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ANDREW BARBANO
Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream


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"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together." — Joseph Pulitzer

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"Media is the plural of mediocre."
— Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017)

If we stop killing, we stop killing ourselves
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 11-7-2018 Sparks Tribune / Expansions in blue


Greatest Hits Dept.

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME ON FIRST BALLOT

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The 9th Muse
Barbwire wins 9th Nevada Press Association award

GOLD 2017-18

2018 First-Place Winners

From the depths of despair to the den of iniquity & holy of holies

"Excellent work. These are some of the most moving columns I've read."
— NPA contest judge/9-29-201
8

The Grasshopper and
the Dragonfly

9-6-2017

Kicked off the Ledge
4-18-2017

NATIONAL NEWS FIRST-BREAK
Back to the Future in
Mississippi West Nevada

10-18-2017

Gold 2017
Don't ask Renown Med for marijuana to help your chemo

10-4-2016
We Don't Need No Education
Toxic turf threat ignored

12-13-2016
Kate Smith & Lady Gaga
2-14-2017

Bronze 6-pack
In the Uber-Nevada legislature, words can kill
4-28-2015
On artificial turf, don't breathe unless absolutely necessary (above)
11-24-2015
Leading questions, lead-headed leaders
1-19-2016

Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake
4-18-2013
2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon
5-30-2013
The politics of media ga-ga boosterism
3-20-2014

More statewide and national award winners

We Don't Need No Education—> Neverending Barbwire Series

1997 Pulitzer Prize entries

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success

Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
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The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

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TOP SECRET— HushHush!

 

I would have wept had I sat up front. I was fortunate to pass the vigil for the Pittsburgh Eleven in the foyer of Temple Emanu-El last week.

The small church overflowed, mostly with average folks paying their respects. Less than a dozen public officials and pretenders.

After most attendees left for an outdoor candle lighting, I ventured into the nearly empty place of worship. Therein, I beheld a table bearing 11 framed color photos, each with the name and age of a worshiper killed in Pennsylvania. A single candle illuminated each kindly, smiling face. 

I began to tear up and evacuated outside where a hundred candles soon bathed a brick Star of David in a caress of gentle flame.

Black people. White people. Brown people. Red people. Yellow people. All became Jews for at least one night. A rare, ephemeral community of sorrow. An ad hoc family.

Aye, there's the rub. As a nation, as an industrialized society, we've lost our community and live much the worse for it.

My tears soon found company.

Last Sunday, New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss tore me up again. The mostly Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood where the senseless slaughter took place is her home town. The Tree of Life Synagogue is her family's place of worship.

She wrote a killer compendium of human kindness amid tragedy.

When I was in Catholic school, they taught us that two of the acts that get you into heaven are healing the sick and burying the dead. If so, two sisters punched their ticket.

"If you are lucky, when a terrorist comes to your town, you will witness some of this country's better angels...like Alisa Fall and Melanie Weisbord who spent Sunday night doing shmira — guarding the body of one of the victims so that, in keeping with Jewish tradition, the person would never be alone."

I can think of few more wrenching acts of pure kindness.

We live in an uptight world but it doesn't need to be this way. John Lennon was right in singing "all you need is love." Which includes family.

The fabled Italians of Roseto, Pennsylvania, proved it. I first learned of Roseto in college health education class. The little eastern Pennsylvania hamlet of less than 2,000 was the healthiest place in the United States a half-century ago. No crime. No heart disease. No one applied for public assistance. And nobody followed the latest diet fad. If you want to view an example on film, watch "Moonstruck."

New York Daily News health columnist Dr. Rock Positano (yes, that's his real name), wrote this in 2011: "Rosetans, regardless of income and education, expressed themselves in a family-centered social life. There was a total absence of ostentation among the wealthy, meaning that those who had more money didn't flaunt it. There was nearly exclusive patronage of local businesses, even with nearby bigger shops and stores in other towns. The Italians intermarried in Roseto, from regional cities in Italy. Families were close knit, self-supportive and independent, but also relied...in bad times...on the greater community for well-defined assistance and friendly help," the good doctor wrote.

"No one was alone in Roseto. No one seemed too unhappy or too stressed out. And the proof was a heart attack death rate almost half of everyone else around them. Wealthier towns suffered from heart disease though their medical facilities, diet and occupations were either better or at least equal than available in Roseto. Each house contained three families, or three generations. The elderly were neither institutionalized nor marginalized, but were 'installed' as informal judges and arbitrators in everyday life and commerce."

As the area became more suburbanized, typical maladies followed. The first heart attack was recorded in 1971. The "Roseto Effect" faded into legend.

A slick car salesman once told me somewhat the same thing about Reno-Sparks: "If you treat the town right, when you need it, they'll take care of you." Ironically, he told me that in 1971.

I saw a family come together in support and sorrow at Temple Emanu-El a few days ago.

If we can convince the powerful to invest in families rather than greed and war, we can accomplish wondrous achievements.

All it takes is the personal, political and humanitarian will to do so.

I won't close this hopeful lament with the normal "be well, raise hell" because I'm reliably informed that Jews don't believe in the mythical fear-instilling inferno.

God bless them.

_______
Andrew Barbano is a 50-year Nevadan, executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com and BallotBoxing.US and SenJoeNeal.org and DoctorLawyerWatch.com/ As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988 and received its ninth Nevada Press Association award and 6th first-place at the 29 Sept. 2018 NPA annual convention in Las Vegas. (That trophy and about six bucks will get you a Latte Mocha Cotsafracas Chingade at just about any Starbux worldwide, guaranteed.)

WEB XTRAS & SMOKING GUNS —>

Sore-oppressed Soul-Sister Cities: Menlo Park and Reno-Sparks-Fernley share similarly sad high-tech stretch marks

"All humanity has left the area": paying for Tesla's Gigafactory
Barbano and Nevada conservatives decry corporate welfare depredations

By Rory Carroll / The Guardian 7-3-2018

Editor's Note: The Guardian publishes 180,000 newspapers daily in London and environs and generates ONE BILLION monthly web page views. (I should live so long.)

"Facebook is taking everything": rising rents drive out Silicon Valley families
Property companies advertising their proximity to Facebook’s campus are giving low-income residents a choice: pay a huge rent increase or move out
By Sam Levin / The Guardian 6-20-2018


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For all the news you never knew you needed to know 'til now: Tell your friends and friendly enemies to subscribe to Barbwire Confidential for warm laughter, cheap thrills, hot scoops and occasional cold logic at BallotBoxing.US/ Cheap at twice the price. (Hush Hush!)

Last year's dark foreshadowings unfortunately became reality. I thus suggest inoculation by signing onto the HushHush! list at BallotBoxing.US/ It's cheap as well as enlightening entertainment. Thank you kindly for your support.

"Media is the plural of mediocre."
— Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017)


Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

 

Smoking Guns—>

Personal & political hygiene for fun & prophet
The Nevada connection to murdered Saudi Jamal Khashoggi
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 10-24-2018 Sparks Tribune
BallotBoxing '18: Maximum confusions & contusions
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 10-17-2018 Sparks Tribune
Great Depression 2.0: Sure cure for what ails us
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 10-10-2018 Sparks Tribune

50 shades of rape: Tales of future past
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 10-3-2018 Sparks Tribune

 

Barbwire 30th Anniversary Trilogy
Now well into a 4th decade of equal opportunity harassment of the rich, famous & powerful
Sunday, August 12, 2018, marked 30 years since the first Barbwire appeared in the Rail City's newspaper of record since 1910. "The Chilling of Hot August Nights" brought the first of nine Nevada Press Association awards. I'll add more memories of the early days of the Barbwire as time, space and the political season allow. (See above right.)

Part 3: Biting the hand that feeds me
GOP '18 upsets: Déjà vu all over again
Laxalt and Heller favored to win in November
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 9-5-2018 Sparks Tribune
Part 2: Biting the moonhowlers
Good reasons to lie to those pesky pollsters
Heller eats sheep balls to get the courage to perpetrate guilt by association
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 8-29-2018 Sparks Tribune
Part 1: Bitten by my buds
Machine Gun Michele and her low-caliber, low-cut friends
The censored Barbwires of the 2015 legislature finally see ink and my fantasy fiancée bares all
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 8-22-2018 Sparks Tribune

30 Years before the masthead: Barbano remembers the Barbwire's greatest hits
By Kayla Anderson / Sparks Tribune 8-22-2018

Barbwire by Barbano moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.


$75 dead or alive: Still crazy after all these years
A mass murderer becomes famous on TV a century later

How come nobody noticed 'til now?
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno
/ Expanded from the 2-21-2018 Sparks Tribune

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory owners Max Blank and Isaac Harris. Is not Mr. Harris eerily familiar to television junkies?

From the Emmy-winning opening slate of the blockbuster "Cheers" television series. Combined with its "Frasier" spinoff, it lasted 20 years.
The "shirtwaist kings" immigrated from Russia and made a fortune manufacturing "Gibson Girl"-style blouses. (Photo, "The American Experience"/PBS)
The Emmy-winning opening slate of the "Cheers" television series before the "slate" of creators is superimposed. Looks like Mr. Harris' dead ringer (at left) is having a bloody good time.

"Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" Chico Marx disguised as Groucho Marx in "Duck Soup" (1933)
Back to the story of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist holocaust

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Copyright © 1982-2018 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 50-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He is the executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

Barbwire by Barbano moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

Betty J. Barbano
2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005

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