INCOMING Evie Hudak: As a teacher with about two decades of experience, Hudak, a Democrat from Arvada who will fill the seat vacated by Patti Johnson, has spent plenty of time in the educational trenches — and rather than getting away from this subject during her off hours, she’s regularly…
It’s still possible to see justice done — as long as somebody pays the attorneys. Coloradans who spent weeks, sometimes months, sometimes even years waiting for US West to install new telephone lines will soon be eligible for credits on their telephone bills, thanks to a class-action lawsuit filed back…
Left for Dead, Jailed for Good Sharon Conner found her eighteen-year-old son, Alan, shot dead in the parking lot of an Aurora King Soopers on October 15, 1998. Two years and two months later, she told an Arapahoe County jury what she’d seen that morning. She didn’t look at her…
Had the Rocky Mountain Arsenal produced a 2001 version of the slick, award-winning wildlife calendar that it’s published since the late 1980s, it would have been appropriate to feature a different sarin gas bomblet every month instead of the usual pictures of deer, foxes and eagles. After all, over the…
The Days of Whine and Poses Eve us alone: Well, well. With “2001: A Spaced Odyssey,” in the December 21 issue, once again Crusadin’ Calhoun comes out of her corner swinging with another whining diatribe about the fact that last New Year’s Eve, Mayor Wellington Webb had the Denver police…
Mile High bigwigs like to think of Denver as “the city that has reinvented itself for the 21st century.” At least, that’s how they touted it in a 24-page, $370,000 ad supplement in the September edition of Forbes ASAP magazine. Headlined “Convergence Corridor: Technology With Altitude,” the insert was part…
DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS In July, the Boulder City Council approved an ordinance substituting the term “pet guardian” for “pet owner” in the city’s books. The change, which carries no legal value, was made at the request of the Humane Society of Boulder Valley, whose members believe it will foster…
Willie B. The “B” in Willie B. Hung must stand for “butthead,” because the KBPI morning DJ, whose real name is Stephen Meade, can’t seem to stop doing idiotic things. He and fellow DJs Darren McKee (D-Mak) and Marc Stout made a big splash in September when they led an…
Rolling Down the River Rod and real: Steve Jackson’s “The River’s Edge,” the December 21 conclusion of his “River” series, was a good article, about real problems of real people. Is Westword becoming a real publication? Yes, this is meant as a compliment: I really do appreciate non-weird and non-sordid…
Every weeknight during the fall term, at 5 p.m. sharp, just after the boys’ wrestling team has finished stinking up the small gymnasium at Aurora’s Eaglecrest High, members of the school’s varsity competitive cheerleading squad can enter the room and start practicing. Eaglecrest’s cheerleaders have accomplished the school’s greatest athletic…
October 1893, Los Angeles Major John Wesley Powell looked out over the upraised faces of the people who’d come to listen to his vision of the future, a vision they thought mirrored their own. The general public knew him as the heroic, one-armed Civil War veteran who in 1869 had…
As the bus full of candidates for Centennial’s first city council meanders along the jagged eastern boundary of the city, many of the would-be elected officials inside are starting to feel nauseated. Who can blame them? The vagaries of politics and the mysterious ways of suburban real estate developers have…
Rick Bragg plans to shut down the National Western Stock Show. All it would take to prevent thousands of cowboys and cowgirls from moseying up to the January event, he says, is a gang of friends, co-workers and acquaintances willing to “stall” their vehicles in the middle of streets at…
Lieurance and Shirley Sullivan are not looking forward to Christmas. On December 25, 1998, their daughter Polly was stabbed and beaten to death in her east Denver apartment. Two years later, her killer still walks the streets. “We’re going to do the best we can, but it will be hard,”…
Just in time for holiday stocking stuffing, Alvertis Simmons — local rabble-rouser, black activist, disgraced former city employee and local Million Man March organizer — has written a book about his adventures in Denver. Although it’s titled Hold Your Position: Denver’s Version of the Million Man March, the 119-page self-published…
During the now blessedly concluded period between election day and Al Gore’s belated admission last week that he won’t be joyriding in Air Force One anytime soon, it seemed as if every journalist in the country was yammering about the ridiculous spectacle. So imagine the confusion of the Denver Post’s…
Not even Alice saw it coming. Eighteen years ago, when her husband went into his workshop with some bicycle parts, Christmas lights, teddy bears and Barbie dolls, she thought Richard was doing what Richard always does: tinkering. But now, whenever the holidays arrive, tour buses pull up outside the Kloewers’…
Insensitivity Training A matter of principal: I’ve been reading Westword for years, and I believe it’s a wonderfully informative paper. As I was looking through the pages of the December 7 issue, however, I came across a comic — Kenny’s Be’s “Holiday Cards From Local Celebrities” — that wasn’t very…
When Don Shank was a child, his father regularly took his family on summer trips from California to Colorado. The elder Shank loved the history of railroading in the Rockies, and he shared with his son tales of narrow-gauge lines weaving precariously at the edge of 1,000-foot cliffs, tunnels being…
Launching a tourist railroad is not for the faint of heart. Just ask anyone who’s been involved with the Georgetown Loop Railroad, a breathtaking route between Georgetown and Silver Plume that transports passengers up dizzying spirals in the rugged terrain between the two old mining towns. The route had been…
Terry Akers feels like death warmed over. His back throbs. His testicles ache. His gut — dude, don’t even ask. It’s like he’s living in an old Road Runner cartoon, and someone just shoved a keg of nails down his swollen throat. He’s got a bad case of cottonmouth and…
All teachers dream of having smaller classes so that they can give more attention to their students, and in Denver, at least, average class sizes have remained fairly steady for the last four years, at 24 to 26 kids per teacher. But that’s only because Denver Public Schools has been…
