new blog postings till after Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all. We certainly have a lot to be thankful for whether we know it or not.

Barry

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 23:42:03 GMT

Friday, 4 November 2005

7.39 a.m. NZ time

1951

In the Navy

October 1951 I turned sixteen years old. It had been a great summer and I bought my first car, a 1941, two door, Ford sedan. What a dog. The car overheated on the way home from the used car lot. I should have taken it back to the dealer, but I didn’t because I was sixteen, it was my first car, and I loved it. I spent all my money trying to fix it up. I flushed out the engine, got a new radiator, did everything I knew how to do, trying to make it run cool, but it never did, it ran hot until the day it died.

That year my cousin, Phil, joined the U.S. Navy. He was driving a brand new metallic green hard top Oldsmobile. He was stationed in San Diego pulling Seaman Guard duty at the Naval Training Centre and he came home every weekend, driving his big beautiful new Olds. I thought, “wow man, I gotta join the Navy.” But I was only sixteen, and it would be another whole year before I would be old enough to enlist.

So I went to the recruiting office and asked them what I would need to do to join up. I didn’t tell them I was just sixteen years old, and the recruiting officer told me I would need some kind of proof to show I was seventeen years old. So I jumped in my Ford and drove back up to my old school in Newbury Park. I looked up my friend, Roy, and told him what I needed, a letter written on school stationery saying the school records showed that I was born in 1934, and my age was seventeen years old. And that’s what we did. I drove back to the recruiting office and told the officer I had called the school and they would be mailing him a letter with the proof of my age.

A few days later my phone rang, it was the recruiting officer saying the letter had arrived, and I could come down and sign my enlistment papers whenever I was ready. On the day after Christmas, (Boxing Day in the British Commonwealth) 1951, I, along with about thirty other guys, standing right in the middle of the Los Angeles Central Train Terminal, the very terminal my uncle Mark had helped to build back in ’37, took my oath of allegiance to serve faithfully in the United States Navy.

Boot camp was typical, just like in the movies, with immunization shots, hair cuts, and clothes that didn’t fit. I thought the food was great but most everybody else complained and said it wasn’t fit to eat.

I really liked all the marching around and learning the different rifle commands. I found the classes interesting and I learned a lot, except for the knot tying class. I got bored and went to sleep. The instructor saw me napping and woke me up with the question, “OK sailor, how do you tie a bowline? I yawned, picked up my piece of line, and flick, flick, handed him the bowline. He suspiciously checked out the knot and asked, “What did you do before you joined the Navy?” I told him I had been a commercial fisherman, and he told me to go back to sleep. To the rest of the class he said, “If you need any help with your knots, just ask this guy.”

I met some great guys in boot camp, one guy became a lifelong friend. We wound up being assigned to the same ship, the USS Toledo, a heavy cruiser stationed out of Long Beach, California, my old stomping grounds. He lived in Southern California and he loved cars as much as I did.

I was dating a girl from El Monte. One day my friend asked me if the girl I was dating had a friend, thinking maybe she could set him up for a blind date, and we could all go out together double dating. I asked her and she said, yes, she did have a friend, and she put it all together. Well, it turned out that I knew her girlfriend from the 8^th grade. To cut a very long story short, they fell in love and got married but that’s a whole other story that they would have to tell you.

It got to where the four of us would go out together every weekend that we pulled a weekend liberty. Then came the news we knew was coming, but had been dreading to hear, our ship was ordered to join up with the Pacific fleet in Korea.

Before we knew it, it was our last weekend ashore; the Toledo was scheduled to sail at 0800 Monday morning. The deal was we had Friday night ashore, but we had to be back on board Saturday morning at 0800 for morning role call. Then we could go back ashore again for the remainder of the weekend. Well, it was so tough getting it all together that Saturday morning, and then driving an hour and a half down to Terminal Island, then catch the launch out to where our ship was laying at anchor, don’tcha know, we were late.

We knew if we went aboard for morning muster, and we got there late, we would be put on report. Then we would be restricted to the ship, which meant we wouldn’t see the girls again ‘til we got back from Korea. We were all moanin’ and groanin’ and the girls were pleading, “Please don’t go back until Monday morning.” My ship mate and I talked it over and decided, because we were late, we were going to pull a Captain’s Mass anyway, so why not wait ‘til we were out at sea and receive our punishment (extra duty) there. So with laughter and cheering we pulled out of the Terminal Island parking lot and headed back home with 48 more hours to say goodbye.

We piled back into our car at 6:am on Monday morning and once again drove down to Terminal Island. We pulled into the parking lot with thirty minutes to spare and the first thing we noticed was, the Toledo was gone.

We asked around and found out her orders had been changed; she’d pulled anchor and sailed at 0700. We were an hour late and dead in the water. Missing ship is a whole different ballgame than missing a role call. We were in deep, deep sticky and stinky stuff, right up to our eyeballs.

We sat in the car for nearly an hour thinking and saying, “What are we gonna do, what are we gonna do?” Finally, I told my friend and the girls, “I’m going back to San Pedro and try and figure out what I’m supposed to do.” After six or eight days of expecting the Shore Patrol or the F.B.I. to come busting through my door, I came to the conclusion that since I was still only sixteen years old, and under age, I couldn’t be legally held responsible for my actions. So the best thing for me to do would be to get a copy of my birth certificate, and report back to the Terminal Island Navy Base, and confess my age.

And that’s just what I did, all dressed up in my “Liberty Blues” and ready for inspection, I walked up to the main gate and handed the guard my I.D. and liberty card. First he checked out my I.D. and then took a look at my liberty card. “The Toledo,” he said, “Holy sh--, she sailed more than a week ago. Put this sailor under arrest.” And they did, marching me off to the Officer of the Deck. He examined my I.D. and liberty cards and I handed him my birth certificate. He said “What’s this?” “My birth certificate, sir.” He gave it a quick read, then looking up at me said, “Why damn son, you’re too young to be in the Navy.” “Yes sir,” I replied. “Take this man to the Base Commander.” “Yes sir,” said the two guards, and off we marched to see the Base Commander. The same scenario, “What’s this?” “My birth certificate sir,” “Damn boy, you’re too young to be in the Navy.” “Yes sir,” I said once again. So they shipped me down to Des Base (Destroyer Base) in San Diego, and there, about six weeks later, I received my discharge from the U.S.Navy. I got all my mustering out pay (that I used to buy a ’32 Ford Roadster). I got all my G.I. benefits, including life insurance and hospitalization, and because I had been on active duty for more than six months I never had to go back into the armed forces again.

So there I was, a sixteen year old veteran, with a 1932 fire engine red, chopped top, column-shift, red and white tuck and rolled, leather upholstered Ford Roadster, with a ’48 Mercury engine and juice brakes. How good could it get? I had all my G.I. benefits and I never had to worry about being drafted back into the military. At that moment in my life I thought I had just pulled off the smartest thing I’d ever done, and I knew I’d really had nothing to do with it at all, it just kinda happened by itself.

Well that’s all for now, next time out, it’s 1952, I’m married at seventeen and working for a living.

BMcG