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Author: Susan Viebrock

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Birthday Cakes for Vivien and Clint

The Residencia Historica is located just a few kilometers from the toy town of Marchihue and 40 minutes from the much larger Santa Cruz in Chile’s Colchagua Valley. Colchagua is one of the centers of the country’s rapidly growing wine industry and the Chilean outpost of blue chip labels such as Domaines Barons de Rothschild-Lafite. We first visited the place in 2005, when it was still a work- in- progress.

When Vivien Jones and her partner Silvio Castelli discovered what has become the hotel six years ago, the sprawling 18th-century home had seen better days. The bones remained, but they were buried in a tangle of old eucalyptus trees. Dead fruit trees and the thorns of roses tortured the grounds like a hair suit. Undaunted, the couple pursued a vision that can only be described as a labor of love: the promising wreck received the makeover it deserved. The result is a fabulous boutique hotel, where old and new artfully co-exist. To celebrate, on November 8 Vivien threw a joint birthday bash, a traditional Chilean BBQ or asada, for herself and Clint.

01 December, 2008 /

Take a left turn out of Telluride and people wind up some place wonderful in the great wide world, where they do wonderful things in a state of wonderment. That’s part of what we mean by the “Out” in the name of our blog: we will be documenting Telluriders when they are out and about having fun, making a difference.  

Local landscape designer Elisabeth Gick and Judge Sharon Shuteran both recently traveled to the Far East, as tourists and ambassadors of goodwill.

30 November, 2008 /

Kicker: 2009 season features “The Sound of Music” and “Taming of the Shrew”

When the New York Shakespeare Festival staged its adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” the director had Petruchio and Kate go toe-to-toe against the backdrop of the Wild West. Coincidently, the misogynistic romp opened on Broadway in July 1990 at almost exactly the same time a new theatre company was born in a small Western town that had long ago shed its chaps and buckskin – save for a few crusty old goats and cowboy wannnabes.

Nineteen years later, in June, 2009, the Telluride Repertory Theatre plans to mount its version of the sassy battles of the sexes, reinserting a linchpin in the town’s summer entertainment calendar: Free Shakespeare in the Park.

22 November, 2008 /

Once upon a long time ago, her former husband, Bunzy Bunworth,
tried to convince his brand new bride to leave the East coast and head West to a ski town in the mountains. Reading up on her prospective new home, Suzan Beraza was pleased to discover that Telluride had a theatre. Being an ambitious and hardworking young actress, she decided to jumpstart her new life by sending along an 8x10 head shot and a resume.

15 November, 2008 /

The late Steve Butts, who fell victim to an avalanche while skiing in Canada in 2005, dreamed of introducing people to the unique lifestyle of Telluride. Telluride Properties became his means to that end. Steve’s spirit remains top of mind as his brokers/friends continue to carry the torch he lit.

Now 22 years old, Telluride Properties has long been recognized as a marketing innovator among industry leaders and its peers. “Truly Telluride” is the company’s award-winning publication.

The magazine began modestly as a 20-page booklet. Today, “Truly Telluride” features 50 pages of the region’s finest real estate offerings and candid stories about residents who spice up the town.

For its fourth issue, Telluride Properties’ marketing director, Wendy McKeever, asked me to write about three part-time locals: Richard Holbrooke, Ed Barlow, and Bonnie Cohen. “Full-Time Change Makers, Part-Time Telluriders” profiles three extraordinary individuals, who have lived very different lives and have strikingly different personalities, but share an understanding that blessings come with obligations: each is a dedicated philanthropist/activist committed to making a difference in the world.   

Look for “Truly Telluride” on the newsstands around Thanksgiving.

08 November, 2008 /

African_children_5 The news we get out of Africa is generally one-sided and not good. In America, “Africa” spells “t-r-o-u-b-l-e”: AIDS, malaria, genocide, impasse in Zimbabwe, fighting in the Congo, slavery in West Africa. Although the continent is comprised of 54 distinct countries, we tend to think of it as a monolith conjoined to the word “darkest,” suggesting a backward, dangerous, remote corner of the world where hope disappears in dense jungles. But hope is not dead – far from it. Signs of hope are headed our way in the form of The African Children’s Choir.

04 November, 2008 /

Meredith Nemirov has always painted her mind, and she is known for saying a mouthful in a few strokes – or words.

“To stand and face a whole landscape, to paint ‘en plein air’ and make a painting capturing the scene on a two-dimensional surface in a relatively short period of time is rigorous, but that’s what we artists are driven to do day after day: we interpret our world to find our place in it.”

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For the last four years, Meredith has participated in the Sheridan Arts Foundation’s vetted “Plein Air” exhibition, an event that happens annually over the Fourth of July weekend. In 2007, she was chosen as one of the Top Ten Artists. Last summer, she was the winner of the “quick draw.”

28 October, 2008 /

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Valerie Madonia

The notion of dance in Telluride was not new before Valerie Madonia arrived on the scene.

In the 1970s, Jeri McAndrews, a New York transplant and modern dancer, settled in town and taught modern, jazz, and ballet in what is now the Elementary School cafeteria.

In 1978, McAndrews also founded the first (and only) Telluride Dance Festival.

In the 1980s, Shirley Fortenberry and Leslie Crane taught ballet to young and older. It was “Miss Shirley” who put “The Nutcracker” back in our town’s Christmas.

27 October, 2008 /

A little canoodling between two local nonprofits is not a bad thing – especially when considering the alternatives, such as more nail-biting over the kerfuffle on Wall Street.

The Telluride Choral Society and the Telluride Dance Academy offer a gentler, more melodic alternative to the drum roll leading up to Tuesday’s presidential election: their upcoming MasterWorks concert, “A Celebration of the Seasons,” should be a refreshing pause from the headlines in general.

27 October, 2008 /

Ok, maybe not Seattle exactly, but across the lake in Bellevue, last night Clint and I hooked up with part-time Telluride local and former Mountainfilm director Arlene Chester Burns at the Bellevue Art Museum. The get-together was to celebrate the opening of an exhibition of...

17 October, 2008 /