Twenty years ago, I had a coffee percolator. It was almost impossible to get a decent cup of coffee out of it, so one morning I threw it out the window of the second-floor apartment I was renting in Chicago. I was reminded of this coffeepot over the Labor Day…
Talking about his role as Don Corleone in The Godfather, Marlon Brando compared the “capo de tutti capo” to the chairman of General Motors. Business, Brando said, was business, and the real gangsters resided in the boardroom. David Johnston, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, understands the analogy. Johnston, who…
Three books by current and former New Times writers, on topics ranging from murder to music, have hit the bookstores. American Rock n’ Roll Tour, by staff writer Dave Walker, is a guide to the country’s historic rock landmarks, including the familiar–Graceland in Memphis and the Fillmore in San Francisco–and…
Thousands of students and professors returned to the Northern Arizona University campus in Flagstaff this fall to discover that their academic careers were about to be messed with. Blaming budget woes, university president Eugene Hughes announced in late August that 19 majors could be eliminated over the next few years…
A prisoner described by fellow inmates and others as one of the most influential people at the state prison in Florence has entered his tenth week of a hunger strike, vowing that he’s ready to die unless officials transfer him to a less harsh area. Chuck Shepherd, a 39-year-old Sikh…
Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It isn’t just a fine short novel. It is a magical piece of writing. It is one of two books I’ve read that I always recommend. But controversy has surrounded River from the start and, apparently, it isn’t over yet. At first editors turned…
In the newspaper ad, the governor appears to be sitting on the lip of the Grand Canyon, as if he could fall in at any time. But the picture–promoting a photo contest sponsored by the Arizona Department of Tourism–is a composite, a cut-and-paste job. Governor J. Fife Symington III never…
On the other end of the telephone that Ferd Haverly’s holding, there’s a photographer who wants some time with Haverly’s boss, U.S. Senate hopeful Claire Sargent. As press secretary, Haverly knows it is his job to find and maintain the proper balance between cooperation and circumspection. He knows that for…
Vaseline on her teeth provides a smooth-sliding smile. Her breasts are routinely taped to achieve a Barbie doll’s bustline. A light coat of spray adhesive applied to her derriäre ensures that there will be no unsightly wrinkles when she promenades through the swimsuit competition. When it comes to cosmetic wizardry,…
As wars go, it started quietly. And although the Battle of the Placards didn’t make the evening news or draw much notice from the newspapers, it left a legion of veterans with tales to tell. It began shortly before Vice President Dan Quayle delivered the only public speech of his…
The function of law enforcement is the prevention of crime and the apprehension of criminals . . . not the manufactur[e] of crime. –Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren in Sherman v. United States The butcher is addicted. He loves the AzScam trial. Every morning he arrives early at court…
Three days a week at 5:30 in the morning, with the sun not yet up, Mayor Paul Johnson laces up his Asics Gel running shoes for a ten-mile run. He meets a coterie of city employees, staff members, police officers and the occasional local politician, and 10 to 15 at…
Keith Miller moved to Arizona in 1987, when the state had just begun its political self-immolation. Evan Mecham, a Pontiac dealer and longtime election loser, had lucked into the governor’s office and had quickly turned Martin Luther King Jr., dead almost 20 years and universally hailed as a titan of…
Maybe, just maybe, Governor Fife Symington won’t have to worry anymore about the reporter whose scoops consistently embarrassed him. Then again, says John Dougherty, late of the Mesa Tribune, from his new home in Flagstaff, “You never know when I’ll run into something up here about Fife that needs to…
The Walkman-wearing dude frying at poolside no doubt spoke for most of his fellow Arizona State University students. “I don’t want to get involved in the controversy,” he said. Yet involved he was, plopped beside the Ocotillo dorm, soaking up the September sun, because Ocotillo is the site of Umoja…
Some of your constituents think you sold them out. –Alabama Senator Howell Heflin to John McCain That terrible judgment, made at the opening of the Senate Ethics Committee hearings, sticks in my mind. I will always remember the guilty grimace on John McCain’s face. He sat there uncomfortably with the…
John McLaughlin, former Jesuit priest turned television pundit, was asked one day why so many people treated him with such respect. According to his assistant, Kara Swisher, McLaughlin “got down really low on his desk, almost like he was a lizard.” Then he looked up at Swisher and replied, “They’re…
The man from China sat in his chair and wept. Thousands of miles from his homeland, Quan Lu had been answering questions in an airless room in Florence, Arizona. “It must have been difficult for your wife,” said the man sitting next to Lu, and with that simple remark, the…
Antony and Cleopatra! Romeo and Juliet! Liz and Larry! In the grand tradition of those legendary lovers comes a newsome twosome determined to add their own names to that romantic roster. Meet Paula Grecco and Michael Modzelewski, the Valley newlyweds who dare to ask the question, “Can a Playboy bunny…
Christine Walker had already enraged many of those she governed. For more than two years, the secretive leader of the Chemehuevi Indians had used the unique powers and autonomy of her tribal government’s semisovereign status to undertake what many describe as a systematic course of despotism and corruption. Allegations of…
The news from the small river town of Saltillo, Mexico, is Earth-related but not earthshaking: The clay tiles that are the area’s most famous export–and a popular flooring material for Arizona patios and kitchens–are going to be changing. The reason? The tile makers fire their kilns with old automobile tires,…
Ten years ago, when state health officials first learned that children in Maryvale were dying of leukemia at twice the national rate, they delayed further health studies of the west-side community and quietly covered up the problem. When news reports of Arizona Department of Health Services’ four-year delay in studying…
