Events

[click "Play" to hear Ron Gilmer's conversation with Susan]

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Ron Gilmer with Brother Jeff

Ron Gilmer is affectionately known around town  as the Grand Vizer or Grand Potentate of the Telluride AIDS Benefit.

While he lived, Ron's partner Robert Presley inspired the Telluride community with his generosity, his talent as a fabric artist, and his wild and crazy ways. The man was universally loved. Even after his death from AIDS in August 1997, Robert continued to make a difference: the added complication of having AIDS in rural Colorado helped change the way state Medicaid handles virus patients. Robert was also the muse of the Telluride AIDS Benefit, started by a group of his friends in 1994 as a street dance to help  him offset his burgeoning AIDS-related medical expenses.

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Diana Mellon, scarves

Valentine shoppers be advised. The human touch rules this year, anything imbued with attitude and the scent of green, such as the work of the 15 artisans from the Four Corners region gathered at the historic Sheridan Opera House for the first Regional Arts Fair. The event takes place Saturday, February 13, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Sunday, February 14, V-Day, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.


The list of participants and their work follows:


When the going gets tough, the tough don diapers and wings and arm themselves with bows and arrows.

In 2009, Telluride's SquidShow Theatre Company produced no fewer than one full-length contemporary play, four full-length original plays, six professional play readings, and two historical adaptations from non-fiction work, a whopping 22 performances, reaching over 1,600 locals and tourists. SquidShow Theatre hit the ground running in 2010, packing the Sheridan Opera House with an unprecedented encore performance of “Inaccurate Reenactments,” its Telluride Historical Museum-sponsored hit.

And yet the Squids lost their funding from regional grants.

[click "Play" to hear Flair Robinson's conversation with Susan]

New York City Final_2_2 Upcoming at Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts: Tile Basic Mosaics taught by instructor Flair Robinson, Wednesday – Friday, February 24 – 26, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage from small pieces of colored glass, stone and other materials such as ceramic tiles for decorative purposes generally inside a home or church. The technique has been around for centuries: examples abound in pre-Islamic Persia, ancient Rome, and early Jewish and Christian cultures. Mosaics dominated church art throughout the Italian Renaissance and Baroque eras (16th and 17th centuries), but the art form is still going strong today.

[click "Play" to hear Jeb's "serious" conversation with Susan]

Jeb About 10 years ago, Telluride local, actor, comedian/talking head Jeb Berrier  was a Naked Baby, part of a comedy troupe with friends Rob Corddry, whom he first met touring with the National Shakespeare Company – yes, the Rob Corddry –  and Brian Huskey.  Corddry and Huskey are alumnae of the Upright Citizens Brigade, a Manhattan theater company where future comedy stars are processed like beef: in goes the raw meat – actors, writers, ex-lawyers and med students – and out come tightly wrapped, high-priced performers, ready for consumption by fat cat shows: "Saturday Night Live," "30 Rock," "The Daily Show," where Corddry and Ed Helms became "correspondents" and rising stars.


For people adrift at sea in their relationships, the San Miguel Resource Center is a life raft. And it was all hands on deck Saturday night, February 6, at the Telluride Conference Center in the Mountain Village for the 15th annual Chocolate Lovers' Fling, the nonprofit's only major public fundraiser.

The theme of 2010 Fling: "The Love Boat." The rationale: a mass rescue for victims of interpersonal violence. The payoff for months of hard work by the Resource Center's staff and the dedicated Fling committee: a sea of people surrounding an island of chocolate, representing a show of hands from locals and guests and most of all from the professional chefs, who generously offer their talent and time to the cause.

Participating chefs, all winners in the opinion of Telluride Inside... and Out:

[click "Play" to hear Meehan Fee's conversation with Susan]

CL 2010 Poster FINAL 020210 Experts define abuse as anything from a vague feeling something is wrong to violence. The San Miguel Resource Center is the Telluride region's one-stop shop for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, serving roughly 200 unduplicated clients a year in a population base of about 6,000, spanning the area between southwestern Colorado’s San Miguel County and the western end of Montrose County.


Help for the Center's clients includes a wide range of services in English and Spanish: community outreach/education, crisis intervention, professionally facilitated support groups, advocacy (to help clients with court services, employers, housing, transportation).


IMG_0792 Telluride's KOTO  Community radio continues its winter fundraising campaign with the 5th annual KOTO Cribbage Tournament. The event takes place at The Cornerhouse Grille, 131 Fir Street, February 10,  starting at 6:30 p.m.

The invention of Cribbage is attributed to the poet Sir John Suckling (1609 - 1642) by his biographer, John Aubrey. According to one online source, Suckling was an equal opportunity scoundrel, an expert at cards, dice and bowls and a womanizer. His most notorious scam involved distributing marked cards to English aristos and then traveling the country challenging the local gentry to Cribbage. In the end, Suckling sucked the suckers dry, earning around £20,000  or about £4 million in today's money. Suckling's wayward lifestyle, however, led to his untimely demise. In 1642, the guy allegedly became involved in a plot to free the Earl of Stafford from the Tower of London. In an effort to escape the consequences of his actions, Suckling fled to Paris, where he committed suicide by poisoning at the age of 32, his only legacy: a card game.

[click "Play" to hear Kristin Holbrook's suggestions about "Fling" costumes]

Kristin Holbrook of San MIguel Resource Center and on the committee for the nonprofit's 15th annual Chocolate Lovers' Fling, its only public fundraiser. The event takes place Saturday, February 6, 7:30  – 11:30 p.m., at the Telluride Conference Center in the Mountain Village.


Is-1 Since 1994, the Center has supported victims of domestic violence and sexual assault living in the Telluride region. The idea is to help clients help themselves to form a loving relationship, first with #1, and then, perhaps, with a new, healthy, supportive partner. This year's party theme is "Love Boat." From 1977 – 1986, viewers set a course for romantic adventure when "The Love Boat," aka The Pacific Princess, sailed onto their TV screens and into their living rooms.

[click "Play" to hear Sergio Gonzalez talk about SMRC, the Fling, and Telluride Pizza Kitchen]

 
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Sergio Gonzalez

The San Miguel Resource Center is the Telluride region's only nonprofit in the business of eliminating domestic violence and sexual assault. The upcoming Chocolate Lovers' Fling is the Center's only public fundraiser.


Chocolate’s history dates back at least 1,500 years, when the Mayans of Central America crushed cocoa beans into an unsweetened beverage. Closer to home, last year tests of cylindrical clay jars found in the ruins of Chaco Canyon confirmed the presence of theobromine, a cacao marker. Researchers now believe the ancestors of modern Pueblo people of the Southwest used the jars to drink liquid chocolate. Years later in Europe, chocolate was prescribed for depression and made into love and death potions. (Its bitter flavor masked poisons.) You are in good company if you find the allure of chocolate irresistible. (Cravings may be in part be attributed to the natural chemicals in chocolate, including theobromine, thought to produce feelings of well being.) But did you know chocolate is good for you in other ways? According to the Harvard Women's Health Watch, over the past 10 year chocolate has undergone an extreme makeover from "fattening indulgence" to "health food."