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Around Telluride

[click"Play" button to hear Susan's interview with Ted Hoff]

IMG_0793 In 2000, Telluride audiences saw the (now departed) Lizard Head Theatre Company's production of "Sylvia",  A.R. Gurney's hit comedy. The play is about a talking dog, part Lab, part poodle and entirely femme fatale. The comedy's all too familiar barbs about marriage, unspoken needs for connection, a sense of why we are here and feelings about out pets hit never failed to hit their mark: We have met the nut cases and they are us.

"Sylvia" was perfect for a town like Telluride which long ago went to the dogs. I personally know many grown-ups, including some of my friends, who get down on the floor with their canine darlings and shower them with terms of endearment such  as "sugar," "my beautiful angel,""pumpkin," and "sweetheart." They – okay, mea culpa, we –  spoil our furry friends with treats and marrow bones from Clark's. (A few – and don't ask me who – even stuff them with peanut butter once the marrow is gone, and stick them in the freezer to make doggie popsicles, guilt bones for when we leave them alone in the house.)

06 June, 2009 /

[click "Play" button to listen to Susan's conversation with Daniel Tucker]

Daniel_new On Thursday, June 4, 5 – 7 p.m., Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts celebrates its founder, naming its new gallery at the old Depot after the visionary Daniel Tucker.

Daniel is intuitive and a book artist, whose work is assured a place in history. The company he founded with partner Claire Owen in 1975, Turtle Island Press, has titles in the collections of major museums/ institutions including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art; The New York Public Library; The Library of Congress; The Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany; and London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

02 June, 2009 /

[click "Play" to hear Eileen Burns' conversation with William DeMille]

by Eileen Burns

All-mini-ag Monday, June 1, noon– 1p.m., Wilkinson Public Library, William and Vernie DeMille, founders of MiniAg and owners of Paradox Valley CSA, host the first of a four-part series of seminars, "MiniAg Garden". 

MiniAg is all about teaching people how to grow food in their own backyard.  Today's topic: "The 15 Minute Farmer." The talk centers around the power of drip irrigation, the benefits of intensive gardening, how to build healthy soil and time management. 

For 35 years the DeMilles have been raising organic fruit and vegetables, along with beef and dairy cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, and all kinds of poultry.  They moved to the region from Northern Missouri after discovering the nutrient rich Western  mountain soil of Paradox, Colorado. There they established their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm.  CSAs provide local shareholders with baskets of fresh seasonal food year round.

01 June, 2009 /

IMGP0408 IMGP0411 Red letter days under blue skies. Our life in Telluride.

The morning of May 27 started out with a hike out our back door, crack of 7:30 am, our dog Gina running ahead, breaking through the crust of frost. You heard me.

We divided to conquer the middle of the day: Clint rafting on the Uncompaghre with TASP and me holding down the fort, posting and podcasting, which has nothing to do with fishing.

In the evening we joined locals at the Ah Haa School Depot Building, where the winners of the Telluride Writers Guild's annual Write Here Contest were on the boards, strutting their stuff. Writers Guild director Amy Cannon beamed as she introduced the winners.

28 May, 2009 /

Telluride Mountainfilm was an appropriate venue for the announcement on May 23 of a new program of renewable energy in the Telluride region. The introduction to the session was given by Bill McKibben, longtime advocate for solutions to global climate change. Mountain Village mayor Bob...

27 May, 2009 /

by Kris Holstrom

The New Community Coalition worked hand in hand with Telluride Mountainfilm staff to brainstorm composting, recycling and trash reduction this year. The opening event, on May 21, was the dinner for the filmmakers and guests at a beautiful spot high up in the Preserve.

The evening was damp and delightful and included delicious food by Lucas Price and an amazing mix of interesting people. Even better, from the waste side of things, it was a total success.

 Zero is not always a good thing. It's an insult when used to describe a person. Describing waste is a whole other story, but in that context, zero is so difficult to achieve, it is often stated as a goal, rather than as something truly possible. Thursday night raised the bar: Mountainfilm got about as close as you can get.

26 May, 2009 /

After a day that went from sunshine to heavy rain showers and back again,  on Sunday, festival goers at Mountainfilm in Telluride were treated to a break in the pattern, with light rain in town being backlit by beautiful late afternoon sun. It's not...

25 May, 2009 /

We took a Telluride break from the Mountainfilm experience this morning. We walked along the bike path out toward Society Turn with Gina the Dog. Last night it snowed in the high country, rained below about 11000 feet. Picture it: New snow on...

24 May, 2009 /

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...

24 May, 2009 /

Lani- for Susan and Telluride [click "Play" button to hear Susan's interview with Lani Alo]

Entrepreneur/author/environmentalist Paul Hawken was a Telluride Mountainfilm guest in 2007. Telluride was a stop in a tour explaining the idea behind his latest book "Blessed Unrest," a sprawling grassroots movement comprised of tens of millions ordinary and not-so-ordinary individuals and groups busily working to safeguard the environment, ensure social justice, and resist the threat of globalization on indigenous cultures. The movement consists of research institutes, community development agencies, village-and citizen-based organizations, corporations, networks, faith-based groups, trusts and foundations, all trying to defend against corrupt politics and climate change, corporate predation, and death of the oceans, governmental indifference and pandemic poverty, industrial forestry and farming, depletion of soil and water, and more… Trying to describe the breadth and depth of the global grassroots commitment would be like trying to hold the ocean in your hand.

Mountainfilm regular, ethnobotanist/author/environmental activist Wade Davis once described the people Hawken is talking about in "Blessed Unrest," as "dharma saints." In a big way, "dharma saints" is what The Goldman Environment Prize is all about, ordinary people taking extraordinary action.

22 May, 2009 /