The Photo Lady emerges from a corner of the venue dressed all in black. Her salt-and-pepper mane is pulled back into a tail off a softly weathered face. “I gotta fish,” she announces, eyes all wide behind buglike specs. The urgency in her voice suggests something big, as if she…
Pamphlets for the new Phoenix Family Museum ask folks to “imagine . . . a place to engage the minds, muscles and imaginations of people of all ages.” “Imagine a place with all hands-on exhibits. Imagine a place where you can build magnetic cars, dance in costumes from around the…
The historic Phoenix Union High School buildings and Tovrea Castle didn’t make the cut to receive money from the upcoming bond election when citizens’ committees drew up a list of projects to put before voters. But thanks to last-minute action by the Phoenix City Council, millions of dollars of bond…
Journalists in Arizona have a clear right to protect their sources, even if the source is a criminal, a Superior Court judge has ruled.”This is not a close question,” Judge Frank T. Galati said in rejecting a state request that New Times staff writer James Hibberd be forced to turn…
Arizona’s first merchant plant will fire up this summer near Kingman. If this plant is any indicator of things to come, Arizona is in deep trouble.Mohave County is on the verge of bankruptcy, thanks, critics say, to incentives and tax breaks given to the new Griffith power plant. The county’s…
Margo Channing came to dinner . . . Baby Jane stayed for breakfast!” That tantalizing teaser only sounds like a terrifying advertising come-on for one of Bette Davis’ horror movies from the ’60s. In reality, it’s a line of dialogue from Me and Jezebel, a reality-based play about the legendary…
Last Friday’s ruling by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge George B. Nielsen is a devastating one for former governor J. Fife Symington III. More than five years after Symington filed bankruptcy seeking dismissal of $25 million in debts, Nielsen ruled that a $10 million loan from a consortium of union pension…
At first blush, career criminal John Arthur Smith’s gripes about his trial attorney’s shortcomings sound painfully familiar. In 1985, a Maricopa County judge sentenced the Phoenix man to life in prison after he was convicted of robbing a drugstore. Smith’s earliest release date was 2010, when he will be 57…
Accusations of subterfuge and sabotage are once again swirling around proposed legislation to improve Arizona’s whistle-blower protection for its 43,000 state and university employees (“Committing the Truth,” Robert Nelson, July 13).Three bills before the Arizona House of Representatives proposed changes in laws that protect whistle-blowers from retaliation by their employers…
Headline NooseDear slur: In reference to the “Steers and Queers” headline (Amanda Scioscia, February 15), your advertisers should know that you just alienated a group with a lot of disposable income. I’ll be considering where they advertise when I plan future purchases. Rhymes may sound catchy, but distasteful ones that…
What we have here is a failure to communicate. We have other problems as well — mistaken identities, innuendo masquerading as gospel, an abusive cop, unwarranted detention, dead and disabled witnesses, a trumped-up charge, justice run amok. It all swirls kinetically amid a vortex of racial tension. The protagonists are…
The three fundamental C’s of Arizona — copper, cotton and cattle — have a new partner. California power. Twenty massive power plants are under construction or in the planning stages in Arizona. The bulk of the power from those plants, as much as 15,000 megawatts, will be sold to California…
The Noble ScribeOnce again, life imitates the movies. It’s been brought to the Flash’s attention that the recent flap over New Times’ interview with the Mountain Preserves arsonist would have been old news in the hometown of journalist Henry Aldrich.Henry who? A bit of explanation: In the early 1940s, Paramount…
The morning mist has burned away, and the long, auburn hair of rodeo contestants #108 and #109 glistens in the midday sun. They are dressed in matching black pantsuits, Western-shirt collars upturned, decorated with orange flames. Jaws set with determination, they stretch, focus in preparation. The tips of their black…
On a sunny winter morning not long ago, Don Sorchych — editor and publisher of the weekly Sonoran News — doused his lox, eggs and onions with hot sauce and talked about how he came to live in Cave Creek. Hybrid wolves. He breeds them, crosses wolves with malamutes and…
Three weeks have passed since the publication of New Times’ interview with the Phoenix Mountains Preserve arsonist. The period has been remarkable for all the things that have not happened. There have been no fires. No arrests. No reported arsonist communiqués. No comment from law enforcement — a media blackout…
Being an outspoken atheist in America has never been a walk in the park, but these are particularly trying days for nonbelievers.At last month’s inauguration of George W. Bush, the Reverend Franklin Graham dedicated the ceremony to Jesus Christ, and proclaimed Him to be “our savior,” a declaration which probably…
Rite Guard Re: possession: Paul Hernandez’s belief in demons is yet another example of how the Catholic Church has failed our most forgotten — the seriously mentally ill (“The Devil and Mr. Hernandez,” Gilbert Garcia, February 8). In a terribly morbid sense, we are all possessed with the spirit of…
Last August, Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. announced it was recalling millions of potentially flawed tires, many on the super-popular Ford Explorer. It was the first nationwide warning by the company that tread could separate from the tires at high speeds, a defect that may be linked to hundreds of accidents and dozens…
Paul Hernandez sits in a dimly lighted two-room apartment on the west side of Phoenix and prepares for battle. Hernandez has no accomplices. He brandishes no firearms, no blunt instruments. His only weapons are a wooden crucifix, a bottle of holy water on a corner bookshelf, and a hardbound prayer…
Rod Beaumont comes bustling in to a small Prescott conference room, a few minutes late for a scheduled visit. He looks somewhat stressed, as if he has been terribly busy but will interrupt his work as a courtesy. His hair is longer and his build stockier than a publicity picture…
One morning last week, as he’s done for a quarter-century, Eddie Haramina set up shop in front of the county courthouse in downtown Phoenix. He didn’t appreciate that it was a blustery day — the wind kills his business, he said.Eddie took a hand-painted sign and leaned it against a…
