Personalities

Monday, May 2 , 5:30 p.m.,Temple Grandin is scheduled to speak in Telluride at the Palm Theatre. Yes, THE Temple Grandin.

Temple Grandin became as much of a fixture on the awards show circuit as her Tinseltown counterpart, Claire Danes. And when the lovely Danes won a Golden Globe Award, she made very sure to honor the woman who inspired the eponymous biopic. The film focused on the giant strides Grandin made in the fields of autism advocacy and animal welfare.

A high-functioning autistic,Temple Grandin did not speak until age four. Ultimately, however, she went on to earn a B.A. in psychology and masters and doctorate degrees in animal science. Today Grandin is a full professor at Colorado State University, best-selling author, inventor, designer, consultant.

 

A trip to the american girl store Describing Chicago as a second city is like describing Telluride as a second Aspen. It’s inaccurate and ruffles feathers on both sides. I love New York, and I love Chicago. But there can be no ranking. They are entirely different places just as Telluride and Aspen are entirely different places.

Here’s what I love about Chicago: it’s a city that feels like an out-grown town. When I go to see family there two or three times a year, and I run along the lake front, people almost always smile or nod when we cross paths. Like Telluride, Chicago is not a place where you can be anonymous. The city draws the introvert out of you.

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

(ed. note: After a devastating April around the country and the world, May is a welcome change. Rosemerry has sent three poems to welcome Spring in Telluride and Western Colorado. May 1 is also Kjerstin Klein's birthday. Happy Birthday, kid.)

Preparing the Garden for Spring


Spring Garden We pull up the old iron slabs I had used
as stepping stones for my garden. By we,
I mean I pull them up. My son takes
to raking the shriveled brown cords of melons,
pumpkins and squash. His interest wanes
soon enough and he leaves me with my hands
in familiar gray dirt. In my lungs, dust rises
like long-forgotten prayers. And I am alone,

though not alone. There are several of me here.
One woman who dreams of kissing in rain. One woman
who plots where new seeds will go. One woman
plants herself in this bed. One woman kneels
in the morning’s gold shrine. And one woman lifts
old iron slabs. She blossoms one now at a time.

Concert finale Telluride may be a toy town, but it casts a long shadow. Turn around too quickly and you will bump into Telluride no matter where in the world you are. Like yesterday. All day. The point takes on an all-caps clarity if I begin at the end.

Part-time Telluride locals Anne and Vincent Mai are co-producers of the Telluride Musicfest (with documentary filmmaker and part-time local Josh Aronson). Among the regular guests and returning for the 9th annual musical event, (June 22 – July 3) is classically trained violist Kathryn Lockwood.

In her ethnic persona, Australian born Kathryn performs with her husband, Lebanese-born Yousif Sheronick as Duo Jalal. On April 27 the couple happened to have a gig at a club in the alphabet soup of Manhattan's lower East Side.

by J James McTigue

“Road Trip” conjures many images–-recollections of Kerouac, laissez-faire college summers, U2’s Joshua Tree album. Memories of road trips make me sigh, reliving those days when we could just hop in the car and take off, without a care in the world.

Road trip Though the circumstances of my life have changed (I’m married with two kids) I still hang on to the romantic vision of road tripping. So much so, that when the lifts closed, we packed the family, skis, road bikes, pack-n-play, and coloring books into the car and headed west. This was a far cry from the spontaneous road trips of yesteryear, in which the plan was not to have one. Every night of this road trip was accounted for, a combination of staying at friends’ houses, getting “bros. deals” at nice resorts and paying for a few crappy hotels. The trip would take us from Telluride, to Northern California down to Southern California then east to Phoenix and back to Telluride, with a lot of stops in between. 

When I divulged my plans to my seemingly more practical friends, whose off-season plans included a plane ticket, a beach and a condo, they unconvincingly  commented, (more accurately questioned) “That will be fun?”

 

 By Emily Shoff

Tidepooling at Puako at Sunrise There’s a little trip Andy and I like to take with the girls when we’re on the Big Island of Hawaii. We drive over from Puako, just north of Kona on the dry side of the island, to Hilo, the wet side.

Mornings in Hawaii usually start early. The near-equatorial light and the trumpet of bird sounds call us out of bed by 6 a.m. But on our Hilo day, we leave the condo at first light. There’s a lot to see and the earlier we start, the more time we’ll have. Besides, sunrise is a great time to be out in Puako. Guava pinks and mango oranges swim across the sky, while just off the fringing reef in the water, humpback whales travel north.

[click "Play" for Susan's interview with playwright Drew Larimore]

 

 

OUT OF ASKJA Here's another fine example of what happens in Telluride does not stay in Telluride. Which is a good thing.

"Askja" is the name of a volcano in east central Iceland, active in 1961. "Out of Askja" is the name of play which remains very active, thanks to Telluride.

Playwright Drew Larimore workshopped "Out of Askja," in Telluride in 2008 at Jennie Franks' 2nd annual Telluride Playwright Festival. Three years later, "Out of Askja" opens the first week in June at the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, New York City's premiere eco-friendly theatre festival. According to Planet Connections' mission statement:

 Lucky us! Ted Hoff of Cottonwood Ranch and Kennel has a new video ready. As we have mentioned before, active play is an important part of the experience for dogs at Cottonwood. In this video, Ted shows us Bree, in the act of having a...

But is it Art?
But is it Art?

We love it when a member of the Telluride Inside... and Out family is tributed, especially this member.

Art Goodtimes and I go way back to the beginning days of the Daily Planet, when the man gallantly stepped aside to allow this then wet-behind-the ears journalist to take her place in hot seat as the town's theatre critic, a job he had performed ever so well. Which is the way Art does everything from governing to organizing festivals to weaving baskets to weaving words together to form a poem.   

In late March, Thunder River Theatre Company and its board of directors announced the appointment of Art Goodtimes as the first ever Western Slope Poet Laureate. He serves as Western Slope Poet Laureate through March 2012, when a new poet laureate will be named at the second annual Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival.

by Jon Lovekin

(Editor's note: One of the pleasures in publishing Telluride Inside... and Out is getting to know new  [to us] writers. Susan and I independently ran across Jon Lovekin on Twitter. She took the next step, checked out his writing, liked what she saw and asked if he would be interested in contributing to TIO. Herewith, the first article from Jon.)

We awoke early that morning as was our custom even though we had been up most of the night, stargazing and watching the meteor shower. Our tongues had been loosened by the incredible night sky glowing with brilliant starlight and we told stories far into the night. Early meant dawn and all the struggles that go with sore muscles, lack of sleep and the hard ground. The coffee solved most of that as we plunged into our gear and sorted what we would need in our packs for the day.

Stunner Campground We were headed up a steep drainage, above Stunner Campground, to where the old mine was marked on the map. As was often the case, the mines were no longer associated with any visible road or trail, at least not from the campground. The terrain was typical of the Eastern San Juans, rugged and unforgiving. The drainage marked a slash in the ground that was visible high above treeline as yellow dirt where the erosion fanned out into the rocky ledges above. We humped on the packs and got going as the sun flickered on the ridges above. It would be hot again, at least for a time during the middle of the day.