As a child, Kim Allen would watch the crop-dusting airplanes buzz low over west Valley cotton fields, leaving clouds of pesticides in their wake. This did not alarm her. To any kid growing up in the homes on tracts of land skirting the west-side farming regions, crop dusters were simply…
To everyone else who sees it, the campaign logo that Tucson Republican Patricia Coleman is using in her first bid for the state legislature looks familiar. It is virtually a replica of the trademark Coleman nameplate found on lanterns and cookstoves at most any campsite in America. And one of…
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. Woody Allen in Annie Hall It took just a single week of merciless tabloid headlines to redefine Woody Allen. For years Allen had been praised as our finest contemporary filmmaker. He was a combination of Ingmar Bergman, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin…
Motorola: The Story So Far On May 6, 1992, New Times began a series of investigative reports detailing extensive groundwater pollution linked to Motorola, an $11 billion multinational electronics manufacturing company that is the state’s largest employer. Among the findings: Motorola’s two flagship plants have been linked to severe contamination…
By 1994 there will be a new building at 8600 East Thomas in Scottsdale. Concealed behind the building’s adobelike faade will be a multimillion-dollar plant designed to strip health-threatening chemicals, principally the suspected carcinogen trichloroethylene, or TCE, from drinking water pumped out of the north Indian Bend Wash Superfund site…
Last Wednesday, state Superfund managers from across the nation quietly gathered at Red Lion’s La Posada Inn in Scottsdale. The purpose of the meeting: For EPA officials to explain the new plan to “revitalize” Superfund. The plan is called SACM, or the Superfund Accelerated Cleanup Model, and it may not…
Tonight is the night, he told himself, inhaling the aroma of stale grease in her hair and feeling a little queasy. He closed his eyes as he hugged her. Tonight is the night, he thought. Tonight is the night Chelsea dies. (excerpt from First Date by R.L. Stine) Welcome, gentle…
American public television’s ongoing Anglophilia has resulted in an ironic cultural reversal. The collection of Are You Being Served? highlights that will air around the country during the upcoming PBS pledge drive was assembled near the banks of the Salt River, not the Thames. The Best of Are You Being…
Tall and slightly heavy, Don Jones is every pound a salesman, and a logo-crazy one at that. The emblem of his independent DRJ & Associates insurance agency–run out of Jones’ southwest Phoenix house, where there are no apparent associates–adorns brochures, business cards, posters, his tee shirt and even hangs from…
The little creatures were enough to sell Ray Griswold and his wife on Union Foothills Estates six years ago. The 200-acre plot of desert just beyond Phoenix’s northern border struck them as a tranquil outpost with ample spacing between neighbors. “People want to live in the desert that hasn’t been…
After the game, the two coaches walked off the field together. Joe Bugel, who always seems like a particularly ambitious used-car salesman, kept grabbing at Mike Ditka, hugging him, patting him, smiling up at him. Ditka, the embodiment of the bohunk bartender in a seedy saloon, seemed embarrassed by Bugel’s…
Lena Goldtooth Canyon sits on a sturdy dinette chair, rubbing worn thumbs together and watching her feet tap on the linoleum kitchen floor. Below her long skirt, she is wearing white socks and black sneakers, laced but not tied. Canyon is 76 years old, a heavyset Navajo woman whose life…
On Thursday, July 23, Air Force Staff Sergeant Tom Paniccia, 28, sat nervously on the set of ABC-TV’s Good Morning America, resolutely blinking at the camera lights, his black hair combed back so tightly it looked painful. His mission that day ran counter to Air Force regulations. He was “coming…
Terry Gaskin glanced out the window of a downtown Circle K last Wednesday afternoon and witnessed the best-documented spill in the history of Phoenix. What apparently was a truckload of documents tumbled off a vehicle as it sped through the intersection of Third Street and Thomas. Clouds of paper, whipped…
Hanging in a second-floor gallery of the Phoenix Art Museum is a square canvas with the words “High-Speed Gardening,” in upper-case, sans-serif letters the color of a hunter’s safety vest. These letters are superimposed over a blur of vague greens. It could be an alien sunset, with the letters blaring…
Steve Mitchell felt the tension rise. They had just brought Dan Willoughby into the courtroom for the beginning of a hearing that could put Willoughby in the gas chamber. Willoughby wore jailhouse blues. His skin had turned pale during his time in the county jail. He had shaved off his…
One of the perils of turning on your car radio during midmorning is accidentally tuning in the Barry Young talk show on KFYI-AM. This happened to me the other day. Young’s guest at the time was none other than Charlie Keating’s former best pal, Senator John McCain. McCain, speaking by…
As a young man with spiked hair, earrings, and a skateboard under one arm walks into her store, Sandie Hamilton smiles and greets him like an old friend. After chatting with Sandie, the boy drifts over to the counter and starts searching the room for a familiar face. He didn’t…
Child molestation? Committed by a member of a church?! Alert the media! And who better to spread the word on this alarming “new” aberration than Channel 10 reporter Teresa Fischenich, latest recipient of New Times’ prestigious Bill Close Award. Named in honor of Channel 10 antiquity Bill Close, the award…
A forlorn picket shuffles listlessly across the forecourt of America West Arena, trying to rain a little conscience on the crowd celebrating the opening of this entertainment palace. His sign reads: $$$ TO BUILD ARENA BUT NO XXX FOR HOUSING No one’s paying attention; the crowd–later estimated at 60,000–is in…
He had been standing at the podium, answering a question from the Senate Government Committee chairman, when he tailed off into incoherence. He fell silent, lifted his glasses and felt for his pale eyes. His left hand drifted to his forehead. Abruptly, he turned and left the hearing room, as…
Rocked by sex scandals, the Mesa Police Department has changed its policy about releasing the results of its completed internal investigations. The new policy makes it even more difficult to determine what exactly is going on inside the sin-ridden East Valley department. No, this particular instance doesn’t directly concern the…
