Calling all Scots: Don your family's tartan kilt for this weekend's fortieth annual Colorado Scottish Festival. Held today and tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Highland Heritage Park, 9651 South Quebec Street in Highlands Ranch, activities include rugby games, dulcimer music and Highland dance, as well as displays of British cars and geneology information. At noon on both days, more than a hundred bagpipers and drummers will play together. "It's very moving and beautiful," says event spokeswoman Jan Mitchell. "It gets your Scottish blood moving."
Saturday evening will feature a Ceilidh -- a Gaelic music and dance party complete with bagpipes, fiddlers and social dancing -- starting at 7 p.m. at the Sheraton Denver Tech Center, 7007 South Clinton Street, Englewood.
Festival tickets are $10 per day for adults, $6 for seniors and kids ages seven to twelve; kids six and under are free. Tickets for the Ceilidh are $15 for adults and $8 for children. Visit www.scottishgames.org or call 303-238-6524 for further details. -- Julie Dunn
Y'all Come
THURS, 8/7
For most of us, www stands for the World Wide Web. But for the folks in Littleton, WWW has stood for one thing for the past 75 years: Western Welcome Week. "It's the biggest event that Littleton runs all year," says Cindy Hathaway, the event's director. "We basically shut down downtown Littleton."
Kicking off tonight at 5:30 with the Taste of Western Welcome Week, WWW features more than forty events over the next ten days. The list is as staggering as a string of cattle on a drive: activities include tomorrow night's Concert in the Park with fireworks; horseshoes, softball and shuffleboard tournaments; a book sale; a juried art exhibit; a classic car show; and numerous community dances.
For more information, call the festival hotline at 303-795-3788 or visit (there's them letters again, pardner!) www.westernwelcomeweek.com for a complete schedule. Prices vary per event; many are free. "We try to make it very family-oriented and as inexpensive as possible," promises Hathaway. -- Julie Dunn
Stop!
We brake for the Osage Mercado
SAT, 8/9
The idea of a neighborhood market has been around the block again and again in La Alma/Lincoln Park. But that's just the way things are around here, notes Stella Yu of the La Alma/Lincoln Park Planning Group: "The public market is an age-old concept anywhere in the world, but here in Denver, it seems like we bypassed that part of community development and went right to the supermarkets." A little over a year ago, though, RTD approached the group for advice on development plans for the 10th Avenue and Osage Street Light Rail Station -- a bleak whistle-stop distinguished by concrete, chainlink fencing and the nearby Buckhorn Exchange. Theoretically, the resulting Osage Mercado, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and tomorrow at the station, is just another of many feasibility studies, but for those who make it a destination, it'll be a place to taste fresh food from neighborhood eateries, watch local storytellers and dancers, and peruse Mexican artifacts, fresh flowers, handmade dolls and African baskets. Think you'd want to go back there again? Then go. Call 303-446-8880 for more information. -- Susan Froyd
