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Author: Susan Viebrock

[click "Play" to hear Susan's interview with Scott Blossom]

Scott Blossom and Chandra Easton arrive in Telluride from Tara Mandala just outside Pagosa Springs, where the husband and wife team teach a week-long workshop on the subject of "Shadow Yoga and Buddhist Meditation: the Pranic Pathway to Stillness," June 30 – July 7. All day on the opening day of the Telluride Yoga Festival, July 8, the couple teach an abridged version of the intensive for those interested in learning a set of practices for circulating and preparing the vital energies (prana) for meditation. They are also on the schedule with a variety of classes for all levels of practitioners throughout the long weekend.


Scott-2-IMG_0211e-print Scott Blossom was the very first  yoga instructor and therapist to sign on the dotted line when Telluride Yoga festival founder Aubrey Hackman needed a respected "brand name" in the industry to attract other high profile teachers to her nascent event. Blossom is also traditional Chinese medical practitioner and Ayurvedic consultant. A premise fundamental to Ayurveda is that all living things are innately interdependent. What sealed the deal for him three years ago was the fact the Yoga Fest would be a zero waste weekend and 25 percent of net profits would be donated to a local environmental non-profit. Blossom is now a Telluride Yoga Festival board member.

Scott is scheduled to teach an Introduction to Shadow Yoga, the Hatha lineage founded by his yoga maser Zhander Remete, a practice for Balancing our Inner Fire, and a session on Healing and Strengthening Bones, Joints and Nerves.

06 July, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Susan's interview with Jim Riley]

Sunset Show Summer traffic in the Telluride region is generally concentrated in our box canyon: the town of Telluride is central ops for all the major festivals, which tend, however, to concentrate their activities over long weekends. Mid-week the action shifts "uptown" to Telluride's sister town, the Mountain Village, where every summer Wednesday night, 6 p.m. rain or shine, the Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association presents the Summer Concert Series.

In its 11th year, the popular program draws on average 1,500 – 2,000 music lovers to the grassy slope known as Sunset Plaza at the top of the Chondala (Lift 1), where everyone seems to enjoy an opportunity to catch up with one another as much as revel in the sounds.
05 July, 2010 /

Lama Tsultrim Allione is among the presenters at the 3rd annual Telluride Yoga Festival, all deeply knowledgeable in the field of transformative practices, but primarily Yoga. Lama Tsultrim is the exception. She does not teach Yoga or the related science, Ayurveda. Lama Tsultrim...

05 July, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Susan's conversation with Dr. Cohen]

Mark-cohen-skull-02 Like the Telluride Musicfest  (just over) and the Telluride Playwrights Festival (ongoing this week through July 13) the Telluride Science Research Center (TSRC) is another of the towns well-kept secrets, despite the stature of the participants. The Research Center's mission: to inspire substantive scientific inquiry, breakthroughs, and discoveries by hosting scientific meetings in an open environment conducive to productive collaboration and positive contributions to research, policy, and education. To those ends, TSRC has provided meeting services for top scientists, who have met in the Telluride region every summer since 1984.

The Pinhead Institute, dedicated to teaching young people and adults bio-literacy, and TSRC collaborate from time to time, for example, to present Tuesday night Town Talks, 6 – 7:15 p.m., a program in its eighth year.
04 July, 2010 /
[Scott, Nancy and Elisabeth discuss the Dalai Lama's birthday party; click "Play"]

"For as long as space endures / And for as long as living beings remain / Until then may I too abide / To dispel the misery of the world," the Dalai Lama's daily prayer.

Newsletter 13 Telluride's five-star Wilkinson Public Library is throwing an all-day birthday party. The guest of honor is a man born Lhamo Dhondrub on July 6, 1935 to a humble farming family in the village of Takster in northeastern Tibet. At age two, this man was proclaimed the tulku or rebirth of the 13th Dalai Lama. He is now His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, living in India as the spiritual head of a government-in-exile along with the 80,000 exiles who followed him.

04 July, 2010 /
[To hear Paul Dujardin's conversation with Susan, click "Play"]

BIT fire, fixing hose
Volunteer Firemen, BIT fire

In a matter of speaking, President John Adams may be the man responsible for Telluride's Fourth of July celebration. In a letter to his wife Abigail written July 3, 1776, Adams wrote:

  “The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, funs, bells, bonfires, and illumination from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”
03 July, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Greg LaRock's interview with Susan]

LaRock, Greg - Eight O'Clock Alley - 8 bit The Sheridan Arts Foundation's Telluride Plein Air is a robust weekend of fine art and music, culminating over the Fourth of July weekend starting July 2 with a Quick Draw and Sale, 10:30 am – 12 p.m.; the Oak Street Park gala premiere and silent auction,  5 – 8 p.m. and  gala concert featuring Janis Joplin's original band, Big Brother & the Holding Company, 8 p.m. (The sale of works by Telluride Plein Air artists continues throughout the weekend, interrupted only by the Fourth of July parade, 11 –  noon.)

Telluride Plein Air traces its lineage across the pond to the end of the 19th century.
02 July, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Susan's podcast with David Brankley]

The BeanMountainfilm Telluride celebrates the First Thursday of every month with the Telluride Council's for the Arts & Humanities' ArtWalk, a meet-and-greet on the street to experience the town's fine art and retail scene. (Stores stay open late until 8 p.m.) All participating venues are on or within walking distance of Main Street. For a list of what's going on where, go to www.telluridearts.org.


For the July ArtWalk, the spotlight is on artist David Brankley, whose concise, compelling paintings are on display at The Telluride Council for the Arts & Humanities'  Stronghouse Studios, 283 South Fir (one block south of the Village Market). The artist's reception is from 5 – 8 p.m.
01 July, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Lucy Boody's conversation with Susan]

Lucyboody Amy Jean Boebel is on a roll. All summer long the owner of Sapsucker Studios, 299 Sputh Spruce, is displaying the work of remarkable women like herself. In June, it was Ally Crilly's elephants. In July, it is Lucy Boody's scarf art, the artist's first one-woman show.

Lucy Boody was once upon a time the Town of Telluride's dogcatcher, a job she "co-chaired" with Michael Saftler. But there is a little more to her story than jailing our furry friends.

01 July, 2010 /