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[click "Play", Nina Tumbas talks about why she works with the TAB fashion show]

363224895306_0_ALB Toss the rule book when it comes to Telluride. We make up our own. Witness the theme of the 2010 Telluride AIDS Benefit fashion show: "Out of your comfort zone. Step out of the box." Expect the unexpected, as expected.


The ideal female fashion model is tall, long-legged, and lean. Their minimum height is usually about 5'8"+ and average weight, between 108-125 lbs.  Generally speaking they are sent to the glue factory past 22. Not in Telluride. In Telluride models come in all shapes, sizes and ages. On the runway of the Telluride AIDS Benefit fashion show, the highlight of a week of outreach and education, talks, HIV screening, and a major art auction, you find an equal mix swizzle sticks and classic egg timers (in and out shapes). At the Telluride AIDS Benefit fashion show, brains meets beauty, personality rules the night, and fashion meets compassion: Enter Nina Tumbas.

18 February, 2010 /


The Telluride AIDS Benefit's Student Fashion Show, February 18, 6 pm., The Palm, is a warm up to the Big Event on February 27 at the Telluride Conference Center in the Mountain Village. But what is true of the gala fashion show is true of the teen event: beneath the sizzle, the through line is the persistence of the pandemic and the need for ongoing support of those with HIV/AIDS and their families and prevention education to keep everyone else safe.

The Telluride AIDS Benefit's Grand Vizer, Ron Gilmer, has been on a soapbox for years: he believes there should be Telluride AIDS Benefity events in communities around the world to help stop the spread of the disease. TAB board member/longtime student activist-educator Sandy McLaughlin wholeheartedly agrees. Year after year Sandy leads TAB's education initiative at the she want them to do more than listen. She want kids to hear. To get it. One who does is Sandy's daughter Mia, a graduating senior/ peer educator like all the models and 2010 Student Fashion Show director.

17 February, 2010 /
[click "Play" to listen to Susan's interview with Marla Hodes]

BABY HEART BEAT_Keener Of the Telluride AIDS Benefit's  (February 18 – March 1) half dozen beneficiaries, several are out of Africa, including the Ethiopian Family Fund.

Ethiopia is the fourth poorest nation in the world. However, unlike many African countries, Ethiopians, who divide among Muslim, Jewish and Orthodox Christian, peacefully co-exist. Given the rampant poverty and wholesale lack of education, HIV risk is high and medications are very limited. According to UN estimates, about 3 million Ethiopians have been exposed to the AIDS virus, with over 600,000 children made orphans and one-third of Ethiopia's hospital beds used by carriers of the disease.

16 February, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Molly Wickwire Sante's comments about TAB Fashion Show]

N1320290710_30358857_6811191 Fashion is the stuff dreams are made of. AIDS is the stuff of nightmares. Fashion is fantasy; the disease: harsh reality. Fashion celebrates youthful bodies and upbeat attitudes. AIDS ravages both.

In Telluride, AIDS and fashion share equal billing on the runway at the Telluride AIDS Benefit Fashion Show, a reminder of how quickly the game can change.

The fashion show is the highlight of a week of prevention education and outreach, HIV testing and an art auction, all designed to raise awareness and funds to support six beneficiaries on the Western Slope, the Front Range, and in Africa.

15 February, 2010 /
[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.

14 February, 2010 /

AF-Mellon-Scarves
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:
12 February, 2010 /


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.

10 February, 2010 /
[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.

10 February, 2010 /
[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.

09 February, 2010 /


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:

08 February, 2010 /