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August 2010

IMGP1428 After a five-year hiatus, the Telluride Repertory Theatre at last was able to bring back Shakespeare in the Park. "Merchant of Venice" opened Saturday night. 7:30 p.m. on the Main Stage in Telluride Town Park. Performances continue Wednesday, August 25 – Sunday, August 29. (The performance on Saturday, August 28, however, is a 1 p.m. matinee.)

Local actor-turned-director Jeb Berrier's choice of "The Merchant of Venice" to relaunch one the REP's most popular series was a bit like deciding to run a marathon after an extended illness. The material in this dark comedy is challenging to say the least, dealing as it does with racial profiling in the person of Shylock, whom the Bard portrays in a somewhat grotesque, anti-Semitic caricature. Shakespeare, however, specializes in shades of gray, begging the question: Is Shylock meant to be victim or villain?
23 August, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Art Goodtimes' take on the Mushroom Festival]

IMG_5180 "The mushrooms have two strange properties: the one that they yield so delicious a meat; the other that they come up so hastily, as in a night, and yet they are unsown," Francis Bacon, "Naturall Histories," 1624.

Probably the best mushroom harvest in years has upped the ante for the 30th Annual Telluride Mushroom Festival, Aug. 26-29.

Wild mushrooms have always prompted wild debate, because they make great eats, but also can kill you. In some parts of the world – Telluride is one such address - mushrooms are prized for their culinary properties. But elsewhere on the map, mycophobes associate fungi with witches and serpents oh my.
22 August, 2010 /

IMGP1420Friday afternoon in Telluride, Tim Erdman called: Did we want to go mushroom hunting with him Saturday morning? Robert Allen and Susie Coit would be joining us as well. We had never hunted with Tim but enjoy his company, so why not. Turns out he is as addicted to the hunt as we are, so even when we all agreed it was well past time for lunch, we couldn't resist adding more mushrooms to an already impressive stash.

The Telluride Mushroom Festival takes place next weekend, so we got a bit of a jump on the event. When the word goes out in Telluride that boletes are everywhere, it's time to be in the hills.

21 August, 2010 /

I find it endlessly interesting watching Cottonwood Ranch and Kennel's Ted Hoff at work with dogs. The underlying technique is almost always the same: patience; reward in the form of physical and audible praise, but only for correct performance. Ted doesn't...

20 August, 2010 /
August 19 to 26, 2010

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

Awakening and Change Afloat on an Ocean of Emotion

Red sunset Planet Uranus, the Great Awakener, has recently moved in and out of Aries - the very first sign of the tropical zodiac – and, in so doing, has awakened us to what’s up in the road ahead. Aries is the sign of primal instinct, self-awareness and survival. Aries is ruled by the “red-planet” Mars – ancient god of war and champion of desire – and is the sign most associated with new beginnings, fresh cycles, initiation, motivation and action. It is a positive, masculine sign of cardinal modality, the energy of pursuit and prey, passion, competition, exertion and assertion. Whenever a planet moves into Aries, we enter new territory and explore new frontiers. It’s also a time of rebirth and recovery, when we are called upon to reincarnate or regenerate what has died or disappeared, been destroyed or fallen into dysfunction. It heralds the revival of important ideas and forces, as well as a period of broad and significant individual and collective change.

20 August, 2010 /
As a school girl, Telluride local Barbel Hacke received only F’s in English class. It was only heartache, of Berlin Wall proportions, that sent her packing for America to find refuge with her friend, and fellow German, Elizabeth Gick.

27 Throughout Telluride’s history, this remote box canyon has served as a mecca for immigrants running from home, searching for riches or following follies. The place has been a magnet for those in search of adventure and a path less traveled.



19 August, 2010 /
[to hear Erin Neff's conversation with Susan, click "Play"]

And now for something completely different.

Cabaret ad costume party The 37th annual Telluride Chamber Music Festival meets "Cabaret." The event takes place Friday, August 20, 7:30 p.m. at the historic Sheridan Opera House. In keeping with the decadence of the period in Germany before the rise of Hitler, the evening begins with a champagne reception and ends with sweets. Guests are asked to come in costume, although Telluride chic works just fine for the aristos in the crowd.

The culture of Germany's Weimar Republic, 1918-1933, encompassed the political caricature of Otto Dix and George Grosz, the beginnings of the far-reaching Bauhaus movement in architecture and interior design and the decadent cabaret culture of Berlin, documented by Christopher Isherwood in "Goodbye to Berlin," the book that became the musical "Cabaret." Cabarets, concert halls and conservatories performed the atonal and modern music of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Kurt Weill, like the other arts, declared decadent under the Reich.
18 August, 2010 /

Cyrus_smallposter The movie schedule at Telluride's Nugget Theatre for the week of Friday, August 20 through Thursday, August 26 is a busy one, including a Telluride Film Festival presentation of "Cyrus" on August 26.

"Inception" (PG13), carried over from last week, continues through Wednesday, August 25.

The early movie for Friday and Saturday is "Ramona and Beezus" (G), based on the characters created by novelist Beverly Cleary and set in Portland, OR. This should be a good one for the younger set: Ramona is a 9 year old whirlwind, causing chaos, yet remaining untouched at the eye of the storm.

18 August, 2010 /

Joe Kimm never got to Telluride. But he should have, he would have loved it. Joe is a pioneer pilot with Northwest Airlines, now retired for 39 years, father of my first wife Barbara, and who played no small part in my having...

18 August, 2010 /