It was a hot, uneasy afternoon on the plains. The women and children, left alone without menfolk, were finishing up their chores. There were goats, sheep and chickens to feed, turnips to hoe and salt beef to soak for dinner–what there would be of dinner. It being only June, few…
Don’t rain on his parade: Westword’s March 29 story on Alvertis Simmons, a Wellington Webb campaigner, prompted several outraged letters and calls from folks defending Simmons’s honor. One man, however, phoned in with a reminder of another time that Simmons made the news. During the 1992 presidential campaign, he got…
Among thousands of celebrants, the happiest man in baseball this week has to be American League president Gene Budig. Had the divisive players’ strike lasted just two more days, after all, Budig might have faced the sticky task of breaking Cal Ripken Jr.’s historic date with the Iron Horse. Unless…
Native American spiritual leader Oscar Brave Eagle, convicted last year of raping a female colleague, has been granted a new trial. Brave Eagle, a sexagenarian Lakota Indian, was granted a second chance to plead his case when a Larimer County judge agreed in March that his lawyer in the first…
Here Comes the Judge Outrageous! That’s all I could think after seeing Patricia Calhoun’s April 5 column about Judge Armatas, “His Honor?” If John Doe owed $2 million, he’d be facing a judge–not be the judge himself. Ray Vigil Denver Extra Innings Good story by Steve Jackson about the Moore…
The political turmoil shaking Mexico appears to have spilled north into Colorado. Aeromexico, the country’s largest airline, suspects its former top executive of embezzling tens of millions of dollars. According to legal documents filed here, the company now hopes to use a Denver court to lure him back to his…
At first, Susan Pitcher had nothing planned but just another gay-beauty-pageant fluff piece. Pitcher, a lesbian reporter and producer for cable TV’s Lambda Report, was interviewing Greg Lowe, an organizer of the Rocky Mountain Mr. Leather contest, when she stumbled across a news tidbit she now sees as “a very…
A Metropolitan State College of Denver history professor’s credentials to teach a course in Native American history have been questioned after a student complained that he conducted the class in an “insensitive” and “racist” manner. Sophomore Lily Boyce identified herself in a written complaint to college officials as “an enrolled…
part 1 of 2 Lisa didn’t stir when her husband slipped out of bed and walked to the bathroom. It was six in the morning, and he had to get to the ballpark. The desert dawn had already crept past the hotel curtains; outside, the Tucson air smelled of sun-warmed…
part 2 of 2 Brad arrived in Philadelphia determined to keep his mouth shut and do exactly as he was asked. He knew he had been called up because the Phillies ace reliever, Kent Tekulve, was injured. Brad had no illusions about staying on the squad the rest of the…
In 1974 Michele Wallace lost her life to another human being in the Rocky Mountains. But other predators weren’t through with her. For the next eighteen years, various creatures picked at her remains and scattered them in the wilderness near Kebler Pass, just west of Crested Butte. Before she turned…
Board stiff: Okay, so corporal punishment is out for kids–but what about for school-board members? When Denver Public Schools teacher Lynn Pohlod moved to Wyman Elementary this year, she was shocked at what she found. The school, located at 17th Avenue and Williams, has an extremely high student turnover, with…
The DNA tests are back from the lab, and those were not major-leaguers who christened Coors Field Friday afternoon. Before 47,563 polite witnesses, a group of strangers wearing Colorado Rockies pinstripes defeated a band of aliens in New York Yankee road grays 4-1, in the first game at Denver’s graceful…
Neighborhood Botch I was shocked to read Arthur Hodges’s article “Arrested Development,” in the March 29 issue. For what reason was it even published? Mr. Simmons is not under any current investigations, allegations or even suspicions. What is the big deal? From what I can gather from the article, he…
Jack Dempsey lived in Creede, Denver, Steamboat Springs and Montrose, fighting in mining camps across the entire Rocky Mountain region before becoming the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. But he was still known as the “Manassa Mauler.” This summer Dempsey would have been 100 years old. And the tiny…
Congress Park residents were pleased with themselves and the system last fall after winning a legal battle to keep a liquor store from opening in their neighborhood. Their triumph, however, lasted only five months. They are now gearing up for an identical skirmish with the same would-be owner, whose most…
The smell of manure, sweet and earthy, permeates everything in and around the tiny farming enclave of Wiggins. Its musk is carried in the wind as it blows across the brown, dusty fields and then settles in the streets and stores and tiny backyards of the houses in town–an appropriate…
Noblet Danks loved to teach. She loved the children she taught–their energy, their enthusiasm, their eagerness to learn. In the Seventies she taught in Bolivia as a member of the Peace Corps. Back in Colorado she worked in a small Catholic school for two years. In the early Eighties she…
Dem bones: It’s getting pretty lonely over at state Democratic headquarters. The offices at 770 Grant Street used to bustle with an executive director, a bookkeeper, a communications director, a constituent-relations specialist, a political director, an executive assistant and a secretary; now they look like the closing scene in Dr…
Bring your pets inside and hide the children in the cellar. The Thing That Cannot Play is about to be set loose. You know the one. The many-footed monster that has prowled the swamps of Florida and the deserts of Arizona since mid-February. The scourge that put Sparky Anderson to…
A man hired by the City of Denver to help coordinate the Neighborhood Watch anti-crime program has been arrested three times in the past twelve years–at least once for allegedly disturbing the peace of his own neighborhood. Alvertis Simmons, 38, also has been charged by police in Glendale and Denver…
Mammoth Events Center, the well-known auditorium and concert hall on Denver’s East Colfax Avenue, is floundering in a tar pit of debt and may well be sold, according to court records. Mammoth owner Manuel Fernandez and his partners are seven months behind on mortgage payments to the Colorado Housing and…
