Cambodia, Vietnam, 1979, undated

Barber’s earliest writing is semi-autobiographical and based on his own travels abroad and at home in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Included are stories in which Barber uses pseudonyms in lieu of his own name to describe: his time in Cyprus and his time with a group called The Motherfuckers who rode around California in a yellow school bus in the late ‘60s.

After working in and around Boston as a substitute teacher and cable installer Barber volunteered as a broadcast news writer for Colonial Cablevision in Revere, Massachusetts. This series contains articles he wrote while covering the local news beat in Lynn and Waltham, Massachusetts in 1978-1979 before moving on to a freelance position with the Boston Globe in 1980 and the Boston Herald-American in 1981. Included is a series on the disappearing trees of Waltham, Timothy Leary’s return to Boston, and an article opposing Haiti’s corrupt leader Jean-Claude Duvalier. The series also contains editorials on Afghanistan, the Polish uprising against Russia, Passover and divorced parenting that Barber sent to The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Newsday. Included are feature pieces that Barber penned under the name John Stone for The Atlantic Magazine about the communist rule in Czechoslovakia during the 1960s and 1970s.