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Some moments freeze themselves in your mind. I remember a day in Washington, D.C., during Sandra Day O’Connor’s 1981 hearings to determine her fitness to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

On May 6, 1992, New Times published an investigative report 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 of two separate aquifers in the Valley–one…

Following one of America’s largest groundwater contaminations, the government allowed the polluter, Motorola, to inform the public of the consequences. The media played along with pedestrian “parts per billion” coverage that minimized the calamity. The effect was spin-control that would have made the chamber of commerce blush. Were you aware,…

When a hospital technician attached a gizmo onto Sam’s penis to measure his responses to sexually explicit photographs, it is unlikely that he was terribly surprised. After all, 12-year-old Sam has undergone various types of “sex therapy” for half of his life. His mother molested him when he was 3…

Scottsdale seems an unlikely place to locate a band of VISTA volunteers. What acts of selflessness might these persistent do-gooders be committing in the shadow of the Galleria? Ladling out Evian to overheated tourists? Counseling the aesthetically challenged on the finer points of turquoise procurement? Created in 1964, VISTA–Volunteers in…

A FEW YEARS AGO, Wayne Dellinger decided he’d like to make a living doing impersonations of Theodore Roosevelt. Having spent some time in the banking and real estate businesses, Dellinger knew enough to do market research. His market research consisted of dressing up as TR–black cutaway coat, top hat, little…

Thinking back to the day his nose was bloodied, Jack Eason says he probably should have left the principal’s office sooner than he did. Bill Wicevich, the principal of Desert Arroyo Middle School in Cave Creek, had ordered Eason, a 53-year-old janitor and maintenance man, into his office to discuss…

Time has changed the newspaper business. Drastically. People with master’s degrees in journalism tell me it’s for the better. Why don’t I agree? There was a time when I was addicted to newspapers–all of them. Now I can take them or leave them. To me there is no bigger rip-off…

Christina the Lawyer expected there would be chilly nights. But not like this. It was, to put it bluntly, ridiculously cold. So now she is on the telephone, calling me from frigid Michigan, seeking a decent way out. Christina the Lawyer had enrolled in a class at the famous Ox-Bow…

SOPHIE KURYS does not have much good to say about today’s ballplayers. “Overpriced and overrated,” she calls them. She also thinks the ticket prices at spring training games are too high. Not to mention that baseball games these days go on too darned long. Sophie Kurys has opinions on just…

THE GOVERNMENT MAN recalls the first time he laid eyes on a Klump. “One of the brothers was riding horseback over the south side of the Dos Cabezas Mountains,” says Larry Humphrey of the federal Bureau of Land Management. “I noticed that his horse wasn’t wearing any shoes and I…

In the midst of the storm about Phoenix’s proposed gay rights amendment, perhaps the most unexpected thunderbolt was hurled by the Arizona Republic. Two days before the Phoenix City Council was to vote on the issue, William Cheshire, the newspaper’s editorial page editor, personally urged passage. In a June 14…

I walk into the small garage on Route 30, an hour’s drive south of Chicago. It’s quiet here in Chicago Heights. Many of the factories and steel mills have shut down. It’s hard times. There is only one man at work in the garage. He also pumps the gas. I’m…

Still such annoyances were to be endured as part of the desperate gamble involved in my becoming a novelist. –Ralph Ellison in his introduction to The Invisible Man I sit there waiting for Ralph Ellison to take the microphone. What will he be like, I wonder. Among writers Ellison is…

Uh-uh.” Dance-hall owner Jack Smythe shakes his head while skimming an application from a well-groomed, middle-aged woman who’d just applied for a job as a hostess at his new establishment. Forty-five-year-old men don’t want to come in here and talk to a 45-year-old woman,” says the 49-year-old Smythe. If he…

After the stunning Phoenix City Council vote on June 16 to, in effect, not vote on a controversial gay rights amendment, air horns blared and whistles blasted as supporters and opponents alike voiced their disapproval. For a moment, the two factions that nearly filled the Civic Plaza showroom seemed to…

I’m standing in the grocery store check-out line. Suddenly I sense something strange about the covers of the supermarket tabloids that shout to me from the metal racks near the cash register. The usual photographs of Roseanne Arnold, Oprah Winfrey and Jack Nicholson are missing. They’ve been replaced, for at…

SEVERAL WEEKS AGO, 80-odd warm bodies gathered to determine what to do with a hundred cold ones. Although officially billed as the second annual “Mass Fatality Incident Management Conference,” the marquee in the lobby of the Fountain Suites Hotel in north Phoenix announced the event in verbiage that was at…

Alan Goldman, by many accounts, was an inspiring classroom teacher who attracted students to the communications department at Arizona State University West. Doing good work wasn’t enough for him to keep his job, however. He and two other popular instructors were let go to make way for “big league” professors…

Jack and Penny Laetch may end up telling a judge they deserve a break-but it won’t be at McDonald’s. The elderly Scottsdale couple turned from McCustomers into McBlackmailers last month, police say, after scheming to extort money from a man who owns several of the fast-food joints. The alleged shakedown…

SLOUCHING toward adjournment, the 40th Arizona Legislature is a dispirited beast. Many of the 90 men and women sitting in yet another marathon session hate their jobs, and it shows. Republicans war among themselves, and a Republican House clashes with a Democratic Senate. Both chambers have given up hope that…

ARE YOU REALLY HAPPY with your current politicians? Perhaps Doug Wead can inspire you. Arizona’s newest big-time politician, Wead often tries to display a disarming sense of humor. He doesn’t jab you in the ribs; he’s kinder and gentler. At his May 12 campaign kickoff rally for the state’s newest…