Chautauqua Journal: Day 1—Sunday

Past attempts of mine to write in real time on vacation have been haphazard—I’m so busy from day to day that I end up falling behind by the end of the week. But hope springs eternal, so here we go again…

Veteran readers of this blog might remember—vaguely—that I wrote several posts three years ago (starting with this link) about the place where I’m staying now. But the universe contains far more people who have never heard of the Chautauqua Institution, an upstate New York historic landmark that is one of the least-known but most important places in the U.S.

This lakeside village began in the 1870s as an attempt to educate Protestant ministers about all aspects of their faith, but over the years it broadened, creating an entire circuit of forums across the country in which famous people spoke about public affairs. William Jennings Bryan, for instance, lectured on this circuit in the first decades of the 20th century, and FDR delivered his famous 1937 “I Hate War” address right at the amphitheater just down the street from where I’m staying now.

The Depression wiped out nearly all of this circuit, but the progenitor of it all, here in upstate New York, managed to survive with a vigorous summer-long program of public affairs, entertainment, the arts, recreation, and—a nod to its original reason for being—spirituality. Chautauqua is one of the only places where I have visited repeatedly and still discovered something new each and every time.

I managed to reach my accommodation here, the Carey Cottage Inn, in time for a 5 pm reception for guests such as myself. The other guests came from places such as Michigan; northern Virginia; Pittsburgh; Dayton, Ohio; Texas; even Burma. Except for a couple in their 30s or early 40s, all the guests are older than myself. Some of these people have been coming here for decades; others, now that their academic duties are behind them, finally have the opportunity to visit.

Each of the nine weeks of the Chautauqua season is devoted to a particular theme. The week with the most appeal to me was Week 9, on the Civil War, but circumstances prevented me from attending then, in late August.

The theme for this week, though, has its own fascination: the American intelligence system. The events of the last 70 years—from Pearl Harbor through the killing of Osama bin Laden—underscore just how critical that system is to our nation’s foreign policy.

After the reception I walked by the lake, where, at 7 pm, a guide was lecturing on places and events in the Bible, illustrating his points by pointing to spots on Chautauqua's "Palestine Park." The latter a scale topographic model of the Holy Land, including cities and mountains.

At one point, the very lively and enlightening lecturer (he's in the accompanying image on the far left, with a beard, a white shirt, and a staff in hand) had me pass around to the rest of the group a small, anatomically correct likeness of the ancient Semitic god Baal who constantly angered the Israelites. “Did you go baal-istic?” an older listener in the group whispered to me later.

I’d done quite a bit of driving this weekend (including to Pittsburgh, where I enjoyed the great hospitality of my brother and his family), and the heat and humidity seemed to be rising tonight, so I thought it the better part of valor to catch my breath for the rest of the night and plan out what will be a full itinerary for the remainder of what promises to be an unbelievably busy but fascinating week.