Mike Halker wanted to make wine for his wife back in 2005 when a homebrew supply store manager convinced him making beer is easier. The manager gave him a sample of Sam Adams Boston Lager, and Halker was a changed man. It wasn't necessarily his favorite beer, but it made him realize that beer nowadays is much different from the pale-yellow swill his grandfather drank before him.
"Before this, I thought everything was Coors Light, you know?" says Halker. "Then I tasted some stuff that amazed me."
Halker began brewing two to three batches at five gallons each in his garage and... full story >>
When Debbie Jones saw her mother, she knew the news was bad.
For weeks, Jones had been waiting to hear from the Dallas County District Attorney's Office about the results of a DNA test. Now, on a sunny April morning in 2008, one of the DA's investigators, Jim Hammond, had shown up at Jones' office, her mother by his side. With them was Mike Corley, who Jones had met almost three decades before, when he was a young detective. He was an assistant chief of police now, but through the years he'd always remembered Jones' case. He wanted to help cushion the blow.
They led Jones to... full story >>
A river runs through the heart of Denver, this city's most liquid asset. But the South Platte River wasn't always regarded that way.
"We came to the shallow, yellow, muddy South Platte, with its low banks and its scattering of flat sand-bars and pigmy islands — a melancholy stream straggling through the centre of the enormous flat plain, and only saved from being impossible to find with the naked eye by its sentinel rank of scattering trees standing on either bank," wrote Mark Twain in Roughing It, his book that describes his trip across the Great Ameri... full story >>
If Jason Todd Ready had been a run-of-the-mill, delusional, Holocaust-denying racist neo-Nazi who liked to play with guns, I suppose we could could spare an ounce of surprise that, according to the Gilbert police, he killed himself and four others — including a baby girl, her mom, and her grandmother — last week.
But Ready, 39, practically had a buzzing neon sign reading "Destined to Implode" flashing on and off above his head.
Add to this Ready's pattern of intimidating and sometimes criminal behavior, his regular spouting of violent rhetoric, and his yen for ru... full story >>
Photo illustration by Andrew J. Nilsen.
Just before noon, the explosive echo of a deployed tear gas canister rings through Frank Ogawa Plaza. Moments before, demonstrators — some wearing black bloc garb, others with their faces uncovered — had been munching on free cupcakes. Now they dash into the intersection to confront riot police.
It's May 1. If you had somehow missed the banners and signs, or the panicky press coverage, the protesters charging into a high noon skirmish with the cops should be an instant giveaway — this is Occupy Oakland.
...
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On Friday, May 4, hours after St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor Arnie Robbins gave his employer, Lee Enterprises, two weeks' notice, Ellen Soeteber, who'd preceded Robbins at the helm of the Post, lofted a brief e-mail to RFT from her home in south Florida, saying she wanted to talk.
We didn't have to think twice about taking her up on the offer.
Aside from a few journalism-review postmortems after her abrupt departure in late 2005, Soeteber hasn't spoken publicly about the Post. And not for lack of caring — she grew up in the Metro East, worshiping the St. Louis daily. A... full story >>
Joe Henry hated his boss so much, he would've preferred his old Army drill sergeant.
"A drill sergeant is consistently one way," he says. "You know you're going to get yelled at no matter what."
Henry, a barrel-chested man with military posture, joined the Army at age 18 and deployed with one of the first battalions to enter Iraq in March 2003. He served a seven-month tour locating weapons caches and maintaining communications lines. A fellow vet remembers Henry as a reliable soldier — steady under the sound of constant gunfire.
For Henry, it turned out wartime... full story >>
