News

House party: Kevin Marchman, the former head of the Denver Housing Authority who went on to become a public-housing wunderkind in the Clinton administration, apparently had more than family reunions on his mind when he returned to Denver last winter to spend more time with his kin. Marchman, who resigned…

It used to be so simple. Each fall, when the leaves turned and you wanted chile, real chile, the kind that made your sinuses clear and your belly warm, you’d drive past the tracks and beyond the highway to an empty lot in the country, where an old farmer wearing…

An Old-Age Problem I could not read Stuart Steers “Dying for Dollars,” in the October 15 issue, to completion because of the painful memories it brought back. After a stay in Lutheran Hospital, my mother was transferred to Cedars Health Care Center for rehabilitation in late 1996. I chose Cedars…

The two police officers met for coffee, as they often did, at the Homestead Restaurant in Idaho Springs one cold afternoon in November 1992. Gary Cunningham, who’d worked for the town’s police department for two years, had recently married his fifth wife, Michele. She worked at the Homestead, and he…

Frank and Norma Dougherty lived a modest American dream. It should not have ended in a nightmare. Frank served as a lieutenant colonel in the Army during World War II, then worked for years as a mechanical engineer at the Denver Federal Center. Norma was a homemaker who devoted herself…

Broadcast bruise: Television news is a rough business–especially if you toil for the Channel 4 morning team. Yes, beneath all that sunny bubble and squeak lies a heart of darkness. Or something. The trouble started on September 24, when affable newsbabe Katie Keifer was booked by Denver police for allegedly…

Those waiting to see Colorado’s new death-penalty tag team in action will have to wait even longer than expected. The first test of a two-year-old law that takes the death-penalty decision out of the hands of a jury and places it before a three-judge panel has been put on hold…

By now the nation knows that Linda Tripp was worried about her bangs, that Monica Lewinsky was worried about her lack thereof with the president, and that an unworried Hillary Clinton thought her husband was simply “ministering” to a misguided youth outside the Oval Office. We know this because Congress…

Touched by and Angle Patricia Calhoun’s “An Unhealthy Situation,” in the October 8 issue, hit the nail on the head. How can organizations work effectively to help victims if the organizations can’t work together? Thanks for bringing this to the public’s attention. I hope you plan to continue coverage of…

You will be treated very hospitably by Vivian Brock, retired art teacher and lifelong raspberry zealot. If you are even remotely civil, she will fix you a cup of raspberry tea, give you a couple of perfect raspberry plants, autograph a copy of her new book, Raspberry Story, and perhaps…

The halls of the Federal Building in downtown Denver are lined with helpful bulletins advising visitors of their right to a hassle-free workplace. Sexual harassment, discrimination on the basis of disability or race or national origin, gender-based bias in hiring or promotion–all the unspeakable, unconstitutional acts of modern society are…

In 1995, the famed Tibetan Buddhist monk and scholar Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche visited the Federal Correctional Institute in Englewood. The holy man walked through the main entrance of the medium-security prison onto its linoleum floors, which looked dull even under the harsh fluorescent lighting, and through a rabbit-infested courtyard…

It was fun while it lasted, but the Denver Public Library has finally lost patience with patrons who use its computer facilities as a video arcade–or, for that matter, an adult-video arcade. In an effort to relieve congestion on their overburdened PCs, library administrators are working on a plan that…

One Thursday evening in mid-September, Catherine Bauer hopped the RTD light-rail train from her receptionist job in a downtown communications-strategy firm. By 7:30 she was in the Broadway Marketplace lot, just south of Alameda and Broadway–but her car wasn’t. “At first I thought it was stolen,” she says. “I was…

Proof of the dumbing-down of the news–or at least its alleged gatherers–arrived Saturday in an announcement from Colorado Public Radio that the station had “temporarily removed” Tia Marlier from the news department, where she worked as announcer for the popular All Things Considered and Weekend Edition news shows. Her sin?…

Ex Marks the Spat Regarding Ward Harkavy’s “Fact or Friction?” in the October 1 issue: The very idea that gays come from bad families, smothering mothers, etc., is absurd, to say the least. I know many gays, including myself, who come from very loving families where “the lifestyle” was never…

Twenty years ago, Denver led the way in dealing with domestic violence. While other cities were just beginning to recognize the plight of battered women–hell, in some states it was still legal for a husband to rape his wife–Denver was funding safehouses, establishing police protocols and reconfiguring courts to provide…

Maybe it was the flea-market matador that sparked the lightbulb over Henry Whittaker’s head. Or the wooden tiki mask. Or the Fisher-Price dollhouse. Or the plaster conquistador figurine. Heck if Henry knows. Besides, even if he could remember what inspired his collection, it’s hard to explain the appeal of a…

John Paulk’s life has really changed. A few years ago he was nobody, just another former drag queen. But that was before he started going public with his “conversion” from homosexuality, before he became the straight man for the “ex-gay” propaganda campaign. That campaign kicked into high gear this summer…