Take it from people who have spent the past couple of weeks thumbing through the electronic annals of recent history: There’s nothing quite like an election year, combined with a few Colorado visits from Satan himself, combined with one heck of a snowstorm to turn everyday events into the news of the weird. But it all happened, folks.
January
Governor? Anyone? Desperate Democrats, unable to presage that Republican gubernatorial candidate Marc Holtzman will fell his own party with a primary campaign gut shot to Bob Beauprez, gather beneath the mayoral balcony as wunderkind John Hickenlooper, facing a draft candidacy for governor, mulls whether ’tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of the city, or to take arms against the state’s troubles.
Devil’s in the details: In Bennett, a moral crisis of a different sort looms when elementary-school music teacher Tresa Waggoner screens portions of a video of 1859 opera “Faust” for her young charges. A dozen parents, ignoring Waggoner’s work as a Sunday school teacher and her own recording of Christian songs, accuse the teacher of being a devil worshipper, among other things.
February
Wrap it up: Bureau of Land Management completes the public-comment period for Christo and Jeanne-
Claude’s plan to cover the Arkansas River in shimmering fabric in a blizzard of angry letters that may later be sewn together to create the 4- to 6-mile-long drape the artists will anchor over the canyon between Cañon City and Salida sometime around 2010.
To thine own self be true: Hickenlooper drops the Hamlet act, leaving the Democratic gubernatorial nomination to former Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter.
Gunsmoke and mirrors: Perhaps shocked to death by rising property values in his southern Colorado hometown of Ridgway, TV star and environmentalist Dennis Weaver dies at the age of 81. His 10,000-square-foot earthship home, built mostly from such garbage as used automobile tires and tin cans, is listed for a whopping $3.75 million.
March
I know you are, but what am I? In a period of Statehouse high jinks that suggests there is a problem with moral poverty in the Capitol, Sen. Deanna Hanna, D-Lakewood, resigns amid an ethics inquiry, Rep. Joe Stengel, R-Littleton, resigns amid an ethics inquiry, and half the state wishes Jim Welker, R-Loveland, would resign after forwarding a post-Katrina e-mail with the subject line: Moral poverty costs blacks in New Orleans.
Hot-air hero: Overland High School student hailed as a hero by conservative talk-
show hosts after he goes public with a surreptitious recording of his geography teacher likening President Bush’s U.S. foreign policy in Iraq to Adolf Hitler’s strategies in Nazi Germany.
On your left: More than 50,000 people dressed in white T-shirts march on the state Capitol, part of a national protest against a bill that would make illegal immigration a felony. The rally clogs city streets in downtown Denver, forcing motorists who would rather have sped on by not thinking about the shadow workers who prop up our local economy to confront the issue head on in a traffic jam.
April
Last call: Seeing opportunity in the perfect storm of Rockies’ home opener and RTD transit strike, lot managers jack parking rates sky high, and the normally saucy, bus-riding crowd contemplates giving up beer long before the Seventh-Inning Stretch.
Thongs can still show, but …: Culture wars move from Overland to schools in Longmont and Westminster. At Shaw Heights Middle School a dress code enacted in response to the increasingly heated immigration debate bans clothing that makes a political statement of any type, including camouflage, banners, flags and bandanas of all types. In Longmont, Skyline High School administrators ban all flags – including Old Glory – because of verbal altercations over immigration reform.
Why do you think they call it dope? Meanwhile back in the department of moral poverty, Federal Heights Mayor and Essence Gentleman’s Club doorman Dale Sparks is caught up in a nightclub raid scandal, and 12 junior winners in the National Western Stock Show are disqualified for needling their lambs.
May
Psych ward: Midway through what surely will be considered the longest goodbye in history, a University of Colorado academic panel recommends firing embattled professor Ward Churchill, who was called out for likening workers killed in the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York as little Eichmanns, but called on the carpet for unrelated academic offenses. He vows to sue.
June
That just stinks: A University of Northern Colorado prof emeritus is charged with criminal use of a noxious substance after allegedly dropping off a campaign flier filled with dog poop at U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave’s Greeley office.
Who’s your nanny? Libertarian activist Jon Caldera and Co. raise their clenched fists against the gubment’s “nanniest” policies at their fourth annual Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms summer picnic.
Tourist’s eye view: Colorado’s state quarter, featuring a view of the back side of Longs Peak captured by a Maryland engraver back in the 1980s, debuts to great head-scratching.
July
Heated debate: After a sizzling argument – and requests by people who do not think drawing attention to winter lows of 40 below zero is a viable way to sell their city to develop a more marketable alternative – chilly Fraser keeps its midcentury moniker: Icebox of the Nation.
Dress code: Culture wars move to Loveland, where “Triangle,” a bronze statue of two nude figures holding a third aloft, is characterized by members of a nearby church as pornographic. Community members take things into their own hands, swaddling the figures in sweat pants and bikini tops.
Smells like chicken: Statewide smoking ban goes into effect, forcing bars and restaurants that have not cleaned in decades to deal with whatever that was that was rotting under the bar that you can smell now that the place isn’t filled with cigarette smoke.
August
Karr Crash: John Mark Karr, apparently out of cash and dying to get back to the states before the holidays, confesses to the 1996 murder of JonBenét Ramsey, gets a first-class airplane ride home from Thailand, and a get-out-
of-custody-free card from Boulder County district attorney Mary Lacy.
(Red) Hering: Marine Lance Cpl. Lance Hering goes AWOL in a late night hike in Boulder’s Flatirons that allegedly resulted in a fall and a head injury and massive hunt for a “lost” serviceman. His friend finally fessed up to the ruse, but Hering has been on the lam ever since.
Banner year: A seventh-grade geography teacher at Carmody Middle School in Lakewood is placed on administrative leave by Jefferson County officials worried that Chinese, Mexican and United Nations flags hanging in his classroom violates state law banning display of foreign flags on public property.
September
Man, what’s that smell?: Rainbow Family members Giles Charlé and David Siller jailed for theft of spoiled produce from a grocery store Dumpster; they avoid hard time but are still stuck with that funky onion odor on their clothes.
No time better than hard time, dude: University of Northern Colorado backup punter Mitch Cozad, 21, upset about how little playing time he was getting, is arrested for stabbing the Bears’ starting punter in his kicking leg.
October
Ooh, aaah, urp: Libeskind-designed wing opens at the Denver Art Museum and the collective art-going public loses its balance.
I’ll take a get out of jail card, Pat: Convicted embezzler Scott Alan McDonald of Littleton, who cheated people out of $181,500 to fuel his gambling habit, wins $47,000 on “Wheel of Fortune.”
Uh, that’s Wyoming: Monday Night Football’s baaaadest commentator Tony Kornheiser tells the nation Denver has nothing but the Broncos and sheep.
November
Election extravaganza!: Dem Bill Ritter takes the guv’s seat with a campaign that appears to consist of this: Don’t do or say anything stupid! Repentant gay prostitute Mike Jones outs Colorado Springs evangelical pastor Ted Haggard, the author of Colorado’s defense of marriage act, and is eventually blamed for torpedoing Referendum I, that would have granted civil union status to gay couples! Failing to take into account the possibility that people would show up to vote, the Denver Election Commission’s voter center concept leaves thousands standing on line for hours to cast ballots! Wags almost immediately start calling the debacle “Hickenlooper’s blizzard!”
December
Plumming problems Last season’s gridiron savior QB Jake “The Snake” Plummer
morphs into the man who can’t connect and gets benched for babyfaced Bronco Jay Cutler.
HOA of the apocalypse: Apparently unclear on the whole “peace on Earth, goodwill toward men” concept of Christmas, a neighborhood association president orders a Pagosa Springs couple to remove their peace-sign shaped wreath, calling it an “anti-Christ” sign.
Trust me, your street’s been plowed: Hickenlooper finally gets his own blizzard and is left to ride herd on a city – and airport – paralyzed by 2 feet of snow. The Teflon mayor responds by throwing sledding parties all over town.
This story has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, it incorrectly identified Deanna Hanna as a former state representative. She served as state senator.
