On Monday, May 18, staff and volunteers from TASP met the crew from San Juan Outdoor School at the Bilk Creek Wall for some climbing instruction. TASP is adding climbing to its Summer schedule for people with disabilities. Monday's session included training in safe belaying...
Sus and I were away from Telluride for quite a while this Spring, and hit the ground running last week when we got home. Getting through accumulated mail, writing, editing and publishing our regular stories, along with the excitement of covering Mountainfilm for the...
[click "Play" button to listen to Chef Ming]
Chef Ming is MC, Telluride Mountainfilm food symposium
Award-winning chef/entrepreneur Ming Tsai is the keynote speaker of Telluride Mountainfilm's Moving Mountains Symposium, a gallimaufry of ideas on the subject of food.Less is certainly not more when it comes to water and raw materials to grow food. When we spice the pot with increasingly unpredictable weather patterns (which decrease agricultural production), it will take a miracle or a second Green Revolution to increase food production to meet the demand by 2050, when the much quoted UN population estimate of 9.1 billion becomes reality.
It was not their dream. One day, they just did it. Their 70-acre orchard, New Leaf Fruit, located on the Gunnison River north of Delta, produces peaches, pears, apricots, cherries, nectarines and apples. They have two children together, five-year-old Finn and 10-month-old Vivian, who was born at the orchard last apricot harvest. Eric's other daughter, Shawnee, worked at the orchard three years ago and loved it so much she is now in graduate school in international development, focusing on sustainable agriculture in Latin America. Rosemerry's most recent poetry collection, Holding Three Things at Once (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2008), is a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and explores the world of mothering, orcharding and communicating with each other and our environment.[Click the "Play" button to hear Gene Baur]
Editor's note: Animal activist/author Gene Baur is coming to Telluride for Mountainfilm's Moving Mountains Symposium about food. Listen to his podcast to learn more about his Farm Sanctuary and how the one-time McDonald's talking head wound up rescuing and providing refuge for farm animals.
Fido au gratin? Perish the thought. For activist/author Gene Baur of the Farm Sanctuary, dining on Babe is no different.
The cover of his best-seller, "Farm Sanctuary, Changing Hearts and Minds about Animals and Food" says it all: there's Babe, alive and well. On the back cover, you will find an image of The Man cuddling up to a Holstein. The endorsement by Dr. Jane Goodall (the gorilla lady) is the final nail in the coffin: "Filled with hope, this book is written for all who strive for a more compassionate world. I highly recommend it." Who doesn't want to be considered compassionate, especially when it comes to our four-legged friends? The package is enough to make a person swear off bacon cheeseburgers forever. And that's Gene's point.
[Editor's note: Click the "play" button to listen to Telluride Mountainfilm guest Chef Ann Cooper talk about why she thinks the National School Lunch Program needs major tweaking and what she and others are doing to address the challenge.]
What's wrong with this picture?
While legions of parents are obsessing about whether their offspring are getting enough vitamins or consuming too much sugar and salt, as they are trying in growing numbers to encourage healthy eating habits, at school millions of kids are consuming French fries, processed chicken nuggets and syrupy fruit salad, standard fare on the average commodity-driven lunch menu.
According to Chef Ann Cooper, aka "Renegade Lunch Lady," the National School Lunch Program is an antique – it was launched in 1946 as a public safety net – in dire need of recycling. She contends we won't have much hope for future generations of healthy kids unless we begin teaching them what good food really is.
[click "Play" button to hear Susan's conversation with Kimberly Rose] The adjective "hairy" has two distinct meanings. Telluride locals seek out hairy moments in the mountains: hazardous and frightening are turn ons. Hairy also means "having or covered with,...
Spring may be my favorite time of the year in Telluride, though you may want to check with me on this in late September. In any case, this morning was Sus' and my first hike with Gina the Dog since we returned from our off-season...
As anxious as we were to get home to Telluride, we dawdled leaving the Hastings' home in Indianapolis. It was just too pleasant to rush out. So we had a short drive on Saturday and decided to stop for the night in Kansas City. We often do not make hard plans in our travels, and, true to form, we had no reservations when we arrived. That flexibility has occasionally meant we had to accept less than we had hoped, but not this time.
We found the Q Hotel and Spa, which bills itself "Kansas City's 'Green Hotel'" and found ourselves surrounded with quiet luxury and a staff who, to a person, could not do enough for us. Susan spent quite a while with the reception folks, and came up with what turned out to be a great dinner reservation.
Lots of things were broken in the early 1990s: the economy and my arm. The country turned to the Man from Hope to fix the economic downturn. (Clinton did.) To fix the arm, the result of a horseback riding accident, I turned to a part-time Telluride local, world renowned hand and arm surgeon Dr. Hill Hastings of the Indiana Hand Center/Shoulder & Elbow Institute, our Indianapolis connection.
Meeting HIll was yet another in the endless variations on the theme of six degrees of separation: a friend of a friend, he happened to be in residence at his Telluride Ski Ranches home just three weeks before I was scheduled for surgery in New York. The man's genius was apparent after our first meeting: he had created architectural drawings of my arm, complete with moving parts to illustrate what needed to happen. He generously offered to participate in a conference call with my New York doc. Clint and I decided to jump ship and have him do the surgery.
