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

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Photo: Debra Reid, Sparks Tribune

 


   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...
Everybody knows the scene is dead
   But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
   What everybody knows...
   Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
   and a long red rose.
   Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.

By Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) & Sharon Robinson
© 1988 CBS Records, Inc.


I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island.
— Leon Russell, 1942-2016


President Donald Kardashian
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 6-5-2024 / Updated 6-7-2024 GMT / Expansions in blue

Would you vote for an Oprah-Trump or Trump-Oprah ticket? Oprah Winfrey actually floated such an idea to the Orange Crusher in 2000.


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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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She has since seen the error of her ways.

Nonetheless, she was onto something.

I have been saying for decades that the secret of success in short-attention-span America lies in getting famous by any means necessary.

It does not matter if you are a saint like Mother Theresa of Calcutta or an insane mass murderer like Charles Manson. Get famous, get a book deal, sell the movie rights, get your own TV show.

More than a century ago, legendary Boston Mayor James Michael Curley famously asserted that "I could elect Judas Iscariot. The name is familiar."

Curley served as a state legislator, congressman, governor and four-term mayor.

He also went to jail in 1947 in the middle of his fourth mayoral stint. He did 18 months in federal prison for mail fraud. (Sound familiar?)

Yes, people went to jail for "paper crimes" even back then.

He made a career of running against the elites and upper crust. (Sound familiar?)

Curley was sometimes compared to Louisiana Gov. Huey P. Long.

Both Curley and Long had slightly fictionalized versions of their careers become Hollywood films. (Sound familiar?)

Curley threatened to sue the producers of the Spencer Tracy film "The Last Hurrah." (Sound familiar?)

Long was long dead before the movie version of Robert Penn Warren's bestseller "All the King's Men" hit the silver screen.

It won a bunch of Oscars, including the best actor trophy for Broderick "Highway Patrol" Crawford.

The Orange Crusher has been threatening to file a defamation action about the "The Apprentice," a new flick about hisself and his mentor, Sen. Joe McCarthy's (R-Wisc.) Red Scare lawyer Roy Cohn.

It proved quite popular at Cannes this season. Unlike the earlier two productions, today's lead actors don't play fictionalized characters.

Trump should send flowers. He's the walking embodiment of the old country boy politician motto, "Call me a sumbitch, just spell my name right."

Any publicity is good publicity. Still.

With Ms. Winfrey having seen the error of her youthful indiscretions, I thus predict that the most famous American who is famous just for being famous will become Trump's vice-presidential running mate: Kim Kardashian.

Trump's kinda girl.

I visualize Czar Donaldov secretly fuming that presidential pretender RFK the Lesser has already named a foxy billionaire as his number two.

Which means that should Trump lose this fall, Ms. Kardashian becomes the automatic GOP 2028 frontrunner.

T-Rump, always the master rapper, just tried to polish his self-anointed outlaw image by chilling with accused criminals. He also said he'd be OK with prohibiting contraception, then walked it back, just like he told Fox Noise that he never said "lock her up" about Hillary Clinton.

He also mumbled he would not order the release of sealed records about his party hearty buddy Jeffrey Epstein. ("I like them young, but not as young as he likes them," Trump said before Epstein punched his own ticket outta here.)

UPDATED 6-7-2024: T-Rump's next underwhelming Whopper of a running mate.

NIXON, PART DEUX. Perhaps most chilling is T-Rump's latest vague promise to end wars.

"I get along very well with Putin and I get along with Zelensky, and I would put them in a room and I would get it ended and I have an exact plan as to how but I can't tell you that." (Sound familiar?)

And whatever happened to that other "plan" to repeal Obamacare with something better?

In 1968, Richard Nixon and his future secretary of state, war criminal Henry Kissinger, pimped another "secret plan," aimed at ending the Vietnam War.

Actually, Kissinger clandestinely subverted President Lyndon Johnson's negotiations to end the bloodbath.

Kissinger held a 1972 press conference to announce, in his best Dr. Strangelovian growl, "peace is at hand."

Richard the Rotten thus defeated anti-war WW2 hero George McGovern. The Vietnam debacle lingered until 1975 after Nixon had resigned.

WISEST WORDS OF THE WEEK. Last Saturday, the fake news New York Times ran a stellar piece by triple-Pulitzer winner Thomas Friedman, one of the wisest people out there in these trying times.

I will link it to the expanded web version of this column at NevadaLabor.com/

Friedman started off lamenting mankind's destruction of mangroves, thickets of trees which protect coastlines and nurture life.

"Our society has lost so many of its social, normative and political mangroves —- all those things that used to filter toxic behaviors, buffer political extremism and nurture healthy communities and trusted institutions for young people to grow up in and which hold our society together," Friedman lamented.

His checklist of lost mangroves is chilling: Shame. Civil discourse. Universities "whose first impulse these days is to seek cancellation and not conversation."

It's worth noting here that the smallest Ivy League university, Dartmouth, avoided all the conflagration which has engulfed so many by promptly getting factions talking with each other.

Imagine that.

Friedman's list of mangled mangroves includes religion, membership in which has fallen below 50 percent for the first time in Gallup's eight decades of tracking it.

H.P. Inc. CEO Enrique Lores once told Friedman "Today we have the power to part the Red Sea...but too often without the Ten Commandments."

Amen.

"Small town newspapers used to be a mangrove, buffering the worst of our national politics," Friedman noted. Alas and alack, more than 200 US counties are today "news deserts."

"More than half of all U.S. counties now have limited access to reliable local news and information," he quotes from a Northwestern University study.

Nevada has lost many of its small town papers, widening the gap between the Cow Counties and the metros (Clark, Washoe-Carson).

"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together," legendary newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer famously remarked.

Brace yourself for a very bumpy Fall 2024.

¡Sí se puede!

Vaxx up, stay safe, pray for Ukraine and almost 100 other currently war-torn lands as we once again fail to learn the hard lessons taught on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

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 55-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 andSparks-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.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

 

 

The shrinkflation of democracy
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 5-29-2024 / Updated 5-30-2024 / Expansions in blue

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

Last week, the Reno Gazette-Journal announced its own funeral.

Democracy will go down with it along with the hundreds of newspapers already lost and those who have caught the RGJ disease.

Why should you care? After all, we can get daily news 24/7 for free someplace, right?

You get what you pay for and corporate America is making you pay dearly every day: At gas pumps, grocery stores, restaurants, your school and your job.

I have been railing against America's creeping monopolies for decades.

They continue to encroach a little at a time.

Kids pumping their own gas or sweating thru voicemail hell instead of talking to a human think it's OK because that's the way it's always been.

Abuse and erosion become embedded.

"Starting Monday, June 24, the U.S. Postal Service will be delivering the Reno Gazette-Journal to optimize resources amidst increasing digital readership demand," Executive Editor Peggy Santoro wrote last week.

"The Reno Gazette-Journal will utilize a (postal service) program called Exceptional Dispatch, which allows time-sensitive periodicals including newspapers to be locally distributed. RGJ print editions will enter the mail locally, in Reno, and not be affected by the USPS's recent announcement that it will move Reno's mail-processing operations to Sacramento," she stated.

That, dear readers, is one serious sin of omission.

"Exceptional Dispatch" (AKA Second Class Mail) is mostly for mail that has three days to two weeks for delivery, like magazines.

Mrs. Santoro continued "The Sunday edition will be delivered on Saturday...This change will make a big impact on the consistency of delivery, which is great news for our print readers...Readers can also visit RGJ.com...Subscribers with questions or concerns can visit help.sitename.com/contact-us," she concluded.

OOPS DEPT. The above help-site name does not exist, even with prefixes added such as https:// and https://www/

RGJ.com subscriber info lays likewise devoid.

I don't blame Peggy. She's a great journalist and the senior employee at the Incredible Shrinking RGJ, having put in more than 30 years at hard labor.

She's seen it go from force to flat-line and is now the designated ICU nurse on death watch.

I've been in some form of the newspaper business since I was about 10 years old, a kid hawking the "greenstreak" afternoon final edition of the Fresno Bee on the streets of old downtown.

For all its flaws, the Reno Gazette-Journal remains the central news dissemination source for all of eastern California and northwestern and north central Nevada.

Making the system so user-unfriendly that the company can justify its elimination is an old corporate trick going back almost a century.

Make no mistake, it's coming. At minimum, this "upgrade" will make worse the forcible fracturing of citizen consensus and community cohesion into splintering silos of suspicion.

We've seen this show many times before.

Railroads made passenger service so bad that they could kill it due to "lack of interest." (TRANSLATION: Not enough profit.)

They kept passenger revenue by starting Greyhound, which is why bus terminals popped up next to railroad terminals all across the country, including Sparks-Reno.

After World War 2, Detroit auto barons took over cheap and efficient southern California mass transit, then made service so bad that citizens had to buy cars.

Gridlocked freeways were built along former rail rights-of-way.

Mrs. Santoro states "The Sunday edition will be delivered on Saturday, giving readers a head start on weekend features..."

Today, the Sunday RGJ goes to bed at 4:00 p.m. Thursday.

There are NO newspapers now printed in northwestern Nevada. From Fallon to Carson/Douglas/Tahoe to the RGJ, ALL are produced in California save for the Sparks Tribune which is printed in southern Nevada.

Killing home delivery might make collateral damage of the San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

When the RGJ eliminated Saturdays, it killed Saturday delivery for all, scrambling all Saturday, Sunday and Monday deliveries.

In my experience, the "Sunday" paper would now have to close Wednesday (or earlier) to be on California presses Thursday, get trucked to Reno's Vassar Street post office by Friday to hit Washoe households on Saturday — in a perfect world. (Everybody knows that presses, computer systems and vehicles never break down and Donner Pass will never be closed again as a personal favor to Postmaster Louis the Clueless Dejoyless and his favorite president.)

As the Washoe County Registrar of Voters Cari-Ann Burgess told the RGJ after Dejoyless announced the January 2025 move of most mail processing to W. Sacramento, first-class mail, which is supposed to get anywhere in Washoe in two days, currently sometimes takes as long as seven.

Mme. Registrar added that if the change goes ahead, it means the end of mail-in voting.

Thus, the shrinkflation of democracy.

Triple hall-of-fame journalist and Tribune alum Dennis Myers once noted that voter registration is the best system yet devised to keep citizens from voting.

Add that to all the other hassles, mix in a little corporate propaganda as news, and you end up with government by monied corporations, the very definition of fascism.

I write this feeling two emotions, sorrow and anger.

The republic is in bad enough shape without placement of further inhibitors to inform the body politic and let them vote.

Did I mention that the ad accompanying Mrs. Santoro's corporate statement last Sunday ignored whether or not the paper would continue Monday and Tuesday publication?

The icing on this crummy cake is that subscriber prices, in print and online, will more than double.

The shrinkflation of news and thus democracy.

Stay tuned if you can.

It ain't over 'til it's over.

¡Sí se puede!

Vaxx up, stay safe, pray for Ukraine and almost 100 other currently war-torn lands.

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 55-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.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

 

 

Cheesily pickled politics
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 5-22-2024 / Updated 5-23-2024

A smattering of splatterings
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 5-15-2024 / Updated 5-19-2024

What happened to us?
Did we do something when we should not have? Did we do nothing when we should have?
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 5-8-2024

One Photo That Captures the Loss in Gaza
"Dr. Sam Attar went over and only then realized that the boy was dead."
By Nicholas Kristof / The New York Times 5-4-2024
Karam and his mom at the hour of his death

Breaking News —> Masks work!

 

 

Ain't we a pair?
Dennis Myers & Andrew Barbano inducted into César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 4-10-2024
Expansions in blue / Updated 4-11, 4-14, 4-15, 4-16 & 5-2-2024 GMT

So stated Tina Turner in the 1985 blockbuster "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome."

That line best summed up my overwhelmed feelings last Friday evening when the Northern Nevada Central Labor Council inducted the late Tribune journalist and my old friend Dennis Myers into the César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame.

Using a hockey analogy, Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar noted that the occasion completed a hat trick for Dennis. He had previously been so honored by both the Barbwire and Nevada Press Association rogues galleries.

Living up to my self-imposed nickname of Quarantino, I attended via Zoom, dressed appropriately for the solemn occasion: In a sweatshirt and UnionYes! baseball cap.

I thus stood surprised and amazed by the second installation of the evening, The Barbwire Man hisself.

Zounds.

I told the sold out event's attendees that this represented the second-greatest honor of my life, eclipsed only by the day I married my wife, Betty, 40 years ago.

I was and remain humbled to stand with giants who accomplished much more than I ever will. The César HOF includes Nevada's two greatest legislators, Sen. Joe Neal and Assemblymember Bob Price, both D-North Las Vegas.

Fred Ross, Sr., the union stalwart who taught César Chávez how to organize abides therein, as do Maria Zamora, who marched with Chávez from Delano to Sacramento in the 1960s; United Auto Workers stalwart George "Battling" Nelson of Sparks who stood beside Chávez and United Auto Workers legend Walter Reuther at the dedication of the United Farm Workers headquarters; Nevada labor mainstays Dan Rusnak and Sam Lumpe; the late Nevada Labor Commissioner Stan Jones and his wife, Wendy; and the original Chávez HOF honoree, Darlene Jespersen.

Ms. Jespersen was a longtime Harrah's bartender who refused to follow demeaning new corporate makeup face painting rules. Her wrongful termination case broke new ground for women's rights at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Dennis, Nevada's greatest reporter, was the first journalist so honored. I can only state that I am the second because Dennis himself accorded me that appellation.

I still term myself an advocate and hellraiser. I don't present both sides, especially when the other side is suffused with flaming bigoted moonhowlers.


Video of Myers and Barbano inductions —>

https://youtu.be/pFNUBW1vhEo

https://youtu.be/GopULsYDWuE

Text of Judge Patricia Lynch acceptance speech for Dennis Myers

ThisIsReno.com 4-14-2024: Nevada Labor Hall of Fame inducts journalist Myers

     Official Cesar XVIII commemorative program book

A posthumous accolade / By Matthew Bieker
Reno News & Review 4-27-2024


ADIOS, VERITA BLACK PROTHRO. Last Saturday came news of the death of the beautiful Nevada activist and businesswoman. Verita paid heavy dues in her shortened life. When she ran for Washoe County public administrator in 2018, some freedom loving racist defaced her candidate signs with black spray paint.

The Nevada Democratic Party sent out a double notice, also including the hit-and-run fatality of Kurt Englehart, aide to Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto, D-Nev.

I stand proud and humbled by having known and worked with most of the above superstars in the firmament of human aspiration.

READER RUMBLINGS: Tribunistas have reacted to this newspaper's March 27 publication of the Nevada Independent news service exposé of our regional health care octopus. ("Renown Health is a powerhouse in Northern Nevada. Is that a problem?")

Last week, I added some very necessary perspective regarding the origins of the malady by calling attention to the 1995 Washoe County Grand Jury report documenting the outright theft of our formerly publicly owned, low cost hospital.

Some Tribune subscribers sent these comments: "I worked there as a head supervising nurse. Their 'non-profit' status is just a moniker. Actually, 'More Money' is their tacit motto." And this: "I remember times when management harassed me to make sure all my employees only gave Renown management five-star ratings or I would be demoted, go without a raise or some other hellish reprisal."

I built a whole website of research on the depredations of our health care conglomerate which will be linked to the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/

UNHEALTHY CARE, PART DEUX. The fake news New York Times just published a major scandal regarding big health insurance companies. Many have retained an outfit which earns billions in commissions based on how much health care they DENY to insured patients.

"Don't like your $100,000 surgery bill? Sue us, turkey." [UPDATE: Websearch "hamby nytimes.com tool helps insurers reap fees shift costs" to view several articles.]

I have never seen a better argument for a single-payer national system. Fully one-third of all U.S. health care dollars go toward profit and paperwork. This has resulted in the highest costs for just about the poorest care in the industrialized world.

Social Security, that dastardly government run program, only costs three percent to run. Continuing rape and pillage by the health care industrial complex must come to an end.

I remember when moonhowlers took to the streets to campaign against Obamacare. Some dimbulb woman actually told a reporter she was there to "keep government's hands off my Medicare."

In 2009, the U.S. government became the largest health care customer in the country. Combined with the military, the Veterans Administration and other programs, Uncle Sam has long been paying most of the bills. It's well past time to reign in pillagers like Renown, Cigna, Aetna, Humana, United Health Care (aka AARP) and Big Pharma.

Sorry, Ronnie, government is not the problem. Government is the solution.

HISTORY FOR DULLARDS. Supporters of T-Rump, the croaker who raps America, want to rename DC's Dulles Airport for the Orange Crusher. What an insult to the legacy of the Republican Dulles Brothers, Allen who headed the CIA, and John Foster Dulles who served as Secretary of State, both under President Dwight Eisenhower.

These bastards made a sport of overthrowing small democracies, most notably that of Iran. The latter was accomplished because British Petroleum wanted their oil refinery back after the democratically elected Iranian government nationalized the industry after decades of western exploitation.

We are at war with Iran today because of the depredations of the Brothers Dulles back in the 1950s.

So why trade a headache for an upset stomach?

SLIGHTLY CYNICAL DEPT. Congratulations to the universities of South Carolina and Connecticut for winning their respective women's and men's minor league professional basketball championships.

¡Sí se puede!

Vaxx up, stay safe, pray for Ukraine and almost 100 other currently war-torn lands.

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 55-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.

Breaking News —> Masks work!

 



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

Larry Barbano, Frater Mei
1947-2023
To Die For
My daughters were born 65 years ago yesterday. Alas, their youth was cut in twain.
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 1-17-2024
 

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Why the science is clear that masks work
By Zeynep Tufecki / The New York Times / 3-10-2023

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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

Wasting workers where everybody knows your name
Barbwire by Andrew Quarantino Barbáno / Expanded from the Sparks Tribune 10-18-2023

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Copyright © 1982-2024 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 55-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He was the longtime executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and has been a quarter-century member and 10-year officer of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

The Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO inducted him into César Chávez Nevada Labor Hall of Fame on April 5, 2024.

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

Larry Barbano, Frater Mei
1947-2023

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