Get TIO in your Inbox!

August 2009

[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with director Tom McPhee]

MV5BMTAyNTI2NzkyNjZeQTJeQWpwZ15BbWU3MDM1NzI2MjI@._V1._SX100_SY104_
Tom McPhee

On Monday, August 31, Telluride's Wilkinson Public Library is really going to the dogs. Starting at noon, Second Chance Humane Society is out front, its Pet Mobile filled with animals in need of loving homes.

At 5:30, Second Chance gets to plead its cause, followed by a real life Katrina pet rescue story featuring locals Alfredo Lopez and Nancy Landau. (Bring Kleenex, a checkbook and a leash.)

At 6 p.m., the Library and the Second Chance present a screening of director Tom McPhee's  award-winning "An American Opera: The Greatest Pet Rescue Ever." What could have been pessimism porn about an American tragedy turned out to be an upper about the triumph of the human spirit.

31 August, 2009 /
[click "Play" to listen to Kelly Goodin speak about Second Chance]

Constant contact 2 In the Telluride region, including San Miguel and Ouray counties, Second Chance Humane Society is the last word in pet rescue.

Second Chance offers top of the line rescue initiatives  – a shelter in Ridgway, foster care, help for families who can no longer care for pets, outreach for prevention and education, including financial assistance for spay/neuter –  for dogs and cats at the end of their rope.

 Second Chance Humane Society together with the Pagosa Springs Humane Society brought 100 dogs and cats from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. All the rescued pets were placed into foster homes and some, including a dog initially placed in a Telluride home, were reunited with their original pet parents. 

30 August, 2009 /

[click "Play" for Ted's experience with Molly] On Monday, August 31, Telluride's Wilkinson Public Library is hosting an all-day pet rescue event. At noon, Second Chance Humane Society arrives in town with its Pet Mobile. Its passengers: adorable animals in need of a family to...

29 August, 2009 /

August 27 to September 3, 2009

Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter  Evening: Saturn

America's Most Accomplished Senator Enters in Dreamy Pisces and Exits in Virtuous Virgo

250px-US_Capitol_dome_Jan_2006 Ted_Kennedy,_official_photo_portrait_crop "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die." - Senator Edward M. Kennedy

One of our country’s most famous, accomplished and influential politicians, Senator Ted Kennedy, passed from this world to the next in his Cape Cod home last Tuesday, Aug. 25th. Born Feb. 22, 1932, he died on a day when the Earth had reached a point in its yearly orbit around the Sun that was almost exactly opposite his own natal sun-sign degree, a point long ago associated by astrologers as a critical degree in one’s annual birthday to birthday solar cycle.

Today, modern astrology pays less attention to physical predictions of doom, gloom and possible death than it does to the more psychological, spiritual and emotional manifestations of planetary positions and aspects. One thing is certain, however, about Sun opposition Sun transits: we feel a certain amount of tension and pull, we are awakened to life’s inherent polarities and we are called upon to balance our perspectives, opinions, tendencies and behaviors with opposite views and forces. It’s the classical reflection of the internal self in the mirror of external relationship, the dance of inside with outside.

28 August, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with John Sir Jesse]

100-0056_IMG_3 In Telluridespeak, the event is known as Mushfest. The 29th annual Mushfest, aka Telluride Mushroom Festival  – billed as "the nation's oldest mycological conference exploring all things fungal" – happens this weekend, August 27 – August 30.

In the context of the Telluride Mushfest, the world wide web takes on a whole other meaning: we are talking about mycelium, the sentient  web of cells, which, in just one magical phase of its life cycle, fruits mushrooms. Shroom evangelists from writer Terence Kemp McKenna and avant garde composer John Cage to Paul Stamets, a Mushfest regular, filmmaker Ron Mann ("Know Your Mushrooms),  and this year's special guest Gary Lincoff ("Mushroom Magick") head the list of true believers who contend fabulous fungi have the potential to save the planet.

28 August, 2009 /

500daysofsummer_smallposter Gforce_smallposter Be aware Telluride: it's a short week at the Nugget Theatre. The Nugget will be closed on Wednesday and Thursday, September 2 & 3 to get ready for the Telluride Film Festival. For the rest of the week, Friday-Tuesday, the program is "G-Force" and "500 Days of Summer."

"G-Force" is a Disney animation featuring guinea pigs with a mission to save the world from the machinations of an evil tycoon. The movie is rated PG for some mild action and rude humor.

"500 Days of Summer" is not a love story, as the audience is warned at the very beginning. The movie does not follow the "Boy meets Girl, Boy gets Girl, Boy loses Girl, Boy gets Girl back" formula, and doesn't so not in chronological order. With me so far? Rated PG-13 for sexual material and language.

See the Nugget website for trailers and reviews. The week's schedule is shown below.

27 August, 2009 /
[double click to view in larger format]

Head shot 2009 copy The girl can't help it. Sculptor and long-time Telluride local Julie McNair was born to make art.

 Her mother had studied fine art and music in college. Her grandmother was an antique dealer with a large collection of dolls from Europe and China. Both women were always up to something creative.  McNair's entire family encouraged her in her personal goal to become an artist.

McNair gathered credentials. She studied sculpture at North Texas State University and then earned a master of fine art in sculpture at the University of Wyoming. After graduating, McNair worked as an Artist-in-Residence for Northwest Community College in Powell, Wyoming, where she taught bronze casting and set up a foundry and was then hired as an Assistant Professor at Mississippi State University to teach ceramics, sculpture design and art appreciation. She was director of the Art League of Houston, which involved running all aspects of a non-profit school and gallery.

26 August, 2009 /
[Click "Play" to hear Eileen's interview with Richard Turner]

Hp-main Richard Turner is known world wide as "the greatest card mechanic of all time."  Richard Turner will be performing at Telluride's  Sheridan Opera House on Thursday, August 27th at 7pm, to raise funds for the local youth organization Young Life.  This performance will humor and entertain an audience of all ages.  Turner does not perform magic tricks, he demonstrates the moves used by cardsharps intended to cheat players gambling with cards.  He can deal a wining hand to anyone, anywhere...every time.  Richard Turner's demonstrations have been featured on "That's Incredible", "Ripley's Believe It Or Not", "The 700 Club" and "The Paul Daniels Magic Show" in the USA.  Turner has been asked to lecture to international corporations as well as government agencies.  His inspirational lectures promote honesty, integrity and discipline.

Turner first picked up a deck of cards at the impressionable age of seven, after watching an episode of the late 1950s TV sensation "Maverick", featuring James Garner. On the show Maverick did a trick that Turner just had to learn.   By age 19 Richard Turner was fully immersed in cards and for the next 20 years, he practiced ten to 20 hours a day.  He worked for Bob Yerkes and Circus of the Stars when he met Dai Vernon, who then schooled him until his skills surpassed Vernon's.  Legally blind, Turner is also known for being a "touch analyst" for the United States Playing Card Company, who employed him to evaluate the texture, flexibility and cut of dozens of decks of cards.  In his illustrious career, Richard Turner has received countless awards, including the Golden Lion Award in Magic by Siegfried and Roy of Las Vegas.  To date he has performed over 80,000 shows.  Richard Turner is semi-retired but still enjoys performing for a good cause, including Young Life which in partnership with our local community churches, helps raise support for the youth living in the San Juan Mountains. 

26 August, 2009 /
[Click "Play to hear Eileen's interview with festival director Art Goodtimes]

TMF_2009Poster The 29th annual Telluride Mushroom Festival takes place Thursday August 27th through Sunday the 30th with Fungophiles from around the world attending what has been dubbed as "the nation's oldest mycological conference exploring all things fungal."  MushFest, as Telluride locals call it, is part education and part outdoor fun, with daily workshops and lectures on a variety of topics as well as forays into the mountains to search for all types of edible and some not so edible mushrooms.   There will be a tent in Elks Park, on Main Street, where anyone can bring their found mushrooms to have identified. There will be book signings, poetry readings, a vendor bazaar, drumming and dancing and the whimsical Mushroom Parade, which will take place Saturday at 5 pm beginning from Elks Park. Art Goodtimes, renowned performance poet and long time director of the Telluride Mushroom Festival, tells us what's in store this year and shares some special memories in this podcast. 

26 August, 2009 /