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DENVER (AP) — There are moments when Michael Wentz is gripped by overwhelming dread.
He’ll be walking on a sidewalk in a grassy neighborhood and suddenly panic, sensing he must have broken some rule that would cast him in a punitive-segregation cell at Sterling Correctional Facility, where he has spent most of his life. Then he remembers: He has been legally released from prison and is on his own.
It isn’t easy adjusting to freedom after spending nearly 27 years in prison.
Still, with all the pressures of beginning a new life, Wentz, 45, has been able to accomplish goals that until months ago seemed abstract and unattainable. He has done it with assistance from a Colorado Department of Corrections program that helps prisoners adjust to life outside of prison.
State officials believe supporting him in this transition from prison to freedom could have societal benefits, including safer streets. It could help Wentz avoid future missteps that could land him in prison again.
“I want to be an asset to society, not a deficit,” Wentz said.
Wentz was locked up in 1985.
The then-19-year-old Army soldier and his brother, Theodore, who was two years older, beat up a man they found walking toward a gay bar in Colorado Springs. At the time, Wentz said, he hated gays, in his mind grouping them together with an uncle who had molested him.
The last time a reporter from The Denver Post spoke with him, Wentz was sitting in a circle of convicts deep within the Sterling prison in June 2011. The group of men participating in the pilot Lifetime Offender Program exchanged ideas about how to survive prison release to freedom after spending most of their lives behind bars.
The weekly meetings helped prepare him for his release from Sterling in March to a halfway house.
Since his release, Wentz has been meeting with prison mentors every other week. During his first day of intensive supervision, he was confused about curfew and his limits and called another inmate who explained the rules to him.
He applied for and was hired at Pelsue Co., an Englewood engineering and manufacturing firm. He also got a job as a tattoo artist at Endless Ink Tattoo and Spa near Interstate 70 and Quebec Street.
Pelsue, which retrofits vans for utility companies and manufactures safety equipment and tents that go over manholes during maintenance work, hired him to help retrofit vans by installing clean laboratories used in the field by utility-company workers as they perform tasks such as fiber-optic splicing.
Wentz said that when he came to Pelsue, he didn’t expect special privileges because of his publicized talent as a graphic artist that he had developed in prison. Many of the walls inside Sterling are covered with giant murals he painted. Wentz’s paintings sold in galleries for as much as $2,000.
Wentz was a quick learner who eagerly worked overtime when called upon, said his former supervisor, Jose Rodriguez. Pelsue is a relatively small company and can’t afford to have employees who are dead weight, Rodriguez said.
In a few months, Wentz moved to a position in the company’s fabrication shop. He was a full-time employee, getting medical benefits and paid vacations.
In May, another position came open.
Wentz got the job, which usually required applicants to have a college degree in drafting or engineering. In prison, he had earned an associate’s degree in computer-aided drafting, but most of the computer software he uses to create schematic drawings he had taught himself to use.
On his computer, he has created three-dimensional drawings of how Pelsue products are assembled. He has created realistic drawings of products yet to be built.
In the afternoon, he dons another hat and works in the marketing office. He has been redesigning the company’s catalog, giving it more of a commercial feel rather than an institutional one. He has quite an eye for it, said Pelsue chief executive Mark Pelsue.
“We’re very proud of Mike’s journey and delighted to play our part in it,” Pelsue said.
While Wentz has moved up through the ranks of Pelsue, he has had to abide by stringent rules under the supervision of his parole officer, Matthew Cooper. But Cooper has been flexible, allowing Wentz to work longer hours when it was essential that he work overtime, Wentz said.
Cooper said Wentz so far has strictly followed release rules. Wentz has also reached personal milestones.
He recently proposed marriage to Donna Novotny. He passed a driver’s-license test and bought a 2000 Jeep Wrangler. He has moved into his own house, which he shares with his fiancée.
Harry Styles In Talks To Play Mick Jagger Role In Upcoming Rolling Stones Biopic, One Direction Mates Jealous?
Mick Jagger’s Famewhore Girlfriend, Ballerina Melanie Hamrick, Reprimanded By American Ballet Theatre – Ditched Work For Hookup!
L’Wren Scott’s Suicide: Why Did Mick Jagger’s Girlfriend Kill Herself?
A businessman has backed plans for a new theme park near Auckland Castle.
Jonathan Ruffer is already well known in Bishop Auckland as the philanthropist, who invested £25m in the castle in 2012, transferring it to a charitable trust.
Now he is putting up another £2m for the project, called Eleven Arches, after a nearby bridge.
By 2016, a light show will illuminate the land next to the castle, telling the story of British history, in a similar way to the London Olympic opening ceremony. It will involve 600 local volunteers and will be a not-for-profit venture.
"The community is at the heart of the project. If you do a show with people being paid to do a show, what you have is a show. That's not the vision.
"What we're trying to achieve is to bring people together behind a very inspiring pursuit, a joint pursuit."
By 2024, even more could be added, including a daytime theme park, which will be a commercial business and could create up to 300 jobs.
Eventually, it could bring 800,000 visitors to Bishop Auckland.
"Bishop Auckland is of a size where I think it is possible to make a difference to the whole community, and it is big enough that if you could, then one's done something really worthwhile."
MARK MORAN / JUMPSTART! Ron Roberts and his family opened Crabby’s Seafood Grill and Pipes Bar in October, and business has been booming ever since.
Longtime restaurateur Ron Roberts made his mark in Dallas when he opened a seafood restaurant.
After opening Crabby’s Seafood Grill and Pipes Bar on Lower Demunds Road just over six months ago, Roberts said business is booming, and the people keep coming back for more.
Roberts knows a thing or two about running a restaurant. He owned a Baton Rouge restaurant when he lived down in Louisiana for 12 years, and upon returning, opened the French Quarter on Main Street in Luzerne. With opening Crabby’s, Roberts said he wanted to bring back some of the old French Quarter staples in a new setting.
He began to lease the building on the corner of Upper and Lower Demunds Roads in May 2016, with his daughter Kim and her husband Bill Gonzales as partners, and immediately got to work. Although the restaurant is tucked away from the hustle and bustle of state Route 309, it allows for a welcome, cozy atmosphere.
Nautical decor, including life preservers, ship wheels and crab nets fill the dining room that seats 55. The Pipes Bar features a glossy wood bar with a motorcycle motif, which offers 18 additional seats at tables and 15 around the U-shaped bar. Classic cork dart boards, a jukebox and pool table also sit in the bar for patrons.
Some of the most popular seafood dishes include the jumbo lump crab cakes, crab Ponchartrain and the Snow Crab clusters. In addition to the New Orleans-inspired seafood, Crabby’s offers standard pub fare like a shrimp po’boy, cheesesteaks, burgers and wings.
The bar is equipped to make a wide variety of mixed drinks, including several signature drinks like the frozen New Orleans Attitude Adjustment, a New Orleans Hurricane, Mint Julep, Marilyn Monroe Cocktail and Peyton’s Now-Famous Blue Chip, which was created for a Blue Chip Animal Refuge fundraiser held at the bar.
And the restaurant is becoming so popular that they highly recommend patrons make reservations for Friday and Saturday nights.
“Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays are becoming busier because of the weekend nights being so packed,” Roberts said.
The next step for the restaurant is the opening of an outdoor patio for the summer, which Roberts said should be open by May 1. In the future, Roberts said he would like to host more live entertainment on Saturdays and Sundays as well.
“Our idea is quality, consistent food, a friendly, clean atmosphere and, unlike the building’s history, we don’t put up with troublemakers,” he added.
Hours: Monday to Thursday, 2 to 11 p.m.
Sunday, noon to 11 p.m.
Hailee Steinfeld is an Oscar nominee for True Grit, and she has plenty of grit herself. But she confessed to feeling some pressure before filming a major scene of her new film Bumblebee. Here's what she told CinemaBlend's own Dirk Libbey when asked about the scene she was most nervous to shoot.
The very first scene Charlie meets Bumblebee. In the garage when she brings home this car that she feels is her new way out or a new way to freedom and obviously makes this incredible discovery, that whole, the whole scene, the whole exchange between the two of them when they meet for the first time. I remember reading, thinking, you know, it's so beautifully written. It seems great and I'm into it, I'm ready. But then I got there and I kind of was like, I realized that if, if this, if this thing doesn't work, we don't have a movie, and so that, that I think is probably the scene I was most afraid of most nervous for. But now looking back, I'm the most proud of.
Good for her. Hailee Steinfeld should be proud, especially if she was most concerned with pulling off that scene. There's no question she stuck the landing, so to speak. Her Charlie is the main human character of the film. It can't be easy building a heartfelt relationship with an Autobot as your co-lead, but she made it look effortless -- and both critics and audiences seem to agree. The film has a 93 percent fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes critics, and an A- CinemaScore. It has been called, by many, the best Transformers film of the franchise.
In Bumblebee, Hailee Steinfeld plays Charlie, who is on the edge of 18 when she revives the broken, battle-scarred yellow VW bug we all know and love as Bumblebee. In real life, Steinfeld is 22, and already a pro in the industry -- from The Edge of Seventeen to the Pitch Perfect films, her Gwen Stacy voice role in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and her own singing career.
Busy as she is, Hailee Steinfeld also told CinemaBlend why she'd love her Charlie to return for a Bumblebee sequel. Plus, since this film is set in the 1980s, there's a lot of time to explore between Bumblebee and the other Transformers films. What has Charlie been doing? The actress is curious to know as well.
Hailee Steinfeld's human Bumblebee co-star John Cena also said he'd love to make a sequel, since there's more story to tell with his Agent Burns as well. He also told CinemaBlend about his ... colorful way of getting into character on set. Still hoping we get to see all of that behind-the-scenes footage when Bumblebee is eventually released on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital.
For now, Bumblebee is playing in theaters, as one of the many films kicking off what truly sounds like one of the best years at the movies.
MEXICO CITY – Thirteen people died and 15 others were injured in the crash of an air force helicopter carrying Mexico’s interior secretary and the governor of the southern state of Oaxaca, officials said on Saturday.
The helicopter crashed Friday night while it was approaching Jamiltepec, a town in Oaxaca.
Government Secretary Alfonso Navarrete and Oaxaca Gov. Alejandro Murat were on board the aircraft but escaped the crash unharmed.
The Oaxaca state Attorney General’s Office said in a statement on Saturday that 13 people died, one of whom perished in a local hospital, and that 15 others who were injured have received medical treatment.
Navarrete and Murat were traveling to the town of Jamiltepec to assess the damage caused by a magnitude-7.2 earthquake that shook central and southern Mexico on Friday.
The aircraft, which was transporting government authorities, military personnel and emergency management officials, plunged to the ground and struck several vehicles, Navarrete said Friday night.
Twelve people – including three minors – died at the scene of the crash, while one other individual perished at the hospital in Jamiltepec, the state AG’s office said on Saturday.
Navarrete said on Twitter that the crash occurred as the helicopter was flying over Pinotepa Nacional, a city in Oaxaca’s Jamiltepec District and the location of the quake’s epicenter.
No fatalities have been reported as a result of Friday’s quake, which left two people slightly injured, damaged 50 homes and left around 1 million people without power.
Around half of those who lost their electricity live in 112 Mexico City neighborhoods, according to state-owned electric utility CFE.
Could there be life on Mars? What’s it like driving a robot from 120 million miles away? No matter what industry you work in or what your major was is there anything cooler than space exploration? Boston University Alumni Association and the BU College of Engineering is proud to present “Two Alumni-One Mars Mission” with Matthew Heverly (ENG’05) and Anita Sengupta (ENG’98). Please join your fellow terriers in LA for an intimate discussion about NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Mission. Marquee members of the mission team, Anita and Matthew will speak directly about their experiences preparing for and executing the Mars Mission. Anita Sengupta (ENG’98)- Senior Systems Engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory was responsible for insuring that the Curiosity Rover successfully was able to touch down on Mars. Matthew Heverly (ENG’05)- Mobility Systems Engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory is currently the lead driver on the Mars Rover.
Gold plated necklace. Aries stationary pendant. Lobster clasp closure. Measures approx 18.5" in length. Made in USA. TSNR-WL48. TMG029 A.
Is There Some Element in the US Military that Wants to Take Out Journalists?
First the Americans killed the correspondent of al-Jazeera yesterday and wounded his cameraman. Then, within four hours, they attacked the Reuters television bureau in Baghdad, killing one of its cameramen and a cameraman for Spain's Tele 5 channel and wounding four other members of the Reuters staff.
Was it possible to believe this was an accident? Or was it possible that the right word for these killings – the first with a jet aircraft, the second with an M1A1 Abrams tank – was murder? These were not, of course, the first journalists to die in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Terry Lloyd of ITV was shot dead by American troops in southern Iraq, who apparently mistook his car for an Iraqi vehicle. His crew are still missing. Michael Kelly of The Washington Post tragically drowned in a canal. Two journalists have died in Kurdistan. Two journalists – a German and a Spaniard – were killed on Monday night at a US base in Baghdad, with two Americans, when an Iraqi missile exploded amid them.
And we should not forget the Iraqi civilians who are being killed and maimed by the hundred and who – unlike their journalist guests – cannot leave the war and fly home. So the facts of yesterday should speak for themselves. Unfortunately for the Americans, they make it look very like murder.
The US jet turned to rocket al-Jazeera's office on the banks of the Tigris at 7.45am local time yesterday. The television station's chief correspondent in Baghdad, Tariq Ayoub, a Jordanian-Palestinian, was on the roof with his second cameraman, an Iraqi called Zuheir, reporting a pitched battle near the bureau between American and Iraqi troops. Mr Ayoub's colleague Maher Abdullah recalled afterwards that both men saw the plane fire the rocket as it swooped toward their building, which is close to the Jumhuriya Bridge upon which two American tanks had just appeared.
"On the screen, there was this battle and we could see bullets flying and then we heard the aircraft," Mr Abdullah said.
"The plane was flying so low that those of us downstairs thought it would land on the roof – that's how close it was. We actually heard the rocket being launched. It was a direct hit – the missile actually exploded against our electrical generator. Tariq died almost at once. Zuheir was injured."
Now for America's problems in explaining this little saga. Back in 2001, the United States fired a cruise missile at al-Jazeera's office in Kabul – from which tapes of Osama bin Laden had been broadcast around the world. No explanation was ever given for this extraordinary attack on the night before the city's "liberation"; the Kabul correspondent, Taiseer Alouni, was unhurt. By the strange coincidence of journalism, Mr Alouni was in the Baghdad office yesterday to endure the USAF's second attack on al-Jazeera.
Far more disturbing, however, is the fact that the al-Jazeera network – the freest Arab television station, which has incurred the fury of both the Americans and the Iraqi authorities for its live coverage of the war – gave the Pentagon the co-ordinates of its Baghdad office two months ago and received assurances that the bureau would not be attacked.
Then on Monday, the US State Department's spokesman in Doha, an Arab-American called Nabil Khouri, visited al-Jazeera's offices in the city and, according to a source within the Qatari satellite channel, repeated the Pentagon's assurances. Within 24 hours, the Americans had fired their missile into the Baghdad office.
The next assault, on Reuters, came just before midday when an Abrams tank on the Jamhuriya Bridge suddenly pointed its gun barrel towards the Palestine Hotel where more than 200 foreign journalists are staying to cover the war from the Iraqi side. Sky Television's David Chater noticed the barrel moving. The French television channel France 3 had a crew in a neighbouring room and videotaped the tank on the bridge. The tape shows a bubble of fire emerging from the barrel, the sound of a detonation and then pieces of paintwork falling past the camera as it vibrates with the impact.
In the Reuters bureau on the 15th floor, the shell exploded amid the staff. It mortally wounded a Ukrainian cameraman, Taras Protsyuk, who was also filming the tanks, and seriously wounded another member of the staff, Paul Pasquale from Britain, and two other journalists, including Reuters' Lebanese-Palestinian reporter Samia Nakhoul. On the next floor, Tele 5's cameraman Jose Couso was badly hurt. Mr Protsyuk died shortly afterwards. His camera and its tripod were left in the office, which was swamped with the crew's blood. Mr Couso had a leg amputated but he died half an hour after the operation.
The Americans responded with what all the evidence proves to be a straightforward lie. General Buford Blount of the US 3rd Infantry Division – whose tanks were on the bridge – announced that his vehicles had come under rocket and rifle fire from snipers in the Palestine Hotel, that his tank had fired a single round at the hotel and that the gunfire had then ceased. The general's statement, however, was untrue.
I was driving on a road between the tanks and the hotel at the moment the shell was fired – and heard no shooting. The French videotape of the attack runs for more than four minutes and records absolute silence before the tank's armament is fired. And there were no snipers in the building. Indeed, the dozens of journalists and crews living there – myself included – have watched like hawks to make sure that no armed men should ever use the hotel as an assault point.
This is, one should add, the same General Blount who boasted just over a month ago that his crews would be using depleted uranium munitions – the kind many believe to be responsible for an explosion of cancers after the 1991 Gulf War – in their tanks. For General Blount to suggest, as he clearly does, that the Reuters camera crew was in some way involved in shooting at Americans merely turns a meretricious statement into a libelous one.
Again, we should remember that three dead and five wounded journalists do not constitute a massacre – let alone the equivalence of the hundreds of civilians being maimed by the invasion force. And it is a truth that needs to be remembered that the Iraqi regime has killed a few journalists of its own over the years, with tens of thousands of its own people. But something very dangerous appeared to be getting loose yesterday. General Blount's explanation was the kind employed by the Israelis after they have killed the innocent. Is there therefore some message that we reporters are supposed to learn from all this? Is there some element in the American military that has come to hate the press and wants to take out journalists based in Baghdad, to hurt those whom our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has maliciously claimed to be working "behind enemy lines". Could it be that this claim – that international correspondents are in effect collaborating with Mr Blunkett's enemy (most Britons having never supported this war in the first place) – is turning into some kind of a death sentence?
I knew Mr Ayoub. I have broadcast during the war from the rooftop on which he died. I told him then how easy a target his Baghdad office would make if the Americans wanted to destroy its coverage – seen across the Arab world – of civilian victims of the bombing. Mr Protsyuk of Reuters often shared the Palestine Hotel's elevator with me. Samia Nakhoul, who is 42, has been a friend and colleague since the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. She is married to the Financial Times correspondent David Gardner.
Yesterday afternoon, she lay covered in blood in a Baghdad hospital. And General Blount dared to imply that this innocent woman and her brave colleagues were snipers. What, I wonder, does this tell us about the war in Iraq?
The Sky News correspondent David Chater was in the Palestine Hotel when the hotel was hit by American tank fire. This is his account of what happened.
"I was about to go out on to the balcony when there was a huge explosion, then shouts and screams from people along our corridor. They were shouting, 'Somebody's been hit. Can somebody find a doctor?' They were saying they could see blood and bone.
"There were a lot of French journalists screaming, 'Get a doctor, get a doctor'. There was a great sense of panic because these walls are very thin. "We saw the tanks up on the bridge. They started firing across the bank. The shells were landing either side of us at what we thought were military targets. Then we were hit. We are in the middle of a tank battle.
"I don't understand why they were doing that. There was no fire coming out of this hotel – everyone knows it's full of journalists.
"Everybody is putting on flak jackets. Everybody is running for cover. We now feel extremely vulnerable and we are now going to say goodbye to you." The line was cut but minutes later Chater resumed his report, saying journalists had been watching American forces from their balconies and the troops had surely been aware of their presence.
"They knew exactly what this hotel is. They know the press corps is here. I don't know why they are trying to target journalists. There are awful scenes around me. There's a Reuters tent just a few yards away from me where people are in tears. It makes you realise how vulnerable you are. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to carry on if American shells are targeting Western journalists?"
The Villa at Chateau Elan will make you feel like you're nestled in the heart of French wine country.
A weekend away at New South Wales premium wine country in the Hunter Valley is often the choice for many a lover of a win- tasting experience. Often it is the big names and the well-publicised venues that people choose to visit. I am not here to say that’s a bad thing at all, but this brief tale is one of the little battler, the unsung hero, the family-owned-and-operated toilers. The people that cannot but help themselves in the search of the perfect drop – it’s either in the blood or in the family.
To be frank, there is a plethora of options when it comes to said vineyards and it would take you much longer than a weekend to sample them all, and possibly a little portion of your liver too! But proper wine tasting is meant to be about the sensory examination of wine. You are supposed to sip, swill and spit. I myself always struggle in expelling a good drop of vino, and when it’s really good, well it’s just not going to happen!
During the recent Hunter Valley Food and Wine Festival (which is on every May and June), I was chuffed to be invited to experience a few of the aforementioned properties. The lifeblood through every vineyard that I visited was that internal love of what a family operating the property is all about. They live and breathe it. And it shows in all aspects of what they achieve, be it the wine they produce, the cuisine they create or just the friendliness that they exude.
My first destination is the perfect example of this. Stonehurst Cedar Creek is owned and loved by the Heslop family for over five generations – in fact, there has only ever been two owners of the land since the 1830’s. The original owners were Napoleonic war veterans and the land has always been known for its horticultural produce including cattle and deer, apple and orange orchards and, since 1995, vineyards.