Ron Norris’s family eked out a living as sharecroppers in Scotch Ridge, Iowa. They lived simply, decades behind progress, tilling the fields with draft horses and drawing water with a hand pump. On Saturday evenings they’d sit around the battery-powered radio and listen to the tinny strains of Roy Acuff…
Hundreds of people attending the Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center fundraiser on Thursday went home disappointed. It seems that Thunder, the white Arabian stallion, isn’t well. According to the brochure that went along with the event, Sharon Magness, socialite, benefactress and widow of cable magnate Bill Magness, was supposed to…
When you’re sniffing around a perfumer’s house, your descriptions of smells had better be particular, so here: The backyard is lilacs before, as opposed to after, a quick afternoon rain in Colorado. The kitchen is cloves with a faint note of rosemary. The perfumer herself, Kerry Ott, does not smell…
There are things you know — and then there are things you know. The difference is everything. In 1969, while he was in Germany attending his first international track-and-field competition, Frank Shorter roomed with a hammer-thrower, a man of immense proportions. One night the roommate began bouncing off the walls,…
Every Second Counts Mark his words: In “Marked for Death,” in the May 25 issue, Alan Prendergast stated that there have been eight inmate homicides at Florence federal penitentiary since it opened seven years ago. This means 1.1 homicides per year. He also wrote that 94 assaults means “roughly one…
Jeremy Garcia was the first to see the Special Forces commandos. Well, they said they were Special Forces. But the two men didn’t look like any commandos Garcia had seen before. Their heads were covered by camouflage hoods studded with pieces of red sponge. They wore thick green canvas breastplates…
When Colorado First Assistant Attorney General David Kaye was handcuffed and arrested three weeks ago for breaking into his ex-wife’s garage, allegedly injuring her in the process, he was charged with felony trespass and misdemeanor criminal mischief. When his ex-wife, Irene, was handcuffed and arrested after she kicked his truck…
As recently as last year, Denver officials pushing for a sweeping renovation of Red Rocks Amphitheatre and Friends of Red Rocks, a group of public citizens fearful that the city’s plans went too far, were singing very different tunes. But the announcement earlier this year of a less ambitious restorative…
On November 19, Junior Seau and the rest of the listless San Diego Chargers will file their way onto a chartered airplane and fly to Denver for their yearly faceoff against the Denver Broncos. The owners of the team, 76-year-old Alex Spanos and his son, Dean Spanos, will probably join…
John Horan has handled a thousand bodies, but even now, after 25 years, the forgotten ones still get to him.”This was an eleven-year-old child,” he says, examining a green cardboard package no larger than a deck of cards. “I can’t imagine how anyone could abandon the remains of an eleven-year-old…
Those conservative politicians who routinely bellyache about the alleged liberal bias of the media seldom include mainstream talk radio in their rants, and for good reason: Most hosts with an overt ideological slant, be they local or national, are only slightly less right-wing than was Benito Mussolini.Understanding that, the folks…
Ready, Aim, Misfire Carried away over concealed-carry: Patricia Calhoun’s May 11 “Fire Away” column proves that she is either incredibly naive or was under a very tight production schedule. She states that over a year after the Columbine tragedy, we still hear the gunshots, but “now they merely disturb our…
After preparing for this day for two years, Peter Thomas leaves Denver on the morning of Monday, January 2, 1999, nearly misses the connection at JFK in New York (runs to make the flight), changes again in Stockholm and then lifts off for St. Petersburg. He has checked through two…
Last June 2, emergency teams gathered for a closed-door meeting at the Colorado Convention Center and learned that deadly anthrax had been released at a Sixteenth Street Mall food court. The dissemination had been subtle — 10,000 to 20,000 spores, a microscopic amount, is all that is needed to infect…
Mayor Wellington Webb is so confident in Denver’s economic future that he’s willing to bet the house on it — or at least the city’s convention center. Webb agreed last week to give developer Bruce Berger a $55.3 million subsidy to build a Marriott hotel adjacent to the Colorado Convention…
The driver of a black Ford Bronco heads west toward a traffic circle on 15th and Pine Streets in Boulder. Visibly confused, he fails to slow down to the suggested fifteen-mile-per-hour speed limit, swings around the circle, which has replaced what would be a four-way stop, and heads back east…
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Sure as fuck ain’t the Denver police. This is one of Denver radio personality Peter Boyles’s favorite new jokes about this city’s little no-knock-raid publicity problem, but he can’t say it on the air, for obvious reasons. Less obvious, however, is why the ubiquitous KHOW talk-radio…
I bring my wallet, telling myself that I will use a few old Post-its crammed inside for my notes. But the minute I pass through the massive wood-and-glass doors, my credit card begins to throb. I have come to the new REI flagship store, located in the husk of what…
The topic that the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News cover worse than any other is themselves. Sometimes the inaccuracies are unintentional; they’re caused by a predictable lack of objectivity, perhaps, or the seemingly benign but actually corrosive tendency to give statements made by their overseers a free pass…
How would this country’s motorheads react if the next three Daytona 500 winners were Romanians driving Russian race cars? What if an NFL expansion team from Amsterdam or Tokyo built a Super Bowl Dynasty? How many tickets would U.S. baseball nuts buy if the World Series featured the Toronto Blue…
Of Rags and Road Rage Patricia Calhoun, as the editor of a rag that (with justification) regularly bashes King Webb’s violations of various statutes and constitutional guarantees, it’s surprising that you would agree with him on denying Denver citizens the right to protect themselves with a firearm (“Fire Away,” May…
Everyone will tell you that Edward Bryant is the nicest guy in the world. Responsible, a good friend, kind to his cats, endlessly helpful to other writers. So where does this come from: “The muzzle of the .357 belched flame and the back of Mrs. Hernandez’s skull exploded outward, the…
