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July 2009

Ahhaa_auction As much spectacle as fundraiser, the theme of the 2009 Ah Haa auction encourages everyone around Telluride to embrace their love of art and discover their inner artist: "Celebrate Art ! Be The Artist You Want To Be!"

Now in it’s 17th year, Ah Haa’s annual fundraiser is not to be missed. The event includes a live and silent auction, featuring over 100 pieces of original art, services, and excursions, donated by the regional artists, locals businesses and Ah Haa. The monies raised in this single evening support scholarships, supplies,
teachers, the Visiting Artist series, and keeping the spirit of Ah Haa going for another year.

In years past, local celebrities such as General Norman Schwarzkopf have contributed art work they created in conjunction with Ah Haa teachers in support of the school. (Joanne Corzine bought Stormin' Norman's first effort for $17,000.)

08 July, 2009 /

by Kris Holstrom

 123 Is it a strip of weedy sidewalk? Or a potential edible landscape? Perspective makes all the difference.

Changing Telluride, changing our world, can be as simple as changing a lightbulb or seeing a garden where weeds used to be. (The edible landscape is outside the Telluride Academy's new home, in the old Silver Belle building on Pacific Street.

 What's required is a shift in perspective to get the ball rolling.

We are creatures of habit. We tend to sit in the same seat, walk the same route, think in the same way until something motivates us to change. Sometimes motivators are forced upon us: someone takes our usual seat, an injury forces us to change routines, etc. But a valuable tool when dealing with each other  –  friends and family to co-workers, community members –  and with our environment is to change our perspective on purpose.

08 July, 2009 /
[click "Play" for Susan's talk with David Russell]

DaveRussell w mic A sound experience –  kirtan – has been added to the schedule of the 2nd annual Telluride Yoga Festival, June 10 – June 12, 2009.

On Friday evening, 7 – 10 p.m., under the stars at the Mountain Village Sunset Stage, just a short walk from Yoga Fest hospitality, attendees and friends are invited to attend two performances of kirtan, one given by Durango's Prema Shakti, a 12-person energetic kirtan group. The second is led by David Russell and friends.

Plato pondered the powers of music and sound in "The Laws"  and other dialogues. Shakespeare also intuitively understood: several of his most poignant scenes dramatized music's soothing effects on troubled souls.
Pre-dating Western scholars, the Yoga tradition has known for centuries that sound is the new aspirin or apple –  only more so. Proof positive lies in the bible of Yoga, "The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali," where the great sage explains that the mystic sound "OM" is not just the name Isvara (a God analog), but is Isvara, the actual form of God. Humming"OM" is a summons: the sound brings God to you.

Kirtan is a group practice of singing Sanskrit mantras that are set to simple melodies. These mantras are sound vibrations which roll and vibrate through the seven energy centers (chakras) of the body creating well-being in body, mind, and spirit. It really doesn’t matter what the words mean because the sound vibrations alone are a direct plug-in to the experience of Source, or God Consciousness, or whatever you choose to call Isvara.

07 July, 2009 /
[click "Play to listen to Marcia Cohen on Geek Fest]

4__#$!@%!#__unknown How the word "pinhead" entered the Telluride lexicon is a matter of conjecture - but all roads lead to L.L. Nunn and his power plants. 

One version of the story suggests the term "pinhead" refers to the original geeks running around Telluride at the turn of the 20th century.  It seems Nunn had developed a work-study program to get alternating current to run his mine, and the initiative was so successful, he bought more mines in Colorado and Utah, spreading his scholars around. Nunn kept track of the whereabouts of his minions by sticking pushpins into maps. 

A geek tends to be odd, overly intellectual – in this country, anyone who prefers arugula to french fries – and generally prefers his computer to other human interests. (A nerd is simply a geek with more RAM and a faster modem.) Geeks tend to wear totemic Clark Kent glasses and are authentically unhip.

On Thursday, July 9, 6:30 p.m., Ah Haa School at the old Depot, 300 South Townsend, the Pinhead Institute, a Smithsonian affiliate institute is hosting its fourth annual Geek Fest: Get Your Green On. The event includes dining, drinks and dancing to DJ Ryan Smith and a silent auction.

06 July, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Dayne Conrad & John Ehlers on Amlavi]

Australia New Zealand April 2007 209 Listen, Telluride: It is no longer just about solar panels, wind turbines and bio-diesel. America's green revolution has infiltrated the world of beauty.

One of the Telluride Yoga Festival sponsors, Amlavi heads an alphabet of new labels representing super effective, eco-friendly cosmetics, bath products and scents, including companies making soy polish remover (Priti), producing make-up brushes fashioned from sustainable wood and brushed recycled aluminum (Ecotools Cosmetic Brushes), making nontoxic nail polish (Sula Paint & Peel), and producing mascara (Organic Wear).

06 July, 2009 /
Download Jacques Parker, 10th Mtn Div [download file to hear Jacques Parker talk about his experience with the 10th Mtn in WWII]

IMG_3588 I had the unique opportunity to talk to a living legend in my Telluride living room on July 3. Jacques Parker had agreed to an interview, and what a treat to hear from one of the participants what it was like to be at Camp Hale (near Leadville, CO for the uninitiated) for training, how he came to be a combat artist, about the camaraderie among the men of the 10th Mountain Division during the Second World War, and generally to have a good conversation with a real gentleman.

Fourteen years ago, Beth and George Gage, Telluride locals and well known documentary filmmakers made "Fire on the Mountain" about the 10th. The film is being screened at 6:00 pm, Monday, July 6, at the Sheridan Opera House. The movie is the highlight of Telluride Mountainfilm's Summer fundraiser.

05 July, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Liz Lance on the Media and Beauty]

Liz_about On Monday, July 6:30 p.m., at Telluride's Wilkinson Public LIbrary, itinerant daughter Liz Lance plans a multimedia presentation of her Fulbright research on the subject of beauty and the way mass media affects ideas about body image and femininity in Nepal.

The conversation has never been more interesting. We live in a world of swizzle stick celebrities, binge diets and surgeons armed with needles, scalpels, lasers, whatever is desired or required to overhaul anyone with a chunky checkbook from head to toe. Make-up, skin and hair care, cosmetic surgery, health clubs and diet pills rolls up to a global industry worth over $160 billion per annum.

05 July, 2009 /