The Blackboard Bungle Kudos to Eric Dexheimer for his story on the plight of John Hart, recently canned part-time faculty teacher at Aurora Community College (“Teacher’s Fret,” August 29). The article revealed not just a personal story but the workings of a whole system run with an iron hand by…
Southwest Plaza has, like, fifteen entrances, and that’s not counting the downstairs at Sears where you go in next to the Die-Hard batteries and radial tires. As if. As if you would ever go to the mall to buy a tire. The fourteen-year-old girls who live in my neighborhood will…
John Hart is a fine writing teacher; his student evaluations are nearly unanimous on that. Last year his students nominated him as Teacher of the Year at the Community College of Aurora, where he also served as co-chair of the faculty senate. He has a graduate degree in fine arts,…
Down at the Regional Transportation District’s lofty LoDo headquarters, good help has never been hard to find. The pay at the troubled transit agency is competitive, the benefits are excellent–and in some cases, there’s even a bonus for quitting. Paying employees to leave isn’t yet common practice at RTD, but…
Social climbers: On Friday, gossipmonger Bill Husted told the Rocky Mountain News he was entertaining an offer from the Denver Post. Apparently the News wasn’t interested in countering: When Husted showed up for work Monday, he got the boot instead of a boutonniere and was escorted from the building with…
Former Fort Morgan pharmacist and self-confessed morphine addict Andrew Komesu was lucky to get out of Colorado with little more than a slap on the wrist. Now, however, he just might be forced to make a return visit–a possibility that both satisfies and frustrates drug-enforcement officers. In 1995, Komesu served…
At Ted Nugent’s Kamp for Kids in the Michigan woods last week, you had two choices. You could get a bow and arrow and hunt deer, elk, bear or what Nugent called “a great big Commie Russian hog.” You could gut it out, haul it home and help feed your…
As officials of the Winter Park ski area prepare to raise the curtain on what’s supposed to be a new era of accountability, questions continue to swirl about the finances of the city-owned resort. The Winter Park Recreational Association, the secretive private board that runs the lucrative resort for the…
Cradle to Grave Thank you for running Karen Bowers’s August 22 article “Older but Bitter,” about the shocking crimes of Wanda Crawford. My heart goes out to Troy, Selina and Stephanie De La Rosa. It is such a tragedy to have a healthy, happy baby hurt–especially by a caregiver. The…
On July 1, several children in the Baker-La Alma neighborhood were playing in back of the storefront offices of Weed and Seed, a federally funded anti-crime program that pumps money into several impoverished Denver neighborhoods. Suddenly, nine-year-old Ivan Jorgensen was hit under the eye by a rake that another boy…
Colorado Springs babysitter Wanda Crawford was 66 years old in 1994 when she was found guilty of shaking a nine-month-old infant so severely that the baby was left brain-damaged and permanently disabled. So abhorrent was the crime that, despite Crawford’s age and the fact that it was her first felony…
The rising popularity of a spot of natural beauty southwest of the city of Golden has prompted a plan that strikes some Jefferson County residents as decidedly unnatural: paving a short stretch of Colorow Road that leads to the Lookout Mountain Nature Center. County officials insist they are paving with…
Of all the indignities Elizabeth Matteson says she suffered at the hands of the government, the worst came after the Environmental Protection Agency had frightened away a tenant occupying the industrial building her husband built. It was after the agency had put up a chain-link fence around the property overnight…
The baggage system from hell at Denver International Airport still isn’t working properly–but the lawsuit it spawned has turned into lawyer heaven. The case, which fills a two-foot-thick file at Denver District Court, is generating sky-high fees for some of Denver’s most powerful law firms. And it promises the potential…
Runaway train: If the primary election seemed rough, fasten your seatbelts–we’re in for a bumpy ride through November 5. But the toughest fight promises to be not the Senate race (pitting the Pillsbury Doughboy against the Democratic doughboy), not the First Congressional race (Pat Schroeder Jr. against a guy named…
The attorney for the plaintiff wore a khaki jumpsuit and leg irons. Most of the witnesses were merely disembodied voices in the air. The audience, made up chiefly of agents from the U.S. Marshal’s office, looked bored. But David Merritt pressed on anyway, trying to show that the nation’s most…
When Andre Dawson announced his retirement last week, a couple of astonished doctors pointed out that the great slugger had undergone twelve knee surgeries in his 21-year career–seven on the right knee, five on the left. Both ravaged knees, the Hawk allowed, are now creaking along “bone on bone.” That’s…
T and Sympathy Regarding the August 8 Off Limits item about Peter Boyles, Wilma Webb and Mr. T: Throughout the radio interview on KTLK-AM, Peter Boyles addressed Wilma Webb respectfully as “Mrs. Webb,” and Wilma Webb addressed Boyles condescendingly as “Peter.” To get respect, you usually have to give it…
It was a hot July morning, and the Reverend Robert Woolfolk mopped at the sweat that beaded on his dark brown face with a white handkerchief. With his other hand, he grasped the thick rope that hung from the ceiling just inside the oak doors of the church and pulled…
So far, the only organized opposition to the Public Service Company merger is coming from environmentalists, who fear that one consequence of tying Colorado’s power supply to Texas could be more air pollution in Denver. To link the two utilities, a $150 million power line will have to be built…
Stockholders are not usually a hostile crowd, especially when a company is posting record profits. At annual meetings, where the audience typically is made up of men in Brooks Brothers suits and women in pumps and pearls, the emphasis is on making money, not storming the barricades. Conservative investors complain…
It is undisputed that Karen Ann Shain’s boss used to measure her skirt lengths against those of other women in the office. He admits that he called long skirts “Karen length” skirts and used to kid her for not showing any “skin” on either her legs or her neckline. There…
