Beyond Telluride

[click "Play" to hear Eileen's interview with Lo Snyder]

 

By Eileen Burns

Rope, Boots and Hat Grab your cowboy hat and boots folks, The San Miguel Basin Fair and Rodeo is in town and promises to be jam packed full of events and competitions for everyone in the family.  From the adrenaline rush of a pro cowboy taking a wild and thrashing 8 second bull ride around the arena, to little Johnny next door, hanging on with sheer guts, as he tumbles through his first mutton busting competition, Norwood Colorado is the place to be this weekend.  The fair grounds are located just 40 minutes from downtown Telluride, on Wrights Mesa.  The CPRA Rodeos will take place both Friday and Saturday evenings starting at 7:00 pm.  Entry fee to Rodeo is only $9.00.  There will be plenty of vendor stands with food, pop and beer, including the kids' favorites: sno-cones and cotton candy.

Just a little reminder that the San Miguel Basin Fair and Rodeo is taking place right now down in Norwood. The festivities began at 6:00 pm on Friday, July 15th, @ the County Fairgrounds Outdoor Arena with a Greased Pig Contest - PRIZE...

Note: Our good friend, Bean, husband to beautiful Helen, son of good friend Ed Bowers - now deceased - and Jane Bowers, nephew of longtime, old time Telluride locals Jim and Kathy Bowers, crossed from this world to the next last Sunday, July 9,...

 

It's hard enough to let your child ride a motorcycle for the first time. Imagine he or she grows up to be a professional motocross stunt rider, like Chas Burbridge.

Chas and some of his friends who live on the Western Slope are coming home to Norwood for the Freestyle Motocross Exhibition on July 16 (Saturday) at the San Miguel County Fairgrounds. The event is a fundraiser for the Wright Stuff Community Foundation and its Prime Time Early Childhood Education Center. Chas and the other professional FMX team members travel all over the country and world to stage events like these, performing in front of stadiums full of thousands of people, but this show will also be a homecoming for the local boys.

You can see by looking at these two star charts from the Sky & Telescope website how much the Moon changes from day to day, night to night. It's fun to track our most intimate planetary companion across the backdrop of the fixed star...

By Tracy Shaffer

Tracy at DAM The Denver Art Museum's current offering is a mud pie for the senses. With the most basic of themes, earth, this global exhibition brings together time and place to reveal how the artist deals with dirt. Curators from around the museum present their earthenwares in ways that honor the simultaneous beauty and function of the Coors Porcelain Company's vessels, the aesthic simplicity and eternal popularity of the blue & white ceramic, and the exquisite work of Native American potter, Nampeyo, who built a name for herself and a family legacy through her creations. 

[click"Play" to hear Erik Dalton's description of River Festival]

 

RwayRiverFest11.jpg. Ridgway, Colorado, is so much more than a bedroom community for Telluride. The town is famous – or infamous – as the location for several movies, including "How the West Was Won," and one of actor John Wayne's latest and greatest, "True Grit," (1969), in which Wayne stars as Rooster Cogburn. Ridgway's True Grit Cafe is filled with John Wayne memorabilia, but as far as we know, no drunken, one-eyed federal marshals. And the Uncompaghre is a great source for trout fishing and the focus of Ridgway's fourth annual River Festival.

 

[click "Play" to listen to Jesse's interview with Alicia Stark]

 

By J James McTigue

Alicia Stark, RN-BSN, began her career as a labor and delivery nurse in a high-risk hospital in Virginia.  
She gained incredible medical experience, but realized she hadn’t learned anything about birth. This education came when she worked literally worlds away -- on the Navajo Reservation in Tuba City, Arizona.

Inspired by her experiences on the Reservation, she added certified Hypno-Birthing practitioner to her Bg-1 list of credentials.  She is excited to share the methods of hypno-birthing and what she refers to as birthing “tools” to pregnant women in and around Telluride. She will be teaching a two-day, Hypno-Birthing class, from noon to 6 p.m. on June 25th and 26th at Shantihi Yoga Studio in Ridgway. 

Prudence

By Tracy Shaffer

Sunday afternoons at the Mercury Café are always an eclectic mix with swing dance, poetry slams and tarot readings on the calendar. But last week the place levitated to a place even the Tibetan meditation class would envy. The occasion was a concert by the brilliant jazz band, Zuri, featuring the angelic voice of Prudence Mabhena, to benefit the Cunningham Foundation.

Hosted by Zuri cellist James Bailey, the event opened with some “world-inspired, improvisational, high-energy jazz”, as vibes playing percussionist Greg Tanner Harris describes the Zuri sound (I’d have gone with “jaw-dropping, eye-popping” myself), while artist Laurie Maves painted the scene on canvas for auction. Soon Prudence rolled in gracefully; the most grounded human being I’ve ever seen, with a soul that emanates from her brown/black eyes. She is pure spirit and a set of pipes that will make you believe in God.

[click "Play" to listen to Susan's conversation wih Jin Zidell]

 

JinZidell-closeup Mountainfilm in Telluride's theme, "Awareness into Action," comes to life in this story about Blue Planet Network.

December 10, 2001, just one year after the death of his wife from cancer, part-time Telluride local Jin Zidell took a walk around a lake near his home in Marin County, CA. When two runners passed by, Jin had an epiphany:

 “Around the world for safe drinking water flashed in my mind."