TOOTH OR CONSEQUENCES

They spent their young adult lives looking after kids and husbands, cooking and cleaning. And then Arla Tolman and Suzanne Martin decided they wanted something to safeguard their futures. They wanted careers–as dental assistants. What they say they got was the financial and psychological equivalent of a root canal. That…

OFF LIMITS

Snow job: Is there a mover and shaker in the state whose name hasn’t been mentioned in connection with the top spot at Colorado Ski Country USA? Age doesn’t seem to give candidates an edge in this race, because so far, the leading contenders are all under forty: former Comsat…

HOMEBOYS

From the beginning, that big white clock outside Coors Field has had a mind of its own. So at 3:54 last Thursday afternoon, this unreliable timepiece assured the gathering throngs on Blake Street that it was 3 p.m. By evening, 54 minutes were still missing in action and, for all…

SCHOOL’S OUT

After a tough fight, a second charter school will finally open in Denver this fall. But it won’t be the controversial Thurgood Marshall school, nor will it be another proposed school aimed at helping at-risk inner-city kids. The lucky winner goes simply by P.S. 1, a so-called urban school based…

COUNTRY STRIFE

The government’s latest reports show that crime is down in major cities across the nation. Not since before the advent of crack have the mean streets been so mellow. But don’t you dare relax! Westword has examined police blotters in small towns throughout Colorado and found disturbing evidence that crime…

LETTERS

Town Haul Regarding Robin Chotzinoff’s “Our Town,” in the August 16 issue: The story of John and Ida May Noe was interesting. Today the Greenland Ranch is owned by the Oklahoma Publishing Company of Oklahoma City. This is the picture of many small farms across America. Farm policies, run by…

WARNING: BAD AIR AHEAD

Nick Forster, the man behind the Boulder-based radio program E-Town, no longer has to follow every twist and turn of the debate over whether federal funding for public broadcasting should be cut or eliminated. That’s because E-Town, a music-and-environmental-news show that’s been a National Public Radio staple for years, already…

SHOOT UP FIRST, ANSWER QUESTIONS LATER

part 2 of 2 Back at police headquarters, Komesu was singing like a canary. He admitted that he was a morphine addict, Kuretich says, and he admitted forging prescriptions. “He said he’d taken a large amount of morphine so he could start slowly decreasing his use,” Kuretich says. “And he…

SHOOT UP FIRST, ANSWER QUESTIONS LATER

part 1 of 2 Fort Morgan hospital pharmacist Andrew Komesu was already in jail facing charges of forging prescriptions and plundering drugs when local police and federal agents discovered his stash. The haul, made in May 1994, was one of the largest in ten years for a DEA anti-drug task…

OUR TOWN

The small house Ida May Noe shares with John, her husband of 52 years, is one fence line away from the hundred-year-old Noe Farm, run by John’s brother James. Both places sit just back from Noe Road, which cuts a two-mile dirt track through the southern half of Douglas County…

OFF LIMITS

Standing Pat: Talk-show host Mike Rosen isn’t the only conservative taking swings at Representative Pat Schroeder. In the current issue of the Republican National Committee’s Rising Tide magazine, Colorado state treasurer Bill Owens ranks a “Doer’s Profile” that includes several enlightening answers to the profile’s standard questions. To wit: “Latest…

BLOW HARD

Peter McNeeley is the heavyweight champion of certain parts of Massachusetts and a couple of saloons in eastern Connecticut. He’s beaten such luminaries as Jesus Rohena, Ron Drinkwater and Howard Kelly. Two years ago he knocked out Miguel Rosa in Revere, Massachusetts, in the second round, and he won a…

ANOTHER CABLE FABLE

Hold on to your TV remote: TeleCommunications Inc., the world’s largest cable company, is ready to grant you absolution. Recently, the Englewood-based cable giant–which has 11.5 million subscribers across the country–has been running late-night television commercials announcing that August is “amnesty month” for cable pirates and warning that in September…

AFTERNOON DELIGHT

It’s a sunny July day at Denver’s Washington Park and, over by the picnic pavilion, 150 shorts-clad revelers are eating, drinking, playing games and frolicking to the extent permitted by the 90-plus degree heat. So what’s wrong with this picture? The picnickers are employees of Denver’s Department of Social Services…

LETTERS

When Irish Guys Are Smiling Regarding the ethnic contretemps in Evergreen (Eric Dexheimer’s “War of the Words,” August 9), one is tempted to ask what the reaction of the Jeffco DA and the pecksniffs in the media would have been had the situation been reversed, with the Aronsons spouting off…

WAR OF THE WORDS

Seldom is the legal rule of innocent until proven guilty so ignored by the public as in cases of ethnic and racial hate crimes. The charges are toxic enough to begin corroding the accused immediately, and for a crime that is enormously difficult to prove–was he a black victim, or…

OFF LIMITS

Lord of the manner: Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich apparently likes rules–and lots of ’em. When the House recently hired a “protocol adviser,” Congresswoman Pat Schroeder joined a dozen other Democrats in protesting the “wasteful and embarrassing use of funds” and then, predictably, took it a step further. “Now…

TEN QUESTIONS–AND SOME ANSWERS

1. How ’bout that mixed-doubles badminton final? Don’t let this get around, but while most of us were rotating the tires on the car last week, or repainting the parakeet’s cage, something called the U.S. Olympic Festival snuck into our fair state. This series of athletic exhibitions proved so popular…

STICKER FOR DETAIL

Al Pallone bought his 1975 Pontiac Grand Ville four years ago. Pallone, who had just made the change from industrial sales rep to middle school physical-education teacher, felt the car might make a nice change from the “sedate metallic four-door” his former company had provided as a perk. “I bought…

PAY BALL!

In October 1991, Coors Field was still just a blueprint, and the talk of the town was about the lease of the unborn diamond to the Rockies ballclub. The hoopla went something like this: After taxpayers were cajoled into shouldering a $161.3 million share of the $216 million ballpark, the…

LETTERS

Snitch, Snitch, Snitch After reading Karen Bowers’s article “Say Anything,” in the July 26 issue, I had to ask myself why my tax dollars are being wasted keeping two pieces of shit like the Rodriguez brothers alive. Steven Lee Hart Denver Women and Children Last Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “Girl Crazy,”…