The thing about it is, Barry McDonald says, he doesn’t think he actually attracts weird and creepy phenomena. “But I do seek it out,” he explains. “And if you seek out something long enough, you’ll find it.” Back when he managed the Officers’ Club at the old Lowry Air Force…
Lucy Walker, the 74-year-old founder of EDEN Theatrical Workshop, sits sipping her coffee with measured grace. At this breakfast banquet extolling the benefits of the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, which apportions sales-tax money to arts and cultural organizations throughout the Denver metro area, arts enthusiasts offer skits, fancy slide…
A wooden windmill looms out of the October fog along rural Weld County Road 39, thirty miles east of the Rocky Mountains. Standing guard over a rickety tub, the old windmill pumps water for a dozen head of cattle chewing mouthfuls torn from the rangeland of yucca, sagebrush and prairie…
When Lieutenant Governor Joe Rogers organized a conference on youth education last spring, he got a lot of help: The University of Denver lent him the Magness Arena at cost; BeWell.net, a local Internet provider, set up a Web site; polling company Floyd Ciruli and Associates pitched in its expertise;…
At first glance, it looked like there would be a major turn in the long-running feud between local television outlets and residents of the Lookout Mountain area over the construction of a digital TV tower there (“Something in the Air,” April 6). In the October 18 Canyon Courier, an article…
They kick, they scratch, they fight for attention, but third-party candidates just don’t seem to get any respect in Colorado. And despite the biggest push by Libertarian and Green Party candidates in state history, no third wheels made it into the Rocky Mountain News’s October 22 Election 2000 Voter Guide…
Although approval of the joint operating agreement linking the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News hasn’t been finalized, no one at the Post doubts it’ll happen. As proof, note that on October 24 the paper announced it was doubling the newsstand price of its product, from 25 cents to…
The good news was that the Pumpkin Satellite Project had just launched a one-gallon jug of water approximately twenty yards through the air — not a winning distance, certainly, but respectable for an early simulation of what might happen if you put a pumpkin in its place. The bad news,…
Dying to Believe The doctor is in: I’d like to comment on Eileen Welsome’s October 12 article about the First Born Church, “Born to Die.” There’s a joke that goes like this: A city is being flooded, so a man climbs a tree and starts praying to God. Another man…
Patsy Ramsey: I want you to look at me and tell me what you think happened. Steve Thomas: Actually, I’ll look you right in the eye. I think you’re good for this. I think that’s what the evidence suggests. — Larry King Live, May 31, 2000 For Steve Thomas, an…
The race for Boulder County District Attorney is taking place under the shadow of Alex Hunter, who has held the job for 28 years. For the past four of those years, Hunter and his previously off-the-radar office have come under glaring public scrutiny for the DA’s handling of the murder…
Penelope Jones was born with spastic cerebral palsy and is unable to control the right side of her body; she is also deaf in one ear and mentally retarded. When she enrolled in a special-education class at Denver’s George Washington High School seven years ago at the age of twenty,…
Bob Sylvester doesn’t want to go back to prison. He knows too much about prison and what it does to you. On October 23, Sylvester will find out just how much prison time lies ahead when he appears in a Denver courtroom to be sentenced on charges of racketeering, extortion…
The old adage says fences make good neighbors, but Aurora’s plan to fortify its image by building brick walls around some neighborhoods could cause divisions between people who do and don’t want the new boundaries built. The Neighborhood Fence Replacement Program, unveiled October 2, lets Aurora residents pay the city…
No matter how scary this Halloween becomes, it can’t be as frightening as the vision of Halloween 1995 conjured up by Suzanne Galante, at the time a 22-year-old Channel 7 intern. At a party at a house in Boulder, she fell upon a longtime fantasy: a fellow with “peach-fuzzy sideburns,”…
Only the largest of cars will do. Thus, there were no road trips during the energy crisis of the ’70s. Before and after that, however, for better and worse, my father and I got to know each other during long drives in his 1971 Impala. No matter how rocky a…
As you and I know, polling has been an intrinsic part of election coverage for years now — but the 2000 campaign has taken things to a new (and notably ludicrous) level. A prime example: Immediately after the conclusion of the debates this month between presidential candidates Al Gore and…
Americans don’t give a damn if Slobodan Milosevic goes nuts and murders half of Eastern Europe. They don’t care if bubonic plague decimates Philadelphia, Homer Simpson gets elected president as a write-in or Firestone starts putting its tires on baby strollers. No, what most of America really worries about is…
His and Hearse A tisket, a casket: I enjoyed Harrison Fletcher’s October 12 “Death Takes a Holiday,” on the goths with the hearses. It brought back a lot of memories for me. Around 25 years ago on the East Coast, a friend acquired a 1964 Caddy hearse. It was extremely…
Even in the glare of the noonday sun, the Pea Green cemetery feels like a haunted place. Situated on a rocky bluff overlooking a highway in rural Montrose County, the cemetery is a parched jumble of tombstones and rock, drained of all life except for a copper-colored horse that lives…
At eighteen, Scott Zuviceh wanted to be just like a Secret Service agent. He’d grown up in Granby, mostly, and was one of the town’s more notable troublemakers, a bona fide hellraiser. When he was eleven, he’d been removed from his parents’ home and sent to live in a progression…
The past few months have not been the best of times for the folks at Halaby, Cross & Schluter, the private law firm hired to defend the City of Denver in cases of alleged police misconduct. Blasted by a federal judge last spring for failing to comply with his order…
