Off Limits

The death of Dr. Steven Mostow, an infectious-diseases specialist and associate dean at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, certainly didn’t go unnoticed in Denver. The 63-year-old professor, known as Dr. Flu, died on March 24 when the twin-engine plane he was piloting crashed near Centennial Airport in Douglas…

Post Mortem

On May 12, two days after his departure from the Denver Post, longtime columnist Chuck Green told KHOW talk-show host Peter Boyles he hadn’t resigned from the paper, as the Post had reported, and insisted that after 34 years of faithful service, he’d been sent packing without even receiving “cab…

Water Hazard

Unbeknownst to most of his acquaintances, Joe McCleary leads a double life. By day, his job is to lovingly tend 105 or so acres of the most green-velvety, luscious, ease-down-on-the-ground-and-take-a-nap-looking rye/Kentucky bluegrass hybrid this side of the Front Range. But at night, he heads for his suburban Aurora home, where…

Letters to the Editor

Waste Not, Want Not Unsafe at any speed: I don’t know why Patricia Calhoun thinks South Carolina should be happy to take the waste that Colorado doesn’t want (“Deliverance,” May 23). Or why she thinks that all the states between Colorado and South Carolina should have to endure plutonium shipments…

Wring Out the Old

Jeri Aiello feels like she grew up at the phone company. She started at the Mountain States Telephone Company in 1962, when she was just sixteen. A friend of her mother’s worked there and told her the company was hiring operators. The job was part-time but had full benefits, so…

Cruel and Unusual

Colorado now has five murderers marking time on death row. Several hundred other violent criminals are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, and more than one member of that group has suggested that execution might be a more merciful fate than decades of isolation behind bars. But out…

Valley of the Dolls

On the eve of her entry into adult life, Debbie Baker had a change of heart that would alter her destiny. “I didn’t like Barbie when I was a little girl,” she says. “I liked baby dolls to play with.” All of that changed in 1978, when a friend gave…

Off Limits

Last week, the Colorado Supreme Court determined that Jefferson County prosecutor Mark Pautler had broken ethical rules governing a lawyer’s conduct when he represented himself as a public defender while talking on the phone to William Cody Neal, the now-convicted ax murderer who killed three women during a grisly spree…

Speak for Yourself

At this 7 a.m. meeting of the Cherry Creek Toastmasters, Topicmaster Susan Grattino throws out questions loosely related to Mother’s Day. In return, she expects an extemporaneous speech, no longer or shorter than 45 seconds. “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,” she says. “How is that…

Letter to the Editor

Critics of Denver Post owner Dean Singleton see him as a skinflint, but over the past several years his words and deeds regarding the capstone of his newspaper empire belie this tag. He’s spent money freely to boost the paper’s “We Cover the World” reputation, albeit with just a modest…

Balls to the Wall

The vast majority of American men have nothing more in common with major-league baseball players than an occasional hangnail and the right to a jury trial. Most of us couldn’t hit a beach ball thrown by an eight-year-old, much less Randy Johnson’s heater, and whenever we execute the hit-and-run, there’s…

Letters to the Editor

This Property Is Condemned Waste-watchers: Douglas Bruce is my hero! He should run for governor of Colorado. Alan Prendergast’s “Vendetta,” in the May 16 issue, was a perfect example of useless, blood-sucking government bureaucrats (about half of the government’s employees), so-called public servants who really have nothing better to do…

Vendetta

Bastards. Idiots. Liars. Crooks. Bastard idiot lying crooks. Douglas Bruce doesn’t mince words. Charm and cajolery are not his strong suits. The state’s foremost anti-tax activist has been known to accuse state legislators of being both exceedingly greedy and hopelessly stupid, to question their sanity as well as their honesty,…

Forfeit Me Not

The battle to overhaul Colorado’s civil forfeiture law provided a few sparks in an otherwise dull legislative session. It was a classic clash of principles, pitting law-and-order types who view forfeiture as a powerful weapon in the war on drugs against defenders of constitutional rights and the sanctity of private…

Family Style

Ever since abandoned warehouses in lower downtown were transformed into livable lofts and the addition of Coors Field ushered in restaurants and bars, the area has become a fashionable neighborhood. There are the young professionals who like walking home after happy hour and the empty-nesters who’ve given up their suburban…

Top of the World

Kim Clark is one of five American women on the first all-women climbing team to attempt Mount Everest. A former Keystone ski bum who is now a junior at the University of Colorado’s school of nursing, the 35-year-old Clark is the youngest woman on the expedition, which first arrived at…

Follow That Story

A 22-year legal battle came to an abrupt end last week when the Church of Scientology paid $8.67 million to one of its harshest critics: a former member who claimed the church had harassed him for years and driven him “to the brink of insanity.” The settlement between the church’s…

Follow That Story

Members of the West 29th Avenue Neighborhood Association, who objected to a recent United States Postal Service plan to change their zip code (“Stripped of a Zip,” March 7), credit U.S. Representative Diana DeGette with accomplishing in the nation’s capital what they couldn’t do here: getting postal officials to withdraw…

Off Limits

The last group of students who were at Columbine High School during the April 1999 massacre will graduate on May 18 at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater, but you won’t be able to watch the ceremonies on TV — if, for some reason, you even wanted to. According to a statement issued…

Three the Hard Way

Daily newspapering in Denver has been on a bumpy ride for the past several years, with many of the jolts coming courtesy of the joint operating agreement between the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post. But despite changes in publishing schedules, format and behind-the-scenes matters, the most prominent faces…

Fur Real

“This is Howler,” Miles says. “He’s gonna ride down with us. Dinger’s got a game today, but Rocky will be there.” We head south in the Miles Mobile. The 2002 GMC Van — donated by John Elway, natch — is brightly painted, festooned with advertising. Pictures of an aggressive but…

Letters to the Editor

A Churl in Every Deport True Brit: Regarding Jonathan Shikes’s “British Invasion,” in the May 9 issue: Nick Williams acted, as we Brits like to say, like a “complete and utter wanker.” Pot? He’s an idiot. Pot and guns? A fucking idiot. There isn’t a legal resident in this country…