Festival

There goes the first official weekend of the summer. Here in Telluride we like to keep people entertained, so every weekend there is a festival of some sort or other. Some are fun, some not so, but it just depends on what floats your boat. If chamber music tickles your fancy, then Telluride is the place to be August 7th to 16th. Mushrooms, that would be August 21st to24th and so on...

This past weekend it was one of my favorites, Mountainfilm a prestigious film festival devoted to mountain life. 

Or at least thats what it started off as, it has evolved into something much bigger. Now there are symposiums on environmental issues, exhibitions of art, discussions about social issues amongst some of the people who are dealing with the top levels of human strife & struggle.

This year, one such such topic was slavery, there are at this time more slaves in the world than at any other time in world history. 

It is an enlightening and sobering experience, & can make one feel guilty about living in this land of opulence. Or at least make you realize that if you have more than everyone else, it is good to give back.

So, we'll see you here next year?

Just beware of the cowboys...

Have you seen this?

Or even this?

Well?

Now We Are Six

Rowan's party was excellent, a success all round especially after the previous days mudslide debacle. The slide folks are for the most part out of danger for now...

Do you remember your 6th birthday? My Sis & I were 5 days apart. No, she is not 5 days older, but her birthday fell on the 1st & mine on the 6th. So our party was always on the same day. I remember it like I should; beautiful sunny days, stuffing ourselves with forbidden junk, loads of prezzies. 

This year we made 7 quarts of ice cream. That's right, and there was nary a smidj left of any except for the Maple Walnut.

Beware the dread gravity

First this happened:

San Miguel County Sheriff’s Deputy Chris White, on his first day on the job, stands next to the debris field above Lawson Hill yesterday, where a huge section of the hillside gave way Saturday night, causing 14 houses in the subdivision to be cordoned off.

From The Daily Planet, May 5th '08

Telluride, Colo. -
Rumbling and churning and knocking down trees, a hillside sheared off and tumbled toward Lawson Hill Saturday night. It didn’t cause any damage to anyone’s property, but people were evacuated, and 14 different houses in the Elk Meadows area were cordoned off by the Sheriff’s Office. Officials feared the slide could slam into the side of houses near the end of Society Drive. San Miguel’s Road and Bridge Department created a temporary drainage yesterday to funnel the runoff from the slide zone into nearby Skunk Creek. Residents were allowed back in Sunday morning, but were ordered out again around noon, as the Sheriff’s Office feared the hillside would heat up and break loose again. Officials said residents would be able to return for good this morning.
The winter’s (possibly) record-breaking snowfall poses problems as the weather heats up and melting snow turns into raging rivers and unstable hillsides. A mudslide in the Ilium valley last week closed a road near Ames, and slides down valley have poured onto the highway.
All day Saturday, the sun beat down on the hillsides and soaked the ground with melting snow, transforming it into a cauldron of loose pudding. The slopes above Lawson weakened and finally cracked at around 5:30 p.m. A mud slab — 20 feet deep in places — broke off and carried a torrent of trees, mud and boulders towards the homes 300 feet below.
“This water is seeping into the ground and then the ground just became saturated. Then gravity just took over,” said Sgt. Mike Wescott of the Sheriff’s Office. “It was roaring pretty good. You [could] hear the mud moving and hear the trees cracking.”
Kathleen Morgan was walking from her house toward Lawson’s trash facility when she heard the boulders crashing against each other in a flinty thunderclap. She wheeled around.
“I watched the whole hill collapse,” she said. “I saw trees come down, literally, just like matches. The trees I saw go down were huge pines — 70 to 80 feet tall.” She walked towards the slide and saw her neighbors investigating the fresh muddy gash. It was 300 feet long, 120 feet wide, and 20 feet deep in places. Boulders falling, splintered trees splayed against each other, rivulets of mud spilling toward the road, and runoff water forming a tiny new creek over the slide path.

Morgan called the police, and they decided to evacuate the homes in the Elk Meadows section to the west of Skunk Creek.
SourceGas and San Miguel Power shut off the electricity and gas for the night, but the electricity was turned on yesterday morning so people’s food wouldn’t spoil in their freezers. Residents were allowed to gather food, clothes and anything else they might need during their exile.
“That’s one of the joys of living here — there’s always something that can get you,” Wescott said.
After grabbing some belongings, most people spent Saturday night with family or friends; one family didn’t have anyone to lend a room, so a firefighter gave them a condo for the night. Elizabeth “Eli” Burke pulled her computers and work tools out of the house — she’s a painter — and moved furniture from the bottom floor to an upper floor, in case the houses flood.
“I’m planning for the worst,” she said. She said she never expected to see her hillside slide. “The mountains are moving,” Burke said. “It’s kinda crazy.”
Linda Lyon was in her home when she heard the rock slide coming. “It’s kind of horrifying,” she said. She, too, was staying with a friend, waiting to see if the mountains stop moving.


Gravity can be dangerous folks. As I get older, it is apparent that mostly everything wants to move towards the center of the Earth. Now while I believe that moving towards the center is good for us in general, one could also call it "taking the middle path", this gravity lark is a different matter altogether. There is an argument to be made that it's what actually kills us in the end, or at least that it is what makes us bald. Well, actually there's not much argument for that because surely then everyone would go bald at the same rate... I digress...
But it is often I have thought that as one gets older and smaller and more hunched over, our old pal gravity has had a hand in our slow gravitation, as it were, towards the molten core. Closer to the center of the Earth as though it is under the crust and mantle that our eventual salvation is to be found, and not in the other direction, toward the Celestial Heavens.

I am planning a protest. I will make t-shirts and signs that say "Down With Gravity", we will march on the physicists, will you join me?

We are well anyhow, and the mudslide did not threaten our place, but here in our tight knit community we knew all of the affected folks. They are all well too, thanks for asking, but it remains to be seen how it goes for them. The mud & rocks & trees (oh my) still might decide to continue their downward trend, it depends on how much precipitation we get (it snowed all day today)and on whether or not Mr. gravity will continue with his folly.

A report of Rowan's 6th birthday party will follow soon, stay tuned...

Home again, home again, jiggidy jig

Well, by Gob it's hard to excavate the motivation to do this sometimes. I do hope that you're still with us. A wonderful time was had by one and all in Statia. I'll not go into it too deeply right now, but please check out the slideshow in the top right of this ethereal page (hint: click on it & you will be immediately molecularly transported to Monaco).

 Rowan's 6th birthday will be upon us this Saturday and a Birthday Party to be held on the 4th will bring eat, drink and be merriment to our little Cul-De-Sac. 

The party has gotten a bit out of hand in the last few years, 150 (yes, that's right, 150) people showed up last year. You know the story, you can't invite them without inviting those, and on and on it goes, where it stops, no-one knows. It has become, really, a "bring on the spring" festival, complete with rakes of homemade ice cream and hoses & water guns spraying water on those who brought their bathing suits (or their birthday suits, no?).

This, of course if it is not snowing, whereupon less people usually show up (wimps) and we all huddle into our moderately sized living room.

Please stay tuned for a full report with pictures and film.

A Different Paradise

From the shenanigans of the last weekend of ski season inTelluride:

Street Dance


Unicycles


And Pink Flamingos

To the lazy days of the Caribbean Spring, seamlessly we move from one paradise to the next.

Rowan has become a budding naturalist, collecting & naming specimens of all kinds of Flora & Fauna. Our next post will be a scientific wonderland. For now, however, I'll leave it here, things move very slowly here, including computers.

Thankyou for taking part in our latest poll, it appears as though 55% of people worldwide blame Karma for their present situation in life. The results will be duly tallied, analysed and used for various subliminal purposes. Please take part in our new study of Ice Cream tastes.

The Free Box Provides

In our little Town there is a curious item called the Free Box. Some would call it an institution, others call it an eyesore (more on that later...). It has been around since the 80's and has greatly enhanced our lives here.

The Free Box:

Put simply, it is a place where you can get rid of old unwanted things, or pick up old wanted things. Over the years Kathleen, Rowan & I have put it to great use. Our dining table, Rowan's crib when he was wee, various many items of wonderful clothing (including such gems as practically new Patagonia fleece pullovers),

an old Specialized Rockhopper bicycle

and just today, that nice queen size mattress we've been waiting for. Yes, waiting for.

This leads us to the metaphysical levels of  "The Box". There is a common belief that the Free Box exists within other dimensional realms. For instance, if you interact with the Free Box while taking Karma into consideration you will get what you want, in and around when you want it. Hence the phrase, "The Free Box provides". 

One of the main necessities here is that one must not only take, but also give, or you might find yourself shite out of luck when you're looking for that can opener you need. It is important, also, to do this on a somewhat equitable basis too. If you've been taking too much from The Box, you better clean out your closet and throw some of those old polyester shirts in there (polyester shirts are quite popular around here).  

This idea of equitable give and take seems to make the Free Box a strange and insentient teacher of how to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 

The Golden rule of the Free Box if you will...

Well, of course, there are also the begrudgers. The Free Box has suffered some abuse over the years. The people who don't take their Karmic responsibilities seriously and leave broken things or things that are just plain useless there have made it a bit unhappy to go there from time to time, but there is also a particular breed of person who has a most unfortunate habit of deciding that the dump, or the tip, or the landfill is too difficult to get his or her items to, and drops a large pile of flotsam (or jetsam as the case may be) on the sidewalk by the venerable Box. Of course, other people will use different words to describe the leavings of the ignorant, I will not repeat them here.

Alas, folks, it is my feeling that the tradition of the Free Box will not last in Telluride. But for now, it still lives and that is all we can hope for. Tomorrow is a myth.