TRAVIS T. HIP from the KSAN days has died in his sleep. Services will be held next Saturday (26th of May in Silver City Nevada.
A READER sends along this accompanying note: From his perch in the high desert of western Nevada, remote control and cup in hand, Chan Laughlin, aka Travis T. Hipp, (“the poor hippie's Paul Harvey”) pontificated to the world every morning about politics, truth, justice, and modern life. One of the few remaining practitioners of free-form, seat-of-your-pants radio commentary, he worked with few notes and distilled the days events into greater truths that sometimes surprise even himself. Before he died, Chan said he is “still alive and only slightly wounded” in his latest battle with the authorities. They raided his house last year and charged him with felony marijuana trafficking. But all the charges were dropped after the cops failed to produce evidence of any crime. ” “KPIG is expanding slowly and I get a ten bucks a day raise for every new station,” he bragged, “so I am finally making as much as I did at KNEW in 1968, not counting inflation. At this rate my career will take off at 75 years of age, and my fame as the voice of the geriatric revolution will go down in history! Play Politics but keep your powder dry!”
FROM HANK SIMS' crucial HumCo blog, LostCoastOutpost.com: “The Very Last Chapter of the Reggae War: Dimmick Ranch Under Foreclosure. A legal notice in this morning’s Times-Standard mentions that the Dimmick Ranch — one-time home to ‘Reggae Rising,’ the rogue offshoot in the Late Great SoHum Reggae Wars — is under foreclosure. Redwood Capital Bank is scheduled to auction off the property on the courthouse steps on June 7, after owner Tom Dimmick, who once had hoped to transform his family property into a world-class entertainment venue, defaulted on a $1 million loan. The Reggae Wars broke out in 2006, when Dimmick and concert promoter Carol Bruno attempted to wrest control of the hugely successful ‘Reggae on the River’ festival from its sponsor, the Mateel Community Center. In the legal actions that followed, the Mateel was able to maintain control of the the ‘Reggae on the River’ brand, but Dimmick and Bruno — who had been booking the festival for years — soon announced that they would throw a rival festival, to be known as ‘Reggae Rising.’ The split triggered a civil war within the SoHum hippie community, with longtime Mateelians bitterly lining up behind one faction or the other. Dimmick and Bruno began to put on other types of concerts on the property, which lines the South Fork of the Eel near the Humboldt/Mendocino County line. But Dimmick later acquired full control of the ‘Reggae Rising’ festival from Bruno, and in 2010 he failed to acquire proper permits from the county. Everything went downhill from there. In the meanwhile, the Mateel Community Center’s original ‘Reggae on the River’ festival carries on, though much downsized from its glory days. With the Dimmick Ranch gone under, the final outcome of the Reggae Wars seems pretty conclusive: Everyone lost.”
A MS. JACQUELYN CLARK has been fined $110.50 for having a dog off-leash at Navarro Beach, an infraction. Ms. Clark was cited by State Parks. We bring it up because it's the first we've heard of someone getting a ticket around here for an off-leash dog. And we totally approve.
OSCAR WILDE died in 1900. In February the previous year he had visited his wife's grave. In a letter to Robert Ross he wrote: “It was very tragic seeing her name carved on a tomb — her surname, my name not mentioned of course… I brought some flowers. I was deeply affected, with a sense also of the uselessness of all regrets. Nothing could have been otherwise and life is a terrible thing.”
AS THE SUMMER OCCUPY PROTESTS commence, so do the frame jobs. Three young guys are looking at highly dubious “terrorist” charges worth 85 years each in prison. The allegations begin with a police assumption that the three are “self-described anarchists.” “Brent Betterly, 24; Jared Chase, 24; and Brian Church, 20 are alleged to have showed up in Chicago for the NATO summit demonstrations with Molotov cocktails to attack Obama's re-election headquarters and Mayor Rahm Emanuel's house. The three “also discussed using swords, hunting bows and brass-knuckle handles.” (What's a brass knuckle handle?) The allegations have been formalized as conspiracy to commit terrorism, material support for terrorism and possession of explosives. The undercover cops who set up the arrests cannot be found while everyone who knows the trio say the charges are simply preposterous. The protest, one of the city's largest in years, was to end at the lakeside convention center hosting the two-day meeting, which is focused on the war in Afghanistan, European missile defense and other international security matters, all of it funded by the everyday people of industrialized countries.
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