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Followed by a moon shadow

TRAVUS T. HIPP, 1937-2012

ADIÓS, COMPADRE — Our friend Travus, 75, passed away peacefully between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. PDT on 18 May 2012 at his home in Silver City, Nevada. The sun is in eclipse as I write this at 6:30 p.m. on May 20. CHANGE OF VENUE (5-22-2012) — Adiós in Silver City, Nevada, Saturday, May 26, 2012 —> Updated 5-27-2012 — > The auld church where Travus lived and died proved too small for the expected multitude, so gathering, gnoshing and remembering commenced at the Silver City Community Center, 385 High Street, at 10:00 a.m. PDT. The graveside memorial service began at High Noon. Travus was buried next to his rock star companion Lynne Hughes, a short walk away. My remembrance of Lynne from the 3-21-1993 Daily Sparks Tribune has been linked to Travus' formal obituary at this website. All memories accepted for permanent posting hereat. Stay tuned for pictures and stories of the appropriately rainy day. Thanks for all your kind words. Keep up the good work and the good fight. Be well. Raise hell. Andrew Barbano

Barbano remembers the artist Reno Gazette-Journal 5-25-2012 NEW — Travus' life story and obituary Travus' last column in the 5-20 Daily Sparks Tribune Debra K. Reid photo / Sparks Tribune Jan. 4, 2009

Travus T. Hipp & Tales of Nevada's Futures Passed
Expanded from the 6-3-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune
Updated 7-2-2012

     At bottom, he was an artist who used his voice to soar and slice, a tenor for the tenor of our times. Many of his mourning California listeners talk about the vocal spells he wove, how he soundly organized the noise of daily life into music that entertained, engaged, enlightened, educated, enthralled and occasionally enflamed. [From the saga of Travus T. Hipp and contributions by The Barbwire to the May 25 Reno Gazette-Journal and May 26, 2012, Daily Sparks Tribune.]

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine and my tunes were played on the harp upstrung, would you hear my voice come through the music? Would you hold it near as it were your own?

— Lyrics I haltingly spoke on Travus' rainy day

HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award Barbwire.TV Watch NevadaLabor.com for show times. Help us get the word out. Support the project at http://resurge.tv#donate SUING FOR SCHOOLS Updated 8-30-2011 Now rerunning on Carson-Dayton 226 Additional programs on Boulder City cable. Go to bcnv.org and then go to the BCTV link. If Reform Fails: Health Care, Jobs and Unions — new power to the people on the public airwaves The program premiers were available to every television set in the region because of a high-mileage media hybrid. The shows appeared on both commercial and community stations. The non-corporate entity produced the events, commercial TV greatly expanded distribution. Thus began an ongoing series of sane public interest programs which generate both entertaining heat and more than a little light. Please spread the word and consider contributing to the cause online at ReSurge.TV. You may also take the public option known as the U.S. Postal Service and send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510. Your contribution will help fund the distribution as well as ongoing efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate community radio station and the return of community television to Reno-Sparks-Washoe. You are present at the creation of what I hope can become a new media model where the programming accurately reflects what's happening on the ground and the media impact is powerful enough to forcefully pass the message upward. Thanks. Be well. Raise hell. Andrew Click here for selected on-demand re-runs from the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Barbwire.TV archives Barbwire.TV: 15-year overnight success Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008 The Barbwire's Greatest Hits Highlights from radio days mp3 file HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award

Travus T. Hipp's Silver City memorial service was peopled by "faces that could have lived a hundred years ago or a hundred years from now. Hats and flowers, purples and paisleys, beards and tears. I felt part of a loving family sending a member on a journey."

So I wrote in my 1993 remembrance of Lynne Hughes, Travus' rock star lady who died of cancer.

The same miasma descended under the rains of the Comstock last Saturday as we laid the greatest talk show host in the world next to his beloved, a stone's throw from the auld church they called their home for decades.

The longtime Tribune columnist and my much-longer friend died on May 18. We stood in a circle on the steep hillside and remembered this complex and compelling soul.

Some of the 100-plus in attendance included Travus' former radio colleague Bruce Van Dyke, historian Guy Louis Rocha, former Tribune reporter and current Reno News & Review news editor Dennis Myers, former Washoe County Assessor Bob McGowan, KUNR-fm newsman Steve Funk, Nevada author David Toll and legendary nationally syndicated cartoonist Dan O'Neill ("Odd Bodkins").

Hipp and O'Neill covered the 1973 American Indian Movement occupation at Wounded Knee, S. Dakota, for San Francisco's KSAN-fm.

The most moving music was provided by Kristi Murkovich, a neighbor and caregiver, who spontaneously broke into "Precious Lord, Take My Hand."

The most I could manage was to haltingly speak one verse from The Grateful Dead's Ripple.

As people slowly drifted back toward the community center, I noted one very beautiful and very emotional raven-haired young woman energetically shoveling soil onto the great one's grave: his granddaughter, who had brought her husband and children to say goodbye.

A bearded mountain man handed me a spade. For the only time in my life, I shoveled earth on someone's resting place.

Before I left, I committed reverse-Judaism. The Jewish custom is to place a pebble on a headstone. I took a pyramid-shaped rock with me.

Country music superstar and Comstock resident Lacy J. Dalton sang at the reception afterward, as did Tommy Thomsen who renders a mean "Your Cheatin' Heart."

I have since been informed that one of Travus' final wishes was to have the ladies of Silver City craft a quilt out of his well-worn personal t-shirt collection, including some true collector's items. They've got 25 or so.

I'll keep you posted.

CORRECTIONS DEPT. Two of Travus' descendants emphatically informed me that his actual name was Chandler Atchison Laughlin, Jr., not Chandler III. I've so noted at the ever-expanding NevadaLabor.com Travus memorial section, but try to correct a few thousand websites.

Last week, I also reprinted verbatim of an undated handwritten note Travus gave me with a union application to join the Industrial Workers of the World (aka The Wobblies). He noted the Comstock Wobblies contact which I mis-spelled despite best efforts to read the great one's handwriting.

Well, Bum "Weasel" Allander was present in Silver City last Saturday, automatic pistol sticking out from his bum.

He led the 21-gun salute for his Navy veteran friend. As Travus would have liked it, the cannonade was done with live ammo.

KEEPING IT ALIVE. It was long my dream that the Travus 'n' Andy shows would reunite on local television. Turned out that Travus' last Nevada radio-TV appearance was on one of my 2008 programs.

A websearch produces a lot of audio archives of Hipp radio commentaries, but they do not reflect the magic he made interacting with listeners. Too bad that will never happen again.

In our first incarnation together, with me against Lush Rambo in the morning, we surgically removed about four in 10 listeners to the station now known as KKKOH.

I can guarantee one thing: When, not if, the new community TV station is launched, Travus' words and spirit will be present. (More at Barbwire.TV)

Last week, I printed some of his greatest hits, including "If voting mattered, they wouldn't let us do it." To which I now add this corollary: "If you don't vote, don't bitch."

BLIND LEADING THE BLIND DEPT. There are too many inexperienced greenhorns selling themselves as campaign consultants these days.

Instance in point: the effort of Washoe County Commissioner and current Reno City Council candidate Kitty Jung.

For all the swill the Washoe County Republican Party has stirred up in a titularly non-partisan race, Jung's response has been flamingly flaccid.

For several weeks, the online Reno Kazoo-Journal published that her principal opponent, Neoma Jardon, violated election law by failing to file campaign expense reports with the secretary of state.

Jung's campaign sat shiva.

Worse, she has been victimized by KRNV TV-4's conversion to a grocery story tabloid news format. Jung has not helped by stonewalling the press, another testament to poor campaign management.

However, she could have undercut TV-4's credibility by pointing out one hard, cold fact: The first Jung hatchet job came at the beginning of the Nielsen rating period. The latest came just before the Nielsens ended.

UPDATE TV-4's tabloid conversion fails to convert the viewing audience Barbwire / 7-1-2012

As Don Henley so memorably sang, "we love to cut you down to size, we love dirty laundry."

Too bad we are deprived of Travus T. Hipp to help us sort it out.

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Thank you.

Be well. Raise hell.
____________
Andrew Barbano is a 43-year Nevadan, chair of the Nevada César Chávez Committee, 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 JoeNeal.org. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks Tribune since 1988. Ripple lyrics copyright © 1974 Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia.
Joisë 77

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Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review / 11-23-2011 Fact-free nation: Inside the lie machine Mother Jones Magazine May-June 2011 / Cover story and in-depth analysis Bill Moyers: Welcome to the Plutocracy Money fights hard and it fights dirty Speech delivered at Boston University on 29 Oct. 2010 Part of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series Barbwire Corporate Welfare Archive Cabellyup.com From clear-cut forests to dirty Gulfstream waters, this land belongs to old BP TOLJASO LONG TIME AGO BP/ARCO: The greasy root of our evils Barbwire / Daily Sparks Tribune 9-10-2006 The awful truth — Read it and weep, fellow suckers Labor Day 2009: Rise of the Vampire Corpobots Expanded from the 9-6-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune Angry Americans and Freudian fraud Using war to market cigarettes Expanded from the 8-23-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune BARBWIRE Nevada Corporate Welfare Archive Propaganda fuels gasoline price fixing Barbwire 8-14-2005 Donate to the cable ratepayer legal defense fund at our PayPal-enabled ReSurge.TV Consumer War Room Phillips, Kevin; Numbers Racket: Why the economy is worse than we know Harper's Magazine; May 2008; page 43 Phillips has authored numerous books on history and politics over the past 40 years. His most recent, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, was published by Viking on April 15, 2008. NAOMI WOLF: Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps There are some things common to every state that's made the transition to fascism. Author Naomi Wolf argues that all of them are present in America today. Alternet 5-20-2007 Johnson, Chalmers; REPUBLIC OR EMPIRE? A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States; Harper's magazine; January, 2007. I love it when heavy hitters validate what I've been saying for years in the tiny Sparks Tribune. Barlett, Donald L. and Steele, James B.; America: What Went Wrong? (1992); America: Who Really Pays the Taxes? (1994); America: Who Stole the Dream? (1996) ; Andrews & McMeel/Universal Press Syndicate. Review of Alex Carey's Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Propaganda in the US and Australia The Orwell Diversion by Alex Carey Excerpted from the book available below ORDER Taking the Risk Out of Democracy Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty By Alex Carey Edited by Andrew Lohrey Foreword by Noam Chomsky University of Illinois Press      SEE ALSO: Lapham, Lewis H.; Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, A Brief History; Harper's Magazine cover article; September, 2004, page 32.      By one conservative estimate, the corporate right has spent about $3 billion over the past three decades manufacturing public opinion to suit big business goals. Lapham's number covered the early 1970's to the present day. Alex Carey noted that by 1948, anti- New Deal corporate propaganda expenditures had already reached $100 million per year, not adjusted for inflation, for advertising alone. (Carey, ibid; page 79)      Adjusted for inflation, that 1948 $100 million becomes $801,659,751.04 in 2005 dollars. Conservatives Help Wal-Mart, and Vice Versa As Wal-Mart struggles to rebut growing criticism, it has discovered a reliable ally: conservative research groups. New York Times 9-8-2006; Free registration may be required.       BARBWIRE: Labor Day '94: People vs. corporate con job, 9-4-94 Chilling forecasts from Alex Carey       BARBWIRE: The Nevada Republican Party Becomes Communist, 3-30-97 A prescient Plato on the dangers of oligarchy The sands of time do not cloud the long memories of the sheiks of Araby Barbwire 9-10-2006       Rinfret, Pierre A.; Peace is Bullish; Look magazine, 5-31-1966

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Copyright © 1982-2012 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 43-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee, He is producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president, political action chair and webmaster of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

Barbwire by Barbano premiered in the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in those parts ever since. Tempus fugit.

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