Who or what will be remembered by whatever life forms abide in these parts a thousand or even a hundred years hence? Your guess is as good as mine.

Our measure is not the poundage with which we impact this mortal coil (adults are 60 percent water), but rather our infinitesimal impact while interacting with our fellow life forms.

"Maybe we're all just penciled in," advertising legend and satirist Stan Freberg once noted as part of a series of religious radio commercials.

So sharpen your pencils for those deserving a brief sketch.

FOR MY DAUGHTERS. Debra Joyce Donlevy and Donna Leslie Cline shared the same birthdate (Jan. 16, 1959) and the same star-crossed fate. The two friends were severely injured in a 1978 rural Nevada car crash. Debbie died because of an incompetent doctor at a cow county hospital. I've written about the risks of getting sick or injured in the outback and nothing's changed. (Barbwire 4-2-2006).

Donna went on to become Miss Wheelchair Nevada, Miss Wheelchair America and a major market news anchor. When she died in 1999, no less than Texas Gov. George W. Bush marked her passing on his official website.

What might this world have become had they lived longer.

FOR SPARKS. Last year, Bill Galt's death made local and national news as the founder of the Olive Garden restaurants which were originally called The Good Earth. Bill Galt got his start in Sparks with a chicken drive-thru which he converted into "The Big Potato" in the 1970s. The short-lived enterprise featured every variety of baked potato which could be conceived by the human imagination.

Its strongest impact was a TV spot by film maker Jim Mitchell who used Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra (aka the theme from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey) as background music over what looked like a shot taken from a spaceship flying over a desolate planet.

Upon closer perusal, it was a landscape of potatoes. Galt ran in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in 1964 and the primary for lieutenant governor in 1966. He died in Reno on 2 August 2018 at age 89.

FOR WONDER WOMAN. Stunt woman and ladies' world land speed record-holder (512 mph) Kitty O'Neill died on Nov. 2, 2018, in Eureka, South Dakota. In Oregon's Alvord Desert in December, 1976, her first run topped 608 mph. (Two runs in opposite directions are averaged for the record.) She was prevented by her car's ownership from going for the men's record of 630.4 mph because the attempt had been contractually committed to stunt driver and Hollywood director Hal Needham who was away helming a film at the time. Toy companies had the rights to make an action figure of Needham and went to court for an injunction. He never set the record. They should'a bet on Kitty. (Two years later, Mattel did so.)

The record of 763 mph (1,227.985 km/h, Mach 1.020) was set by Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green (UK) on October 15, 1997 in the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach, Nevada (pre-Burning Man). Kitty also set a world speed record in water skiing (104.85 mph) and was an Olympic-class swimmer and diver.

She was perhaps most famous for taking a dive off a skyscraper. (Barbwire 1-24-2018)

Kitty's photo appeared in the Reno Gazette-Journal in 1979 after she "established a new high-fall record when she plunged 127 feet from atop the Valley Hilton in Sherman Oaks," the Los Angeles Times reported. She did it in full Wonder Woman drag, standing in for TV series star Lynda Carter. In its 30 December 2018 edition, The New York Times Magazine selected just 30 of the hundreds of prominent people who died last year for an extensive last hurrah. There stood Kitty with the likes of Aretha, Margo Kidder, Vic Damone, Dick Tuck, Tom Wolfe, Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain, Dwight Clark, Rusty Staub and Stan Lee. The Times included a color shot of Kitty standing next to a race car and the full-page black-and-white corollary to the Wonder Woman dive. Taken from ground level next to the inflated cushion which she dared not miss, you can barely make out a tiny figure executing a perfect swan dive in mid-air 13 stories up. BTW: The Times Mag led off the 30 retrospectives with Kitty's story: "She overcame tragedy by daring anything and outrunning everything," stated the headline of Michael Paterniti's splendid story.

At the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1978, I discussed land speed records with Kitty, Formula One driver Jean Pierre-Jarier, and CanAm driver and future Nevada State Sen. Randolph Townsend, D&R-Reno. Kitty said she was gearing up for another run but wanted to use rubber tires for "more traction."

Jarier was aghast. "You need a steel tire at those speeds. There is racing and there is suicide!"

And there was Kitty, fearless as always. And by the way, totally deaf, a result of measles, mumps and smallpox contracted as a baby in Corpus Christi, Texas. Sen. Townsend and I mourn our old friend's passing.

FOR THE CAPTAIN. Darryl Dragon, ex-Beach Boys keyboardist and The Captain of the "The Captain and Tenille," died last year. He and his former wife had the biggest hit of 1975 with "Love Will Keep Us Together," the only single to top two million in sales that year. It didn't keep them together. They eventually divorced in 2014. They lived many years in Washoe Valley, Nevada, between Reno and Carson City. Toni Tenille was quite active for local charities while in these parts.

FOR THE STARS. Dr. Nancy Grace Roman (1925-2018), the Mother of the Hubble Telescope, was a former Renoite.

"In Reno, of course, the skies were very clear, a beautiful place to observe the sky, and we lived on the edge of the city at the time" (when she was 11 years old). "We had very few lights. I started an astronomy club with the girls in the neighborhood. We learned the constellations, read astronomy. I just never lost my interest in it." (The New York Times 12-31-2018)

The stars are now her destination. As is the brightest star we lost last year, Aretha.

FOR MLK WEEKEND EVENTS. Saturday, Jan. 19 — 11:00 a.m., women's march from the Reno Arch to City Hall. In Las Vegas from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m., a memorial celebration for longtime Nevada Assemblymember Bob Price, D-N. Las Vegas, will be held at the Robert E. “Bob” Price Park and Recreation Center, 2100 Bonnie Lane, Las Vegas 89110. The facility was dedicated in his honor in 2007.

FINALLY, FOR POETRY. "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." So wrote the great romantic poet John Keats, before dying of TB in his twenties. He thought himself a failure.

'Twas not so.

But "this monster mannunkind," as poet e.e. cummings termed us, are not only writ in but made of water. Which washes away pencil dust rather efficiently.

Take care of each other.

Be well. Raise hell.
Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (And my French.)
Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)

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, superannuated 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 (6th first-place) at the 29 Sept. 2018 NPA annual convention in Las Vegas. (Such ephemera and about six bucks will get you a Latte Mocha Cotsafracas Chingade at just about any Starbux worldwide, guaranteed.)

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(I should live so long.) [MUCH MORE TESLACIDE]