You Can’t Go Home Again

The Hilltop neighborhood, which sits on a bluff east of Colorado Boulevard and north of Alameda Boulevard, was largely developed in the 1940s and ’50s, and most of its homes are suburban-style ranch houses that could just as easily have been built in Lakewood or Littleton. For years, Hilltop was…

Playing Chicken

Russ Seward gets up with the prairie chickens. So does Carol Twiss. In fact, so many people in eastern Yuma County wake with the birdies that the local historical society has printed buttons featuring a picture of the prairie chicken and the slogan “I got up with the prairie chickens.”…

Follow That Story

The homeless lost more of their homes at the former Lowry Air Force Base on October 17, when Catholic Charities and the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless accepted a cash settlement to end a civil suit against the Lowry Redevelopment Authority. The agreement reduces the overall number of “transitional units”…

Off Limits

The Rocky Mountain News apparently didn’t have room for third-party candidates in its October 22 voters’ guide, but it managed to make some space on Tuesday after the Libertarian Party coughed up a chunk of change for a full-page ad listing the state Libertarian candidates that the Rocky didn’t –…

Surrender, Regis!

All by himself, Rick Rosner is a few of my favorite things. In 1986, the story of his life thus far constituted my first Westword feature. He had just won second place in Omni magazine’s Smartest Man in America contest, which he aced by completing a long quiz of which…

Lighting a Fire

“The liberal media.” The phrase is so stale that it’s practically fossilized — not that this condition has prevented politicians of a certain stripe from regularly trotting it out in advance of next week’s balloting. But while it might be true that a sizable percentage of reporters, editors, news directors…

Standing Pat

You don’t have to be a psychoanalyst or a Pentagon code-breaker to understand the threat that Pat Bowlen issued last week. It was the ultimatum of an angry man, pure and simple. If the professional football team Bowlen owns and loves and realizes a handsome profit from doesn’t win its…

Letters to the Editor

You’ve Got Male! Ice breaker: Patricia Calhoun’s October 26 “Skating on Thin Ice” is the typical response I expected your “paper” would produce regarding the arrest of Patrick Roy. Ms. Calhoun recklessly lumps Roy’s actions in with those of convicted abuser and former Denver Donkey Vance Johnson, as well as…

X-phile

The thing about it is, Barry McDonald says, he doesn’t think he actually attracts weird and creepy phenomena. “But I do seek it out,” he explains. “And if you seek out something long enough, you’ll find it.” Back when he managed the Officers’ Club at the old Lowry Air Force…

All the World’s Her Stage

Lucy Walker, the 74-year-old founder of EDEN Theatrical Workshop, sits sipping her coffee with measured grace. At this breakfast banquet extolling the benefits of the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, which apportions sales-tax money to arts and cultural organizations throughout the Denver metro area, arts enthusiasts offer skits, fancy slide…

Trickle-Down Economics

A wooden windmill looms out of the October fog along rural Weld County Road 39, thirty miles east of the Rocky Mountains. Standing guard over a rickety tub, the old windmill pumps water for a dozen head of cattle chewing mouthfuls torn from the rangeland of yucca, sagebrush and prairie…

Give and Take

When Lieutenant Governor Joe Rogers organized a conference on youth education last spring, he got a lot of help: The University of Denver lent him the Magness Arena at cost; BeWell.net, a local Internet provider, set up a Web site; polling company Floyd Ciruli and Associates pitched in its expertise;…

Follow That Story

At first glance, it looked like there would be a major turn in the long-running feud between local television outlets and residents of the Lookout Mountain area over the construction of a digital TV tower there (“Something in the Air,” April 6). In the October 18 Canyon Courier, an article…

Off Limits

They kick, they scratch, they fight for attention, but third-party candidates just don’t seem to get any respect in Colorado. And despite the biggest push by Libertarian and Green Party candidates in state history, no third wheels made it into the Rocky Mountain News’s October 22 Election 2000 Voter Guide…

The Wrong Stuff

Although approval of the joint operating agreement linking the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News hasn’t been finalized, no one at the Post doubts it’ll happen. As proof, note that on October 24 the paper announced it was doubling the newsstand price of its product, from 25 cents to…

Going for the Gourd

The good news was that the Pumpkin Satellite Project had just launched a one-gallon jug of water approximately twenty yards through the air — not a winning distance, certainly, but respectable for an early simulation of what might happen if you put a pumpkin in its place. The bad news,…

Letters to the Editor

Dying to Believe The doctor is in: I’d like to comment on Eileen Welsome’s October 12 article about the First Born Church, “Born to Die.” There’s a joke that goes like this: A city is being flooded, so a man climbs a tree and starts praying to God. Another man…

Justice, Boulder Style

Patsy Ramsey: I want you to look at me and tell me what you think happened. Steve Thomas: Actually, I’ll look you right in the eye. I think you’re good for this. I think that’s what the evidence suggests. — Larry King Live, May 31, 2000 For Steve Thomas, an…

Office Politics

The race for Boulder County District Attorney is taking place under the shadow of Alex Hunter, who has held the job for 28 years. For the past four of those years, Hunter and his previously off-the-radar office have come under glaring public scrutiny for the DA’s handling of the murder…

Telling Tales Out of School

Penelope Jones was born with spastic cerebral palsy and is unable to control the right side of her body; she is also deaf in one ear and mentally retarded. When she enrolled in a special-education class at Denver’s George Washington High School seven years ago at the age of twenty,…

A Man of Convictions

Bob Sylvester doesn’t want to go back to prison. He knows too much about prison and what it does to you. On October 23, Sylvester will find out just how much prison time lies ahead when he appears in a Denver courtroom to be sentenced on charges of racketeering, extortion…

Don’t Fence Me Out

The old adage says fences make good neighbors, but Aurora’s plan to fortify its image by building brick walls around some neighborhoods could cause divisions between people who do and don’t want the new boundaries built. The Neighborhood Fence Replacement Program, unveiled October 2, lets Aurora residents pay the city…