After the Civil War, the legendary Colonel Little settled in Douglas County, seeking to build a new utopia. By the time he was planted in his tiny grave (not far from a former onion patch), “Littletown” had grown to 42 buildings and over 1,200 residents. To this day, no one…
I stare. Outside the window above my computer screen, rose hips on thorny stems are barely moving, making tiny anticipatory nods to a soft morning breeze. My wife calls down for me to come right away, something terrible at the edge of her voice. On the way up the stairs,…
Rules rule in Denver Public Schools, but there’s a difference between the golden ones and those that are tarnished with age. And as part of his effort to revamp DPS, new superintendent Jerry Wartgow last month created the Dumb Rules Committee, with the goal of getting to the bottom of…
Although I am a professional consumer of media (meaning that I get paid to monitor the press in all of its many facets), I am not all that different from the amateur kind — particularly at times when a single story dominates the national consciousness. As such, I imagine that…
You could say Jake Shannon’s big break — his biggest so far, anyway — came when he got the call from the people in California who told him the gig was his if he wanted it, and could he fly out right away? Jake hemmed and hawed. His work troubleshooting…
We’ve Got You Covered A true gift: What a gutsy call to make Harrison Fletcher’s “Touched by an Angel” your cover story for the September 6 issue. Few people know anything about gifted kids or care, something you no doubt know, yet there are Linda Silverman and the remarkable Justin…
Linda Silverman began with the vocabulary, working from the high end of the IQ test, using words so obscure that even she, with a Ph.D., would have trouble with them. And yet the six-year-old boy sitting across from her defined most of them correctly. “What do you do?” Silverman joked…
He’d dressed for the surgery in a dark-blue bow tie, light gray blazer and white-striped shirt, hair perfectly combed, stethoscope dangling from his neck. When the video crew signaled, Akrit Pran Jaswal — sitting behind a desk cluttered with anatomy textbooks, parents hovering nearby — gazed into the camera and…
Just south of Lincoln Avenue on I-25, the cityscape ends, and the old Colorado — the one that preceded the shopping malls, office parks and sea of suburban roofs — comes back into view. Prairie grasses, sage and yucca fill the land, which rises up into the striking bluffs that…
Are coin collectors being buffaloed by Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, or will a slightly altered reissue of the popular American Buffalo Silver Dollar be money in the political bank for Colorado’s senior senator? Earlier this year, the U.S. Mint’s initial offering of 500,000 commemorative silver dollars featuring James Earl Fraser’s…
Walt Stinson began selling stereos in the West Washington Park neighborhood back in 1972. By 1984, his business was doing so well that Stinson expanded into a warehouse/office building on South Logan Street, just north of I-25. The back side of that structure, with the ListenUp logo painted prominently across…
The transition from jock to jock talker isn’t always easy, especially when the subject is football. On-the-field talent, and the fame that comes with it, is no guarantee of success (Joe Montana, perhaps the greatest quarterback ever, flopped as an analyst), and neither is a controversial nature (longtime lightning rod…
There are so many reasons to detest the French that it’s hard to choose the best ones. Their capitulation to Hitler during World War II holds up pretty well, as does their icy disdain for anyone with the nerve to be from another country. As movie director Billy Wilder once…
Net Gains Hat’s off: Steve Jackson’s “Caught in the Net,” in the August 30 issue, was a great story — extremely comprehensive, an interesting read, and well-written. I’ve known Cassandra since she was about six years old, and my husband and I are close friends of her parents. Through them,…
He waved at the fourteen-year-old girl crossing the motel parking lot. She looked great: shorts, a little white blouse, her brown hair in a ponytail that bounced as she walked toward him. He was high as a kite on the methamphetamine that he’d promised her would make for a better…
Earlier this month, city planners, neighborhood activists and assorted bureaucrats gathered around three tables in a community meeting room. At the center of each table was a huge black-and-white aerial photograph of the northeastern edge of downtown Denver, extending north toward Manual High School and east to the hospital district…
East Village isn’t the only turf war on downtown’s northeastern edge. The largest empty parcel of land in the neighborhood sits at the corner of 22nd and Washington streets, directly behind the Safeway and right across the street from East Village. Uptown Partnership, a nonprofit developer that’s been rehabbing abandoned…
The swimming pool, gone. The running track, closed. The handball court, extinct. Consider such archaic facilities knocked down, cleaned out and forgotten in favor of a newer and thoroughly modern vision of the downtown Denver YMCA. As the outreach slogan of the nonprofit organization reminds members, the 21st-century YMCA is…
Area cultural organizations can stop worrying — for now — about whether Colorado’s Ocean Journey will detract from their sales-tax revenues by becoming a part of the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District. Instead, they can focus on changing the way that money from the special taxing district is distributed. The…
In its summer edition of the members-only zoo review, the Denver Zoo addresses the unfortunate rampage of Hope the elephant. Hope, who had been performing a daily, and much-hyped, Elephant Walk alongside a baby elephant named Amigo, escaped from a bathing area on June 10 and ran willy-nilly through the…
When the business wings of the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post were fused earlier this year via a joint operating agreement, many observers predicted that competition between the news departments, left independent by the pact, would go the way of those dinosaurs not cute or scary enough to…
Remember Caine? Not the biblical guy, but Kwai Chang Caine, the half-Chinese, half-American Shaolin priest who wandered the old American West in the 1970s television series Kung Fu. Played to subtle perfection by David Carradine — he didn’t look Chinese, exactly, but you knew he was, because he spoke really…
