Except for a dozen wronged bartenders and a handful of die-hard Brooklyn Dodgers fans, the whole world’s happy this week that Mickey Mantle continues to recover from liver transplant surgery. We Americans like our heroic myths to go on forever, even in defiance of logic, and the Mick still supports…
The government laboratory that does environmental testing for the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional headquarters will be relocating to a Jefferson County research park that is being evaluated as a possible Superfund site. John Yeagley of EPA’s Region Eight Central Laboratory says the agency is aware that tons of radioactive mine…
In retrospect, Terry Casper’s midnight bike ride through Cheesman Park wasn’t the quickest route for him to get to work. It proved instead to be a shortcut to jail, where the 28-year-old Denver man was booked, fingerprinted, photographed and forced to cough up a $100 bond for violating a park…
Coors Brewing Company recently became one of the country’s most progressive corporations. It happened quietly on May 11, when the board of one of Colorado’s top ten employers voted unanimously to expand the company’s generous benefit package (everything from health insurance to adoption assistance) to include “domestic partners”: unmarried adults…
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At the time it was announced, it seemed the perfect example of picayune government rules stifling entrepreneurship. A year and a half ago, the federal Food and Drug Administration fined Boulder’s Lexicor Medical Technology Inc. for violating agency rules. The amount of the FDA’s proposed fine, $1.6 million, was approximately…
Preach Out and Touch Somebody I’m a retired Presbyterian minister working as a volunteer chaplain, and I read Steve Jackson’s article about Doug Overall (“The Quiet Man,” June 14). I wrote Overall a letter commending him for his work–what a great man and a wonderful outreach. It was great reading…
part 2 of 2 Doug entered the Washington Hospital Center program for pastoral care in September 1987. For his field training he was sent across the street to the National Rehabilitation Hospital. He got off to a rocky start, though, when he was told to put together a Sunday service…
part 1 of 2 The motorcade wound slowly through the snowy streets of the city, following the hearse that carried the body of Denver police officer Shawn Leinen. Leinen, 28 years old and a three-year veteran of the force, had been shot and killed a few nights earlier by a…
Marj Rust enjoys the view from her home on a ridge west of Rocky Flats. She can take in a rolling expanse of rangeland running east from the hogback to Standley Lake, a vista interrupted only by the jumble of buildings at the U.S. Department of Energy facility. But these…
United we strand: Sure, the debut flight of United’s $120 million Boeing 777 out of Denver International Airport last Wednesday morning was a soaring success, with a sendoff that included costumed well-wishers and the flash of many cameras. But the fate of the first flight in caught United officials, airport…
At thirty, Barry Bonds is still the finest baseball player in the world. The San Francisco Giants’ left-fielder has a sweet swing, hits with awesome power and guns down runners with an arm the chairman of the NRA would envy. He’s won five Gold Gloves for his defensive play and…
Ten days ago South Dakota senator Larry Pressler blew into Denver for a short overnight trip. When he left he was $25,000 richer, thanks to a fundraiser held in his honor by Tele-Communications, Inc. The Denver cable giant’s timing couldn’t have been better. Exactly a week later, the biggest telecommunications…
When Richard McSpadden wanted to put in some new pay phones at Union Station, he didn’t have to look far. “In the past several months I’d say I’ve gotten about eight calls from companies wanting to either put in new phones or rip out our phones and put in their…
California Steaming I was disappointed to see the first category on your Best of Denver Readers’ Poll: “The best way to discourage Californians from coming to Colorado.” A Colorado native, I have lived in North and South Carolina, Georgia and back in Colorado, and I was then relocated to California…
Escalating tensions along Colorado’s Front Range have resulted in an outbreak of chemical warfare, forcing the government to step in and mediate. “It’s neighbor against neighbor,” says Angela Medbery, co-founder of the Colorado Pesticide Network and an eyewitness to the grassroots campaigns, which she describes as “mini-wars.” The fighting surrounds…
part 2 of 2 Orlando could have gone to Denver’s Emily Griffith Opportunity School to get his GED, Will says. But, she says, he was reluctant to do so. “At that time he was voicing a desire to stay away from gang influence,” says Will. “He said gang members went…
Right now Colorado attorney general Gale Norton looks like she should be a shoo-in for Hank Brown’s soon-to-be-empty U.S. Senate seat. She’s won two statewide elections, she’s made herself highly visible in what is normally a dry, low-profile office, and she’s smart. She’s pro-choice, talks tough on crime and pushes…
part 1 of 2 There’s something about Orlando Domena that makes people want to save him–from poverty, from gangs, from himself. Community leaders, from Denver’s chief of police to gang intervention officials, politicians and respected businessmen, offered up jobs, money, a cellular phone and a college education in an attempt…
Pop culture: Sacre bleu! Comsat, owner of the Nuggets, apparently thought of everything–including how to wrangle tax concessions out of both the city and the state–when it planned to build a giant arena in the Platte Valley. Everything, that is, but this: The very name of the place is a…
The assembled scholars in the South Stands think Al Davis is Satan, and they may be right. But if he does what he’s making noises about doing, they’ll canonize the man in Oakland, California. His stock might even rise a few notches right here in Elway Corners. Maybe Al wouldn’t…
When Rita Montero was conducting her campaign for the Denver Public Schools board this spring, voters in northwest Denver heard all about her qualifications for the job and her ideas for educational reform. Montero pledged to cut wasteful spending at DPS, boost parental participation and overhaul the district’s bilingual-education program…
