Mountain Views News          Saturday, September 29, 2012

17

OPINION

 Mountain Views News Saturday, September 29, 2012 

STUART Tolchin..........On LIFE

HAIL Hamilton My Turn

Mountain 
Views

News

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

CITY EDITOR

Dean Lee 

EAST VALLEY EDITOR

Joan Schmidt

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

PRODUCTION 

Richard Garcia

PHOTOGRAPHY

Lina Johnson

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

CONTRIBUTORS

Jeff Brown

Pat Birdsall

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Stuart Tolchin

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Hail Hamilton 

Rich Johnson

Chris Bertrand

Ron Carter

Rev. James Snyder

Bobby Eldridge

Mary Carney

La Quetta Shamblee

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Greg Wellborn

Dr. John Talevich

Meaghan Allen

Sean Kayden


WHY DO WE HURT SO MUCH

ENDEAVOR’S LAST FLIGHT -- 
AN END OF AN ERA

 This past weekend I 
attended a workshop 
which taught me the 
same lesson that I 
learned over thirty 
years ago. People are 
hurting inside and as 
a result of that hurt they often choose to 
hurt others. This past weekend involved 
telling stories and then focusing on the 
reactions of others as they listened to 
the stories. The point of the seminar 
was to increase attorney sensitivity to 
the feelings of jurors listening to the 
presentation of evidence involving 
parent-child relationships. I was 
surprised to realize how angry so many 
people are at what they endured while 
growing up.

 Seminar participants described 
that they were now forced to become 
caretakers for their parents who had 
never properly cared for them in the first 
place. Considerable guilt accompanied 
these feelings and participants 
rationalized by saying that all along they 
felt that other children were favored 
and that their parents had never given 
them deserved attention. This all 
reminded me of my experience in the 
human –potential movements of the 
‘70s when exercises involved the leader 
of the group telling stories about those 
wonderful days of growing up and those 
lovely summer days at the beach where 
everyone enjoyed the sun and each other’s 
company. Soon the whole room was in 
tears but what was being cried about was 
not the memories of those now long past 
lovely memories. No, people were crying 
and angry about the fact that they never 
had those experiences or feelings in the 
first place.

 The group leader then directed 
the 100 people or so in the room to use 
the conveniently placed foam bats and 
pillows to express their anger. Sobbing 
screams of “You never paid any attention 
to me” or “You always loved her more 
than me” filled the room. It was all so 
predictable I guess and don’t forget this 
was in the generation before stoned 
parents and mandatory divorce. I 
guess it’s even harder to grow up now as 
parents try to cope with unemployment, 
and drugs, and never-ending war, and 
doubt.

 Are things easier in other 
cultures? This morning I had breakfast 
at a restaurant with my wife and son 
and listened as he told me how hard 
life was for his neighbors. Not only do 
they work two and three jobs but they 
send a thousand dollars a month back 
to their parents who live in some far-
away country. “How come they have to 
do this? Doesn’t anyone care for them in 
their own country?” My son is a disabled 
person who receives assistance through 
the Regional Center which attempts to 
find appropriate employment for certain 
categories of disabled adults. He has 
been without work for almost a year but 
is due to start work tomorrow which was 
one of the reasons we were meeting for 
breakfast this morning.. I wondered if 
his question about sending money to 
parents was connected with his feelings 
that he should try and save part of his 
incredibly limited income and send it to 
me.

 I was in the process of assuring 
him that there was no need for him to 
save money for me as I would be okay 
on my own and was receiving Social 
Security and, anyhow, I am still working. 
All at once a thought from the weekend 
seminar hit me as I tried to focus on my 
son’s actual feelings. I stopped in the 
middle of my summary of American 
Welfare and Old Age Benefits and the 
difference between the philosophies of 
the Democrats and the Republicans.

 It hit me that my son had brought 
up the discussion of his neighbor’s 
obligations

in connection with fears about his own 
new job. In previous articles I have 
mentioned how my son has lost vision 
in one eye and now has limited vision in 
the other eye as a result of some kind of 
unpredicted immediate onset glaucoma. 
Perhaps he believes that the loss of vision 
was somehow connected with working 
conditions or the stress surrounding 
work or who knows what. Really, we 
haven’t talked much about it. It is a very 
painful subject and we just go on with 
our lives.

 A couple of hours after breakfast 
I an now thinking that my son thinks 
that there might be some risk to working 
but he thinks that working is worth 
that risk because it will give him an 
opportunity to be helpful to his family 
and not to be a burden. (I remember at 
age 5 or 6 he told he never wanted to be 
a “birdie”.) Human beings I think want 
to help one another and when that help 
is not needed or rejected there is great 
anger. Perhaps one of the reasons for all 
of the rage we carry within us is that we 
simply feel that our help is not needed or 
wanted and this leaves us very angry and 
confused (and it’s our parent’s fault) Is 
this a possible consequence of our Cradle 
to Grave Welfare System? As usual I feel 
that I don’t know enough to answer the 
question. But who does? 

 I couldn’t help 
feeling a bit sad 
watching Space 
Shuttle Endeavor as 
she made her final 
fly-by and landed at LAX. For me it 
marked the end of an era, an era that 
had begun when I was a teenager. The 
era of manned space flight, the birth 
of the space age when human beings 
began exploring outer space. Tears wet 
my cheeks as I watched Endeavor being 
off-loaded from the modified 747 that 
had carried her on her final flight. Was 
this the end of NASA’s manned space 
program? Was America stepping aside 
for others to go “where no man has 
gone before?” 

 I remember JFK’s speech setting a goal 
for the United States to put a man on the 
Moon and return him safely to Earth by 
the end of the decade. I remember how 
our nation rallied behind the whole 
idea of manned space flight and space 
exploration. I remember waking up 
early in the morning with my parents 
and little brother to witness another 
fiery liftoff from Cape Canaveral of a 
manned spacecraft heading into outer 
space. With each flight of the Mercury, 
Gemini, and Apollo programs it 
seemed to me that Buck Rogers and 
Flash Gordon might not be comic book 
fantasy at all.

 And then on July 20, 1969 at 20:18 
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) 
Apollo 11 landed the first humans, 
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on 
the Moon. Armstrong became the first 
to step onto the lunar surface 6 hours 
later on July 21 at 02:56 UTC, telling 
the world: “That’s one small step for 
man, one giant step for mankind.” 
A third member of the mission, 
Michael Collins, piloted the command 
spacecraft alone in lunar orbit for about 
28 hours until Armstrong and Aldrin 
returned to it for the trip back to Earth.

 The impact of the Apollo Moon 
landing cannot be overemphasized. An 
estimated one-fifth of the population 
of planet Earth watched the live 
transmission of the first Apollo Moon 
walk. Apollo 11 reinvigorated and 
expanded the idea of humans exploring 
space. Jules Verne’s 1865 epic space 
adventure, “From Earth to the Moon,” 
had by 1969 become a reality. In little 
over a century, science fiction had 
become science fact.

 The Apollo program flew eleven 
missions. Six of the missions (Apollos 
11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17) achieved 
this goal. Apollos 7 and 9 were Earth 
orbiting missions to test the Command 
and Lunar Modules. Apollos 8 and 
10 tested various components while 
orbiting the Moon, and returned with 
detailed images and maps of the lunar 
surface. Apollo 13 did not land on 
the Moon due to a malfunction, but 
also returned with images of the lunar 
surface. The six missions that landed on 
the Moon returned a wealth of scientific 
data and almost 400 kilograms of lunar 
samples. Experiments included soil 
mechanics, meteoroids, seismic, heat 
flow, lunar ranging, magnetic fields, 
and solar wind experiments.

 Then came the Space Shuttle. The 
reusable spacecraft seemed like the 
next logical step in preparing the 
way for building a permanent “space 
station” orbiting the Earth to be used 
for scientific purposes and as a terminal 
for a fleet of smaller space vehicles 
for transporting astronauts back and 
forth to the Moon. There we would 
build a Moon base complex where a 
new generation of spacecraft would be 
constructed and launched to explore 
the solar system.

 NASA’s space shuttle fleet began 
setting records with its first launch 
April 12, 1981 and continued to set high 
marks of achievement and endurance 
through 30 years of missions. Starting 
with Columbia and continuing with 
Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and 
Endeavor, the spacecraft has carried 
people into orbit repeatedly, launched, 
recovered and repaired satellites, 
conducted cutting-edge research and 
built the largest structure in space, the 
International Space Station (ISS). The 
Enterprise was used for landing tests 
and was never flown in space.

 But the ISS was not the kind of 
orbiting space station I had envisioned; 
one where space vehicles could dock 
and refuel to take astronauts to the 
newly built Moon base. There a new 
generation of exotic spacecraft could 
be constructed and launched taking 
advantage of the fact that the Moon’s 
gravity is only one-sixth that of the 
Earth’s and it has no atmosphere.

 Still, I am sad to see Endeavor retire 
and, with her, NASA’s entire manned 
space program. I am glad that NASA 
chose the Science Center as Endeavor’s 
new home. Unfortunately, this exhibit 
of mankind’s technical ingenuity and 
desire to explore the heavens will be 
seen by visitors as a relic of the past 
rather than a harbinger of the future. 

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OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder


1962 - 

SO WHAT HAPPENED

RICH Johnson

WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE 
CALL “TIMEOUT?”

 As many of you know I have been fortunate to become 
involved with two wonderfully funny and creative people in a 
weekly one hour radio show. Those funny people are named 
Barry and Lisa. And what is so coincidental about their names 
is they fit right in with the name of our show: The Barry, Lisa 
and Rich Show. Or is it the Barry, Rich and Lisa Show? We 
have completed 36 one-hour broadcasts which you can listen 
to in two places on the internet. First is our local internet radio station, Radio 
Fishbowl, and secondly at www.barryrichlisa.com. 

 A recurring, and popular highlight in several of our shows is an interesting 
look back at a year in our past. This includes prices for houses, top television 
shows, Academy Award winning movies, births, inventions etcetera during 
those particular years.

 Why not share a bit of this trivia with you?. I hope you find it interesting. We 
are going to take a look back 50 years at 1962. Let’s get started:

 Wanna buy a house in 1962? The average price will be $12,500. You are 
probably making an average of $5,556 a year. Minimum wage was $1.25 an hour. 
A first class stamp was 4 cents. A gallon of gas is 28 cents, a year’s tuition at 
Harvard will set you back $1,520. 

 On a political note, Richard Nixon lost his run to become governor of 
California. You may remember him saying, “You won’t have Nixon to kick 
around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference”. Did he 
do anything after that loss?

 President Kennedy had the Cuban Missile Crisis to contend with in 1962. Both 
Kmart and Walmart opened their first stores this year. Kmart in Michigan, and 
Walmart in Arkansas.

The top five television shows of 1962?

1. The Beverly Hillbillies 
2. Candid Camera 
3. The Red Skelton Show 
4. Bonanza 
5. The Lucy Show 


 We witnessed the end of the Cheyenne television show starring Clint Walker, 
who was so tall it looked like his feet were dragging on the ground when he rode 
atop his horse. The Huckleberry Hound Show ended also in 1962 but was soon 
replaced by The Jetsons. If you ever wondered why the Jetson’s dog’s, Astro, 
voice sounded just like Scooby Doo’s voice, there was a reason. They were both 
voiced by a guy named Don Messick.

 The Academy Award Best Picture of 1962 was Lawrence of Arabia. David 
Lean won the Best Director for the same movie. The Best Actor Oscar went to 
Gregory Peck for his role in To Kill a Mockingbird, and the Best Actress Oscar 
went to Anne Bancroft for her role in The Miracle Worker. Other movies of 
1962 included Westside Story, Birdman of Alcatraz, The Longest Day, The Music 
Man, and two personal favorites, Dr. No (which introduced James Bond), and 
from Japan, King Kong vs. Godzilla.

 1962 was the first year we saw Jackie Chan, Julie Christie, Robert Duvall, Sally 
Field, John Hurt and Terrence Stamp on film.

 1962 was home to great rock and roll music. And, in particular, three 
instrumentals that are on my “best of” list. First is Green Onions, by Booker 
T. and the MGs, Telstar, by the Tornados, and Stranger on the Shore, by Acker 
Bilk. The last two songs were from British bands and hit number one over here 
(in case you thought the Beatles were the first). Other great tunes included, The 
Loco-Motion, Duke of Earl, Johnny Angel, Breaking Up is Hard to Do, and The 
Monster Mash.

 Finally, 1962 gave us Tom Cruise, Jim Carrey, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, 
Matthew Broderick, Rosie O’Donnell, Governor Chris Christie, and Demi 
Moore. 

 I just realized that 
summer is now over. 
Where in the world 
did it go?

 In fact, that is a very good question. 
Where does the summer go when it 
leaves? Is there some place that summer, 
winter, spring and fall go to chill out? 
When they get there, what in the world 
are they doing?

 Someone suggested, and I will not 
divulge any names - only to say they 
live in the same residence I do - that as 
a person gets older, time goes faster. I 
absolutely resemble that comment.

 This past week I finally adjusted myself 
to my summertime schedule. I do not 
know about anybody else, but it takes me 
a long time to get into a new schedule.

 While I am thinking about it, who in 
the world invented these seasons? Why 
didn’t they let a good thing go? I would 
much have preferred that we simply 
divide our time by day or night. If it is 
dark, for example, it has to be night. 
And, if the sun is up and it is shining and 
bright, it must be day. I could live with 
something like that. At least I would 
know what time it really was.

 I was actually wallowing in a hopeless 
spirit of despondency. What is a person 
to do?

 Then something rather strange 
happened. One of my friends was playing 
football and his first game was on a 
Saturday morning. I thought maybe the 
distraction might cheer me up a little bit 
and encourage me to keep on keeping on.

 I cannot remember the last time I was 
at a football game. Of course that does 
not mean too much, I cannot remember 
what I had for lunch yesterday. It was 
good to get into a different venue, and air 
out my soul.

 Then it hit me. No, not the football, 
although that might have helped to a 
certain degree. But a thought hit me, 
which is just about as rare as being hit by 
a football at a football game.

 I had just gotten into the spirit of 
watching the game when all of a sudden 
I heard a whistle and a coach yelled, 
“Timeout.” At that moment everything 
stopped. I looked at the clock on the 
scoreboard and it had stopped. I had 
forgotten about this little quirk in 
football.

 The clock did not start and the game 
did not commence until the coach yelled, 
“play ball.” Or something to that effect.

 That got me thinking. If they can do 
that for football, why can’t we do that for 
life? After all, life is far more important 
than a football game. Who is that coach 
that yells, “Timeout,” and everybody 
stops? What kind of authority does he 
have?

 We need to bring this kind of thinking 
into life in general. It seems to me that 
everything in life is thought out in 
great detail except actually living life. 
Football has been well thought out and 
is comprised of rules and regulations. 
Baseball the same. Hockey... Well maybe 
not so much hockey. Most games are 
well thought out, have rules to live by, 
and if something isn’t going the way 
it is supposed to go, the coach has the 
privilege of yelling “Timeout.”

 How many times could I have used this 
little rule in my life?

 Wouldn’t it be nice to stop life when 
you have made an inappropriate remark, 
maybe you said something to your wife 
that came out the wrong side of your 
mouth. I have done that many a times. 
I think it would be rather nice if when I 
realize what I have just said, to be able to 
yell “Timeout.” Then do it over again.

 The other day one of my checks from 
my checking account bounced. That 
would have been a perfect time to yell 
“timeout” and redo the whole thing.

 There are so many things in life 
that could benefit from this one little 
thing called “timeout.” I suggest that 
we began implementing this into our 
daily life. After all, our daily life is much 
more important than a football game, 
a hockey game, or a baseball game. I 
think whenever something goes awry we 
should have the privilege to stop it right 
in its tracks and do it over again. It does 
not matter how many times we have to 
do it over again, we continue doing it 
over until we get it right.

 It would make life more exciting if 
I knew that if I made a mistake I could 
call “Timeout,” do a do-over, and make 
everything right.

 I think we need to have a very stern 
conversation with good old Father 
Time. He is so much a stickler for time 
marching on. But sometimes you get 
tired of marching and need to sit down 
and take a breather. Then, sometimes, 
you need to change the direction in 
which you are marching. It is not so bad 
that time marches on, but when it needs 
to turn around and march the other way, 
that is a completely different story.

 In thinking further along this line, I 
discovered God already has a “Timeout” 
plan. I found it in 1 John 1:9 (KJV), “If 
we confess our sins, he is faithful and just 
to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness.”

 With this in mind, I certainly want 
to take full advantage of God’s “Timeout” 
plan.

Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family 
of God Fellowship, PO Box 831313, Ocala, 
FL 34483. He lives with his wife, Martha, 
in Silver Springs Shores. Call him at 1-866-
552-2543 or e-mail jamessnyder2@att.net 
( mailto:jamessnyder2@att.net ) . His web 
site is www.jamessnyderministries.com 

Mountain Views News

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