greetings from Telluride

Accompanied some friends to southwest Colorado this Labor Day to bid adieu to August and hello to football season. Hiking, biking, eating & drinking, and somehow managing to take in a little culture, insofar as a four-hour documentary about baseball can be considered a cultural undertaking.

It’s Aspen… 35 years ago. A 130 y.o. mining town turned world-class mountain escape for the well-heeled, as charming for the preservation of its historical buildings and lack of pretentiousness as for its goings-on. There for a weekend of celebration and relaxation, we fortuitously caught the 37^th Telluride Film Festival, and along with it all the trappings that these sorts of things bring to the table.  “Hey isn't that...?”

If you know documentaries then you know Ken Burns. And if you know Ken Burns, then you know Baseball, his 18½-hour film dedicated to our national pastime, which at present seems to be rife with issues that reflect the character (flaws) of our nation while at the same time are of no real concern to anyone (in spite of Congress’ insistent meddling). But Baseball stops in the early nineties, just when things started to get 'juicy'. So on our last afternoon in town, with white clouds and blue skies and 78-degree weather, I opted to duck solo into a balmy dark room with a big screen at the front of it to catch the first half of Burns’ new film, The Tenth Inning… an addendum, as it was, covering the sordid years of the sport between 1994 and today. Unfortunately the real world called us back before I could catch Part II. But it was a tremendously successful viewing, I got to tell the filmmaker "congratulations" (way to take advantage), and now I can frame my Film poster poseur-free.