Shot in the Arm

In an effort reminiscent of the 1950s national crusade to wipe out polio, beginning next fall, Colorado children entering elementary and middle school will be required to receive vaccinations against the hepatitis B virus, the leading cause of liver cancer. The idea is to protect the children from themselves in…

Off Limits

All Ramsey, all the time: The JonBenet Ramsey murder has created a killing schedule for local media pundits discussing the who, what, when, where and whydunit for a national audience. Denver Post columnist Chuck Green has been sighted on Dateline, Tom Snyder and CBS This Morning, where he was tagged…

May We Share?

There are those who think that communes reached their popular peak in the Sixties, but a new style of communal living called CoHousing is springing up in Boulder. These residential developments, which combine private and public living spaces, have helped some people solve their growing feelings of social isolation. CoHousing’s…

Hive Anxiety

In Lyle Johnston’s lone beehive, a drowsy clump of bees staggers across a plastic honeycomb frame. They are in a semi-dormant state, more concerned with survival than with honey or the current queen. A warm, un-wintery buzz hums from the hive, which sits near a grove of old cottonwoods at…

The Bums Already Sold Out

Let’s hope Daffy Duck buys the Los Angeles Dodgers. Or Boris Yeltsin. If the Bosnian government puts together an ownership group, writes a check for 300 million bucks and moves the team to burned-out Sarajevo, that will be fine. Maybe Madonna is interested. For all that it matters, she can…

Letters

It’s What’s Up Front That Counts What’s the deal with the penis envy at your office? With all the stuff going on in Denver/Boulder, I would think you could have a better cover story than Eric Dexheimer’s “Growing Pains,” in the January 2 issue. I also saw the little link…

Global Warning

What’s wrong with this picture? Compared with the beauty-pageant clips of JonBenet Ramsey that keep popping up on television, the crime-scene photos published in Monday’s issue of the Globe look like something from Mother Goose. Night after night, the ghost of six-year-old JonBenet parades across the news, imitating a Las…

Please Release Me

Three days a week, the blue bus from Canon City pulls up at the corner of Smith Road and Peoria and discharges a stream of men dressed in cheap polyester suits. The men are parolees, and each one has a check for $100 and two bus tokens in his pocket…

Opening a Shut Case

Margot Anderson was rear-ended while driving her car in 1989. Yolanda Martinez was hit in her car two years later. Together the two Colorado women helped change the state’s open-records laws to make it easier for the public to examine court documents once considered off limits. Their unlikely legal journey…

Chrome Allies

A few weeks ago Stanton Stegner took over a small warehouse at the corner of 22nd and Curtis Streets, where an auto-parts supply store used to be. Using his 1969 Ford van and a flatbed trailer, he systematically began depositing sculptures made from old chrome bumpers and scrap steel around…

Fight to the Finish

The Moffat Tunnel Commission went out with a bang last week, engaging in one last act of defiance before being swept into the dustbin of Colorado history. At a New Year’s Eve meeting marked by angry exchanges between commissioners and audience members, the elected panel considered a plan to sabotage…

Off Limits

Anchors away! Channel 2 reporter Jann Tracey, who lost the tip of a finger while shooting a segment with a caged, allegedly tame bear last week (the station declined to run the bloody aftermath), probably considers TV reporting tough duty. But it’s nothing compared with actually watching the stuff. View…

Lots of Profit

Where does free enterprise end and profiteering begin? The answer depends on which side of the dollar you’re on. And in this case, Denver city officials are caught in the middle. Manager of Safety Fidel “Butch” Montoya has been called upon to mediate a dispute between the manager of a…

Stupor Bowl

Whooooops! Afterward, Lionel Washington couldn’t hold back the tears. A devastated Shannon Sharpe wondered aloud if he’d be able to look at himself in the mirror come Sunday morning. Or face John Elway. Sharpe predicted it would be “years until the Broncos get over this loss. Probably the next century.”…

Letters

Pocket Change Regarding Eric Dexheimer’s “Growing Pains,” in the January 2 issue: You know, there are a lot of people deliberately paying less than $7,000 for lumpy, bumpy blue sex toys at adult stores. Glen has with him at all times something that most people have to keep in a…

A Yarn About the Broncos

Deep in a corner of my conscience is a wad of unfinished sweaters–one for every Bronco Super Bowl bust. Somehow, in the agony of defeat–or, perhaps more accurately, the discomfort brought on by excessive consumption of both crow and alcohol–lifting the South Stands would have been easier than hoisting those…

Last Hand

The two old men sit at a card table surrounded by space heaters that buzz and glow in their struggle against the cold. The table has been pulled over to a corner near the front window to take advantage of the muted winter sunlight. A small black-and-white television tuned to…

Growing Pains

Glen Rains’s operation didn’t work out quite as he had hoped. “My penis is all globbed up on one side and dented on the other,” he explains slowly. “It’s out of contour. Before, it was reasonably concentric. Now there’s a divot on one side.” Not surprisingly, his wife, Kathy, is…

The Politics of Giving

The announcement that a Denver victims’ assistance board is providing $50,000 to aid victims of the Oklahoma City bombing has created a schism among local advocates: While they agree that Denver should welcome the victims with open arms, some are balking at opening the city’s pocketbooks to them as well…

Off Limits

Dig, we must: With this week’s balmy weather, the immobilizing snow of two weeks ago has melted into memory–a very bad memory. Mayor Wellington Webb’s press secretary, Andrew Hudson, was sitting in the State Capitol on Wednesday, December 18, two days after the snow hit, when he got a page…

Musicians to the Corps

The Denver Junior Police Band, once plagued by scandal, has returned after an eight-year hiatus and is again trying to keep kids off the streets by getting them out there pounding the pavement as a marching band. Originally struck up in 1937, the band grew to be more than a…

War of the Heavy Weights

This old cowtown is finally big enough to merit a splashy, 500-page coffee-table book filled with full-color photos and glowing prose. But Denver’s collective coffee table may not be big enough for two of them. The new year will see the appearance of a pair of lavish profiles of Denver,…