Features

Gray skies couldn’t dampen the mood of the more than 200 participants in the 20th annual Courage Walk in Golden on Saturday morning.

The annual event honors the strength and courage of crime victims and those who have lost loved ones to violence. The Courage Walk coincides with National Victims’ Rights Week.

Jeffco probation department employees Brandy Lewis and Wendy Ala participated in the Courage Walk for the first time.

The first 26 years of the Jefferson County open-space sales tax and three successful referendums at the ballot box proved that voters value open lands. In 1998 they showed how much by passing a measure that helped double the amount of scenery and public land in Jeffco’s Open Space park system.

St. Patrick’s Day can evoke images of green beer, parades and “Kiss me, I’m Irish” buttons. Yet what can get lost in all the noise and revelry is the beauty and emotion of Irish culture.

And there is no better reflection of that than in the music of the Emerald Isle, which was on display Saturday at Littleton’s Bemis Public Library. Tradition, Tartan and Tears, a local Celtic band, played a selection of classic Irish songs in celebration of the holiday.

With a fire in the hearth and a pot of tea at their side, three women worked stitch by stitch Saturday to help move along a five-year project at the Littleton Museum’s living 1860s farm. 

The kaleidoscope-patterned quilt was being created in the same way it would have been more than 150 years ago. Andrea Wilhelm, one of the women gathered around the frame holding the three layers of the quilt together, is the part-time interpreter at the museum. 

Once a month, usually on the first Saturday, members of the Scraps to Treasure quilting club gather at WaterStone Community Church to create creative and colorful quilts that will warm the hearts of people in need. 

Learning a language often means learning a culture as well. Language teacher Yi Ren points out that giving a person from China a clock for a gift can be tricky.

"Don't give a clock. The pronunciation of ‘clock’ is similar to ‘bad luck,’ " said Yi, who is teaching a class in Mandarin Chinese at the Bemis Public Library. "When I teach a class, I focus on the language part and the culture part."

Newly elected District Attorney Pete Weir is close to his new job. So close, in fact, that when he and his wife, Susan, moved into their Golden home, they had to rearrange their bedroom because they could see Jefferson County’s administrative building reflected in the mirror.

Everyone loves an underdog.

Nemo, a dachshund-beagle mix, was found abandoned in a box-store parking lot in Joplin, Mo. But even though a good Samaritan rescued the 3-month-old pup, his future didn't look bright. Nemo was born with a deformed right front leg. Instead of a normal leg, he had two small legs attached to each other, a useless appendage.

Abandoned dogs with severe deformities usually don't get adopted, and in many cases they are euthanized.

 By Alison Mahnken

For the Courier

Hope for animals and for the community was the inspiration for a center housed at Foothills Animal Shelter in Golden.

The Hope Center for Humane Education consists of a large room available for public events and private functions, and the space serves many of the shelter’s goals, from educating the public about homeless pets to fund-raising to animal training.