I have a thing for Swiss Army knives. Don’t you? It’s so neat the way everything folds up in a practical ballet of metal and blades — so functional. And the look of the knife, with its bright red enameled veneer, is just so sharp. Plus, the Swiss Army knife…

My husband sometimes watches those World War II history shows. And I have to admit, there’s something downright awe-inspiring about seeing all that heavy equipment on the screen: sinister U-boats and magnificent aircraft carriers in the sea, and in the air, the dashing Banshees and Tigercats and Dominators. But the…

One of my favorite books of 2005 was the epic bestseller The Hummingbird’s Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea, a poet-turned-documentarian-turned-novelist whose first, amazing work of fiction boiled for twenty years before spilling onto the page, inspired by the true-life story of his great aunt, a curandera named Teresa. It turned…

The Denver Botanic Gardens is living in the past this summer, beginning with the installation of dinosaurs, or at least a bevy of life-sized sculptures of same, which are strewn about the gardens in scary proximity to the pathways. And while Jurassic Gardens: Evolution and Extinction is clearly just there…

I remember lower downtown before it was LoDo, dressed in red brick and laced together by crumbling viaducts that rose up between building faces to leave the sidewalks in looming shadow. Back then (and then wasn’t really so long ago — perhaps twenty years past), those now teeming streets were…

In A Tale of Two Cities, woe came to all those whom the villainess, Madame Defarge, encoded into her ubiquitous knitting, which never left her side. Click, click. Creepy. But there is something internal about the act of knitting that can, in better times, be put to positive use in…

The Wildlife Experience Museum proved it knows how to keep up with the Joneses this year, with the May opening of Globeology, a new 30,000-square-foot permanent interactive exhibit that provides a virtual trip around the natural world. Along the way, visitors will encounter lifelike animatronic wildlife from eight unique and…

Imagine the same story, relived in four similar yet incredibly different cultural situations. That’s more or less what happens in The X, a five-act character study by Phil Klingsmith, a Gunnison playwright and professor emeritus at Western State College. The ingenious play follows four couples — one Anglo, one interracial,…

Anyone who’s followed the theatrical footprints of Brian Freeland, founder of the LIDA Project and Countdown to Zero troupes (and one of Westword’s most recent crop of Masterminds), will immediately know – and not know – what to expect of his next production. A grassroots agenda, subversive politics and truth-seeking…

Here’s what’s to love about a muscle car: candy colors, waxy gloss, racing stripes and beefy but aerodynamic lines. Each one is like a rolling metal-and-leather vial of testosterone that can’t help but point out in all directions. And vintage Camaros and Mustangs? They’re bullies on wheels, but works of…

The drive to Pueblo, some ninety minutes south, perhaps seems a long way to go to see a bunch of boots, but I’ve got to tell ya — it’s the idea of the thing, the cultural wrap-around of it all. I love Pueblo, with its red-brick-and-cold-steel hide and its dusty,…

There’s something about fashion, Fidos and fundraising that works well together. But Unleashed: A Passion for Fashion isn’t just another fashion-show fundraiser for an animal shelter — at least not in the usual ways. First difference? The designers. Haley Mariah of Trophy Clothing and Terra Jo of Havea Lolo are…

According to Howard Szigeti, founder of the Unique Lives and Experiences lecture series almost twenty years ago in Toronto, it’s a girl thing: “The overall spirit of the concept is to bring compelling female role models to speak to a room filled nearly exclusively with women,” he says. “Women talking…