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BARBWIRE
by
ANDREW BARBANO

A tale of two people: A Thanksgiving gift
Special Internet Edition, Wednesday, 11-22-2006

DEAR READERS:

Thanks to everyone who has given me the energy to keep this labor of love uploaded and running for more than a decade.

On Tuesday, it all paid off, big time.

Yesterday brought one of the singular rewards that makes worthwhile my slavish devotion to this website and her several sisters. (Anyone charged with maintaining even one current events web page knows what an all-consuming and vicious mistress that becomes.)

A couple of days ago, I got an e-mail from somebody's long-lost son.

"I have lost contact with my father over the past few years. Please have him contact me if you could," the gentleman wrote from another state.

He included his phone number and had obviously found his dad in some postings at NevadaLabor.com from bygone years.

Back in the pre-cyber era, people wiser than me figured out that the average distance between any two people on Earth is two people. I have found that that remains true.

I had met the father at a couple of public events I wrote about, but he didn’t remember me and asked how I found him. It took one phone call to a local business association which provided me with his business name and number. Total: two people.

Having been through situations such as this on a few occasions, I hoped that I wasn’t bearing bad news, perhaps reigniting an old family feud or opening old wounds.

It turned out that the father lost track of his son for more than 30 years ago after a divorce. They found each other about a decade ago, but then again lost touch. They both have very common names, making a conventional search difficult. Dear old dad tried but failed.

"I always wondered if I would see him again before I…"

He didn’t have to finish that thought.

Thankfully, the son is wired. He didn’t have to do anything more than code dad's name and "Nevada" into a search engine and up popped NevadaLabor.com.

Something similar happened a few years back, but it was even more intense: I had to inform an old friend that not only had I been contacted by his long-lost daughter – likewise gone at about age one during divorce – but also that he was now a grandfather and that his family wanted to see him. I made sure he was sitting down before I hit him with all that news.

Once again, the distance was two people – the guy the daughter called who knew to call me.

So here's my Thanksgiving gift to you: The next time all the travails and frustrations of daily living grind you down, when the big and little things that beat you up really start to take their toll, reflect on incidents like this in your life – the little victories that make it all worthwhile, that occasionally let you know every that you're here for a reason and that you've done some good.

Happy Thanksgibleting.

Be well. Raise hell.


Andrew

______________
* The Upanishads, Translations from the Sanskrit with an introduction by Juan Mascaro; Penguin Classics, 1965, 1967; at 9.

SMOKING GUNS...   Recent BARBWIRE Media Hits and Ego Trips    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 "Our long national nightmare is over." Did I say that a dozen years ago? CORY FARLEY, RGJ, 11-10-2006 BARBANO: Nevada's newly-hiked minimum wage is nowhere near enough Reno Gazette-Journal, 11-11-2006 Oregon State U. minimum wage deflator

 

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Copyright © 2006 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 38-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune since 1988.

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