BARBWIRE by ANDREW BARBANO Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream The Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniator Hall of Flames

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Photo: Debra Reid, Sparks Tribune

I wonder where you are I wonder if you still remember      Once upon a time In your wildest dreams — The Moody Blues

Stay tuned for updates and remembrances. All are welcome.
Celebration of life date announced

Renate Neumann: Once upon a time
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 8-16-2023 / Updated 8-21, 9-1 & 10-4-2023 / Expansions in blue.

The Perseid Meteor Shower arrived last weekend to carry my dear friend Renate Neumann across the universe.

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She left this form on Saturday, August 12, suffering from complications brought on by Parkinson's Disease. The great artist's hands could paint no more and we stand much diminished for it.

Larry Barbano as Renate saw him In a younger day, when he had more hair on his scalp and less on his face, he couldn't buy a beer in San Francisco because so many people mistook him for the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia.

Barbwire Man as Renate saw him

UPDATE: Renate's memorial service will be held at Reno's Mountain View Mortuary, 425 Stoker, at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 7. It will include her final art show with over 150 paintings by Renate and other Reno Portrait Society artists. [MORE]

Renate and her husband Peter were among the first to welcome me to northern Nevada when I moved here from Las Vegas in 1971.

I had worked on Supreme Court Justice Al Gunderson's campaign and he invited me to dinner at the Pagni Family's Jubilee Italian Restaurant in Pleasant Valley between Reno and Carson City.

Renate and Peter were the judge's other dinner guests that memorable evening.

It marked the beginning of a 53-year friendship.

Pete and Renate married on January 23, 1969 at the Reno home of hall of fame photographer Don Dondero and his wife, Liz.

Peter Chase Neumann was in the early stages of building a top gun law practice and Renate was a commercial artist at Doyle McKenna, the longtime advertising agency for John Ascuaga's Sparks Nugget.

She freelanced a little work for my fledgling media enterprise after I opened my own store awhile later.

I learned only recently that she worked in the 1960s at the legendary New York City advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach, the progenitor of modern marketing media, the Mount Olympus of the profession.

They produced what was roundly considered the ad of the decade, a full page photo of the NASA lunar lander on the moon with only a small V W (Volkswagen) logo under the shot.

The venerable VW Beetle was not needed and not depicted. The legendary headline resonates to this day: "It's ugly, but it gets you there."

Her considerable talents were also utiliized by J.C. Penney in Manhattan.

Renate worked and walked with giants all her life.

Renate was an excellent graphic designer but her genius truly shone thru on canvas.

My brother Larry was visiting one summer and by chance, we ran into Renate.

She knew a good subject when she saw one and asked my big little brother to sit for her portraiture group.

The fee structure was rather curious. Twenty bucks for posing clothed, but only $15 for sitting nude. I never asked why.

I could only guess that the rights fee was pro-rated on the weight of clothing.

Sometime later, I also sat for her group. Fully dressed.

Renate later included the Barbano boys' portraits at a weekend showing at the downtown Reno First United Methodist Church.

I had never seen the finished work before that day.

Our dear sainted Italian mother Mary would have said her sons never looked better.

Somewhere, I have a photo of Renate holding those portraits.

If I can unearth it, I will include it in the Barbwire expanded web edition at NevadaLabor.com/

Renate brought beauty wherever she went. She had a radiant kindness about her.

The moment you met her, you knew you had a friend in the petite lady with the movie star presence.

She was the real deal, complete with an elegant German accent somewhere betwixt supermodel Heidi Klum and actresses Elke Sommer and Marlene Dietrich.

When she talked, people listened. The closest I ever saw Renate get to losing her cool came once when I mentioned something with canola oil in it.

"Throw it away!" she interjected and lectured me on all its detriments.

Renate and Peter founded the Angel Kiss Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to helping families of cancer-stricken children.

Their White Water Race & Jazz Festival set the standard for every downtown Reno riverfront event which followed. (See the Barbwire of June 26, 2005, linked to the online edition.)

Even in her final days, Renate exercised regularly, as best she was able. She had just turned 84 on July 31.

I was notified when Peter Neumann copied me on an e-mail to her family in Germany.

I bowed my head, wept awhile, prayed, cried a little more, sang a few songs in breaking voice, then played Eva Cassidy blues followed by Beethoven's 7th Symphony.

The 7th is the most transcendent composition I know and always uplifts me from low and into a soaring soundscape that emulates flight.

I also emanated a meditation to my late wife Betty to embrace our friend Renate as she embarks on her next journey.

I put on a little music from Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, then went outside to breathe a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

Reach out your hand
If your cup be empty
If your cup is full,
May it be again.

Let it be known
There is a fountain
That was not made
By the hands of men.

IN MEMORIAM. My father, Andrew Henry Barbano, died of Parkinson's as did Renate.

As fate would have it, a few days ago, I was informed that Dr. Mindy Lokshin had retired from the general practice of medicine. (She's married to longtime Sparks allergist Dr. Boris Lokshin.)

Dr. Mindy apparently un-retired rather quickly, helping start the Parkinson Support Center of Northern Nevada. Their purpose is "improvement of the quality of life for those living with Parkinson's disease, their families and care partners."

Their goal is "connecting people to the information, support services, programs and activities they need to enhance wellness and live an active, engaged life."

It's a completely local non-profit, not affiliated with any national organization.

From 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. this Saturday, August 19, they are hosting a showing of "STILL — A Michael J. Fox Movie." The film stars America's most famous Parkinson's victim. A question and answer session follows with Dr. Varga, a movement disorder specialist.

Admission is free and light refreshments will be provided.

The location is Five Star Senior Living, 3201 Plumas Street in Reno. Reservations are necessary. You may call (775) 525-0205 or e-mail <anne@pscnn.org>

They deserve your support. Tell them Renate Neumann referred you.

¡Sí se puede!

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since August 12, 1988. Lyrics from the Grateful Dead's "Ripple," 1970.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

 

 

“Mr. X, may we ask you a question? It's amazing, is it not, that the city pays you slightly less than fifty bucks a week, yet you've purchased a private yacht?”

X: “I am positive your honor must be joking! Any working man can do what I have done. For a month or two I simply gave up smoking, and I put my extra pennies one by one into...

“A little tin box, a little tin box
That a little tin key unlocks.
There is nothing unorthodox
About a little tin box.

"A little tin box, a little tin box
That a little tin key unlocks.
There is honor and purity,
Lots of security,
In a little tin box.”

The above exchange comes from the hit 1959 Broadway musical "Fiorello!"

The Barbwire is eminently qualified to deal with the scandals hereinbelow because I played a corrupt judge in the Fresno State production of that show.

"Fiorello!" was about a little Italian guy elected to clean up Tammany Hall politics after the corrupt regime of flamboyant Mayor Jimmy Walker.

Fiorello LaGuardia (for whom the New York City airport is named) served as Big Apple mayor from 1934 to 1946.

When newspapers went on strike, he even went on radio to read the comics so little kids (and a few big kids) would not miss out.

"Little Tin Box" is my second-favorite song from the show. Retired Laborers' Local 169 Business Manager Dan Rusnak reminded me about it after he read last Sunday's New York Times front page story revealing how Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sorta purchased "the Rolls Royce of motor coaches" in 1999.

At that time, most of the household income for Clarence and his wife came from his government salary of $167,900.

So how could he afford a luxury house on wheels which cost $267,230 used?

New ones today cost from $1.8 to $2.5 million.

In 1999, the retail base price was $1 million or much more "depending on the bells and whistles. It was a rich man's toy," according to the Phoenix dealer who sold it to Clarence.

The Ginny and Clarence dreamboat had only 93,618 miles on it, "relatively few for a vehicle that experts say can easily log a million miles in its lifetime," the Times reported.

Clarence has always made a big deal of his up-from-poverty roots and has preached about his identification with the common man throughout his charmed life.

Hence his announced love for the open road to commune with the common folk, "in a condo on wheels," as he once bragged about it.

I don't have the space or the interest to recount the fraudulent and banal facts about Clarence's carefully contrived personal mythology.

"He told me he saved up all his money to buy it," said talk show personality Armstrong Williams. Hmmm...where have I heard that before?

A little tin box, a little tin box
That a little tin key unlocks.
There is nothing unorthodox
About a little tin box.

Clarence noticed the rolling ocean liner while visiting Phoenix to attend a dinner at the conservative Goldwater Institute.

"In a speech that night," the Times reported, "he said he had never yearned to be a federal judge. 'Pure and simple, I wanted to be rich,' he said."

It pays to have rich friends, one of whom "loaned" him the quarter-million-plus to acquire the wheel-house. Whether or not Clarence ever paid him back, they won't say.

Maybe they lost the little tin box holding the records.

The Broadway song introduced a new term into the legal lexicon and resulted in a national public relations coup for Nevada.

In 1984, Federal District Judge Harry Claiborne brazenly asserted a "tin box" defense to explain where he got the money to live a Clarence-style life.

Harry may have been corrupt, but the olden-days Las Vegas legend was one helluva defense attorney — most of the time.

Back when I lived in Gomorrah South, I was told — only partially in jest — that if I ever wanted to commit murder, hire Harry Claiborne and I would never be convicted.

Alas, without home field advantage, Harry lost his biggest trial. In 1984, he was convicted of tax evasion in an away game at Reno.

The Nevada Supreme Court reinstated his law license after he served 17 months.

After all, he was a helluva lawyer, tin box and all.

Can't say the same for Clarence, tin motorhome and all.

PG-13 WARNING. During Fiorello's run at Fresno State, two of my fellow cast members got engaged, spawning a bawdy drama department one-liner.

Courtesy of my male chauvinist piggy castmates, herewith a trip in the Wayback Machine, adapted for the Barbwire...

Q: What did Ginny Thomas give Clarence on their honeymoon?
A: A little tin box.

BARBWIRE CODA: Clarence gave it back with a little tin key to stash "consulting" fees. On January 6.

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT DEPT. August 11, 1973, is regarded as the birth of hip-hop. I mildly disagree.

Back in 1970, I wrote and voiced a rhyming radio spot for advertising clients selling their Instant Trim exercise program.

Here's a vaguely-remembered line: "Come on in and do some slim when you get it on with Instant Trim."

Alas, no mention of killing cops or raping women. I could'a been a contender.

ON THAT CONCLUDING MUSICAL NOTE, my favorite Fiorello song:

Politics and poker, politics and poker
Everybody's broke and getting broker.
Everybody knows the trouble that we're in.
Decisions, decisions when you gamble on your friends.

Politics and poker, politics and poker
Make the average guy a heavy a smoker.
Bless the nominee and give him our regards
In poker and politics
You've gotta have the cards!

¡Sí se puede!

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988. "Fiorello!" book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman; music by Jerry Bock; lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, slightly adapted.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

   Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
   Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
   Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
   That's how it goes. Everybody knows.
— Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016

This here news junkie has become so sick of the 24/7 Donald Xi Putin Show that I've cut back viewing. Cartoon violence on standard TV shoot-em-ups is often quite preferable to reality.

Perhaps there's an upside to this over-saturation of servitude to power-besotted psychos.

The signs in the heavens (cough, hack!) are pretty clear that Mother Nature is sending her spoiled brats a serious warning thru the muck and mire: Get fixed or get gone.

Barbwire-ites know of my simple solvent for the Herculean task of clearing the Augean stables of current humanity: Women. In command. Period.

Long before writing became popular, there were countless predictions of Armageddon. One of my erstwhile talk radio listeners even gave me a copy of "A History of the End of the World." This came as the world trembled that Saddam Hussein could use (non-existent) nukes against Bush the Elder's invasion to protect the Lone Star royal family's Persian Gulf drilling rights.

Same fears abide today, only worse, as many nations actually possess the nuclear button.

So maybe we stand at the apotheosis, the apogee, the highest point, the culmination of...what, exactly?

Exactly. We either climb to new heights of enlightenment, or crash down, smothered under various clouds of the mushroom, fire or ozone varieties. Pick your poison.

Meanwhile, moonhowlers meander over the nit-pickety small. Should Washoe County school children be exposed to the words "penis" and "vulva"? Doesn't much matter to little kids without enough to eat or roofs over their heads.

This tiny blue picayune pixel of a planet, in the tick of time occupied by our species' sentience, doesn't matter all that much.

Yet.

Today, we have arrived at a point prepared to soar into a sparkling age in which there is no war, no want, no wantonness.

Where science and art synergize into a symphony of wonder and achievement.

Welcome to Wonderland, Alice.

We have matured to a point where we actually control our collective futures, forward or backward, to the garden or to the graveyard.

"The world is in an uproar. The danger zone is everywhere." So warned Ray Charles in 1962, a bluesy predictive parable for the parabola of our arc on this watery ark.

Artists and philosophers have been trying to show us the way for millennia.

Are we finally ready to grow up? For every Jacinda Ardern there be a plethora of guys with guns.

The former New Zealand prime minister gave birth while successfully protecting her country from the COVID plague while puerile pubescent boys were playing target practice around the globe.

I may be a born critic, but I am eternally a guarded optimist with abiding faith in humanity's resilience.

Look at our newly immortal media magicians. Tony Bennett overcame many pronouncements of the demise of his career to become an international and American icon.

Paul Reubens (aka Pee Wee Herman) rose above ridicule and vilification, as did Sinead O'Connor.

All three recently departed awesome artists demonstrated how history will judge you kindly if you practice kindness to others, no matter the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

They were all living examples of the old Texas football axiom: Dance with who brung ya to the ball.

Translation: Stick to what you're best at, then fortune will smile upon you.

Which is why we live within what may well prove our finest or fatal hour: We have the ability to rise with our wonders or fail with our faults.

The ultimate in pro-choice.

¡Sí se puede!

Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
être bien, élever l'enfer (Pardon my French.) Stammi bene. Scatenare l'inferno. (And Italian.)
___________________
Andrew Quarantino Barbano is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com, SenJoeNeal.org, DoctorLawyerWatch.com, BallotBoxing.US, ConsumerCoalitionv.org, ChantalCoalition.org, Rentvolution.org, MIssissippiWestNV.org and CesarChavezNevada.com among others. He is a longtime member of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO. As always, his comments are entirely his own. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

 

Miss Priscilla Goodbody channels Princess Cassandra
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-19-2023

Love Letters from Miss Priscilla Goodbody
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-12-2023

True Confession: I drink Bud Light
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 7-5-2023

If you strike a king
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-28-2023

Invasion of the Chicken Pluckers
Gov. Ron DeSatanist soils the Silver State at GOP testiclefest
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-21-2023 / Expansions in blue

Politicians with nothing to hide
The Barbwire Nakedly & Unabashedly Announces Its New Fleshing Out Follytix Forum—>
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-14-2023
More naked reality

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$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

Triangle tragedy recalled as requiem "The Fire in My Mouth," a new oratorio by Pulitzer honoree Julia Wolfe, premiered with the New York Philharmonic Jan. 24 By Michael Cooper / The New York Times 1-23-2019

SITE NAVIGATION TIPS: When all else fails, read the instructions (A favorite John Hanks aphorism I've been using for decades)

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Copyright © 1982-2023 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 54-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 a longtime member 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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