Author: Susan Viebrock

[Click "Play" button to hear Susan's interview with Barclay Daranyi about eating locally]

The New Community Coaltion has asked "Telluride Inside...and Out" to function as its primary mouthpiece for dynamic information about its many initiatives as Kris Holstrom and her team develop programs for the greening of the region.

Kris is a farmer, the owner of Tomtem Farms and the organizer of the Farmer's Market that begins in town in mid-June and lasts into the early fall. For our town's Earth Mother, food plays a major role in her overall strategy for regional resilience.  And in that world, locally Indian Ridge Farm and Bakery is a major player.

Indian Ridge Farm and Bakery was born in 1999 when Tony and Barclay Daranyi purchased 100 acres of land in Norwood, Colorado from Loey Ringquist. The land was sold to them below market value because Loey believed in the vision of sustainable agriculture and community supported farms.  Since then, the farm has grown into a CSA that feeds over 60 families, a pastured poultry operation, including a state inspected processing plant, and a thriving bakery.  The farm also raises pastured pork, several layer hen flocks, some beef and dairy goats. Every summer the farm welcomes 3-4 interns who learn hands-on the joys and challenges of small farming.

[click "Play" button to hear Susan's interview with Sally Strand]

The First Thursday Art Walk, produced by the Telluride Council for the Arts and Humanities, has become a highlight of the town’s high seasons of winter and summer. Galleries, studios and shops stay open late until eight to showcase the goods. Check out the scene at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, where  Sally Strand has a one-woman show. (in 2007, Strand was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Pastel Society of America.)

Stalwart green apples keep company with a green plant, perched like sentries on a windowsill, while gleaming white cups cavort with a gang of tangerines. An unmade bed welcomes the morning light. A door opens into a private world we can only imagine. We follow the light.

Elsewhere people go about their daily routines. A woman sits lost in a book while another, much younger, buffs up the floors of a café to prepare for  lunchtime traffic. A gaggle of chefs, elbow to elbow, hussle dinner.

 


At Lustre, 171 South Pine:

Gurhan @ Lustre At this Thursday's Art Walk, Telluride’s Lustre Gallery is hosting a trunk show of Gurhan’s bling blockbusters. The designer's claim to fame is pioneering the revival of 24-karat gold, transforming the ancient metal into fine, contemporary jewelry.

“Gurhan is unique in his use of 24-karat gold, which is often considered too soft a metal to manipulate. After spending 18 months closeted in a small workshop in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, Gurhan rediscovered ancient metalsmithing techniques, some over 7000 years old, and improved upon them: pure gold is hand-worked, aged through a heating process, and given a stable form, resulting in a beautiful work of art,” said Christine Reich, co-owner of Lustre.

The Sheridan Arts Foundation's Young People's Theatre presents "Grease" this weekend at Telluride's Sheridan Opera House. The show runs Feb 6-8 (Fri-Sun) at 6:00 pm.

"Grease" is a jumping, jitterbugging and leaping, rocking and rolling spoof of 1950s teen innocence chockablock with songs you can whistle, tunes that recall the Buddy Holly hiccups, the Little Richard yodels, and the Elvis bumps and grinds that made the sounds of the era such a gas.

The enduring musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey is essentially a series of lively vignettes about black leather and shiny cars, satin pink and pajama parties, drive-ins, ear-piercing, smoking, wine-chugging, and dating. Home base, Rydell High is Never Never Land with classrooms, where classes are breaks between dances and hanging around in the hall.

Police Inspector: “What can a slumdog possibly know?”
Jamal: [quietly] “The answers.

Nominated for 10 Academy Awards – film, director, cinematography, editing, original score, sound editing, sound mixing, adapted screenplay, and two for original song – "Slum Dog Millionaire" opens at Telluride's Nugget Theatre on Friday, February 6 and 8:30 p.m. nightly through Thursday, February 12, just before the Valentine Day weekend.

"Slum Dig Millionaire" is a valentine to the underdogs of the world who have not lost heart or hope  – and that describes a lot of us who still choose to see the glass half full in challenging times.

"Slum Dog" is "Rocky," "Breaking Away," and "Cinderella" rolled up into one Dickensian fantasy about the American Dream outsourced to India.

[click "Play" button to hear interview with Nancy Anderson]

The SMRC Angels left to right- Melanie Montoya, Nicole Hagan, Melissa Sumpter, Nancy Anderson, Angela Goforth, Lauren Shaddox
Melanie Montoya, Nicole Hagan, Melissa Sumpter,
Nancy Anderson, Angela Goforth, Lauren Shaddox

On Saturday night, February 7, 7:30 – 11:30 p.m., the San Miguel Resource Center holds its annual “Chocolate Lovers Fling,” an all-out bash and the nonprofit’s only major public fundraiser.

Supporting the Fling means help is on the way for you, a family member, or a neighbor should a call to the organization’s hotline ever become necessary.

The organization generates fully 1/3 of its annual budget from the Fling and counts on the generosity of contributors and the success of the event to be able to offer innovative services from these discretionary funds.

[ click to hear the interview with Maegan Boyce]

  Picture 006
Maegan and Peaks
co-worker Zabe James

The San Miguel Resource Center is a small nonprofit with only five employees, yet it provides a menu of services of  that includes:

Short-term counseling
Follow-up contact
Support group treatment
Emergency shelter/safehouse
Information and referral
Criminal justice system support
Personal and legal advocacy
Emergency financial assistance
Emergency housing assistance
Safety planning 
Children’s art alchemy

  [ Click to hear Susan's interview with Jessica Forsyth] 

  Chip image
The CHIP team

It was the wish of the Telluride AIDS Benefit’s muse, Robert Presley, to keep WestCAP healthy. The community-based referral, advocacy and service provider helped him in his fight against AIDS and remains of paramount importance to everyone on the Western Slope living with HIV/AIDS. TAB’s largesse, however, extends beyond WestCAP, its primary beneficiary, to Denver, where over the years the nonprofit has been able to give thousands of dollars to the Children’s Hospital Immunodeficiency Program or CHIP.

CHIP began providing specialized care for HIV+ children in the Rocky Mountain region in 1991. CHIP remains the only entity in the region providing comprehensive, coordinated, family-centered services to infants, children, youth (13-24), pregnant women, and parents of HIV-infected children.

 Since 1977, the San Juan Mountains have been the site of an annual cultural event produced by the Telluride Society for Jazz. The Telluride Jazz Celebration combines performances on outdoor stages in during the day with theater and club shows at night: the best of both worlds.  With its new dates in June, which coincides with the 26th annual  Telluride Balloon Rally, the weekend event becomes even more colorful.

"Jazz means a certain kind of spontaneous interaction on stage and off. Because of how small we are, any impact on our home, Telluride, is positive," said Paul Machado, impresario, the Telluride Jazz Celebration. "At its improvisational center,  jazz in town is so good it makes your ears smile.

"Featured artists typically represent a tangle of styles  and rhythms that add up to one unforgettable experience in sound.

[click to hear Susan's interview with Andrew Currie of E2]

  Robert F Kennedy Jr on carpet
Robert F. Kennedy, jr.

Environmental Entrepreneurs or E2 is a national community of business professionals who work towards developing economically beneficial solutions to top priority environmental issues. Specifically E2's diverse membership of about 850 nationally works in tandem with the Natural Resources Defense Council, lending the voices of experience needed to advance sound environmental policy based on the economic merits.

E2's bottom line: It is not business versus the environment. It is business and the environment.

The synergies between E2 and our region's The New Community Coalition are obvious: both organizations recognize that quality interactions among members of a community are key to identifying, coordinating, and implementing sustainable projects that secure our future locally, regionally, and nationally.