THE END OF THE AFFAIR

part 2 of 2 For two of the past three years, the Conference on World Affairs has been the target of protests by a small group of women calling themselves, among other things, Women in Support of Castration. The women are deeply offended by the CWA program, which lists the…

OFF LIMITS

The cat in the hat: Local viewers might have had some trouble recognizing the self-proclaimed “Black Avenger” as he appeared on Eye to Eye with Connie Chung last Thursday night. Gone were the black leather chaps, the stylin’ beret–and much of the attitude. Ken Hamblin looked–and sounded–like he’d just left…

OFFERING SERVICES

First night on the new job, Calvin Natt called a couple of his guys by the wrong names, and he found himself constantly amazed. “I had no idea the kids had so much athletic talent,” he said the next day. “I’d only watched them on tape from the East game,…

LETTERS

Hamblin on Wry Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “The Smother Brother” in the January 12 issue: In my opinion, the central point that most stands out about Kenny the Negro (as he sometimes calls himself) is not his newfound rap that mimics and cashes in on the success of the real star,…

WHAT RHYMES WITH “JERKWATER”?

A $7.50 can of sale paint was no bargain for 44-year-old Denver antique dealer Myke Johnson: She might wind up mortgaging her house to pay for it. But Johnson won’t find a lot of sympathy in Edgewater. The little suburb’s police force reportedly turned out en masse for Johnson’s trial…

CRASH AND CARRY

One of the few undisputed facts about Denver International Airport is that the new automated baggage-handling system must succeed. Should the computerized network fail, there’s no backup. And that’s not good news. Because despite last week’s rosy reports that claimed the system was a hit, its batting average was actually…

VILLAGE DIN

part 2 of 2 With Poundstone out of the picture in the 1989 election, longtime Greenwood resident Rollie Barnard was elected mayor. And for a couple of years things stayed quiet. Seeing an opening when the Poundstone group lost power, Myrna Poticha had run again for council and been re-elected…

VILLAGE DIN

part 1 of 2 If it’s true that, as one resident says, God has smiled down on the city of Greenwood Village, he must have turned a blind eye to the local government. In this wealthy Denver suburb, a quiet community split between modern upscale tract homes and 1950s ranch…

OFF LIMITS

Bonds on the run: Denver officials may not know how to open an airport on time (much less on budget), but they clearly understand how to stop certain complaints before they ever get off the ground. For proof, check out one of those pesky property-tax notices popping up in mailboxes…

THIN ICE

Figure skating isn’t exactly a sport, and it isn’t Swan Lake. It is, rather, that frozen netherworld where community theater meets the double axel, in costumes on loan from the floor show at Caesar’s. It’s no wonder that the skaters themselves are often quivering bundles of nerves and that their…

CELL, CELL, CELL

“I don’t give up very easily,” says Stephen W. Smith. “No matter what, I keep making things happen.” Smith’s claim is no idle boast. He is currently a resident of the Jefferson County jail, where he is awaiting trial on a potpourri of charges, including first-degree forgery, criminal impersonation, issuing…

DOUBLE THE TROUBLE

The Denver accounting firm Patten, MacPhee & Associates has received a thorough drubbing in the national press over the past two weeks for its role in the hottest scandal of Bill Clinton’s presidency–the Whitewater real estate deal. Now, it turns out, the firm also finds itself near the center of…

REDEEMING VALUE

Mary Murphy has spent more than ten years trying to make Calvary Temple pastor Charles Blair pay for his sins. As a member of the James 1:27 Committee, a group formed by investors who lost millions of dollars in Life Center, a Calvary-backed senior citizens’ complex that failed in the…

LETTERS

All Talk and No Action Congratulations to Patricia Calhoun for an excellent column, “The Smother Brother,” in the January 12 issue. She may be the only person who ever gets the last word in with Ramblin’ Hamblin. Sophia Thomas Denver I very much enjoyed Patricia Calhoun’s piece on Ken Hamblin…

Psychic Reaction

Kelly Roberts lays on the blue eye shadow a bit too thick for anyone other than a fortune teller. But there are no crystal balls or tarot cards in the jumbled single-wide trailer where she lives with her children in a valley near Durango. Take away her mascara, and the…

Small Craft Warnings

Where does a $5 billion gorilla sit? Wherever it wants to. Among the giant Denver International Airport’s latest victims are regional airports that have been forced to delay or cancel improvements–all because of an unpublicized DIA policy shift. And at least one of those airports, Longmont’s Vance Brand, is badly…

Adams Family Values

Federico Pena, former Denver mayor and current Secretary of Transportation, was so anxious to build Denver International Airport that he paid an $8 million “ransom” to Adams County. So says Jim Nelms, chief hostage-holder and an early player in Denver’s airport game. In the Eighties Nelms served as both Adams…

Sites For Sore Eyes

Call it an anti-House Beautiful. Or the evil twin of Architectural Digest. For the past four months Life on Capitol Hill, a small monthly neighborhood paper that covers goings-on along the funky streets south of 20th Avenue and east of Broadway, has devoted a half-page in each paper to “Eyesores…

That’S “Tim,” As In “Timber”

When state officials last week rejected the plan of Tim Blixseth and Big Sky Lumber Co. to acquire the Taylor Ranch, they may have saved themselves some headaches. Blixseth, of Oregon, had announced his proposal to buy the 77,000-acre ranch in south-central Colorado, log some of it and trade the…

Elitch’S Secret Ride

Elitch Gardens has done its best to keep the financial details of its star-crossed move from northwest Denver to the Central Platte Valley shrouded in secrecy. Following last month’s announcement that the City of Denver would throw another $7 million into the pot–raising taxpayers’ total contribution to more than $30…