COLORADANS WOULD

WANT TO KNOW

On the state seal - the round thing that Gov. Bill Ritter, above, is standing behind - what's that funny-looking symbol at the top? An ax surrounded by bundled sticks?

Yup. It's a fasces - a Roman symbol of power and authority and an emblem of strength through unity. The bound sticks are stronger together than their parts alone.

The fasces also is thought by some to be symbolic of Rome's authority to punish criminals by beating them with birch rods, and the ax symbolic of executing evil-doers.

And if fasces sounds like a modern word, it is: Italian fascism took its name and emblem from the fasces.

(Not that Colorado wants to be a fascist state, you understand. We just want, naturally, to be unified in the cause of justice and progress.)

Sources: languedoc-france.info and www.answers.com

YEAH, BUT HE PAYS THE RENT ON TIME

"But he's not even dead yet."

The comment of one of two men in business suits who were standing on the southwest corner of Colfax Avenue and Bannock Street last week after the other pointed out the Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building

VOCABULARY CHAMP

1st place in Colorado in the Reader's Digest National Word Power Challenge went to Eagle eighth-grader Graeme Richards.

Graeme, 13, a student at Gypsum Creek Middle School, will join other state champions May 14-15 in Orlando, Fla., in competition for the national title and college scholarship cash.