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MAX ZAMBRANO – STAFF WRITER

It wasn’t until graduate school that Fenggang Yang realized the importance of religion. He was raised atheist and didn’t follow any religious tradition.

“Even my family tradition didn’t care much about religion,” he said.

Yang was particularly interested in Greek philosophy in college, and wrote his bachelor’s thesis on the notion of logos, which deals with human reason and universal intelligence. After realizing most philosophers reference God, he wrote his master’s thesis on God in Western philosophy. Through this intellectual pursuit, he found faith. 

At 1 p.m. Tuesday, June 29 in the Amphitheater, Yang will discuss religion in post-1949 China (which is when the country officially became the People’s Republic of China) in his lecture, “The Changing Religious Landscape in Modernizing China,” part of the Week One Interfaith Lecture Series, “21st Century Religion in China: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?”

Yang, a sociology professor at Purdue University, said his lecture would focus more on sociological work rather than theological. He is also the founding director of the Center on Religion and the Global East, which “is dedicated to advancing the social scientific study of religion in East Asian societies, East Asian diasporas, and religions originated in East Asia that are spread around the world,” according to its mission statement. 

His personal spiritual journey was entangled with his career pursuit, Yang said. Before following his spiritual path, he simply was interested in logos and philosophy. Yang was in his late 20s, in 1989, when the Tiananmen Square incident and June 4 massacre occurred in Beijing. 

He was in the U.S. at this time, but it still changed his perspective. 

“That triggered my serious pursuit in Christianity as a faith,” he said. “It’s really after that I prayed, and God became real to me, so I converted.”

Through Christianity and the Gospel of John, Yang spotted a familiar word: logos.

“Logos is with God, and logos is God,” he said. “ ‘Wow,’ I said, ‘since college I’ve been pursuing this logos. Finally, I know who is logos.’ ”

Around this same time, Yang said, his parents became Christian. He finds his father’s conversion particularly interesting because he was a lifelong Chinese Communist Party member. Yang said he has interviewed many people and discovered many older, and younger, people have turned to Christianity in China. 

“This is a great awakening happening in China,” he said.

Yang’s lecture will focus on this religious shift. He said it is also based on two books he has published, Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule and Atlas of Religion in China: Social and Geographical Contexts. 

The first book took Yang 10 years to write, he said, after many visits and surveys in different places in China. In the second book, Yang said he used surveys and census data to draw religious maps, such as the distribution of Buddhism, or how many mosques, Protestant churches and Catholic churches are in China, for example. 

His lecture will broadly cover the different religions, but he said will focus more on how religions have survived and thrived under Chinese communism. He said it is possible that China’s Christian population will outnumber the America’s in the next decade.

“How could this be possible, given the suppressive, or repressive, regime?” he said. “That is the main thing I will try to explain. I will try to offer some stories and a general landscape, and as a sociologist, I can try to offer some explanation.”

Although COVID-19 has disrupted Yang’s research — he usually travels to China and other parts of Asia this time of the year — he said the political situation in China has created even more obstacles for him. 

“It has become very difficult for sociologists to do field work research in China or do interviews in China,” he said. 

China has recently been accused of genocide against its Uyghur Muslim population, which is mostly in China’s rural, northwesternmost Xinjiang province. 

“I think Americans need to be informed and express their care about those human rights abuses by the Chinese government,” he said. 

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

Mei Fong’s writing is far-reaching and deeply personal. Her book, One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment, covers how the one-child policy still impacts economic growth and families in China, with one-fourth of the population over 65 and the younger generation being predominantly male. In this chronicle of the practice that started in the 1980s, Fong weaves in her own story of striving to have a child. 

Fong’s writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and many other newspapers. As well as winning the 2006 Human Rights Press Award from Amnesty International and the Hong Kong Correspondents Club, Fong is now the Chief Communications Officer at Human Rights Watch. 

At 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, June 29 at the Amphitheater, Fong will discuss the worldwide impact of China’s one-child policy as part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series theme “China and the World: Collaboration, Competition, Confrontation?” 

“We welcome Mei Fong to the Amp this week to speak to what was, in her words, the world’s most radical experiment,” said Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker chair for education, “and has had devastating cultural and economic consequences.”

In a 2017 editorial for Think, Fong delved into her experience of sending her 6-year-old son to school with leftovers, only for him to come home, ashamed, saying that the other children bullied him for his “stinky” food.

“My first instinct when my son told me his lunchbox story was anger,” Fong wrote. “I wanted to send him back into his classroom armed with pride and an indifference to playground slurs. But I also wanted to shield him. He’s only 6! Why should lunch be a battlefield?”

Fong, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, then journeys with the audience through the far-too-big rabbit hole of “lunchbox shaming,” when children, and adults, are hazed for bringing in their culture’s foods. 

In that brief article, she finds American news organizations writing about which foods not to take into the workplace, with one listing Mexican food at the top; depictions of shaming in popular media like “Fresh Off The Boat;” and how some immigrant families protect their children from the shaming they experienced as children. 

At 16, Fong met Queen Elizabeth II after winning an essay writing competition. 

“Nothing so exciting had ever happened in my dull life until then,” Fong wrote on her website.

Pursuing journalism and writing after meeting with Her Majesty, Fong graduated from the National University of Singapore and earned a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University. 

She also produced a podcast called “The Heist’’ that documents power in former President Donald Trump’s America and is in Foreign Policy’s Top 50 U.S.-China Influencers in the Media & Culture section.

One of the things that Fong has continued to raise alarm bells about is China’s declining number of career-age adults. 

“China needs to desperately increase its number of working adults,” said Fong in an interview with CCTV. “China will be adding about 10 million pensioners every year, but adding about seven million working adults. That’s obviously not great in the long term.”

Editor’s Note: These are the prepared remarks for Chautauqua Institution’s President Michael E. Hill’s annual Three Taps of the Gavel address, delivered at Sunday’s morning worship service in the Amphitheater.

The long winter of our discontent may not be quite over in the world, but it sure is looking a lot like summer at Chautauqua.

I have spent the last several days getting to welcome many of you back to the grounds. We’ve been through so much, individually and collectively, since we were last together. It has been wonderful to share your stories and to share some of my own, including the news that since our last in-person Assembly, Peter and I were married, and we joined the mighty ranks of Chautauquans with a dog — a puppy that, like so many, enjoyed the 17-year arrival of cicadas. I know Wilbur, our 6-month-old golden retriever, looks forward to saying hello this summer. 

It is sometimes hard to even remember all we have seen and experienced through this surreal time in human history, among the most challenging that Chautauqua and Chautauquans have ever known, and, if I’m being honest, I can hardly believe you’re here. What a difference a year makes.

Last year I delivered the opening Three Taps of the Gavel address ushering in our 147th Summer Assembly in quite a different fashion. Looking out through a teleprompter, some 4,500 empty seats were my audience. I remember trying to envision you, wondering whether you were safely in your homes, praying that we had not lost any of you to a virus that was still deeply mysterious. I remember thinking about the launch of CHQ Assembly as a lifeboat to stay connected, and I hoped that I would never again open a Summer Assembly to an empty Amphitheater.

So here we are, you and I, reclaiming our beloved Chautauqua grounds, and today I cannot help but think about all of those who planned and sacrificed, sweated and worried, created safety plans and kept our society moving, all so we could get to this day. It is only fitting that we hold up these heroes as we start our Summer Assembly together, because it took far more than a village to bring us back. Please allow me a moment to share some of the heroics we have witnessed since our last gathering:

Chautauqua County’s Commissioner of Social Services and Public Health Director Christine Schuyler was swept to center stage when the world shut down last March. Day after day she hosted news conference after news conference, representing a calm and knowledgeable presence amid significant uncertainty. She repeatedly credited her staff for their heroics, and she sometimes represented her own humanity through tears that showed all of us that the days were long and impossible.

As the pandemic lingered, Christine kept her focus on serving the people of Chautauqua County, where she continues to lead the effort to enhance vaccine rates and reduce ambiguity.

Christine, thank you for your leadership and extraordinary commitment always — but especially over the past 15 months. We are and will remain grateful to you for getting us to where we are today. I am so hopeful a vacation is in the works. Please stand so we can publicly say “thank you” for all you’ve done.

Another in our community who faced this pandemic like a Marvel superhero is Chautauqua Lake Central School District, under the first-year leadership of Superintendent Josh Liddell. From the start of the 2020-2021 school year, Chautauqua Lake Schools represented creativity and resilience — offering multiple pathways to the classroom experience. The district just completed a remarkable 186-day school year in which it provided in-person instruction every school day for 95% or more of the district’s population. Dr. Liddell, congratulations, and thank you for the inclusive and careful way you and your staff navigated this sometimes frightening and always uncertain pandemic experience. We are fortunate to have you in our community serving as a model of caring for the youngest ones among us while demonstrating that lifelong learning especially matters at the earliest ages. Please stand for our thanks.

While I could go on for hours to recognize the many people in public office, private companies, hospitals, emergency services, police and volunteer organizations who deserve so much of the credit for our ability to be together now and through the next 65 days and beyond, I wish to also recognize the staff of Chautauqua Institution. 

Starting with our Building and Grounds and Chautauqua Police teams who continued to report to work every day while most of their colleagues were required to stay home — these individuals literally and figuratively powered this place for months. And they did so with an uncommon sense of pride and deep, deep commitment. I celebrate you and the entire Chautauqua staff for navigating these difficult days as a team — with good humor, sheer courage and a special pixie dust that looks a lot like love. Every Chautauquan, here and not here, thanks you for your care and your embodiment of Chautauqua’s mission. We gratefully salute you.

I am privileged to share leadership of Chautauqua with a very special group of people. Behind me are members of our board of trustees and members of the executive management team of Chautauqua. I so often wish that all at Chautauqua could witness first-hand the selfless servant leadership of this group of people. They have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic to preserve our most sacred traditions, to expand Chautauqua’s reach and to make it possible to safely return for a new season at Chautauqua. They have my unending gratitude, my deepest respect and my abiding love for their service.

And as part of all of that, I particularly want to take a moment to recognize the many colleagues across the Institution who responded to ever-changing rules and regulations over the course of the pandemic. Many members of our audience today might have had to make similar decisions for the companies and organizations that you lead, to continue to serve your core mission by pivoting, changing or re-evaluating your plans. This work may have left many exhausted from time to time. Some of you still might be exhausted. 

I want to specifically thank our program and safety teams for the work they did to make sure that we continued to serve our mission while maintaining safety as a top priority. I also want to thank our loyal Chautauquans who were willing to roll with the changes, and most importantly those who took the time to say to our staff, “Thanks for all that you are doing.” Your deep commitment to Chautauqua, and your continued kindness and understanding is deeply valued and appreciated.

And, finally, I want to thank each of you who call yourselves Chautauquans. From donated gate passes and financial donations to words of encouragement and notes of wisdom, you reminded us of the importance of Chautauqua’s permanence in a world that felt anything but permanent. For never losing your faith in the Chautauqua ideal, for joining us in its digital expression, for seeking refuge in this place if you could, and for always, always reminding us that Chautauqua must come out the other side, your love of Chautauqua fueled all of us trying to seek a way back. Thank you.

While we take this moment to give thanks for all that has been done, we are also gearing up for our sesquicentennial in 2024. I am excited about our developing plans; but only at Chautauqua can one lay claim to three 150th birthdays, and this year is the first; the second being the 150th Assembly season in 2023 and, in 2024,  marking 150 years since the opening of the first Assembly. But to the first: the grounds are 150 years old this year. It was in 1871 that the Chautauqua Lake Camp Meeting Association purchased the land, cleared the grounds and built the first auditorium in what is now Miller Park. The first camp meeting was opened on the morning of June 27, 1871 — exactly 150 years ago to this day and to this hour. Those early Chautauquans had a sense of the sacredness of this space, as the Rev. Carruthers opened the meeting with a sermon based on Matthew 18:20: “For where two or more gather in my name, there am I.”

But those who organized that first, modest gathering could have had no idea that they were laying the groundwork for such a legacy. When our wonderful archivist, Jon Schmitz, told me of this anniversary date a few weeks ago, my mind immediately went to this question: What are we doing today that could potentially spawn a movement worthy of mention 100 or more years from now?

Of course, it’s exceedingly difficult and dangerous to get into the business of predicting the future, so I’ll reflect with you on our hopes – those of our board of trustees and our leadership team and staff — for what the Chautauqua of today will be known for when those who come after celebrate that tomorrow.

We hope that future generations will look to this era in the life of Chautauqua as the moment that commenced a significant initiative to improve the condition of Chautauqua Lake. Amid a pandemic and related challenges, in 2020 and 2021, Chautauqua Institution launched an ambitious journey toward sustainability and ecological wellness for Chautauqua Lake in partnership with government and community leaders, and our celebrated science partner, The Jefferson Project. 

“After all we’ve just been through to get to this moment, to get back here, to come home to Chautauqua,  I believe nothing can stand in our way.”

-Michael E. Hill, 18th President, Chautauqua Insititution

Naming the science-based conservation of Chautauqua Lake among four top objectives in our strategic plan, 150 Forward, represents a firm commitment on behalf of the Institution that says: “We share responsibility for the care and conservation of Chautauqua Lake, and we intend to claim and maintain a leadership role in this work. We will not stop until Chautauqua Lake is removed from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation list of impaired waterways.” We see a future where Chautauqua Lake and the communities that depend on it serve as a model and example of recovery and collaboration that influences and informs freshwater conservation efforts in the U.S. and abroad.

That care for our environment was also behind the launch this year of the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative. Like our lake initiative, this is a generational issue. But it is one to which we believe Chautauqua must commit. When future generations look back at this time in the life of this storied Institution, we hope there is overwhelming evidence that we helped to create greater awareness of climate change while also helping to bridge divides on the issue. Where there is disagreement, Chautauqua will play a role in bringing people together to focus on what they can agree on toward influencing and creating positive change for the planet. 

Through the generosity of two visionary philanthropist families, starting this year, Chautauqua invests in programs during and beyond the Summer Assembly, on and off these sacred grounds, in bringing people together to consider their role in stemming the trajectory of climate change. Our new director of the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative, Mark Wenzler, brought national attention to us already in his choice to bike — not drive or fly — from our Washington, D.C. office to Chautauqua, New York, two weeks ago. He documented his five-day trip daily on social media by highlighting the beauty of creation along the way and the fragility of our world’s ecology exposed and exacerbated by human activity. 

During his short tenure with us, Mark has already begun to frame the initiative with three primary areas of focus: education, stewardship and justice. He will be with us most of the summer and will create opportunities to discuss his ideas and hear from you about yours. Mark is also hosting our first Chautauqua Travels program in November, to New Orleans, where Chautauqua will lead a group travel adventure with one-of-a-kind experiences to create deeper understanding of the impact of climate change in that part of the world, most notably the bayou region’s continuing recovery from the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina. I’m looking forward to joining Mark on the trip, and I hope some of you will be a part of the journey.

One cannot speak of justice in the world without reflecting on the other force that has rocked the United States alongside the pandemic, namely the continued quest to address the scourge of systemic racism that has plagued our nation. This has been an issue since the founding of our nation and since you and I gathered together on these sacred grounds, in this sacred grove, the nation has again experienced too many deaths of Black and brown bodies at the hands of hatred and indifference. 

So many of us have asked the question about what we can do to make a difference. I know we often feel so helpless and yet want to be a part of the solution. Dr. King gave us such a straightforward answer when he wrote, “Men hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they cannot communicate with each other; they can’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other.”

I hope that in Chautauqua’s tomorrow, you and I figure out ways to make our own corner of the world a model for inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility, that we find ways to make Chautauqua less separated from any and all who wish to participate in our mission. I hope we realize the pledge to turn our gates into gateways. I’m so grateful that we begin this season with the leadership of Amit Taneja, our new Senior Vice President and Chief Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility Officer. While one hire alone will not realize Chautauqua’s desired vision for IDEA, I know having someone to help us shepherd this work will take us a long way toward it, and I’m deeply grateful for all those Chautauquans who invested to make this significant step possible. Welcome, Amit. 

As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first Chautauqua Lake Camp Meeting, we also hope that our vision to be more and do more in the world has begun to take hold. As we began our time together today, I was reminded that last year we convened our season through CHQ Assembly, our new digital collective that has allowed us to program regularly for the past year. I hope as we continue to embrace this important new resource this year and for years to come, that we will continue to find ways to transport our robust series of programs and services that exemplify the magic we create here during the Summer Assembly to any and all who cannot be with us in person. And I hope that we will more deeply explore the ways that Chautauqua can return to its roots of being as much a movement as it is a place. We learned just how important that can be when the pandemic took the gift of gathering in person, and we also learned that when we don’t choose between place and movement, as if there must be a winner and a loser, that we have the chance to do unimaginable things with and for the world.

Our distinctive formulas for diving deeper through interfaith engagement, exploring the critical issues of the day through lectures, learning and enrichment through the literary arts, and probing challenging issues through the lenses of performing and visual arts can and must be ever-more leveraged in communities and organizations across the nation with Chautauqua as a lead partner. And in so doing, I hope that the Summer Assembly itself continues to bring people here every year to engage across disciplines and amidst multiple generations of participants who seek an authentic community — all with a goal to bring newfound goodness and ideas to their other home communities.

As this Summer Assembly begins, I ask you to reflect on the themes we plan to investigate in the coming weeks. While we decide on these themes more than a year prior to the start of each season, I continue to marvel at how prescient they seem to be. In February 2020 — how did we know how important it would be to talk about empathy in 2021, much less resilience? “Navigating our Divides;” “Trust, Society and Democracy;” “Exploring Today’s Unknowns” — all these themes take on a more significant sense of importance and new meaning after what we have been through. And, most importantly, they promise to bring people of diverging perspectives together, face to face, once again. What a joy it is to be in community, at times agreeing to disagree, but always reaffirming our commitment to civil dialogue and celebrating the very best in human values.

And that’s what our forebears in that camp meeting 150 years ago really understood, isn’t it? That it is important for us to come together, to be in community, to learn and pray and laugh and cry and feel together. To feed off each other’s energy and intellect and artistry. To share in the delight of a passing greeting with a stranger, or a lengthy embrace with a long-missed neighbor.

From the first sermon on these grounds, again I recite Matthew 18:20: “For where two or more gather in my name, there am I.”

Whether you believe in a higher power or not, I know you understand the blessing that is this place and the company of one another. The expressions of joy I have witnessed across these grounds in recent weeks have been unlike any I’ve seen in my time at Chautauqua. Personally, I can’t count the number of times I’ve almost choked up in unexpected encounters with members of our community. It’s just so wonderful to see everyone again.

This moment is a gift. I urge you to feel it fully and deeply. Lean into those impromptu Bestor Plaza conversations. Allow yourself to be transported by a soaring aria. Let the majesty of the Massey Memorial Organ overwhelm you, as we all become one in its resonance.

Speaking of the Massey, the last time many of you heard this great organ in person, it was under the command of our beloved and dearly missed organist Jared Jacobsen. We shared some sorrowful days in the wake of Jared’s death, and many more since. The recent past has provided too many reminders that life is precious and fleeting.

And yet, the Massey is still here, in all its majesty, now animated by the masterful Joshua Stafford. And through wars, depressions, pandemics and the sheer toll of time, Chautauqua is here, 150 years after people first gathered in her groves, now given life anew by you. We honor our history and, especially, the adversity we’ve overcome by carrying the torch forward. Chautauqua the Place remains vibrant and full of light, after a year in which we proved Chautauqua the Movement is relevant and needed in the modern world.

I can’t help but think of Beethoven’s Ninth, a most triumphant artistic portrayal of the arrival of joy through suffering, which has countless times reverberated through this sacred space. Many of you are familiar with its final and most famous movement, an orchestration of Friederich Schiller’s famous “Ode to Joy.” One by one, the composer resurfaces and dismisses themes from the first three movements — too heavy, too dark, not joyful enough. He then introduces the choral finale by inserting his own line at the top of the poem: “O friends, not these tones! Let us take a more joyous strain.”

Friends, let this be our refrain this summer, which will still present its challenges. Whenever we feel the onset of darkness or bitterness, let us dismiss it and instead look for light and joy. Where we encounter injustice or hate, let us drive it out with justice and love. When we disagree, let us assume good faith in each other, and conduct ourselves with kindness and grace. This summer, let us take a more joyous strain. 

And in this season of joyousness, let us continue to clear the ground that will have Chautauquans 150 years from now celebrating our courage and our tenacity. Let’s harness the tremendous possibilities of Chautauqua for the betterment of our corner of the world and beyond. After all we’ve just been through to get to this moment, to get back here, to come home to Chautauqua, I believe nothing can stand in our way. 

So welcome home, Chautauqua, and let’s get to it.

I tap the gavel three times. 

Chautauqua 2021 has begun.

The Music School Festival Orchestra will perform onstage for the first time in over a year at 8:15 p.m. Monday, June 28 in the Amphitheater. Musical and Artistic Director Timothy Muffitt will lead the orchestra with help from this year’s David Effron Conducting Fellow, Joshua Hong. 

“A lot of us are super-excited to be playing with a full orchestra for the first time in a year and a half,” said violinist Natasha Kubit. “Even though we have to sit 3-6 feet apart from each other, it’s just so exciting to be able to hear woodwinds and brass again.”

The MSFO usually has over 80 students, but due to COVID-19 regulations, this year’s orchestra has just over 60 students. However, the orchestra will still fill the Amp tonight with the sounds of pieces by Weber, Harlin and Schumann. 

“We have a smaller orchestra than we normally do,” Muffitt said. “Smaller orchestras are typically associated with music from the 17th and 18th centuries. But typically, the bulk of what we do in MSFO comes from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. So finding pieces that would give us a broad variety of musical style, as much as possible and fully engage all the members of the orchestra, was a bit of a challenge.”

The performance will open with Hong conducting Carl Maria von Weber’s Overture to Der Freischütz. From the 18th century, this three-act piece was considered one of the first German Romantic operas. The title, which translates to “Free Shooter,” tells the story of seven magical bullets provided by the devil, six of which are guaranteed to hit its mark and the seventh under the devil’s control. 

“I think it’s such a good piece to open up the concert with,” said violist Sydney Link. “It starts off quiet and then just grows into this loud sound throughout the orchestra. There’s this really awesome horn quartet at the beginning. With our great horn section, it’s just such a great way to start our season off.”

The piece is not that long, hitting just around 10 minutes, but students said it’s full of energy. 

“It’s very dramatic and has a lot of character and color,” said clarinetist Elle Crowhurst. 

The next piece, “River of Doubt,” by American composer Patrick Harlin is not only a new style but uses unique sounds and instruments. Harlin will also be present in the audience tonight. 

“This will be the first time that this piece will be performed in this capacity,” Harlin said. “It’s the first live performance that I’ve been able to attend after the pandemic, so that’s exciting.”

Harlin’s inspiration for this piece came from his expedition to the Amazon for his doctorate. 

“I actually use recordings from the Amazon that I gathered when I was down there,” Harlin said. “It’s something exceptionally rare. I give each of the woodwinds and percussion bird calls that you would hear if you were down there. I give them the liberty to decide when they want to come in. As a unit, they create the Amazon bird calls while there’s conducted music going on. This gives you the sense of being down there.”

Harlin said “River of Doubt” is unique because of the deviation from the orchestra’s usual performance of romantic era and classical pieces. 

“This piece blends soundscapes I recorded from the natural world with orchestral music, and I use some of those sounds as the musical material to make up the piece,” Harlin said. 

This piece is something new — not just for the audience, but for the students, as well. 

“I’m most excited for (“River of Doubt”) because it’s technically challenging, but it’s different from the classical standard sound that everyone’s used to hearing and what we’re used to playing,” Link said. “There’s something called a waterphone in this piece. It’s this round instrument that’s placed by percussion and you bow it with a bass bow. It makes this ethereal sound that’s like birds and animals that makes you feel like you’re in the rainforest.”

This new instrument depicts Harlin’s experience in the Amazon and seemingly transports the audience to the rainforest.

“The waterphone has a sort of haunting sound,” Harlin said. “What’s really interesting is that when you’re in the Amazon, oftentimes you hear one call and you hear it just once and then you never hear it again. I wanted to play off this idea of something that is a little bit haunting.”

The final piece of the concert is Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, op. 97, Rhenish. Schumann captures his feelings about the Rhineland and its atmosphere through this exuberant, relaxing and lyrical piece. Each movement captures different moods and scenes through blaring horns and gentle winds. 

“The Schumann is a piece that really suits the size of our orchestra well,” Muffitt said. 

For students, this return to the stage marks the beginning of an incredible season to come. 

“After the first rehearsal, everyone was just giddy with the feeling of being able to play with a full orchestra again,” Crowhurst said. 

Toni Morrison said in her lecture “Unspeakable Things Unspoken” that “we have always been imagining ourselves.”

“Personal Geographies,” the theme for the 2021 Chautauqua Writers’ Festival, directed by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, echoed that idea of how we imagine ourselves and how that can alter the world around us. The festival, which ran virtually from last Wednesday through Saturday, included workshops, panels readings from faculty members Jess Row, Martha Collins, Porochista Khakpour and Marcelo Hernandez-Castillo, and a keynote on Thursday from DaMaris B. Hill.  

Hill is the author of A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing, an Amazon No. 1 best seller in African-American poetry and a Publishers Weekly top 10 history title. Her other books include The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland. Her work has appeared in African American Review, ESPNW, Sou’wester, Sleet Magazine, American Studies Journal, Meridians, Shadowbox, Tidal Basin Review, Reverie, Tongues of the Ocean, and numerous anthologies.

Evoking Morrison’s style, Hill gave a presentation that was one-part essay and one-part memoir, interspersed with readings from her book A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing. She opened her presentation by talking about her current personal geography goals. 

“In my personal geography, I am trying to be a better steward over the wholeness of who I am,” Hill said. “So rather than divide myself into a scholar sometimes and a writer at other times, I’m trying to bring those things together as much as possible.” 

Before moving into her first reading, Hill took a moment to comment on the role of all the writers that were in attendance, tying it directly into the theme of “Personal Geographies.”

“When considering the past, present and futures of creative writing, we are tracing where we have been and charting where we are going as writers,” said Hill, who got her doctoral degree in writing from the University of Kentucky. “We become a tribe of cartographers, making connections about how we see ourselves in the context of the spaces around us.”

She opened by reading “Shut Up In My Bones,” a poem about the life she shared with her grandmother that she called an ethnography and testament to the fact that despite being generations apart, they still shared a love of literature. 

Hill took the time to punctuate the line “I am the savory morsel in America’s teeth,” by rattling a fork against a plate. 

She allowed the poem to percolate in the minds of her audience for a moment before she started to talk about what the book is, not according to publishing categories, but according to her. 

“This book is classified as a memoir in verse, but what it is, is a remix of who I am, who I was and who I wish to be,” she said. “What the book does is it takes on the responsibility of persona poems and life writing. It deceptively tells you what I want you to know about others and the subjects in the book while, simultaneously and ironically in the same words, it illustrates and details who I am and what I value.” 

Hill chose to include in her book some historically accurate nonfiction vignettes and sought to chart Black women or the subjects’ lives in the currency of Black women’s language, mother tone and gossip. She read one of these poems, called “The Concession of Annie Cutler,” that told the story of a middle-class Black woman who ran away from home with her sweetheart to work at a hotel in Philadelphia until they could marry. However, by the time she had moved, her “sweetheart” had married and impregnated another woman. 

As she mapped these women out across the poems in her book, Hill said it was important that the renderings of each woman were representative of them — not only in content but in the form the poem would take on the page. 

The care that Hill took to tell these stories was highlighted in her poems “Ida B. Wells” and “Harriet is Holy.”

“Ida B. Wells” is a poem about lynching written in linguistic narrative and mathematical composition. In the poem, Hill lists the number of lynchings reported in each state while Wells was alive, painting a powerful picture of the violence committed against Black men and women. 

She brought the mood to a lighter topic by reading her second-to-last poem of the day, “Harriet is Holy.” As she held her book up to the screen, she said that she had tried for a long time to write about Harriet Tubman liberating people in a geographic space, and that that was where the issue was.

“The whole gag with Harriet Tubman is that you could never find her,” Hill said. “For me to try and locate her in any space was not doing Harriet Tubman justice.”

She read “Harriet is Holy” not once, but twice. The poem plays with form and construction in a way that allows it to be read in any direction and still make sense. 

The last poem Hill read for her presentation was titled “A Recipe for a Son,” written for her son 26 years ago, which led her to reflect on the path her life had taken. 

“When I think about my personal geographies and cartographies about who I am, my mapping is never quite complete and ink spills off the page and onto the table,” Hill said. “My fingerprints are everywhere over this map that is my life and it’s smudged and not perfect.”

Thursday closed with a reading from faculty members Hernandez-Castillo and Khakpour. Both authors were introduced and enthusiastically welcomed by Bertram. 

Castillo chose to read a series of poems from his book Cenzontle broken up not by other works, but notes from his journal. Castillo received a silent round of applause from his Zoom audience, and according to Bertram, his reading was “beautiful and haunting.”

Khakpour closed out the evening by reading an essay from her book Brown Album. The essay “How to Write Iranian-America” or “The Last Essay” that chronicled her life as an Iranian-American writer from the time she was a little girl up until she was 17.

Chautauqua has always been about convening. After a year spent socially distanced, Chautauquans are finally able to come together once more in the community they all love.

All across the grounds, families are holding picnics, Chautauquans are engaging in conversations on porches and benches, once-empty homes are filled with life, and friends old and new are being reunited, many having not seen each other since the 2019 Summer Assembly Season. 

With Chautauqua Institution President Michael E. Hill’s Three Taps of the Gavel on Sunday, the season has officially begun, and the most essential element of the Chautauqua Experience, Chautauquans themselves, have come to convene for this 148th Summer Assembly. 

It has been a long and painful road, but Chautauquans who have waited two years for this moment are finally home at last.

LAURA PHILION – COPY & DIGITAL EDITOR

Chautauqua is kicking off its 2021 season with a familiar face: Chris Thile, mandolinist, singer and songwriter. Thile, who last performed at the Institution alongside his group Punch Brothers, is appearing solo at 8:15 p.m. Saturday on the Amphitheater stage.

Thile, who has been hailed by NPR as a “genre-defying musical genius,” has won four Grammy Awards and was a 2012 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, the coveted “Genius Grant.” His new album Laysongs, released June 4 on Nonesuch Records, is his first truly solo effort in 30-odd years of professional musicianship. 

“I’ve always prioritized collaborative recording,” said Thile, who until last summer was the keystone in “Live From Here,” the NPR successor to “A Prairie Home Companion’’ with Garrison Keillor. As showrunner, Thile played on air with acts like Aoife O’Donovan and Sarah Jarosz. “But when I realized I had an opportunity to make a solo record,” Thile reflected, “I didn’t want it to be because I had to. I needed a deeper reason.” 

Thile first picked up a mandolin at age 5. At 8, he helped form Nickel Creek, a Grammy-winning bluegrass group composed of Thile, Sean Watkins and Sara Watkins. Thile’s adolescence was spent performing, recording and being surrounded by conservative Christian teaching in Murray, Kentucky. Thile said COVID-19 brought up familiar emotions. 

“It felt like being 14 or 15 in church, trying to sing a hymn, staving off doubt,” he said. 

Thile decided to lean into those feelings and built his new record around a three-part work, “Salt in the Wounds of the Earth,” written for a residency at Carnegie Hall. Thile called it the “dysfunctional soul of this record.”

Performing live again, for Thile, is another big change. Thile has been making music “nonstop” since age 8. COVID-19, he said, was “the first time I’ve taken this much time away. … It was an opportunity to be forced to take a step back.” 

“Thile represents an important American voice,” said Deborah Sunya Moore, Chautauqua’s senior vice president and chief program officer (interim) and vice president of performing and visual arts. “He is carrying on the folk tradition, but he is also a songwriter and composer focused on making great music.” 

Now that New York has lifted virtually all COVID-19 guidelines for the vaccinated, venues are able to welcome even more patrons. Moore said the season is beginning with solo acts like Thile and working up to larger group performances like those coming to the Amp stage in August. The solo acts like Thile would “delight audiences” and welcome them back to live music, she said. 

“In the middle of the pandemic, it was impossible to know what the guidelines would be — but we planned with purpose and hope,” Moore said.

Moore said Thile will be by himself on the stage, but that it would be a communal experience nonetheless. She said it will be a beautiful and inspirational way to open the season.

Though COVID-19 has been traumatic for everyone, Thile said, every musician he knows has been “chomping at the bit” to get back onstage. 

“It has felt like improvising — but a magical improv session,” Thile said of planning live sets. 

He isn’t just going back to a routine, either: Thile described the “catalyzing newness” of returning to performing in person. “There’s an aspect that’s so beautifully alien.”

“When I pulled up last time, the setting felt like a dream. The performance felt like a dream,” he said. “(The Amp) feels inextricably woven into the community where we can come together in good company and take part in a rare and righteous form of community.”

DAVID KWIATKOWSKI – STAFF WRITER

While COVID-19 may have dimmed the stage lights for much of 2020 and 2021 thus far, the show must eventually go on. Chautauqua Theater Company and Chautauqua Opera Company are back this season to entertain, reflect on the year and to deliver on their promise of showcasing the best and brightest up-and-coming artists and actors. 

CTC Managing Director Sarah Clare Corporandy is eager to kick off the season to get back to what the company does best. 

“We really believe we’re a bridge for everyone that comes to (the) theater company to something else,” Corporandy said. “It may be you’re an apprentice, and you’re 19 years old, and this is your first job working with a professional theater company. Or it may be you’re a  company manager and you’re in your 30s. And then you get a managing director job, or you start as an actor and move to teacher, and move to an associate artistic director and move to an artistic director. It’s not just the schools that we have; it’s the philosophy behind the whole company: ‘How are we lifting each other up to the next?’ ”

Industry unions, including the Actors’ Equity Association, American Guild of Musical Artists and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees have strict COVID-19 guidelines and with changing regulations, the companies had several different plans for what the season was going to look like. With the new Performance Pavilion on Pratt, with a capacity of 316, all shows from the theater and opera company will be outside.

Artistic Director Andrew Borba described this season’s lineup as not merely escapism, but connecting the shared experiences the community has had in the past year. 

The company’s first production, Blood at the Root by Dominique Morisseau, sets the tone for this season’s theme. The show follows six Black high school students charged with attempted murder after fighting a white student. It is inspired by the real-life events of the Jena Six cases in Louisiana. The play follows the perspectives of each of the six characters. 

“Sometimes shows are slanted in different directions,” Corporandy said. “But it’s not so circular in this, that I see each of these six characters have a moment where you get to hear how they’re dealing with this situation. It gave me so much empathy for all six and reminded me that there are so many truths happening at one time, that’s such a source of all of our conflicts: My truth, your truth, who is real? This play, for 90 minutes, made me realize it’s all real.”

Blood at the Root will run from June 29 through July 18 at the Performance Pavilion.

For Chautauquans looking for a Shakespeare production this year, the company is doing something a little different in writing their own production: Commedia. The show will be half-scripted and half improvisation, and the storylines will be ripped from the day’s headlines, making the show different every time. 

Directed by Borba, the impromptu nature of the show is a welcomed challenge. 

“There is something profoundly terrifying about that,” Borba said. “And there is something very thrilling because we’re out on the ledge. And we’re going to jump.”

Commedia will run from July 22 to Aug. 5 at the Performance Pavilion.

The company will close out their season with Thurgood, a one-person show about the life of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice on the Supreme Court. The show was written by George Stevens Jr. and will be directed by Steve H. Broadnax III.

Between learning about the arc of Marshall’s career, the show also makes room to show the arc of America and how the issues Marshall faced during his lifetime still exist in America today.

“There is something about the play existing throughout his life, as an understanding of the arc of his life’s journey,” Borba said. “But also, it is extremely prescient now for what we are facing. We’re just all in the same room together. It’s a beautiful piece. You get to see this masterpiece while being conscious of the fact that we still have work to do in our world today.”

Thurgood will run from Aug. 13 to Aug. 22 at the Performance Pavilion.

Chautauqua Opera Company has two productions this season: Scalia/Ginsburg and As the Cosi Crumbles: A Company-Developed Piece. 

Scalia/Ginsburg is a one-act piece about the close, unlikely friendship between Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. The opera, written by Derrick Wang, was first introduced in 2013 at the U.S. Supreme Court. This production will be directed by Cara Consilvio and conducted by Steven Osgood, the general and artistic director of Chautauqua Opera Company.

Ginsburg saw the play with Scalia when it first debuted. Though they differed on their interpretation of the law, they shared a love for opera. Ginsburg even delivered a morning lecture about the depiction of lawyers in opera on July 28, 2013, on the Amphitheater stage. 

Osgood, who will conduct the opera, believes the themes and messages of Scalia/Ginsburg makes it the perfect show to kick off the season. 

“I can’t think of a better place to present this than Chautauqua,” Osgood said. “We have both of those communities in spades here — people who will be so stimulated by the music of it and the law of it. The philosophy of it is incredibly heartwarming and timely. The idea that people on opposite sides of the ideological divide can be friends and respect each other — that’s a good message for now.”

Scalia/Ginsburg will run from July 9 to Aug. 6 at the Performance Pavilion.

The company’s second production, As the Cosi Crumbles: A Company-Developed Piece, is currently still being written, but will allow performers to put new twists on classic arias and ensembles in opera. It will be conducted by Osgood and directed by Chauncey Packer, who will portray Antonin Scalia in Scalia/Ginsburg.

Osgood got the idea based on his experience in experimental theater at the Irondale Ensemble in New York.

“We would create new versions based on a classic,” Osgood said. “We would take these plays, but explode them and bring in contemporary culture. It was all company-developed. And it was using games as a catalyst for improvisation.”

The company has been developing the piece since the beginning of March; it has evolved significantly since Osgood’s initial vision.

“Had you asked me then to guess what the piece would be,” Osgood said, “I would have been talking about (something else entirely). As the Cosi Crumbles is so far from what it was. It’s all the same pitch, the same kind of philosophy. It’s such a response to the company and what every individual brought to the table.”

As the Cosi Crumbles: A Company-Developed Piece will run at the Performance Pavilion from July 28 to Aug. 3.

Osgood is excited to see what this summer’s programming will bring out of the Young Artists and actors.

“(The Young Artists and actors) stepped up to the plate and took over things,” Osgood said. “They took charge, they took an agency with their artistic output that is unprecedented. If we have a successful year, it will because we have said we are not going to lose that. It’s not going to be the COVID year and then back to normal, how do we take (this agency) and make it part of our company culture as we move forward forever?”

NICHOLE JIANG – STAFF WRITER

After a year of endless Zoom calls, social distancing and uncertainty, the School of Music returns to the stage with a highly anticipated season. 

The school — which includes the Voice Program, Piano Program and the Music School Festival Orchestra — faces various challenges every year, but 2020 may have presented the school with its biggest challenge yet: COVID-19.

“The largest hurdle was trying to develop our safety protocols so that we could offer a great learning experience for the students but also keep it safe. Since things with COVID-19 changed so much, sometimes daily or weekly, we had to continuously assess our plans and alter them,” said Sarah Malinoski-Umberger, manager of the Chautauqua Schools of Performing and Visual Arts. “It was a lot of research. We also decided to reduce our enrollments, so that affected the way we structured the programs and what artistic offerings we wanted to prioritize.” 

With the pandemic resulting in the school holding its entire 2020 season virtually, most students are returning to the stage for the first time since February 2020. With all events held virtually last season, the students’ new normal was practicing, rehearsing and meeting through a computer screen. 

As COVID-19 regulations loosened statewide, there was a scramble to put together a season that would be like no other. 

“The pandemic was a moving target,” said Timothy Muffitt, artistic and music director and conductor of the MSFO. “Between when we started planning and when we got here, we now have a level of vaccination that we didn’t think would be feasible. Our planning was not based on people being vaccinated, but then once you put that ball in motion, you have to kind of keep following through.” 

Music School Festival Orchestra 

The School of Music’s orchestra will be the first program to return to the stage with their opening night performance at 8:15 p.m. Monday in the Amphitheater. Muffitt will lead the orchestra in pieces by Harlin and Schumann. Chautauqua Institution will also welcome this year’s David Efron Conducting Fellow, Joshua Hong, who will be conducting Weber’s Overture to Der Freischütz for opening night. 

“We get many applicants from all over the world, and Joshua just really stood out from the crowd in terms of being the complete package,” Muffitt said. “He has a personality that I thought would work well in this environment, but mostly he’s just a terrific conductor.”

The MSFO will then continue their season with the Independence Day Celebration, two more Monday night performances, a special performance with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra and then finish their season with a performance of The Marriage of Figaro with the Voice Program on July 19. 

Many students weren’t able to showcase their talents onstage in 2020.

“They auditioned for last season, but then all they got was a virtual experience,” Muffitt said. “We wanted to honor our commitment to them and let them come back.” 

“What’s so beautiful about it is that each of us are coming from our own respective places but we all come together,” said Joseph Brozek, MSFO trumpet player. “By the end of the summer the orchestra just sounds so good because we’re just so used to each other. It’s a process of individual betterment and also how we can work together to sound our best. I love being able to perform onstage, but the greatest part of it all are the friendships I’ve made through music. The friendships live on even after a summer experience.” 

Voice Program

Not only is the Voice Program returning to the stage, Voice Chair Marlena Malas also returns to Chautauqua for the first time in years. Though the Voice Program won’t hold any in-person weekly recitals this season, there are still plenty of performances to look forward to. The newly built Performance Pavilion on Pratt will host the opera performances of Hansel and Gretel and The Marriage of Figaro, which Malinoski-Umberger is most excited for. 

“We’re one of the only festivals putting on a staged opera with live orchestra this summer, so it was very ambitious,” Malinoski-Umberger said. “It’s going to be amazing to have all of that talent back on the stage.”

Due to COVID-19 dorm restrictions, the Voice Program has just 24 in-person students and 11 virtual students. 

“I think we’re all just grateful to be here in person, no matter if it’s 20 or 40,” said Lydia Graham, who is performing the role of The Countess in Marriage of Figaro. “I’m sad that a lot of really talented singers can’t be here in person, but I always love a small group because it can get more tight knit.”

Piano Program

The Chautauqua Piano Competition Winners’ Recital on July 11 will be the only time the public will be able to listen to the talented pianists of the Piano Program. Coming fresh off of a virtual season in 2020, this year’s pianists are eager to participate and really showcase their talents, even with a shortened four-week season. 

“Pretty much all the students participate in the competition, and this will be the only chance for the public to see the winners,” said Nikki Melville, co-chair of the Piano Program. “It’s just such a nice way of celebrating their playing. It’s going to be a very special thing.”

 There are still other piano performances to attend: Heintzelman Family Artistic Adviser Alexander Gavrylyuk performs July 4, Piano Program faculty member Alexander Kobrin performs July 6, and artist-in-residence Jon Nakamatsu performs on July 13. All performances will take place on Steinway pianos, as the School of Music is one of only four official Steinway festivals. 

Like other programs, the Piano Program was affected by COVID-19, forcing them to downsize to 19 students due to constant last-minute adjustments as well as contingencies based on international travel. 

“Normally we like to have things in place months in advance,” said John Milbaur, co-chair of the Piano Program. 

Another obstacle the program faced was maintaining connections with the community. 

“Keeping in contact with the people who love our students and faithfully come to every single thing we do is super-important to us,” Melville said. “I know it’s frustrating for them that they’re not able to come to events this season.” 

After such a tough and stressful year, everyone can’t wait to be creating music on stage once again. 

“It’s just so exciting to be making music again,” Muffitt said. “I just truly look forward to that moment when we’re all on stage in front of an audience.” 

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

Chautauqua Institution has expanded its dining options with a new food truck and bar. With a lakeside view and next to the chimes of the Miller Bell Tower, Chautauquans can now eat Asian fusion-inspired cuisine at The A Truck and buy a beer at 3 Taps.

Both will be open together from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., so Chautauquans can buy food outside for around $15 and also order a beer inside. Executive Chef Edward Work recommends the pork belly dog and the sesame ginger salad.

The area around the Pier Building also had a face lift. Paul Sass, director of food and beverage operations, said the gravel lot was redone, water and electrical lines were added for the food truck, the inside of the building was renovated to add a bar and high tables, and much of the grass behind the building was replaced with crushed limestone. There is also a new awning on the patio, as well as fire pits, rope railing and Adirondack chairs. The food truck and bar will have a staff of around 10-15 people, including three chefs and multiple cocktail servers. Sass said the Asian fusion-inspired cuisine was selected to give Chautauquans expanded food options. The truck gets its name from the Athenaeum Hotel. Work said that other food trucks were considered, including fire truck with a wood fire pizza oven in the back.

“It’s just an extension of the food that (Work) creates here,” Sass said. “He’s now putting it in truck form.”

The name of the bar refers to the Three Taps of the Gavel delivered by the president of Chautauqua Institution to open and close the Summer Assembly. Appropriately, the bar has three taps for beers. The A Truck was taken for a test drive June 16 to serve members of Institution staff as a pre-season celebration. Sass said the response from the community was overwhelmingly positive, and that some employees said they wanted to order from there every day. He said if the response during the summer season is positive, more food trucks may be added.

“We look forward to these seasons, we really do,” Sass said. “It’s almost like every year you open up something new again. We look forward to planning out the details to get to that, and then hope all the things that we planned for come to life.”

NICK DANLAG – STAFF WRITER

The Chautauqua Post Office is, in its own way, a pillar of the community. The building has been there for well over a hundred years, welcoming generations. To this day, Chautauquans will talk to each other while in line, content to be where they are. 

For the past 15 years, when Chautauquans picked up their mail, they were likely greeted by another pillar of the community: postmaster Laurie Lindquist, who announced her retirement on March 31 due to stage 4 pancreatic cancer. 

“I have made so many friends, and I call them friends because I truly feel they are,” Lindquist said in  recent interview with the Daily. “If you could see the cards and the outpouring of love I have received since my diagnosis of cancer — it’s just overwhelming to me. I save every card, and I’ve got over 1,500 of them so far.”

On June 8, Chautauqua held a retirement ceremony for Lindquist. Dozens of masked Chautauquans waited in a line that stretched from the Colonnade across Ames Avenue and toward the Bestor Plaza fountain. Lindquist embraced and talked to each one. Simply put, Director of Religion Maureen Rovegno said, the celebration was “a love fest.”

“Laurie hugged masked people for over an hour and a half, and the messages and kudos that poured in from all over the country from those who could not be here were extraordinary testimonies to how truly beloved she is,” Rovegno said.

The Chautauqua Institution Facebook page posted about the meet and greet to honor Lindquist. The post has hundreds of likes and dozens of comments, all of which included the commenters’ love. Some included the number of their post office box.

“Laurie has greeted thousands of new and longtime visitors with a friendly smile, helping them navigate this place with her incredibly deep knowledge of the Institution, the community and her work,” the post read.

One of the many people Lindquist has connected with over her tenure is Rovegno, who sent out a few update emails about Lindquist over the Chautauqua Grapevine, a community Google Group, sharing how the postmaster was doing, announcing her retirement celebration and a request for people to be her prayer partners.

“The post office is the heart of the community. I mean that in a literal sense, and that person, the real heart of the community, became Laurie,” Rovegno said. “She is the most beloved person at Chautauqua, and there’s no one who would disagree with my saying that.”

Lindquist said people at Chautauqua gave her that same love every day. One man would visit her during the summer and tell her about each morning lecture because she couldn’t attend due to her work at the post office. 

“Every day, you talk with somebody,” Lindquist. “There’s somebody that does mean something to you.”

Scott Anderson, sales and service associate at the post office, worked with Lindquist for almost three years. He said Lindquist always put the customer first, often working from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. six days a week.

“A lot of people don’t realize she didn’t go on vacations every year,” Anderson said, “so the vacations, few and far between, were very special to Laurie.”

Also special to Lindquist were her multiple runs a day. Her self-care routine started when her youngest son started running to train for football, and he asked her to come with her. 

That care extended to others — she knows almost everyone at Chautauqua by name and box number. 

“Sometimes they’ll come in,” Lindquist said, “and they’ll say, ‘Can you get me the mail in 304?’ I’ll say, ‘No, but I can get to the mail out of 403 because that’s your real box number.’ ”

No matter their box number, Lindquist said she simply wanted to make people happy.

“I want to please them because they treat me so well; I try my best to treat other people the way they treat me and everybody has gone above and beyond to be kind and gracious,” Lindquist said.

Over her tenure, Lindquist has helped nurture a sense of community in the post office.

“People here don’t get impatient waiting in line,” Lindquist said. “They use that time to visit with the person that they’re in line behind or in front of you. Getting the mail is a side thing.”

Lindquist said this calm attitude is part of what makes Chautauqua unique.

“I think people come here with the attitude that ‘The outside world can stay where it is, and I’m here,’ ” Lindquist said. “ ‘I can visit my friends. I can take a deep breath. I can be with my family.’ ”

As a full-time employee of the United States Postal Service, Lindquist worked during the slower months of the off-season, which allowed her to have longer conversations with Chautauquans.

“I always used to laugh and say that my canine customers outnumbered my human customers. I would keep all three sizes of dog biscuits for all sizes,” said Lindquist, who herself has a dog named Winnie and a cat named Charlie. 

Each summer season, Lindquist greeted community members old and new. Every year was different.

“I was there for 15 years and every year it got better and better,” Lindquist said. “It’s such a wonderful thing to be able to love your job because you love the people — not only the people that you serve, but the people you work with every day. It just is very gratifying to be able to say, ‘I love my job.’ And I have loved my job.”

Rachel Bowen Pittman grew up in a segregated Memphis, Tennessee. At age 15, she attended a National Conference of Christians and Jews summer camp, which encouraged children to interact with other cultures and taught them how to reduce prejudice and be leaders in social justice. The second day, the counselors placed the campers into different groups based on their race, and gave different rules to each group. For example, white campers got special food, and Black campers were tasked with clean-up duty.

“As teenagers, we know we have to respect and listen to adults. We knew we wanted to rebel, but we’re afraid of the consequences,” said Pittman, executive director of the United Nations Association of the United States of America. “However, after some time, one camper stood up and crossed the line into another group to break the rule. And then one by one, we all stood up until we were united as one in protest against the counselors.”

This was a planned exercise by the counselors; the goal was to teach the campers they had collective power, and sometimes building a better world requires breaking some rules. 

Pittman spoke at 10:45 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Aug. 26, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform, as part of Chautauqua Institution’s Week Nine Lecture platform, “The Future We Want — The World We Need: Collective Action For Tomorrow’s Challenges,” programmed in partnership with the U.N. Foundation. Her lecture, “Americans’ Role in Addressing Global Problems at a Local Level,” discussed what the United Nations is doing for its 75th anniversary, the effects COVID-19 has had on the globe, and actions each person can take to create a better world.

No step is too small, no movement forward will go unappreciated. Our path to a better world is real,” Pittman said.

The U.N. predicts that 71 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty due to the COVID-19 pandemic by the end of 2020. Pittman said 270 million people could face acute food insecurity — more than double the number of 2019 — meaning their lives would be in immediate danger from lack of food.  

“It is clear that the COVID-19 pandemic is not the great equalizer,” Pittman said. “It, in fact, has a disproportionate effect on the most vulnerable and marginalized communities.”

She also said by the end of 2020, the U.N. predicts global greenhouse gas emissions will decline by 6 percent. This decline, however, will not keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, which Pittman said would require world emissions to fall by 7.6% every year.

Pittman discussed her work with UNA-USA, dedicated to inspiring Americans to support the work of the United Nations, and how she helps members of UNA-USA tell their stories in Congress. According to the UNA-USA website, the organization has over 20,000 members and more than 200 chapters across the country. Members can participate in monthly national conference calls with U.N. experts and have a forum to voice their support for U.S. engagement at the U.N.

“Before the pandemic, I saw this framework in action by (UNA-USA) members,” Pittman said. “I escorted younger and older members around the halls of Congress, so they could advocate for full U.S. funding for the U.N. … Many of them had never taken this action before.”

Pittman said the audience needs to think about how they will participate in the global COVID-19 recovery. She said people of any age can become involved in community engagement and activism, as well as write letters about important issues to their local paper. People can also reach out to their elected officials to make sure they are endorsing laws and practices that promote equity.

“No step is too small, no movement forward will go unappreciated. Our path to a better world is real,” Pittman said.

The lecture then shifted to a Q-and-A session with Emily Morris, Chautauqua Institution vice president of marketing and communications and chief brand officer. The UNA-USA website states that 60% of their members are under the age of 26, and Morris asked how that affects Pittman’s work.

“We felt that the voice of youth needed to be heard more,” Pittman said, “and we noticed that youth in general were becoming more engaged in advocacy issues, such as climate change and gender equality, so it was a natural move for us to want to engage more youth.” 

She said UNA-USA reaches out to young people in several ways, including Model U.N. programs.

Morris asked what UNA-USA would be focusing on in the next few months.

UNA-USA holds the Global Engagement Online Series — webinars featuring a variety of experts in global issues. The next one, on Sept. 9, will be about how COVID-19 is impacting the educational systems in the U.S. and abroad, especially with the start of the academic year.

And for the 75th anniversary of the U.N., UNA-USA chapters across the country are hosting virtual programs.

“We are always looking for people to advocate for the United Nations and the work of the United Nations — especially the World Health Organization,” Pittman said. “We need to fight the COVID pandemic.”

At 58 years old, the Rev. Mitri Raheb has lived through 11 wars and battles in Bethlehem, Palestine.

“On average, every five years we go through a war,” Raheb said. “And in such a context, it’s really not easy to keep hope alive.”

But as an Evangelical Lutheran pastor, he preaches hope all the same.

“The more I read the Bible, the more I was preaching, the more I discovered that actually the Bible itself was written in a context of lots of despair, war, exile, destruction,” Raheb said. “And you hear the prophets saying, ‘How long, oh Lord, how long?’ And yet, that same book, the Bible, is infused with hope.

In his lecture “Palestine: Hope at Times of Despair?!” Raheb described how just like in the Bible, Palestine is in despair, but he still has hope for future peace.

He pre-recorded his lecture from Bethlehem, Palestine. It was released at 2 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Aug. 25, on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform as part of the Week Nine Interfaith Lecture Series theme, “The Future We Want, the World We Need.”

He started with the present. After Palestinians have been pushed out of their homes by Jewish settlers for the last 50 years, Raheb said Israel President Benjamin Netanyahu aims to annex around 40% of the West Bank, including important resources like the Jordan Valley “vegetable basket” and access to water resources like the Dead Sea and a water aquifer. He compared the annexation plan to Swiss cheese.

“Israel gets the cheese, that is, the resources, and the Palestinians are pushed out and get the holes,” Raheb said.

The current U.S. administration is also partial to Israel’s goals.

“They give Israel everything without really leaving any options for the Palestinians,” Raheb said.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan, illustrated in a map, leaves parts of Gaza disconnected from one another, with limited roads to travel between them.

Raheb has been discouraged by the international state response in general. Raheb said the atrocities Jews suffered in the Holocaust often cause European states to hesitate to act on what the Israeli government has done to Palestinians in the name of a holy land.

Meanwhile, Arab states like the United Arab Emirates gain financially and politically through ties with Israel at the expense of Palestine. The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish uses the Judeo-Christian allegory of the 11 brothers abusing Joseph and casting him out in the Old Testament to summarize the the waning lack of support over time from traditionally Muslim countries, though Palestine, too, is traditionally Muslim.

Raheb said it feels like a two-state solution is dissipating, while a one-state solution doesn’t seem possible yet, either.

“We live in this limbo,” Raheb said.

Raheb also uses another word to describe this limbo — apartheid.

“There is no way to violate human rights in the name of divine rights,” Raheb said.

Since 2002, Israel has built a separation barrier deep into Palestinian territory that has been condemned by the international community. Qalqilya, Palestine, is a city with 50,000 people surrounded by a 25-foot wall. To travel from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, five miles away in Israel, Palestinians need a permit. Israel has also created separate road systems that Israelis are permitted to use, while Palestinians are restricted to smaller roads.

When looking at maps, Raheb said it’s hard to be hopeful. But people still inspire hope in him.

He is first comforted by the fact that 6.5 million Palestinians live between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan Valley. They are not going to just disappear. In 1948, outside forces tried to do this by kicking Palestinians out of their homes and displacing them.

He is also comforted by the 6 million-strong diaspora of Palestinians around the world. His conversations with Palestinians abroad who are young, educated and still passionate about Palestine  — even as second- or third-generation immigrants — are another source of hope.

Raheb said that young Jewish people also give him hope for Palestine’s future.

“The third sign of hope is a movement that is happening in the Jewish community, and especially the Jewish community in the United States,” Raheb said.

Raheb said that J Street is part of this movement. An Interfaith Lecture Series talk by J Street’s founder Jeremy Ben-Ami releases at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Aug. 26, the day after Raheb’s.

“J Street said we have to work for a two-state solution. We have to find a compromise,” Raheb said. “Not because they love the Palestinians so much, but because Israel cannot be a democratic country and a Jewish country at the same time.”

Raheb said that he also still sees hope in the international community. Like this summer, when Black Lives Matter protests spread globally following the death of George Floyd. And when Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Israel, the international community did not follow suit because Raheb said it recognized Jerusalem not as the capital of Israel, but as an occupied state. And churches in the United States and all over the world are calling for companies to divest from business with Israel in protest.

“It is a desperate situation, but there is still hope,” Raheb said.

The future of Palestine, Raheb said, needs the international community to take human rights violations in Palestine seriously, engaged citizens who pay attention, and to regain the diversity that Palestine had prior to British colonization. Until 1928, Christians, Jews and Muslims worked and lived in one municipality before the British divided it  into two separate societies. In 1947, British soldiers did the same with a leper hospital and divided them into Jews and Muslims.

Raheb said that without a state, Palestine doesn’t have access to the rest of the world (though being a state doesn’t cut a nation off from everything in a post-nation-state era). After Palestine has been treated as stateless for generations, Raheb said that a confederation of two states rather than a two-state solution could be an option for peace. And regional cooperation on transnational issues beyond Palestine and Israel — like the COVID-19 pandemic — are also priorities.

“This virus doesn’t know boundaries,” Raheb said.

But to be able to prioritize these concerns, Raheb said the hundreds of billions of dollars of military funding need to be distributed back into investments for the people. He is concerned about growing religious nationalism worldwide; in Christian Zionist movements and links to general populism.

“When you blend religion with nationalism, this is a very explosive mix,” Raheb said.

To look toward the future of Palestine and the world with hope, Raheb said, reminded him of the prophet Jeremiah from the sixth century B.C.E., who watched Jerusalem fall while he was still imprisoned. He asked a family member to buy him a piece of land in Jerusalem after the tragedy.

“This is exactly what we do,” Raheb said. “We are investing in Palestine regardless of the weather, if it’s good or bad, if we have peaceful times, or even during wars; we were busy building the future.”

Raheb is the president of Dar al-Kalima University College of Arts and Culture in Bethlehem, Palestine, and co-founder of the U.S. nonprofit Bright Stars of Bethlehem, which funds the university educational and cultural initiatives. During the last five months of the COVID-19 pandemic while everything else shut down, the university finished building an outdoor plaza for students, and a new art gallery for the university art collection — and also started a new training center in Gaza, which suffers from polluted air, water and a lack opportunities for young people due to Israeli state violence.

“The only option we have, actually, is to get ready to work and invest even when no one wants to invest,” Raheb said.

When George Floyd lost his life at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer, the world didn’t stop. Instead, it marched. It chanted. It ignited.  

Before 2020, the 2017 Women’s March held the record for American protests at 4.6 million attendees. Polls indicate that, as of mid-June, more than 21 million adults had attended a Black Lives Matter protest.

Nicoletta Berry, an incoming masters student at the Juilliard School of Music and recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, wanted to stand in solidarity through song — and decided to create her own way of honoring the moment.

“The more outspoken we are, the better things are going to be for the future of us all,” Berry said. 

“Hear them Now: A Recital of Works from the African Diaspora,” a School of Music Voice Program recital, is available on-demand on the CHQ Assembly Video Platform. The recital initially aired and was recorded Sunday, Aug. 2, on Zoom. 

To ensure the planning and execution of the recital was as diverse and representative as possible, Berry reached out to Jaime Sharp, an incoming masters student at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music and recent graduate of the University of Michigan.

“I didn’t want this to be yet another thing run by people who are not Black,” Berry said. “We have seen way too much of that recently.” 

After they sent an email to every student in the Voice Program, 18 students volunteered to perform in the recital. Berry and Sharp put together a program of 18 solos, including art songs, spirituals and arias. All composers are Black. None of them repeat. 

“We feature an Afro-Latino composer, living composers, late composers and female composers — we basically checked as many boxes as we could,” Sharp said. 

There are staples in the set, Sharp said, such as Harry Burleigh, the first African-American composer acclaimed for his concert songs as well as for his adaptations of African-American spirituals, and Hall Johnson, whose Hall Johnson Choir is responsible for many of the greatest choir performances on stage and on screen in the ’30s and ’40s. But there are also contemporary additions, like Carlos Simon, whose work is contemporary partially because of its versatility, partially because he’s only 33. 

It can be difficult to get a hold of music by Black composers, according to Sharp. She has been to music libraries where none of the Black anthologies were accessible, and one where it was listed in the catalog, only for Berry to be told the library was “unable to locate it.” Berry has two anthologies of her own, but was hesitant at first to approach the repertoire because of her limited knowledge of Black composers.

“Those kinds of things just aren’t good enough anymore,” Sharp said. “The failure of these institutions to provide this kind of repertoire is hurting us as students. I hope now that a lot of the singers have heard this music, things begin to change.”

Things are changing already. Sharp and Berry gave each student who performed access to all of the included compositions and said many students expressed they were eager to include it in classes and performances during the subsequent semester. Sharp said a vocal coach from her school now wants to include some of the pieces into his American art song class. 

“The first step is being exposed to them,” Sharp said.

Berry said 18 students is merely a starting point. Most music students across the nation have never explored Black repertoire, something Sharp finds difficult to make sense of. 

“… When you sing American music, that is now going hand in hand with white American music,” Sharp said. “We just want to normalize the concept of when you have to perform an American art song, the one you pick just happens to be an American art song by a Black composer, by a Black woman.”

Normalizing the repertoire, for Berry, means appreciating the work of William Grant Still and Scott Joplin just as much as that of Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann. But for too long, Sharp added, classical music has been deemed “white Eurocentric music,” which she said is narrow and not true, a view she hopes “Hear them Now” will broaden and “alter for life.” 

“How can we incorporate this Black music in the future not because we have to, but because it’s amazing and it deserves to be performed?” Berry said. “I want people to listen to this recital and realize it’s not this foreign thing — it’s here and it’s always been here and we have the obligation to nurture it, perform it and to offer it to the world.”

Though it may have been a recording, the Miller Bell Tower rang out just as true as it always has on Saturday, marking the beginning of Chautauqua’s first virtual Bryant Day.

The Bryant Day ceremony — named in honor of William Cullen Bryant and his support for the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle — is an event that marks the official beginning of the new reading year for the CLSC.

At the virtual ceremony on Saturday, Aug. 22, Director of Literary Arts Sony Ton-Aime unveiled the first 2021 CLSC book selection after a rousing program including songs, poetry and pride. He began by acknowledging the challenges posed to the CLSC by the coronavirus pandemic.

“I am so proud to be part of this community of readers,” Ton-Aime said. “As we approach the end of the 2020 season, we are happy to announce that it was a great and successful season. You, the people of this community of readers, made it possible. Despite the difficulties of the pandemic, we came together around our mutual love of literature and lifelong learning, albeit virtually.”

Ton-Aime said the theme of the CLSC’s 2021 reading year would be “The People,” a theme borne from the “resiliency and ingenuity of (the world’s) people.”

“Next year, the CLSC selections will explore our contributions as people, our commonality, and what makes us human — without losing sight of the individual in each of us,” he said. “They will highlight the myths, fables and narratives of our humanness.”

With that, Ton-Aime turned the program over to Dick Karslake, the president of the Alumni Association of the CLSC, who began with the traditional poem written by Grace Livingston Hill-Lutz, read every year at Bryant Day.

“Your hillside by the quiet shore, / In hearts your watchfires burn, / With answering fire that shall inspire, / Still other hearts in turn!” Karslake read. “Fling wide your music, deep-toned bell, / From out your woodland tower! / Ring, clear, sweet bell, the story tell! / Proclaim the opening hour.”

From there, vocalist Amanda Lynn Bottoms and Chautauqua’s interim organist Joshua Stafford performed the first of two songs, “From Age to Age They Gather,” which was to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Then, after Lynn Bottoms and Stafford performed the short psalm “Bless Now, O God, We Pray,” Ton-Aime moved to reveal the first CLSC selection of 2021.

“Now is the moment I think you’ve all been waiting for,” he said.

After acknowledging the rising (virtual) tension, Ton-Aime lifted the Week Nine CLSC selection in front of his camera for all to see — the CLSC selection for Week Nine of the 2021 season.

“It is Rust: A Memoir of Steel and Grit, by Eliese Colette Goldbach,” he said. “It’s a book that recounts the years that Eliese spent working in a steel mine in Cleveland, Ohio, during the Depression. It’s the only book that we’re going to present now, but stay in touch — we are going to have all the selections revealed in the coming weeks, until we get to the season next year.”

And with that promise, Ton-Aime shifted the presenter’s screen to the recording of the Miller Bell Tower, ringing away.