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Img006 Telluride has lost another dear friend. Stephen Wald died last Thursday, October 22, 2009. I met Stephen nearly a quarter century ago, and my life has been better for knowing him. Our lives crossed in a number of ways besides our friendship. Stephen was a major force in the Telluride Adaptive Sports Program, where I have taught for ten years. When I was too late to register to run in the 1995 New York Marathon, Stephen made a few calls and I got in. The only quid pro quo was that I support a charity that was important to Stephen.

Stephen has been a friend of Susan's even longer than I have, through connections from her earlier life in New York. That we both knew Stephen from different paths was a wonderful surprise in our early time together.

Our hearts go out to Sheila, Alison, and Alex, and to all who will miss our friend. TIO is honored to publish Stephen's obituary below.

01 November, 2009 /
Grooms, 2009, Dancing, Marlborough Chelsea (1) Telluride Inside... and Out's stories about our very memorable day in Chelsea continue with a recap of our visit to the Marlborough Chelsea Gallery, 545 West 25th Street, to see an exhibit of monumental sculptures by Red Grooms. Why we went has everything to do with jonesing for the child-like wonder of the artist's work, cosmic connections, Telluride, and our dear friend Stephen Wald.

Grooms, 2009, Dancing, Marlborough Chelsea (4) Stephen Wald died that very same Thursday, October 22, after a long battle against Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. I suspect his passing happened close to the time a group of us went to the Marlborough to celebrate our friend, a successful businessman, philanthropist, accomplished athlete, photographer, and art lover/collector, because Clint and I knew Red Grooms held a special place in Stephen's life: specifically by a window in the entry hall of the elegant Aldasoro home he shared with his beloved wife Sheila, also a collector.
31 October, 2009 /
IMGP2094 Frances Barlow lives her life with an unbuttoned sense of joy, both in New York, where she runs the theatre she founded, Urban Stages, and in Telluride, where she lives part time with husband Ed Barlow. Telluride Inside...and Out always looks forward to spending time with Frances – and with Ed, whenever his feet touch the ground, which is almost never. The most recent invitation was during our recent trip to New York: lunch at The Coffee House at 20 West 44, where members dine at one long table, discussing anything but work. Here's the backstory based on a speech by Ben Hall at the club's Golden Anniversary Dinner in December, 1965.

Unrecorded in the annals of the Knickerbocker Club is an event which might be called the Great Coffee House Rebellion. One day in January, 1914, two mem­bers of the Knickerbocker—Frank Crowninshield and Rawlins L. Cottenet—met for lunch at a midtown hotel and agreed that they were fed up to the tops of their Arrow collars with the Knickerbocker and its brass-buttoned flunkies, silver duck-presses, and gold-plated table conversation. According to Crown­in­shield’s recollec­tions, they decided that “it would be agreeable and desirable to found a small dining club composed of such members of the Knickerbocker Club as had no sympathy with busi­ness or wealth or with such things that business and wealth produced or implied.”
25 October, 2009 /

Telluride showed up en masse for its portrait during Mountainfilm in May, 2009, when Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org was in town for the festival. Telluride is again helping the organization bring worldwide attention to the requirement to bring our carbon level back down...

24 October, 2009 /

Telluride local Maribeth Clemente does not, to my knowledge, possess a magic carpet. She is, however, in command of something that serves the same purpose: a talk radio show."Travel Fun, which airs bimonthly in and around the Telluride region on KOTO radio and simultaneously...

03 October, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Meredith speak about her art]

[double click to view in larger format]

A show of new work by artist Meredith Nemirov opens October 1 at Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts.

"Leaps and Turns" is a departure for the artist, known for her impressionistic, representational paintings drawn from nature. These works on paper, completed over the last two years, are abstractions. But earlier paintings explain later ones.
The model for the relationship between the new and the old work is jazz: improvisation off a melody line.

30 September, 2009 /

[double click to view in larger format]When Telluride lost Jack Carey this past summer, we lost a friend, a cultural icon, a good man. On Friday. September 25, the Telluride Ski and Golf Company dedicated and re-named the familiar "Locals' Glade" the "Captain Jack" run.About...

29 September, 2009 /

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Last June, the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art gave painter/illustrator Bernie Fuchs a 50-year retrospective exhibition to honor a great artist who owner Will Thompson felt was "sorely undervalued and overlooked." But when Bernie Fuchs passed away last Thursday, September 17, of cancer, both The New York Times and The Washington Post paid homage to the man whose work was familiar to nearly everyone in America through reproduction alone.

Over the years, Fuchs worked regularly and steadily for all the major automobile companies, publications from Sports Illustrated (25 years) to The New Yorker, McCall’s, Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal, and TV Guide, as well for advertising agencies and large corporations from Rolex to Citigroup. He also illustrated dozens of children’s books. Fuchs' illustrious clients have included political titans – JFK, Queen Elizabeth, Lyndon Johnson, the Reagans – and celebrities, among them: Frank Sinatra, Katherine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, and Pablo Cassals.
27 September, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Sophia Tolstoy Penkrat]


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Over Labor Day weekend, Michael Hoffman's "The Last Station" enjoyed an auspicious world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival.

At the heart of the soaring biopic is a conundrum: author Leo Tolstoy's (Christopher Plummer) struggle in the last years of his life to balance fame and fortune with a commitment to a life devoid of material possessions. Weighing in for privilege is Tolstoy's wife of 48 years (and 13 children) Sofya (Helen Mirren). Her opponent in the debate is proto-Communist Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), head of the Tolstoyan movement, a quasi political cult, which advocates pacifism, social equality, vegetarianism, and celibacy. The referee in the pitched battle is Tolstoy's secretary, Valentin Bulgakov, (James McAvoy).

21 September, 2009 /