Politics may make for strange bedfellows, but consulting contracts produce even odder playmates. How else to explain the current business arrangement between the Regional Transportation District and privatized-transit guru Wendell Cox? Stung by charges of inefficiency and bloat–including complaints about overstaffing leveled by members of its own elected board of…
part 1 of 2 Ron Guerin doesn’t want to talk about the apartment. The apartment didn’t work out. Best not to talk about it. See, it was a basement apartment. On the north side of town. And it might have worked out, except for the voices on the telephone. For…
part 2 of 2 “This one’s mine. This one’s mine. This one’s mine, too.” Richard Deem is hunched over a barrel in a back room at the Wishing Well Drop-In Center on Speer Boulevard, a kind of clubhouse for the mentally ill, where the salvaged belongings of former Highlands residents…
cartoon…
Bottom feeders: Forget those New Year’s resolutions coming from our nation’s Capitol. Not ten days into 1996–and new rules governing gifts to members of Congress–Representative Scott McInnis and Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell have eaten their words. Both lawmakers accepted US West’s invitation to sit at the Baby Bell’s table at…
Why not journey up to lovely Cooperstown, New York, this summer and take in the sights? Babe Ruth’s bat. Norman Rockwell’s watercolor depicting a crew of umpires with their eyes turned upward and palms outstretched to a sky full of sprinkles, weighing the merits of a rain delay. The ball…
Andrew Wilson, lingerie explorer, homes in on the peach-hued camisole. Moving a strap from its padded hanger, he murmurs, “Hmmm…satin weave or charmeuse?” Of the silver satin robe he encounters next, he says, “Nice, but the work on these seams is borderline.” To a green crushed-velvet bodysuit, he says, “Ah…
Leader of the Pack Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s January 10 column, “Who’s Holding the Bag?” The answer to Calhoun’s headline is simply this: The taxpayers are left holding the bag. And Denver officials don’t even have the guts to tell us what’s in it. Leland Simmons Denver The true meaning of…
Deep in the bowels of Denver International Airport, in the underground chamber that houses the notorious $218.5 million automated baggage system, sits a woman with perhaps the most mind-numbing job in Denver. Perched on a metal chair in a mile-long tunnel that looks as wide as a four-lane highway, she…
After fifteen years of evaluating child sexual abuse for Denver’s C. Henry Kempe National Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect, Clare Haynes-Seman is out of a job. As of January 31, the contract of the 56-year-old director of the Family Evaluation Team will lapse, and…
Wellington Webb made a well-timed promise to people living in West Washington Park last May. Just days before the mayoral runoff election in June, the mayor–then neck and neck with challenger Mary DeGroot–committed in writing to help the group fight the construction of a “mega-McDonald’s” restaurant on a primarily residential…
part 2 of 2 Like so many women who have fallen for prisoners, Flo Orona insists that her man and her marriage are different. Orona met the man of her dreams in 1987. She’d prayed to God for a man who would meet her ideals. That’s why her two marriages…
part 1 of 2 One day several years ago, a young woman approached retired prison secretary Mary Jane Eaklor and asked her what she thought the chances were of making a successful marriage with her inmate fiance. Eaklor responded by telling her about a pile of rocks in her driveway…
Pressing engagements: The Rocky Mountain News’s decision to cut back its circulation area–and so its circulation numbers–and concentrate on metro Denver would have been more impressive had the January 3 edition carrying the news arrived at our downtown doorstep before 7:30 a.m. By then, of course, the story was already…
On race day, it is always the same. Aaron Harrison hangs Unruly Thomas’s muzzle over his crate, where he can see it, and talks soothingly to his charge in a voice dripping the rhythms of Muskogee, Oklahoma. At these signs, Thomas begins to get excited. And when Harrison shorts his…
Topic of Cancer Regarding Michelle Dally Johnston’s “Critical Conditions,” in the January 3 issue: Whatever happened to taking one’s word, especially a friend’s word, as justification for assurance of almost anything? Personal existence, in this case. I try and live my life by my word. When I say I will…
Last winter, residents of the Vail subdivision Booth Creek, fed up with diesel fumes filling their homes, demanded that the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) close a nearby truck chain-up station on Interstate 70. “The Vail Valley is so narrow, the homes in Booth Creek filled up with exhaust,” says…
Concerned about their future and tired of what they say are inadequate resources, paramedics at Denver Health and Hospitals have been trying for months to switch city agencies and join the Denver Fire Department, where they would stand to enjoy greater clout and earn more money. Unfortunately for them, DHH…
Jack Vickers has a new interest. It’s beekeeping. It’s very profitable. Vickers, who built his vast wealth by developing such projects as the exclusive Castle Pines residential area in Douglas County (the golf course there was designed by Jack Nicklaus), keeps the bees in an unlikely place. Here are the…
As Megan Jones waited to be prepped for her double mastectomy, three people stood by her. On her left was Warren, her husband of ten years. On her right were her closest friends in America: Dianne and Gary Cushner. They were all trying to comfort the 48-year-old Australian, who just…
The last pain to Clarksburg: The people of Clarksburg, West Virginia, must be feeling pretty good right about now. After all, they’ve survived 1995, the year their town was deluged with mail from an unwanted pen pal: one JT Colfax, a performance artist who picked the town as the odd…
Ever had the living daylights beaten out of you by an eleven-year-old? It’s not that bad if the eleven-year-old doing the beating is a kid as nice as Tab Habon and the damned fool grownup learns something in the process. Watch out, though: You may still have to eat 139…
