EDGEWATER MAYOR Police Commander’s View Of The New Civic Center Page 5
MEDICALLY SPEAKING Prepare for Ski Season Now – Really! Page 11
NEIGHBORHOOD ARTS Shows, Succulents, and the ArtLine in the Art District Page 12
******ECRWSSEDDM******* POSTAL CUSTOMER
PRSRT STD U.S.POSTAGE PAID EVERGREEN, CO PERMIT NO. 36
Gazette NEIGHBORHOOD
EDGEWATER
| SLOAN’S LAKE | WEST COLFAX | TWO CREEKS May 15 – June 17, 2018 • ngazette.com • FREE
ArtLine To Open With DinosaurSized First Friday Celebration ■ By
Nancy Hahn
F
irst Friday on June 1 will include the huge celebration of the opening of the ArtLine. The opening will be celebrated with a block party on Lakewood Place between Reed and Pierce streets. Food trucks, children’s creative activities, a scavenger hunt, a dinosaur flash mob (yes, absolutely), live music and a bike parade are some of the wild happenings to celebrate and show off the new ArtLine. Maps of the ArtLine, including details about the art and artists will be available. Seriously, a dinosaur flash mob, too! The bright green-painted line on sidewalks – the ArtLine – guides visitors along the 4-1/2 mile route from one park with activities and artwork to the next park. Aviation Park at 1900 Teller Ave., Mountair Park at 5620 W. 14th Ave., and Walker-Branch Park at 5825 W. 16th Ave., are the parks on the ArtLine. Continued on page 4
THE ARTLINE IS NEARLY COMPLETE, with a June 1 First Friday opening planned. Signage and a bright greenpainted line on sidewalks guides visitors along the 4-1/2 mile route between three parks, packed with activities and artwork in each. PHOTO: WILL STRATHMANN
Bosnian Muslim Community Has A New Home In North Denver ■ By
G
Laurie Dunklee
etting out of Bosnia was like winning the Lotto – it was a one-in-a-million chance,” says Minela Ibisevic about her arrival in Denver as a refugee in 2002. “Our Bosnian community here is strong because of our shared past.” Denver’s Bosnian Muslims have a new home at 36th and Sheridan, where the community has transformed a vacant Baptist church into the Mile High Islamic Center. “About 30 Bosnian families live within a five-mile radius of the new mosque and about 275 are in Colorado,” said Nihad Poljakovic, who arrived in Denver in 2000. “We chose this location because it is central for people from Castle Rock to Boulder.” He said most of the Bosnians in Colorado are refugees, having fled the atrocities of the Bosnian War. The war started in 1992, when the government of the Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia. Over the next several years, Bosnian Serb forces, with the backing of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, perpetrated atrocious crimes against civilians, most of them Bosnian Muslims, resulting in the deaths of some 100,000 people by 1995. Ibisevic and Poljakovic are on the board of the new mosque and Ibisevic volunteers as a youth leader. She works in finance for hospitals and Poljakovic owns a trucking company. “Lots of Bosnians own their own businesses because they are ambitious, and they have leadership and management skills,” says Ibisevic. The community bought the building in 2011 and met in the church basement until the upstairs was completed this year. The mosque’s design features two domes, a minaret and multiple arches.
“
“Our architect was inspired by the famous Blue Mosque in Turkey and he travelled there to study it before completing our design,” said Poljakovic. He said much of the original wooden roof structure was replaced with iron beams to support the domes. The domes are part of the structure and are open to the prayer hall inside with skylights and chandeliers. The large prayer hall has thick carpet with a pattern of hundreds of individual rectangles for worshippers to perform prayer movements. The Imam, or spiritual leader, leads daily prayers from a small alcove at the front of the room, or atop a raised platform
for special Friday prayers. Separate mosque entryways for men and women contain places, called ablution rooms, to leave their shoes and wash their feet and hands before prayer. A curtain separates the men’s and women’s areas. “We want to be clean and look our best for God,” Poljakovic said. Muslims pray five times a day, wherever they are: at sunrise, noon, afternoon, sunset and a few hours after sunset. “Spiritually, it’s about our connection to everything, including the Earth’s cycles,” Ibisevic said. Hundreds of members of the Muslim
Bosnian community gathered with neighbors of the mosque to celebrate its opening last month. “We invited about 100 of our neighbors to come over and get acquainted,” said Poljakovic. “People want to learn, to see who we are. We welcome dialogue with the larger community.” “People who learn about Muslims from the TV or the Internet tend to have misconceptions,” said Ibisevic. “We try to break the barrier of fear by encouraging them to get to know us.” Continued on page 2
PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Edgewater Bee Guardian Abuzz about Bees ■ By
Ken Lutes
E
dgewater resident Kelly Shinn is seeing fewer honey bees flitting from flower to flower than she would expect during this time of year, and she’s not alone. The backyard beekeeper who prefers to think of herself as a backyard bee guardian said, “We do everything organically in our yard to provide a safe habitat for bees, because we know their numbers are dwindling.” Greg Rye, owner of Dakota Bees in Wheat Ridge, is experiencing the same diminishing bee phenomenon. “I’ve got three healthy hives in my home back yard. I go out to look at my [blossom-laden] pear tree on a warm day, and there’s not a bee on it. I don’t know where they’re going to get food, but they’re flying somewhere else and coming back.” Other than disease, Shinn believes a reason we’re seeing fewer bees in this area is due to housing developments. “Rather than having whole fields of wild flowers, their habitat is being broken up into smaller and smaller pieces, and bees have to go Continued on page 2
BEE GUARDIAN KELLY SHINN maintains bee colonies in her Edgewater backyard. PHOTO BY KEN LUTES