November 2010

by Lisa Barlow

ShopsinsL93 (2) One of the things I love most about living over the F train in Brooklyn is that I am never hungry for very long. All I have to do is think about lunch and in the space of 15 minutes, I might have traveled from my quiet kitchen to the cacophonous din of the Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side where I will be sitting at the counter at Shopsins eating the best chicken soup of my life.

Kenny Shopsin is legendary in New York. With his big girth and wild look, he is half culinary wizard and half troll under the bridge. For years he bellicosely presided over a storefront on Bedford Street in Greenwich Village that simply said “GROCERY” over the door, but everyone referred to as Kenny’s or Shopsins.

In my twenties, eating lunch at Shopsins became something of a regular occurrence. The restaurant was originally a real grocery store, but it had morphed one day into a grocery store that served food. There were a few tables next to the shelves of canned goods, a window booth, stools along the counter and an upright piano where it wasn’t uncommon to see one of the Shopsins' 5 kids or a customer banging at the keys. Kenny was behind the counter tossing ingredients into pans and onto plates. His wife, Eve, was alternately bussing dishes and hoisting a baby onto her hip as she served a burger. There would also be a fair amount of yelling, which was fine unless it was directed at you. And if there wasn’t yelling, there was bound to be something else to shock.

[click "Play" to hear Scott Doser talk about this new Community Cinema sreies]

 

11-17 Film Deep Down Telluride's five-star Wilkinson Public Library has partnered with ITVS, co-presenter of the Emmy-winning Independent Lens PBS TV series, to present Community Cinema. The FREE monthly series begins Wednesday, November 17, 6 p.m. with "Deep Down," a film by Jen Gilomen and Sally Rubin about a community battle over a proposed mountaintop removal coal mine.

Independent Lens is an indie film fest designed to be delivered into the comfort of your home via PBS. Films come in all flavors: feature-length documentaries, comic shorts, highly experimental. The thread that binds is the spirit that drives the filmmakers, relentless visionaries who tend to ignore conventional rules of the road in pursuit of stories about people not normally seen on TV and little-known worlds. It's a whole different spin on the notion of reality TV.
 

  SolarHeart2 A few days after our return to Telluride from our Fall travels, Susan and I needed to spend some time at our place in Denver. Not that being in Denver is a chore: our home here is beautiful and there are friends we enjoy being with.

Yesterday I decided to do a couple of things that had been on my mind, but time is usually a little short when we come to Denver. I hadn't thought about it specifically, but as it turned out, my two stops were very much related.

The first stop was at Boulder's Cool Energy. I had a great conversation with President/CEO Sam Weaver last July, and wanted to check in. Cool Energy is working on an electrical power generation system using low heat from solar and waste heat sources. It was fascinating to see the working model of the Stirling heat engine that is central to the process. Weaver was away on business but Leslie Weise, Vice President of Business Development did a good job showing me the operation and catching me up on recent developments. Thanks also to the engineering staff for showing off the equipment.

Awareness into Action: Galamsey David Byars and Jenny Jacobi left last year's Mountainfilm with the same inspiration and desire to do good that many take away from Telluride's film and philanthropy festival. Not wanting to lose this feeling, they began a serious campaign to...

[click "Play" to hear Ashley's take on big jewelry]   Telluride's weather changes at least as quickly as the mood of our country's electorate. Quicker. So we have all become accustomed to the concept of layering. But Ashley Deppen of Telluride's ever popular Two...

November 11 to 18, 2010
Visible Planets: Morning: Venus and Saturn  Evening: Mercury, Mars and Jupiter

Venus Peace and Libra Harmony, Inside and Out

Handshake Venus has returned as a morning star, and for those who rise before dawn, it’s a magnificently beautiful celestial treat. Currently retrograding  through the late degrees of light and lovely Libra, we are being briefly shimmered with vibrations of sweet balance and heavenly grace. It’s an energy that encourages us to find the common ground, shared intention and mutual benefit in our relationships – for the good of all concerned – cultivate tranquility and promote peace.

Heart Tree But out in the world, we discover this to be more fantasy than reality, a seemingly impossible ideal and vanishing species amongst the chaos and contention of political polarities, the distinct layers of economic and social strata and the age-old power plays of ego and self-interest. It’s both challenging and difficult to float upon the calm waters of inner serenity when the waves are choppy, the ocean rages and tsunamis threaten. Venus in Libra loves harmony, seeks justice and emanates equality. It gravitates toward beauty and art, glorifies cooperation and finds comfort in solidarity. How then, can we embrace and manifest inner and outer peace amidst the raging ideological battles and social, political, personal and religious wars running rampant on the planet?

Hereafter_smallposter Secretariat_smallposter2-1 Telluride's Nugget Theatre is showing "Secretariat" (rated PG) and "Hereafter" (rated PG-13) the week of Friday, November 12 through Thursday, November 18, with a Telluride Film Festival screening of "Waiting for Superman" (PG)as the late show on Thursday.

"Secretariat" tells the story of the great racehorse who won the Triple Crown in 1973, the first such win in 25 years. Secretariat was thought to be strongest at shorter lengths, but won the Belmont by an astonishing 31 lengths. The film faithfully follows the true story.

Clint Eastwood directs "Hereafter", probably a good enough reason to see a movie that speculates about what happens when we die. The movie isn't didactic on the subject of an afterlife.

Waitingforsuperman_smallposter The Telluride Film Festival presents "Waiting for Superman", a documentary about what is wrong with the educational system in the US, and issues a call to action to help the situation.

For movietimes, see below; and check the Nugget website for trailer and reviews.

Editor's note: For eight years, Telluride local/mountaineer Ben Clark and a few friends/professional colleagues have made Spring treks to the majestic Himalayas. Follow his adventures on Telluride Inside... and Out, including links to his regular podcasts. If you have missed any of Ben's posts, just type "Ben Clark" into Lijit Search to find them all.

-2 We made it, we skied it, we are done in under two weeks with one ascent and one amazing descent. Our goal, to follow our noses to some of the best snow in Nepal, has been a success. Our summit day on Thorung peak occurred four days ago and we now sit in the comfort of Pokhara Nepal, 19,000 feet lower.

 

by Lisa Barlow

Tomato PIes2 My favorite all time surprise present wasn’t a big fat check or anything shiny under the Christmas tree. It was a pizza…a large clam pizza that had traveled 75 miles in the trunk of a car to reach me, stiff and cold in a grease-stained box. I couldn’t have been more happily startled than if it had been a bouquet of roses or a string of pearls. My dad, the inspired giver, knew exactly how to cheer up a housebound new mother with a colicky infant.
 
Pepe’s Pizza, for those of you who have never been to New Haven, CT, is the Holy Grail of tomato pies. That’s arguable, of course, and I’ve had many a heated discussion while rooting for my team pie. In fact, in the old days when I was a student in New Haven, one of the great distinguishers was “Sally’s or a Pepe’s?” I was a Sally’s girl then, with a favorite booth and a favorite Frank song on the jukebox. Sinatra had his favorite booth there too. Though I never saw him in the restaurant, a laminated photo of Ol’ Blue Eyes was framed above the seat closest to the cash register.