Imagine a garbage dump the size of a small lake. Into its great belly would tumble not only common household waste, but asbestos, petroleum-contaminated soils, pesticide containers and the sludge from sewage-treatment plants. By the time its useful life was over, this landfill would contain enough refuse to fill 93…
Everybody knows that Arizona’s failure to establish a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday has cost the state millions of bucks in convention revenue. Ironically, the mass murder of nine people in a Buddhist temple west of Phoenix earlier this month apparently has had little effect on a Buddhist convention scheduled…
For seven years, Beverly Lemieux donned her blue waitress uniform and slung hash at a Smitty’s restaurant in north Phoenix. Lemieux enjoyed the give and take with her customers at the popular supermarket eatery near Seventh Street and Cave Creek Road. She operated in the lovable-wise-guy manner of waitresses everywhere…
Joanna Wray didn’t have anything to do one night in October 1987, so she tagged along with a friend to hear a seminar given by Wade Bruce Cook, lecturer, writer and self-professed real estate wizard. For several months Wray had listened to her friend rattle on and on about Cook’s…
Someone ought to send 90-year-old Sarah Mandell the Savings and Loan trading-card set. Mandell is that little old lady from Hollywood who recently grabbed Charlie Keating by his lapels and shook him for all she used to be worth. The Savings and Loan trading- card set is the brain child…
Is there nothing a roving NFL franchise won’t do to drum up cash and improve a sagging image in its newest hometown? Naaah, but get this: The Phoenix Cardinals are turning ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium and the town of Tempe into a veritable combat zone this Saturday, August 17, for…
Phoenix builder Bob Gosnell once again is embroiled in a controversial hotel project–this time on the beachfront in Los Angeles. Gosnell Builders claims it’s owed millions of dollars by the owner of the Park Hyatt luxury hotel under construction on Santa Monica Beach. However, several months after the Phoenix firm…
We’ve heard that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But God only knows why Channel 12 head cheese C.E. “Pep” Cooney would taketh such a cheap shot at Patti Kirkpatrick. Last week, the general manager of KPNX-TV rescinded an Employee of the Month award that station employees had…
Need a copy of Intro to Modem Lit? Look no further than Valleycat, Phoenix Public Library’s latest shelf-help acquisition. An offshoot of the computer card catalogues that popped up in several branches of Phoenix Public Library last winter, the Valleycat system allows computer owners to gain access to library listings…
“Should we assume there are violent criminals on the loose?” asked the woman reporter from Channel 12. This is what you might call a “sound bite” question. It is not designed to obtain information but merely to elicit an answer that will sound important on television. They are comparable to…
Like a parent who has forgotten his child’s name, Dr. Marc Baker tells me for the dozenth time that he is not a member of Earth First!. And for the 12th time, he is correct. It is also true that when FBI agents fired their flares into the desert night…
In northeast Phoenix, a family of women tells an eerie story of footsteps on the roof, blood in the living room and midnight strikes by a black-clad “Ninja” that sounds like a script from a Hollywood thriller. “Living hell,” “terrorism,” and “sickening” are some of the words the women use…
Now is the time for all good people to come to the defense of their Pee-wee. I can’t tell you whether he did it. After all, I wasn’t sitting behind the long-haired, goateed man in that Sarasota, Florida, adult movie theatre on July 26, my eyes riveted on his hands…
Mo Udall ended more than his own Congressional career when he retired this spring, conceding at long last to the withering disease that has dogged his footsteps for so long. As Udall stepped down, Arizona slipped from pre-eminence to oblivion in the pecking order of the U.S. House of Representatives…
The white lines of the batter’s box are pristine in the slanting morning sunshine, and the base paths are clean and untrod. In the outfield, looking like white flowers against the green grass, 52 bodies in baseball uniforms sprawl and 52 right legs stick into the air, stretching in preparation…
Ending his weeks of testimony with the sort of outburst you might expect from a witness who had Tourette’s syndrome, paid FBI informant Ron Frazier told the jury that he had been on the verge of gunning down the members of Earth First!. Under cross-examination by defense attorney Gerry Spence,…
Perhaps we’re too quick to criticize political figures. Take the case of Mary Rose Wilcox, for example. She is now seeking a fifth term on the Phoenix City Council. As she embarks on her campaign, some express cynicism over her role in the Indian School dispute: During the city council…
There was a time when people believed that Conley Wolfswinkel was the richest, and therefore one of the most interesting and talented men in Arizona. Phoenix magazine reported that he would soon appear on Forbes’ list of wealthiest men. “Some of my closest friends are the Charlie Keatings, the Gary…
One Saturday evening a few weeks ago, a dozen parishioners filed into the Hellenic Orthodox Church of Saint Nectarios, a tiny house of worship located in the backyard of an East Phoenix home. Once inside the stucco structure, the devout bowed their heads in preparation for a special prayer ritual…
Seven-year-old Tina Harris looked up at her mother and blurted out the truth. “You told me if I ever was afraid to do anything, if I didn’t want to, I didn’t have to,” Heidi Harris says her daughter told her on that early evening of April 14, 1987. Tina told…
If you thought the Phoenix Cardinals were woeful last season, you should talk to a handful of Tempe residents about the off-season–specifically, the night of May 7. Nearly three months after two Cardinal players, Eric Hill and Willie Williams, allegedly harassed a restaurant crowd and a college professor, bitterness lingers…
I had been in Phoenix exactly one day when I saw a news story on TV about former Governor Evan Mecham’s plans to publish a newspaper. At the time, Mecham refused to give a publication date for Arizona Newsday, but he said that when it did start, it would be…
