Chautauqua Day

Bestor Plaza Fountain at the Chautauqua Institution

Yesterday I took my two children who happen to be home and accounted for off to the Chautauqua Institution for a day.  We used to vacation there as a family every summer, but the shortness of the Chautauqua Seaon in combination with the many demands on the lives of teenagers have shortened those trips considerably -- down to one morning and afternoon this year, and nothing at all for the child in Europe.

Chautauqua is an unusual and extraordinary place.  It was founded in 1874 by visionaries who dreamed of a summer school (initially for Sunday School teachers, who in that era were often the only conduit available to most adults for furtherance of their education) in a beautiful location where reacreation and the arts might play prominent roles in the program.  Over the next decades, the term "Chautauqua" became synonympus with adult education in the form of traveling tent lecture and entertainment platforms, and several other permanent Chautauquas sprang up.  The orginal, nestled on the shores of Lake Chautauqua in western New York State, thrives today for nine weeks each summer as a mecca for family vacations, outdoor recreation, programming and education in the performing and visual arts, a potporri of adult education in the form of daily, weekly, and longer classes; an outstanding ecumenical religious program, and a lecture platform that pulls in luminaries from across the national and international community every weekday morning.

Chautauqua Transportation

Yesterday there were a couple of speakers whom I wanted to hear: David Saperstein, a rabbi and lawyer who heads the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, D.C. and whom I have heard previously there, is an enormously inspiring speaker and was the lecturer for the daily morning series.  His brother Marc Saperstein, also a rabbi, and a professor of Jewish History at George Washington University, was speakingin the afternoon religious lecture series.  To my surprise, I enjoyed the Rabbi Mark Saperstein the most, and I'll write more about that on another day.  I also enjoyed just being at Chautauqua, a summer vacation spot where thousands of people arrange their golf, tennis, and boating around lecture schedules.

Chautauquans Listening to Rabbi Marc Saperstein on Connections and Distinctions Among Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Yesterday: Walked:  3.5 miles.