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Home for the Holidays I have read Westword for a long time, and during that time there have been a lot of great articles–but none as great as Kyle Wagner’s “Trash Landing,” in the December 19 issue. I would just like to compliment you and the Mulherns for the wonderful…

Quentin Jones’s cheek pressed into the grit of the asphalt parking lot. His head was immobilized by the nightstick a cop had jammed into his neck, and his arms and legs were pinned down by other officers. From the corner of his eye, sixteen-year-old Quentin could see that his father–who…

Of the nearly 500 Christmas decorations Mary Mulhern has rescued from dumpsters over the past twenty years, the recently acquired Mr. and Mrs. Snowman are her favorites. Made from aluminum cans covered with cotton batting, their cheery faces fashioned from bits of felt, the happy snow people show no signs…

The former treasurer of the College Republicans on the Auraria campus became disenchanted with the party and has found a new campaign: He’s organizing a student club for pagans. These days, “I’m basically a conservative libertarian,” says Nicholas Bull, a 21-year-old Metropolitan State College English major. “I had a problem…

Six sophomores enrolled in German II file into room 208 at South High School and find their seats behind an array of microphones set up as if they were at a congressional hearing. There’s a television where the teacher usually stands. The kids chatter and chew on candy canes until…

Oscar Lopez Rivera knew what he had to do to get out of the toughest penitentiary in the entire federal system. He had to endure 22-hour-a-day solitary confinement, demonstrate “positive adjustment,” follow the rules–in short, get with the “carrot-and-stick” program. If he behaved, he was told, he could earn his…

Big dame deal: On Friday First Lady Wilma Webb added to her title–she now has an honorary doctorate in humane letters from the Colorado Institute of Art. This wasn’t just her first doctorate: It was also a first for the CIA, which up until now hasn’t granted anything grander than…

Roy Phillips has run Texaco stations in Denver since the Seventies, and in that time he’s learned a painful lesson. As a black man, he says, “you can operate stations as long as they’re inside the black community.” Over the years Phillips made a half-dozen attempts to acquire stations in…

A Dunn Deal I found Stuart Steers’s December 5 article, “All Fired Up,” very interesting but a little over-Dunn. Yes, John took a strong anti-pipeline stand–but he seemed to drop the ball at the southern end of the county. We in Simla are uninformed as to the battles to the…

When last we heard from Marshall Kaplan, the embattled dean of the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver was hinting that the public might not have him to kick around for much longer. No more big community confabs, no more big community controversies fueled…

The biggest pay-phone scam yet uncovered involved a San Diego-based company called AmTel. But Colorado has had its share, too. By 1994, eight years after it was founded, AmTel was the third-largest private pay-phone company in the country, with 8,500 phones installed–hundreds of them in Colorado–and plans for another 10,000…

In the mountain town of Frisco, Bobby Gene Kelley was known as a drinker of great persistence. Soon after receiving one too many citations for driving under the influence of alcohol, he purchased a Lincoln Towncar limousine. When he felt like having a drink, he would call his driver, who…

Denver police officer Tyrone Campbell is a familiar face in north Denver’s Cole neighborhood. He’s one of the few Denver cops who carries a personal pager for calls from residents and has a souped-up, bass-thumping CD player wired into his cruiser. As he makes his rounds through the neighborhood, kids…

Motorola ad campaign for its new high-tech Sport Radio walkie-talkie that pokes fun at the supposedly high cost of wilderness rescues has inflamed Colorado’s search-and-rescue squads. “You can’t find a decent rescue for under $100,000 these days,” reads a version of the ad in the December issue of Popular Science…

Six months ago the Colorado state legislature passed a bill allowing people to make voluntary contributions to the D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) anti-drug program on their income-tax returns. It may be one more victory for one of the country’s most visible weapons in the nebulous war on drugs, but…

First things first: The winning slogan that pushed through the city’s 1989 bond sale? “Vote for Elitch’s–It’s Denver.” Not anymore. First, new owner Premier Parks, out of Oklahoma City, dumped the century-old amusement park’s local advertising agency. And then First Night Colorado, the alcohol-free, family-fun New Year’s bash that’s become…

Charlie Papazian likes to say that he is just a regular pie guy, but his vision for the future is well worth heeding. Twenty years ago he had an intuition about beer. At the time, he recalls, Bud and Coors were the reigning brews. So Papazian, who thought beer should…

There’s No Place Like Homeless I wish to write in response to Patricia Calhoun’s December 5 column, “Homeless for the Holidays.” What an artful job of pitting the homeless against such unpopular icons as lawyers and developers. Too bad the question of whether citizens should be able to enjoy the…

Ask Sam Haigler how things are going and he’ll give you that perplexed look, the one that seems to ask: What planet are you from, pal? Twenty years of battling chronic mental illness, just how well could things be? “That’s kind of a hard question for me to answer,” he…

The wild West is making a last stand in bucolic Elbert County, where the new county motto may be “Make My Day.” Ranked as the second-fastest growing county in the country–it trails only neighboring Douglas County–Elbert County has been embroiled in constant battles over growth during the past few years…