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Meet the new kids on the spelling block: Two Colorado word nerds head to Scripps National Bee

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:08 GMT

Aditi Muthukumar exerted a prowess so potent as to overcome the second-best speller in the nation during March’s Colorado State Spelling Bee, partly because of an innate desire for victory and partly because the 12-year-old’s parents promised her a cat if she won.Welcome home, kitty.After a daunting five-hour, 53-round spelling bee — the latter half a volley between Westminster’s Aditi and Aurora’s Vikram Raju, who came in second at the Scripps National Spelling Bee last year — Aditi clinched the win by correctly spelling “hylozoism.”“It was so surreal,” she said of winning the Denver Post-sponsored state bee. “I was hoping to win, but I wasn’t expecting to win.”The seventh-grader at Hulstrom Options K-8 School joins Sofia Tommey Wu, winner of the Boulder Valley School District’s regional spelling bee, as the two students who will represent Colorado among the 231 spellers vying to win the 94th Scripp...

Falling in love at Casa Bonita: When a gift shop attendee met a mariachi performer

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:08 GMT

This story is one in a series featuring trips down memory lane with longtime Casa Bonita fans and former employees who shared their fondest tales with The Denver Post. The restaurant and entertainment venue in Lakewood is expected to reopen in May.Not long after Annette Enzaldo started working at the Casa Bonita gift shop in 1974, the year the Lakewood restaurant and entertainment venue opened, she caught the eye of a mariachi band member.Annette, formerly Schumaker, always admired the musicians as they tuned up their instruments near the gift shop. “When the band would make their grand entrance into Casa Bonita, it made my heart flutter to hear that music,” she said.Valente Enzaldo, far left, pictured with his mariachi band members at Casa Bonita in 1976. (Provided by the Enzaldo family)One day, a 5-foot-4-inch violin player from the band named Valente Enzaldo approached the 23-year-old Schummaker, who was wearing a white blouse with puffy sleeves and a colorful printed skirt for t...

Ignite Adaptive Sports, a fixture at Eldora for five decades, is getting new multimillion-dollar home

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:08 GMT

Bill Goldstein was terrified the day he took his first lesson in adaptive skiing at Eldora Mountain Resort. He had moved from New York City to Colorado for skiing, only to lose his left leg soon after the move due to a diabetic infection. Despite his initial fears, his passion for skiing was renewed through Ignite Adaptive Sports at Eldora Mountain Resort.“My first day at Ignite was the first day I was part of the disabled community,” Goldstein said. “It was like, ‘Wow, I’m one of them.’ It really gave me a much deeper connection to other disabled individuals and their families. Now that I’m a lead instructor, my prosthetic is the best prop I could ever have. It’s really become my life’s work. Losing my leg turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me because it put me in a position to help others.”Ignite Adaptive Sports was the brainchild of two University of Colorado students with a heart for helping people with disabilities, Nancy Kalinski and ...

“Where Coyotes Howl” is a charming tale of love and loss on the prairie

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:08 GMT

Where Coyotes Howl (St. Martin’s Press)Denver’s own Sandra Dallas, author of more than a dozen novels, says her latest may be her “best one yet.”Apparently readers agree, because it’s already been on the Tattered Cover’s best-seller list and is in its second printing.“Where Coyotes Howl,” published in April by St. Martin’s Press, follows Ellen Webster, a young woman in 1916 Iowa who sees an ad for a schoolteacher in tiny Wallace, Wyo., and is chosen for the job because she is the most comely applicant.Ellen is ill-prepared for the harsh conditions of frontier life but is soon swept off of her feet by cowboy Charlie Bacon. (One sweet scene harkens back to  “Oklahoma,” when Ellen’s picnic basket fetches the most money in bidding by her paramour.) Together, they face the worst of what the High Plains in the early 1900s can toss at them.And I do mean worst: The unforgiving extremes of the weather in the winter and s...

Following Boulder King Soopers tragedy, local artist turns memorial flowers into compost

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:08 GMT

Artist Ana Maria Hernando’s “Flowering Eulogy” is a tribute wrought from tragedy.On March 21, 2021, a man carrying a semi-automatic rifle shot and killed 10 people at a supermarket in Boulder. The local community, shocked by the event and stunned by the loss of friends, family and neighbors, reacted with grief, and began transforming the site of violence into a tender memorial with “hundreds of bouquets of flowers of all sizes, browned and blackened and standing there as a love offering,” according to Hernando.After awhile, the city of Boulder collected the material and gave much of it to Hernando with a request to transform it through her artist’s perspective. She spent many months turning it into compost in her own backyard. On the second anniversary of the event, she presented her piece to the public, in small, brown-bag packages of the fertile, earthy material, accompanied by a letter of introduction and a package of wildflower seeds.I asked her to help us understand the piece a...

The first piece of AI-generated art debuted quietly at the Denver Art Museum. It won’t be the last.

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:08 GMT

In the upper left image, Steven Yazzie poses for a portrait in his studio in Denver on May 15, 2023. Surrounding Yazzie are works of artificial intelligence. The AI-generated images were created by Yazzie and Denver Post photographer AAron Ontiveroz using Midjourney, a platform that converts natural language prompts into images. Each of the four sets of AI images were created using the original photograph of Yazzie and different words describing his work and identity. Prompts for these images included phrases like, “Steve Yazzi artist working in studio.” The images produced by the AI technology include photorealistic recreations as well as abstract works of art. Yazzie creates his own art in collaboration with artificial intelligence. (Photo and AI illustration collage by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)You can hear “Us” before you can see “Us.”That’s because the audio narration for the hypnotic, 5-minute video, titled “Us,” echo...

Same pay, fewer hours: Golden will try a four-day workweek starting this summer

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:08 GMT

Golden will be embarking on an experiment this summer that could prove to be the envy of every working stiff in Colorado: 40 hours of pay for 32 hours of work.It’s part of the burgeoning four-day-a-week movement that’s been given extra fuel by pandemic disruptions to traditional work schedules over the last three years. Golden will be giving the truncated workweek a try over the last half of 2023 with its police department only — for now.“I think it could be the largest single game changer in retention of government employees,” said Golden Police Chief Joe Harvey. “It’s about building a culture people won’t want to leave.”His department of 72 full-time employees, he said, hasn’t been at full strength since 2015.City Manager Scott Vargas said Golden has had “long-standing, long-term employee recruitment and retention” issues, with “many dozens” of city jobs still unfilled. If the pilot program with th...

Fatal multi-car crash closes southbound 405 Freeway

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:08 GMT

All southbound lanes of the 405 Freeway were closed in the Westwood area Monday morning due to a multi-vehicle crash that left at least one person dead.Officials said the crash occurred around 3:30 a.m. at Sunset Boulevard and involved four to five cars. One person was pronounced dead at the scene.California Highway Patrol issued a SigAlert around 4 a.m., blocking all southbound lanes of travel.The crash near Sunset Boulevard closed all southbound lanes of the 405 Freeway. May 22, 2023. (LLN)Traffic backups extended for into the Sepulveda Pass, and it was unclear when lanes would reopen. Cars were being diverted at Skirball Center Drive.The cause of the accident was under investigation.This is a developing story. Stay with KTLA for updates.

Will the Roots soccer team ever return to Oakland?

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:08 GMT

OAKLAND — Amid all the talk of the A’s leaving town for Las Vegas, another of Oakland’s last-remaining professional sports teams is looking to make a stadium deal. And unless they do, the city might lose them, too.Earlier this year, popular upstart soccer franchise Oakland Roots SC trekked a half-hour south of its regular home field at Oakland’s Laney College to play at Cal State East Bay in Hayward.The once-temporary stay in Hayward is now set to last the rest of the 2023 season, with the Roots focused on building a 10,000-seat soccer stadium next to the Oakland Coliseum. Their plan has support among some of Oakland’s power players, as demonstrated at a public meeting of the Coliseum’s stewards on Friday.“It is a very positive opportunity for us to generate excitement and revenue and jobs and goodwill for this facility,” City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan said during the meeting.The team has been in talks with a local group that’s on t...

Could your trash contribute to a clean fuel future? Richmond landfill plan says yes.

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:04:08 GMT

One landfill’s trash may soon become an environmentalist’s treasure.Raven SR, a clean fuels company based in Wyoming, will transform a section of a West Contra Costa landfill into a facility that can convert up to 100 tons of organic waste into transportation-grade hydrogen.Tapping into California’s increasing efforts to promote renewable, zero-emission mobility options and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, Raven SR estimates that the 40,000-square-foot Richmond complex may produce up to 2,000 metric tons of hydrogen annually.Vegetation waste from the landfill will be heated until it breaks down and releases energy, without needing to be burned.Mike Fatigati, Raven SR’s chief technology officer, said during Tuesday’s Richmond City Council meeting that the facility will convert the gasses from green and organic food waste into “syngas” — a synthetic mix of hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide and other molecules, using a patented, innovative process called “Steam/CO2 Reformi...