A while back, an area record producer completed the latest album by a well-loved local act. This artist had been supported for years by a successful radio station in the region, and since one tune in particular fit the outlet’s format perfectly, the producer naturally assumed it would receive a…
Have you heard? Barry Bonds is an arrogant egotist who has three lockers in the San Francisco Giants clubhouse but not three friends on the entire team. He’s a slugger who hit 73 home runs this season but wouldn’t score 23 points in a fan approval poll. He’s uncouth, ungrateful…
The Gropes of Wrath Doing our patriotic bust: I was outraged by the women’s mistreatment at DIA security, as reported in Patricia Calhoun’s October 11 “Busted!” I wouldn’t even want my son to witness a woman being treated with such disrespect — her boobs squeezed and butt prodded by “security…
Denver City Councilwoman Susan Barnes-Gelt isn’t known for holding her tongue. She often jousts with the mayor and fellow councilmembers, pushing through proposals such as the city’s new ethics policy, which put an end to the lobbyist-supplied meals and drinks that have long added inches to the waistlines of Denver…
The wind is just starting to die down on Fremont Pass when a faded-blue ’71 long-bed Ford swerves onto the gravel. “Thank God,” says the driver, a wiry little man dressed in jeans the color of his truck. “I was worried it would be too windy for you today. I…
At the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Gary Patton devoted four years to developing conservation strategies for the Canada lynx, a wild cat species on the decline in North America. But this past February, he suddenly found his own job on the endangered list. Patton joined the Fish and Wildlife…
Clear Channel, a San Antonio-based corporation that dominates the radio and concert industries, hasn’t gotten a lot of good press lately in Denver, where the conglomerate is being sued in U.S. District Court by a smaller competitor, Nobody in Particular Presents, for a plethora of allegedly anti-competitive practices (“Taking on…
The current conflict is bringing all kinds of Coloradans front and center. First, former U.S. senator Gary Hart issued a very public “I told you so,” since his study predicting that terrorists were almost certain to strike U.S. soil — okay, sometime in the next 25 years — had gone…
Estes Park resident Paul Saunders is a rarity: an applicant for a license to run a low-power FM (LPFM) radio station who actually stands a good chance of being awarded one by the Federal Communications Commission. “I’ve had a lot of help from a lot of people,” Saunders says. “I…
Albert Chopito’s grandmother died with gangrene, her feet blackened with infection, a gruesome consequence of her long fight with diabetes. Just a little over a year after starting junior college on a scholarship, Albert was forced to quit and return home to care for his parents. His father died in…
Box Score Bloom service: What a masterful job Harrison Fletcher did of capturing the beauty and spirit of a most amazing woman, Jodi Jill, in his October 4 “Out of the Box.” I’m grateful that he was the reporter who wrote about her: He was very thorough, supporting through others’…
Unit 151 stands on the northeastern edge of the Loveland Self Storage lot, on the south end of town, near a concrete drainage ditch and a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The unit is about the size of a one-car garage, ten feet by twenty feet, with cinderblock walls,…
Amy Potter’s balcony offers a commanding view of Battlement Mesa, a Western Slope community named for the imposing geological formation. Most of the few thousand residents of the Grand Valley live there. Potter, a medical assistant, and her retired-cop husband used to live there, too. But a year ago they…
Last winter, the United States experienced the highest natural-gas price surge in its history, an increase of some 400 percent on the wholesale level. In response, the Public Utilities Commission approved several rate-hike requests by the state’s largest energy provider, Xcel Energy. One jump in January alone generated $361.6 million…
Go to GoTo.com, an Internet search engine that provides “sponsored” search results for America Online, Lycos, AltaVista and many other World Wide Web heavyweights. Type in “Scientology,” and you’ll get dozens of hits linking you to sites devoted to the Church of Scientology International. This is what you’ll find most…
“The next time you’re waiting on the concourse at Denver International Airport, you may want to avoid a new paperback named Decree,” this very column warned on September 16, 1999. At the time, even Decree’s Colorado author, G.H. Spaulding, agreed. Westword was “absolutely right,” he noted, “for those who are…
There’s nothing especially swashbuckling about Monk. “I’m a normal guy, and I have a normal job,” says the Boulder resident. “I’m in my mid-thirties, divorced, with a couple of kids. I don’t have dreadlocks. I’m not a typical hippie radical.” He is, however, a wanted man — by representatives of…
Father Knows Best In his prayers: Thank you for Steve Jackson’s beautiful story about Father Jim Sunderland, “War and Remembrance,” in the September 26 issue. It captured the essence of his soul, of how he relates to everyone fortunate enough to know him. Father Sunderland has touched the lives of…
This past July 22 began like any other Sunday for Father Jim Sunderland. He woke at seven o’clock and said his prayers while sitting in his big green easy chair. Help me help others today. Amen! He kissed the silver crucifix he’d been given when he took his vows 53…
Birgitta De Pree’s garden is a mirror of her eccentric personality. The square piece of land she tends in the Emerson Street Community Garden is circled by a fence of twisted branches; the sticks at the entryway are painted a lapis blue. Tibetan prayer flags tied to the makeshift enclosure…
Four activists sit on the arm of a 200-foot construction crane in lower downtown. As two push off and rappel into empty space, they pull down a seventy-foot banner that reads “Wage Peace Now” and bears the likenesses of Martin Luther King Jr., Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai…
Life at Colorado Free University, a local institution that offers hundreds of classes in everything from Spanish to painting to flirting each month, isn’t quite as free and easy these days. The problem started with CFU’s September course catalogue, which features a ninja wearing a hood and sword. To those…
