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Lifestyle

By Lisa Barlow

Frozen Pond I am sitting in the most celebrated restaurant in the world and I have just been served a piece of ice. It is almost as if the pretty white bowl in front of me is empty, except that across its top is a perfect meniscus of clear frozen water. “Frozen Pond” the waiter announces with a smile, while another waiter taps mint dust with green tea and sugar across the top. We are handed spoons and asked to crack the ice. “Tastes like a stick of gum” my husband whispers. But I am decades away in a pink polka dotted parka that I have unzipped to fill with wind so it will sail me on my childhood ice skates across Long Island’s Mecox Bay.

Many things can happen to you if you are lucky enough to eat at El Bulli, Ferran Adrià’s extraordinary culinary laboratory on Spain’s Costa Brava. And you may not really understand the nature of your experience until it is long over. Certainly there is the excitement that you are about to enjoy a great meal, as well as recognition that you are part of history. El Bulli, the restaurant, will close at the end July. But there are many other emotions engendered by what is on your plate to take you by surprise. Frozen water, for instance. What starts out as a joke (the emperor, or in this case, the diner, has no clothes!) turns into a well-placed palate cleanser with Proustian effects.

30 May, 2011 /

By J James McTigue

The Baffin Babes are four rad chics with whom it would be fun to have a beer, go dancing, or ski tour 1200 kilometers in the Canadian Arctic over 80 days. Except you weren’t invited on the ski trip; they chose to do it all on their own.

Babes Swedish sisters Vera and Emma Simonson, along with Norwegian friends Inga Tollefson and Kristin F. Olsen spent 80 days traveling along the eastern coast of Baffin Island, the largest island in Canada and the fifth largest island in the world.

At Mountainfilm in Telluride they will be presenting their trip, the glacial scenery, and remote Inuit villages they visited, as well as the fun they had, in a multimedia presentation at 6:45 Friday night at the Sheridan Opera House and 9:30 a.m. Monday at the Palm. (Palm showing is free to the public).

26 May, 2011 /

Brakes On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, about the time the Gulf oil spill was about to capped, Drew Ludwig decided to take a walk. A long walk. In August 2010, he traveled by foot 120 miles from the Ninth Ward of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico.

"I went to help. I went to work. I held lofty goals of an activist, and I wanted to use my hands."

And so he did, his hands and his unerring eye, recording images with his camera of people and places encountered along the way. Drew's motivation: break down the idea of "The Other," a complex concept lifted from the social sciences that defines the process by which individuals and groups create distance between themselves and those who do not seem to fit easily and comfortably into their cloistered worlds.

25 May, 2011 /

Renny Engbring, Sara Friedberg, Alicia DuPont, Keaton McCargo   Before leaving for Peru, we became interested in studying the importance of clean water in different communities. We gathered shots and interviews from people and places around Telluride. Next, we began researching the water quality of...

25 May, 2011 /

 By Claire Ricks and Marina Marlens “Nutrition” This video is to show the important role nutrition plays among the world in developing children. Using Peru to focus in on as a small fraction of this issue, we hope to put the spotlight on the massive...

23 May, 2011 /
[click "Play", Emily Shoff interviews her husband, Andy]     Excerpt from 2003…. Wandering the streets of Birmingham, Alabama with Telluride Mountain School’s students, it’s difficult to put a single word on all that I feel. Rage? Relief? Mostly what I feel is awe. Awe for all that has happened in this country. Awe for all that I do not know. I’m here with the 7th and 8th grade class to learn more about Civil Rights in America. For the past week, we have explored the Deep South, touring major battlefields from the Civil War and meeting with former Civil Rights activists. We have visited Memphis, seen the spot where Dr. King fell, and listened to some Blues musicians sing on Beale Street. Now, we’ve come to Birmingham, the heart of Civil Rights activism during the 1960s. 7th Grader Miles Galbo Jumps In on Beale St After a somber morning service at the 16th Street Baptist Church, the place where four little girls died in a bombing in 1963, we have just stepped out of the Civil Rights Institute and into its sculpture garden. One of the sculptures depicts a girl who struggles to free herself from the jaws of a police dog. The dog holds onto her tightly, gripping the hem of her dress. For the first time in a while, the group is silent. The girl speaks to them. She is not much older that any of them, perhaps even younger, and yet she risks her life for freedom. This has been a revelation for everyone as we learn more about the protest movements of the 60’s—learning about the children’s efforts in Birmingham and elsewhere. Across the South, children went to jail and risked their lives in order to draw attention towards the hatred and mistreatment of blacks.
21 May, 2011 /
[click "Play" to listen to Wade Davis' conversation with Susan]  

Wade, fireplace Ethnographer, writer, photographer, filmmaker, licensed river guide, Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society and major supporter of Mountainfilm in Telluride, Wade Davis returns for the 33rd annual gathering of the tribe, May 27 – May 30, 2011.

Wade is joined by other wide awake beings, among them, writer Terry Tempest Williams; the voice of youth eco-activists, Tim DeChristopher; eco-adventurer David de Rothschild; Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, co-creators of Peabody-winning PBS documentary "King Corn." With this year's line-up, Mountainfilm director David Holbrooke may just manage to trump last year, which was Mountainfilm's best year ever.
19 May, 2011 /

Ludwig_valleyFloor_web 
Drew Ludwig, Valley Floor #1

Contest Dates:  May 19 – July 15, 2011
Exhibition:  July 30 – August 28, 2011
Location:  Ah Haa School Depot Gallery, Telluride, Colorado

The Telluride Institute is proud to announce the Atlas of the San Miguel Photo Competition, a first annual juried photo exhibition celebrating the San Miguel River Watershed. Amateur and professional photographers of all ages are encouraged to submit photographically generated works of art celebrating life in the watershed—in all of its many forms.

The photo competition is part of a larger exhibition at the Ah Haa School in August. The exhibition is divided into two components--an Invitational Exhibition featuring both local and nationally known artists and the Photo Exhibition featuring photos of the watershed.

19 May, 2011 /
When snow falls in Telluride in May, even the most rugged mountain souls dream of an escape. Luckily, for those of us who get to call Telluride home, there is a flipside to our paradise: road tripping over to Utah. Southeast Utah has all of the things that we lack right now—snow-free trails, electric green aspens, beautiful camping, and most importantly: warmth. Gathering Wild Flowers Chasing up a campsite on a Friday night in Moab, Utah, however, can be trickier than winning an evening plane flight with a young Robert Redford over Africa. Everyone wants in (or maybe that’s just me with that metaphor?)—Regardless, everyone wants in, and not everyone can have in. Utah residents have a joke about this Colorado infiltration that my husband, Andy, likes to tell everyone until they're nauseated: “You know how you know it’s spring in the desert? The license plates turn green.” Because of this Moab chaos, Andy and I have started heading south of Moab to camp out with our girls. On our most recent trip, we went back right back to a spot we’ve been to before: Indian Creek.
18 May, 2011 /