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Over time, Scott Kelly has become “smarter and more handsome” than his identical twin brother, Mark. What’s his secret? A year in space.

With one brother on Earth and the other 254 miles above it, researchers had the unprecedented opportunity to monitor the effects of space on the human body. Now, those results are being used to determine what boundaries exist in the future of human-space exploration — because if the sky is no longer the limit, what is?

Kelly, an engineer, retired astronaut and U.S. Navy Captain, addressed that question at the 10:45 a.m. morning lecture Friday in the Amphitheater, closing Week Four, “The New Map of Life: How Longer Lives are Changing the World — In Collaboration with the Stanford Center on Longevity.” Kelly spent the second half of his lecture in conversation with Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education.

“Eventually I found inspiration in a book… it inspired me that I could potentially do more for my life,” says @StationCDRKelly

— The Chautauquan Daily (@chqdaily) July 19, 2019

Kelly grew up in New Jersey, where his mother, a former secretary and waitress, became their town’s first female police officer. In her determination, Kelly saw what it took to achieve any dream.

“This was the first time in my life that I saw the power of having this goal you think you can’t achieve, a plan to get there and working really, really hard at something,” Kelly said.

The problem was, he didn’t have any specific dreams in mind. However, after reading Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, a story documenting the first Project Mercury astronauts selected for the NASA space program, Kelly realized he had some out-of-orbit aspirations to consider.

“It wasn’t easy,” he said. “I had to take a bad student and turn myself into a good student, but, eventually, I found my way and I got commissioned into the United States Navy, became a fighter pilot, a test pilot and later, a NASA astronaut.”

Almost 18 years, to the day, after reading The Right Stuff for the first time, Kelly took his first trip into space, a trip to repair NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 1999. On his second mission, he crossed the threshold of the International Space Station for the first time as commander of space shuttle Endeavour. He returned to the station for a six-month stay in 2010, commanding Expedition 26.

When he returned home from his third trip safely, NASA proposed sending two astronauts for an entire year.

“Somehow they came up with me, this kid from New Jersey who couldn’t do his homework, and a guy I now refer to as my Russian brother from another mother, Mikhail Kornienko,” Kelly said.

To some, a year might seem extreme, but Kelly said the intensity of the experiment was for the sake of the future. If people should venture to Mars, a planet on the other side of the sun, the trip will take more than three years to complete.

“Never ever on the shuttle did I look outside one time…. it was only because I was focusing on things I could control,” says Kelly.

— The Chautauquan Daily (@chqdaily) July 19, 2019

“Going to Mars is going to be hard; it’s not going to be an easy thing to do,” he said. “It’s going to take a lot of risk for the crew members, it’s going to take risk of the program and risk in investment, but this is something I am convinced we absolutely have to do if we are going to continue as a species.”

In March 2015, Kelly launched into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, at 17,500 mph, never once looking out the window.

“It was only because I was focusing on the things I could control — the procedures, the systems, my job — and ignoring everything I couldn’t,” he said.

After six hours, he docked at the International Space Station, a solar-powered station in Earth’s low orbit. According to Kelly, life on the station is challenging, but during the year it served as his home, he found ways to improve his surroundings.

“You always have to question, ‘Why are we doing this thing this way?’ ” he said. “Why can’t we just make this system, this procedure, this operation, just a little bit better? In my experience, spending all this time in space, if we’re not always trying to make things at least just a little bit better, questioning and testing the status quo, things are absolutely going to get worse.”

The space station was Kelly’s office, too. There he conducted research utilizing a combination of biology, chemistry and physics.

“(We are) studying these things that happen to us in space that are very similar to what happens to us as we age,” he said.

In addition to using the sciences to study space, Kelly also collected data about his health to compare it to Mark Kelly’s on Earth. Ten science teams in NASA’s Twin Study examined the brothers’ bodily functions, both physically and cognitively.

“It was a genetic study about understanding our physiology and how this environment affects us at a genetic level,” he said.

“After spending a year in space I was absolutely inspired,” says @StationCDRKelly, “If we can dream it, we can do it.” pic.twitter.com/GnKeYKeLxj

— The Chautauquan Daily (@chqdaily) July 19, 2019

Regardless of where the trip leads, any time in space damages the human body.

“It’s almost like we are aging at a very, very accelerated rate,” Kelly said.

In space, humans lose 1% of bone and muscle mass a month.

“If you didn’t do anything to prevent that, after 100 months, you would have no skeleton left,” he said. “(That has) effects on our immune system, our vision and our physiology.”

With that in mind, Kelly said the results of the Twin Study were unexpected. In terms of telomeres, the ends of chromosomes that shorten and fray with age, Kelly’s hypothesis was that his would get shorter. As it turns out, his telomeres grew. In addition to his telomeres, scientists found that 7% of his gene expression changed over the course of his mission.

Cognitively, Kelly improved while being tested in space. However, after returning home, he was slower and less accurate on short-term memory and logic tests.

Along with being a scientist and a commander, Kelly wore many helmets in space. As the station’s only residents, Kelly’s team had to take care of general maintenance for the station, the shuttle and each other.

“You’re not only the scientist and the engineer and maybe the commander of the mission, you’re the electrician, the IT person, the plumber, the doctor and the dentist,” he said.

Because “all good things must come to an end,” Kelly returned to Earth on March 2, 2016. When he returned to his home in Houston, Kelly jumped in his swimming pool, had a beer and a piece of apple pie sent from the White House, and took his first shower in a year.

“All of those things were great, but the best part about coming home after being in space for a year was that I knew I had just done one of the hardest things I will ever have to do in my entire life,” he said.

Although he felt accomplished mentally, Kelly wasn’t doing well physically; he had trouble standing up, he was stiff, sore, nauseous and dizzy, and developed rashes and hives when his skin touched any surface.

All of those ailments went away with time, but what he learned in space has always stayed with him.

“NASA doesn’t really see any long-term showstoppers for going to Mars,” Kelly says.

— The Chautauquan Daily (@chqdaily) July 19, 2019

First, Kelly learned the value of teamwork.

“When we’re trying to do anything that’s challenging or difficult, you’ve got to do it as part of a team,” Kelly said. “I say space flight is the biggest team sport there is.”

Second, he learned about the importance of diversity in those team activities.

“It wasn’t until I got to NASA that I saw the power of having a group of people working together that come from different places, different experiences, different cultures and different ways of looking at things,” he said. “When you have people who look at things differently, they have different solutions to problems, and that’s what our job is, to solve problems.”

Third, he gained a new perspective on Earth’s environmental issues. From space, Kelly can see that certain areas in Asia and Central America are covered by air pollution. Between his space missions in 1999 and 2016, he also noticed a vast difference in the size of rainforests around the globe.

Kelly said there is a misconception that moving to another planet is a solution to Earth’s problems.

“We are not all going to Mars, I hate to tell you,” he said. “It will always be easier to live here, no matter how bad we destroy this planet, than it will be turning Mars into another Earth.” 

The space station, where Kelly has spent over 500 days of his life, is a 1 million-pound, football field-sized structure that was created by people all over the world. By its very existence, Kelly learned that anything is possible.

“After spending a year in space, I was absolutely inspired that if we can dream it, we can do it,” Kelly said. “(We can do it) if we focus on the things we can control and ignore the things we can’t, if we test the status quo, and of course, if we work together as a team. Teamwork makes the dream work. We can choose to do the hard things and if we do that, the sky is definitely not the limit.”

Kelly ends by saying, “It’s hard to believe that we have so much potential, yet we sometimes treat people from other countries like they don’t matter.”

— The Chautauquan Daily (@chqdaily) July 19, 2019

How the Light Gets In Director Emilie Beck wanted to be an actor her entire life.

Until she didn’t.

She started as a child actor performing alongside her father in Chicago, went to school for several years to be a professional actor, then moved to Los Angeles to pursue her career. 

“I moved to L.A. and decided that I hated acting in L.A.,” Beck said. “I had a moment where I had to ask myself if I wanted to leave L.A. so that I could be an actor, or if I wanted to stay and figure out something else. I thought about it, and I realized that what I loved most about acting was being able to tell stories.”

Upon realizing this, Beck decided to delve into writing and directing plays with the idea that she could continue to tell the stories she loved in powerful and profound ways.

Since then, she has traveled all across the country, telling stories both through her award-winning directorial works and the premieres of her original shows.

In 2010, she won LA Weekly Awards for Best Director and Best Production for Block Nine, and directed the Ovation Award-winning production of David Wiener’s Cassiopeia in 2013. She has also written two original plays — Number of People and And Let the Skies Fall — the latter of which was nominated for six Garland Awards, including Best Playwriting and Best Director.

“Directing a play gives you amazing opportunities,” Beck said. “For me, when you live with a text and work with it for a long time, it’s so exciting to dig into it. When you add the actors, it comes to life even more. You get to stumble upon some really amazing discoveries and really bring the show to life.”

Now, Beck has come to the Institution to direct Chautauqua Theater Company’s first New Play Workshop show: How the Light Gets In, by E.M. Lewis. The show follows four strangers as they meet one another in a Japanese garden and come to rely on each other — more heavily than they ever thought possible.

How the Light Gets In opened for a brief run on Thursday, and has its final show at 2:15 p.m. Saturday, July 20 in Bratton Theater. The NPW is sponsored in part by the Roe  Green Foundation.

This isn’t the first time Beck has worked with How the Light Gets In. Beck and Lewis have known one another for a number of years, working on several shows together prior to this one.

Lewis showed Beck a draft of How the Light Gets In early last year, and they workshopped the play at Boston Court in Pasadena, California, where Beck serves as literary manager.

Beck said she loves working on the show, and is continually and pleasantly astonished by Lewis’ writing.

“(Lewis) can write a very accessible play, but it leaves so much room for the true depth that is underneath,” Beck said. “She doesn’t feel like she has to explain the nuance and the complexity of her stories; those things are for the audience to unearth.”

Beck said she’s excited for Chautauqua audiences to experience Lewis’ writing. According to Beck, Lewis writes with an earnestness and warmth that can be difficult to come by in 21st century playwriting.

Since How the Light Gets In follows the run of CTC’s The Christians, a show that asked a number of heavy and introspective questions, Beck thinks Chautauquans are in for a positive experience with Lewis’ open and optimistic piece. Even the title itself, Beck said, sends a positive message.

“(The title) is related to this idea that the crisis that cracks us open or the flaw in ourselves — instead of those things destroying us — that opening becomes the most beautiful part of us,” Beck said.

According to Beck, that message, one of openness and acceptance, of growth and strength, is something that everyone deserves to hear.

Review by Andrew Druckenbrod:

Puck’s famous epilogue at the end of Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream apologizing if the play offended the audience is, of course, tongue-in-cheek. But after a sometimes goofy, often elegant but all-together pleasing multidiscipline production of Mendelssohn’s celebrated setting in the Amphitheater Tuesday night, it almost itself offended. After all, the audience witnessed — sometimes quite close-up — a frenetic and funny take on the classic by student performers that needed no apology.

With most of the performances in the Amp from artists in their prime (or at least well-known), here were performers of the future from Chautauqua Theater Company, School of Music Voice Program and School of Dance. The Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra under Rossen Milanov formed a bedrock upon which the students could flourish, but they hit marks, often doubly so. The smart solution by co-directors Andrew Borba and Sarah Elizabeth Wansley to get all the young performers involved was to pair dancers and actors in many roles.

This strategy meant Puck stole the show twice as much as usual. Actress Kayla Kearney shared the role with ballerino Jack Grohmann. She channeled Mary Martin’s Peter Pan while he emphasized Puck’s impish side. Likewise, with mischievousness of their own, the dancers mirrored the actions of the actors, the lovers Demetrius, Helena, Lysander and Hermia. This clever mix of classic ballet technique and whimsical choreography shined in the scene when Puck sends the lovers into deep sleep.

Borne with, shall we say, a puckish modern translation by Avenue Q librettist Jeff Whitty, the young actors embodied the high school drama of the magically misdirected Athenian lovers, anchored by an appropriately self-assured Oberon. Sharp performances by all, but alas names were not attached to characters in the program. At one point, the frustration of the confused Athenians leads to a mad dash of singers and dancers throughout the audience. With the barest of sets, Dixon Reynolds’ costumes stepped in with eclectic and eccentric designs, from modern suits to matching T-shirts. I particularly liked the contrast between Lysander’s Chippendale look and Demetrius’ frumpy dad outfit, and Kearney’s bright green overall shorts were a deft touch.

My own apologia for not getting to the musical performances sooner. The singers from the Voice Program impressed, especially when joined together in the chorus, “You spotted snakes with double tongue.” With the focus on the development of the voice, by its nature an individual matter, blending by opera singers is not assured. It was nice to know the teachers here work on that, as well. That is not to say the soloists disappointed. To the contrary, they phrased well, displaying voices already rich but well on their way to fulfilling the potential that comes later to opera singers.

The CSO played gracefully, with lightness and precision in the elven music and with warmth and bloom in the full sections that followed. This is hardly difficult music for a professional orchestra, but Milanov crafted phrases with aplomb and the balance was excellent in the overture and incidental music alike.

VBO: ‘Music set ablaze’

A special secret about Chautauqua Institution is the chamber music performances that dot each week, usually during the day. Monday brought the smaller, but potent Venice Baroque Orchestra to Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall in a fiery performance that belied the undeserved notion that baroque music is background or church music.

The 15 string, harpsichord and lute players threw the gauntlet down at the onset with dynamic, well, dynamics as a diminuendo arrived so shockingly quick in the very first phrase. That was in a sinfonia from Vivaldi’s opera, L’Olimpiade, that ended with the 18th-century version of thrashing rock. A glorious treatment of the delicate opening to George Frideric Handel’s G-major concerto grosso, from his opus 6 set, progressed to clear soli phrasing and crisp tutti articulation.

Things got more wonderfully intense as the concert progressed, from bow strokes both bouncing and biting to furious, theatrical playing. A Vivaldi violin concerto in E minor brought the virtuosity of concertmaster Gianpiero Zanocco to the fore, and he led the charge in an electric and downright rowdy performance of Francesco Geminiani’s “La Follia.” Vivaldi’s C-major recorder concerto had violinist Anna Fusek pick up a soprano recorder for a lively end to the concert. Yes, there were many moments of exquisite — and quiet — music, but the overall impression was that of music set ablaze.

Andrew Druckenbrod is a lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Pittsburgh and former classical music critic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Chautauqua tennis enthusiasts will be bouncing off the wall for this week’s opportunity.

At 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Friday, July 26 professional tennis player Jimmy Arias will be holding clinics for Chautauquans ages 14 and up at the Chautauqua Tennis Center. Arias, who was, at one point, ranked the No. 5 men’s professional in the world, will be teaching classes, which will focus on a mixture of strokes, strategy and point play. The classes will also offer an opportunity to play one-on-one with Arias in a game of point play, as well as time for those enrolled to have lunch with Arias.

During his professional career, Arias had an incredible forehand that is now a basis for modern-day tour players in the professional league. Arias is the youngest player to have earned a world ranking — at age 15. Arias started playing as a professional one year later — at age 16.

“Since Jimmy is from Buffalo, and rose to such prominence in the tennis world achieving a No.5 national ranking, there was much local interest,” said Lee Robinson, program director at the Chautauqua Tennis Center. “The Chautauqua community is avidly looking forward to Arias’ visit.”

Through an extensive professional career starting in his teenage years, Arias won a bronze medal representing Team USA in the 1984 Summer Olympics, the same year he made it to the quarter finals of the French Open.

After retiring from playing professionally in 1994, Arias worked for ESPN and the Tennis Channel, commenting for competitions and landmark games around the world. While he still appears to commentate, Arias also serves as director of tennis at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.

Arias said he has a new found passion for coaching that continues to grow at IMG Academy.

“There’s a part of me that wants to be (at IMG) more than I have been this summer,” Arias said. “Certainly, (I want to) spend some time with the kids and see if I can change some lives, and not just their tennis (skills) — but their perspective on life as well.”

In a game that started neck and neck, the Hot Chauts pulled away after the second inning to win 14-7 over the Chautauqua Moms on Thursday at Sharpe Field, continuing the 2019 season of Chautauqua women’s slow-pitch softball.

After the first inning had the Hot Chauts up by one over the Moms, a comeback seemed possible, given the momentum of the game. The game’s outcome impacted the season’s roster, putting the Hot Chauts over the Moms with four wins to three.

Communication across both teams was strong, but small issues made all the difference throughout the game. With the Moms missing a catcher, runs were easier to force home for the Hot Chauts and their larger roster of younger players. Between a need for other runners, and several bunted balls, the Moms were often out quickly, turning over to the next inning.

Hot Chauts captain and first baseman Jennifer Tarr said her teammates come from all over Chautauqua County, which she believes is an important part of the team’s high level of play. Tarr said that although some players were absent, and some substitutions were made, they still played very well for the circumstances, pulling through with the win.

“I think we had a good game,” Tarr said. “A lot of people were missing this game, but we always work together as a team, (and we) had good plays. Our outfielder Paula (Bobik) caught some really good fly balls out there.”

The top play of the game came at the bottom of the fifth inning, with the Moms up to bat. When a ball went sailing into the outfield for what seemed like a home run, quick ball movement and communication got the runner out before she could reach home. Tarr and Maureen Gray, Hot Chauts shortstop, got the ball to home plate just before the runner could touch it, getting her out and ending the game in one play.

At the end of the day though, Tarr said the games and competition are all in fun.

“That last play between myself and Maureen coming into home was a good one,” Tarr said. “Got (the runner) out at home base. I wish she got a home run, though. We’re all here to have a good time.”

The plane touched down on a viridescent sea of grass, its human cargo stepping gingerly onto the golf course, unaware of the infamy and tragedy that would befall her less than a decade later.

“All eyes were upon the young conqueror of the ocean,” The Chautauquan Daily reported in 1929.

It was July 20, 1929, when Amelia Earhart landed in her Lockheed Vega plane at the Chautauqua Golf Club — and this weekend marks the 90th anniversary of that landing.

Earhart arrived as part of a lecture circuit that followed her famous transatlantic flight in June 1928, a flight that made her the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, and which cemented her as a pivotal figure in 19th-century aeronautics.

“Stepping from the comfortably appointed plane as it came to rest on the fourteenth fairway, Miss Earhart, by her infectious smile, won her way immediately to the hearts of the crowd which had come to greet her,” the Daily reported on July 22, 1929. “Taken by auto to the home of President and Mrs. Bestor, she was cheered by the people along the route. She, with Lieutenant Stevens, the pilot, and Mr. Hutchinson, mechanic, was entertained at luncheon at the President’s home.”

From her rendezvous with Arthur Bestor, Earhart proceeded to the Amphitheater, where she spoke about her 20-hour and 40-minute, 1928 flight as a passenger across the Atlantic in the tri-motored Fokker plane, Friendship.

“As the flight of the Friendship recedes into the past, I find that I must explain exactly who I am,” she told the Amp audience. “Recently I have been congratulated several times for swimming the English Channel, and once for swimming the Atlantic Ocean.”

In fact, Earhart was working as a social worker in Boston when she got the call to fly across the Atlantic. She accepted, stipulating that she choose her own personnel and that she be allowed to do some flying herself.

“The food on the transatlantic flight consisted of oranges, coffee in a thermos bottle, malted milk tablets, and scrambled egg sandwiches,” the Daily reported. “Everything — chairs, extra life preservers, had to be thrown out to save weight.”

Eventually, after taking off from Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland, Earhart and her flight team finally touched down near Burry Port, Wales, and tied their plane to a nearby buoy.

But perhaps most interesting about Earhart’s lecture in Chautauqua was her characterization of gender disparities in aviation.

“Considering the question of why more women do not fly, Earhart attributed the difference between men and women in aviation to the influence of the educational system, where all girls are taught domestic sciences and all boys manual training, without regard to individual aptitudes,” the Daily reported.

After American aviator Charles Lindbergh’s nonstop, solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Earhart became, in 1932, the second person to complete that great journey. Later in 1932, Earhart became the first woman to fly nonstop and alone across the United States — from Los Angeles to New Jersey.

Earhart’s prescient speculations on the future of air travel ended her Chautauqua speech and heralded her departure from the Institution.

“I hope that every one of you will have the privilege of flying across the Atlantic,” she said. “I myself hope to be able to do it again, not as I did, but in one of the large flying boats which will soon be making regular trips, with landing stations at convenient intervals along the route.”

“Landing stations at convenient intervals” would certainly have come in handy for Earhart in the 1937 round-the-world flight attempt that so notoriously ended in tragedy.

After Earhart’s disappearance in the Pacific eight years later, the Daily lamented the loss of its “First Lady of the Air.”

“We cannot believe the world is ready to move on without its most prominent, most popular birdwoman,” the Daily reported in 1937. “We cannot believe her permanent disappearance could be fair or just.”

It’ll be gospel music that drifts from the Amphitheater into the summer air this Sunday — the kind of gospel music that’s unpredictable and completely unrepeatable.

“They never do anything the same way twice,” said Jared Jacobsen, Chautauqua’s organist and coordinator of worship and sacred music. “They very rarely use actual printed music for anything, because mostly, it’s the most amazing kind of jamming you can think of.”

“They” are the Sanctuary Choir and Dance Troupe from Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

At 8 p.m. Sunday, July 21 in the Amp, Jacobsen will present a Sacred Song Service featuring the TUCC’s choir and dance troupe.

The idea to bring musicians and dancers from the Chicago church originated from the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, TUCC’s senior pastor and Chautauqua’s Week Five chaplain.

“When Otis comes to preach, it’s a big deal,” Jacobsen said. “He pretty much has carte blanche to do what he’d like to do. And a couple of years ago, he kind of meekly asked us, ‘Well, can I bring my choir?’ ”

Jacobsen said that while Chautauqua’s choir is “very good,” they “don’t do what (TUCC’s choir) does.”

“(The Sanctuary Choir and Dance Troupe) comes at their own expense, 50 to 75 of them, from Chicago,” he said. “They come up and arrive Saturday, and become part of Chautauqua almost instantly. They’re all over the grounds, just soaking in the place.”

The key difference between programming for musicians at Chautauqua as opposed to TUCC is that, according to Jacobsen, TUCC’s choir and musicians specialize in improvisation.

“Their way of music-making is so utterly different from mine,” he said. “They’re very good at creating ‘something out of nothing’ music, where somebody just sings them a melody and they create a piece around the edges of that. They bring energy, they bring dynamism, they bring enormous style to what they do.”

According to Jacobsen, the last time TUCC’s Sanctuary Choir came to sing in Chautauqua, they brought with them a few dancers to perform as well.

“The whole community at Trinity United Church is an interlocking group of people who are trying out interesting things,” he said. “So now they’ve sort of codified the dance group, and they’re bringing them here as an official thing.”

However, Jacobsen admitted he has “no clue what they’re going to sing and no clue what the dancers are going to do.”

“I just know that it’s going to be terrific,” he said. “I deed over the Sacred Song Service in the evening to them, but I play the bookends at the beginning and the end — the two hymns and then Largo at the end.”

Moss, TUCC’s senior pastor, is a “phenomenon of Chautauqua,” according to Jacobsen.

“His father, Otis Moss, (Jr.), is retired from a very dynamic African American church in Cleveland,” Jacobsen said. “The preaching gene was clearly passed down from father to son. Otis Moss III won a major award as an up-and-coming preacher out of seminary, so we tapped him to preach here.”

Moss’ father worked in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and was an associate of Martin Luther King Jr.’s.

“(Otis Moss III) became the minister of a very interesting UCC church in Chicago that has a long history in the African American community as a ‘destination church,’ ” Jacobsen said. “So it’s sort of the equivalent of Martin Luther King Jr.’s church in Atlanta.”

Despite all the uncertainty in this week’s service, Jacobsen said he’s going to step back and watch everything fall into place.

“I’m smart enough to know that I just need to get out of the way,” he said. “They can do whatever they want to do to make the music come alive. It will be amazing.”

In partial celebration of the Chautauqua Women’s Club’s 130th anniversary, Wes Cowan is taking on separate but related roles. One is similar to his “Antiques Roadshow” persona, and the other is more akin to his former “History Detectives” persona.

Wearing his appraiser’s hat on Friday afternoon, Cowan kicked off the CWC’s weekend celebration by leading a “Road Show”-themed event, during which he provided valuations of 20 items of personal property brought to him by Chautauquans who had purchased VIP tickets in advance.

At 2 p.m. Saturday, July 20 in the Hall of Philosophy, Cowan will switch to his history hat and talk about “The Things We Keep: History with a Little H,” as part of CWC’s Contemporary Issues Forum.

“I’ve been with (the American version of) ‘Antiques Roadshow’ since its second season,” he said. “And for 11 years I was co-host of ‘History Detectives.’ Those two experiences inform the thesis of my talk. Every American has a story to tell. Those stories connect us to history. Our family’s relationship with these two concepts is changing and is going to continue to change.”

At an early age, Cowan’s own family story began connecting him to American history. Years before he started scientifically studying the origin, culture and development of humans, he gained firsthand experience collecting and unearthing historical objects.

“I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky,” Cowan said. “I was a weird kid. I was drawn to old things. My mother took me to auctions. … I also rode my bike to local antique shops when I was 10 and 11 years old, and all the old men and women who ran them thought it was kind of cute.”

He said that a friend gave him a chipped stone arrowhead, and he wanted to know all about it.

“I turned to the local archaeological society … and my mother took me to local places where I could find arrowheads and other artifacts,” Cowan said.

Relatives in western Kentucky owned farms, and he said he spent summers working on them. Uncovering more arrowheads, Cowan sought out the museum of anthropology. His academic path in anthropology was set in motion, when at age 15, he worked on his first dig.

At the University of Kentucky, Cowan earned his Bachelor of Arts, and then his Master of Arts, in anthropology.

Three years later, in 1980, he completed his doctorate at the University of Michigan, joined the anthropology faculty at The Ohio State University, began teaching archaeology, and continued his fieldwork. His research interests included the archaeology of North America and the origins of agriculturally-based economies.

“I was very interested in the origins of agriculture in eastern North America,” Cowan said. “I’ve written extensively about paleoethnobotany, … the study of the interrelationships of plants and past civilizations.”

From 1984 to 1994, Cowan served as curator of archaeology and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History. He said that during those 11 years, he continued his research. In 1987, the museum published his report, “First Farmers of the Middle Ohio Valley: Fort Ancient Societies, A.D. 1000-1670.”

All the while, Cowan continued antiquing.

“In grad school I became very interested in not writing my dissertation,” he said.

Taking “respite from the grind of school,” he stopped at old shops and antique stores on the back roads of southeastern Michigan, purchased items he could afford — “photographs of 19th-century America” — and learned about American history and photography.

In Cincinnati, Cowan began turning this knowledge and his acquisitions into a side business of “buying, selling and trading with collectors the world over.” He converted his garage into a makeshift office and conducted auctions by mail and telephone.

“In 1994, I was asked to do an appraisal of a 19th-century photo,” Cowan said. “After the lawyer asked, ‘What do I do now?,’ I sold it at auction.”

He left the natural history museum in 1995 to become a licensed auctioneer and establish Cowan’s Auctions in Cincinnati. Initially, he focused on early photographs, historical manuscripts, maps and political ephemera.

Because his business grew rapidly over the next few years, Cowan began hiring specialists in Native American art, furniture, decorative art, paintings, jewelry, antique firearms and 20th-century studio ceramics. He also added two offices — in Cleveland and Denver.

As he added staff, Cowan said he “hired people who were academics” and advised them to “pull the thread, pull the string and see where it leads — the more information you can provide to a potential buyer, the better off it will be.”

Cowan’s Auctions’ tagline is: “Bringing exceptional objects to sophisticated buyers with passion, respect and integrity.”

As his business grew, Cowan maintained his interest in paleoethnobotany and his connections with the academic community.

He made the time to co-edit three books, two of which included his own research on the late prehistoric and protohistoric Fort Ancient societies in the central Ohio Valley: Societies in Eclipse: Eastern North America at the Dawn of European Colonization; The Origins of Agriculture: An International Perspective, and Societies in Eclipse: Archaeology of the Eastern Woodlands Indians, A.D. 1400-1700.

In January, according to Cowan, a company that had purchased Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, founded in Chicago in 1982, also bought Cowan’s Auctions. They merged to form Hindman, LLC, which has locations in 10 cities, including in the southeastern United States.

“We have a greatly expanded footprint now, which allows us to touch even more people,” Cowan said. “In 2018, (Cowan’s Auctions) had 50 employees and $17 million in annual sales. … In 2019 (Hindman has) 150 people and annual sales of $67 million. We’re the largest fine arts auctioneers in the Midwest, and one of the largest in the country, with international reach.”

In addition to growing his business and keeping abreast of anthropological research, Cowan said he spent years in front of a national audience each week.

“When I was doing both, it was incredibly time consuming,” Cowan said. “There were long periods of absence. I couldn’t have done this without great people. I credit them with everything.”

Twelve to 13 million people watched “Antiques Roadshow” every week, Cowan said.

“It’s tough to maintain momentum after 24 years, (yet) it’s still the No. 1 most popular show on PBS, period,” he said.

The documentary television series “History Detectives” aired from 2003 to 2013. In 2014, both its format and name were changed. “History Detectives: Special Investigations” was discontinued, though not officially canceled, the following year.

Cowan, who co-hosted both versions, said that 110 episodes were produced.

“Very few shows have that longevity,” he said. “It tapped into a deep vein of interest.”

“Roadshow” and “Detectives” spawned a series of knock-off shows, including “Pawn Stars” and “American Pickers.”

“Of all the TV reality shows, ‘Antiques Roadshow’ and ‘History Detectives’ are the only ones not made up,” Cowan said. “Particularly, ‘AR’ — it’s pure as the driven snow.”

At least one instance — the mystery of the black Confederate soldier, an item Cowan appraised during a 2010 “Antiques Roadshow” episode — led to him hosting a “History Detectives” episode.

Cowan’s findings concerning the tintype photo of two young soldiers — one white and one black, and both dressed in Confederate uniforms — negated the stories that two West Point, Mississippi, families with the surname of Chandler had been telling for many years. Consequently, their relationship with each other and with Civil War history changed.

Silas Chandler, often misunderstood to be a willing black Confederate soldier, was a Mississippi slave forced to fight in the Civil War alongside his white owners. Photographs, like the 160-year-old tintype of Silas and his owner Andrew Chandler, have historically been used to fuel narratives of willing black Confederate soldiers.

Through Cowan’s research, he proved that the photo of Silas and Andrew could no longer be used as evidence that slaves, or former slaves, willingly fought against the Union Army.

By filling in part of “his story” with a little “h,” Cowan indelibly connected Chandler to American myth and “history” with a big “H” — in a way that is profoundly impactful. 

Welcome to the fifth week of our 146th Assembly. It’s hard to believe we’re already at the midpoint of our annual convening. I’m grateful for the first four weeks of inquiry but even more delighted that we have five left, to crack open thought-provoking topics, to celebrate our shared humanity and to relish in the power of gathering together as we pursue this shared mission. If this is your first week joining us, we welcome you. If you’ve been on the journey with us before this week, know how grateful we are to you for spending extra time with us.

This week we celebrate “The Life of the Spoken Word,” which seems particularly appropriate at a place like Chautauqua, where we lift up great oratory and preaching, and celebrate artists who use the spoken word to share their stories. As consumers, creators and critics, we are experiencing a renaissance of the spoken word. This week, we join the history and modernity of compelling oratory to explore broader themes of social and intergenerational connectedness and the ways that our speech, our stories, bring us together.

Our journey begins with “This American Life” host and storyteller extraordinaire Ira Glass in a Saturday evening Amphitheater special, setting the stage for a rich week to follow. From political rhetoric and civil discourse, to the arts of theater and poetry, to podcasts and stories told around the campfire, we’ll ask “what is the power of the spoken word?” And we’ll explore how this modern age has changed its delivery. Throughout the week, as we look to the future of the spoken word, we’ll present ways to use technology to preserve our past, our history, our stories.

There are so many exciting programs to illuminate this week, but I’d draw your attention to Larry Arnn’s lecture on Tuesday. Dr. Arnn is the 12th president of Hillsdale College, where he also serves as a professor of politics and history, teaching courses on Aristotle, Winston Churchill and the American Constitution. There is a vibrant debate going on right now about the role that our colleges and universities can or should play in shaping our discourse. I have enjoyed receiving the college’s monthly publication Imprimis, which tackles so many of today’s hot-button issues. I know Dr. Arnn will provide even greater context.

Our companion Interfaith Lecture Series this week looks to a time before the founding of Chautauqua, when a very particular expression of the spoken word took root and may have led eventually to our founding, as we examine “Chautauqua: Rising from the Ashes of the Burned-Over District.” We refer often to Chautauqua’s beginnings in 1874, and its history going forward, but little-known is the history that preceded Chautauqua’s founding. The Chautauqua Assembly reflected many movements that had their genesis in what was called the “Burned-over District” resulting from the “on fire” religious environment and culture of the early 19th century in Western New York. The Assembly synthesized the religious passion of the age with its own unique contributions to American culture, as did other religious and civic expressions of the region arising out of that epoch. In this week, we will revisit that incendiary era, and then meet some other religious and civic entities that have also stood the test of time.

A couple of other quick notes about our week. As some of you know, Chautauqua Theater Company received the great news this year that a play it had workshopped in 2017 is now headed to Broadway. I say that because at 2:15 p.m. Saturday in Bratton Theater, CTC will be workshopping How the Light Gets In. I believe we haven’t seen the last of work that started its life at Chautauqua heading to The Great White Way. Don’t miss your chance to be a part of this growing legacy.

Two very special friends return to Chautauqua this week. I cannot wait to welcome back the Rev. Otis Moss III as our chaplain of the week. Otis is a Chautauqua favorite, and I know his words will inspire, challenge and uplift us this week. Welcome back!  And one of my very favorite artists and people, Rhiannon Giddens, joins us for a very special concert on Thursday. Back at Chautauqua by popular demand, Rhiannon is the co-founder of the Grammy Award-winning string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, was awarded a 2017 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and won the 2016 Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Bluegrass and Banjo. I had the unbelievable privilege of spending some quality time with her during our last visit and count her as a kindred spirit. She’s not to be missed.

Each week that I sit down to write these words to you, I’m reminded of the vast treasures that exist at Chautauqua. Picking one or two things to highlight in a given week is always tough because each activity we present is worthy of a shout out. As I write this column Thursday, I am excited that the Music School Festival Orchestra and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra will again combine forces in the Amphitheater. Their joint performance last year was one of the most stunning artistic experiences of my life.

As you head into this week, what things are you most looking forward to? What are those anticipated moments? I’d love to hear your thoughts as a way to share together. For those on social media, drop me a line on Twitter at
@MichaelHillCHQ or on my Facebook page at facebook.com/MichaelHillCHQ. While time and schedules don’t allow me to personally visit with everyone on the grounds, I hope we can celebrate your favorite moments this week.

Have a wonderful week, friends!

“A message from Otis Moss III always teaches about love, justice and commitment to the community,” according to Common, hip-hop artist, actor and a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. “It’s good to have a pastor who’s real and relevant.”

One of Chautauqua’s favorite preachers, Moss returns as chaplain for Week Five. He will preach at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday Ecumenical Service of Worship and Sermon in the Amphitheater, and will share some of his faith story at the 5 p.m. Sunday, July 21 Vespers in the Hall of Philosophy. He will preach at the 9:15 a.m. Ecumenical Service, Monday, July 22 through Friday, July 26 in the Amp. His Sunday sermon, drawing on Luke 5:17-26, is “By Any Means Necessary.” Sermons for the rest of the week include “This Is Us: Part 1,” “This Is Us: Part 2,” “Repairing the Jericho Road” and “A Liberation Ministry.”

In his Twitter biography, Moss describes himself as “a Jazz-influenced Pastor with a hip-hop vibe. Saved by Jesus, Inspired by Zora Neale Hurston, blessed by Howard Thurman & Amazed by August Wilson.”

Moss is senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and has built his ministry on community advancement and social justice activism. At Trinity, Moss preaches a black theology that calls attention to the problems of mass incarceration, environmental justice and economic inequality.

An ordained minister in the Progressive National Baptist Convention and the United Church of Christ, Moss is the former pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia, where, in his first pastorate, the church grew from 125 members to over 2,100 during his tenure.

“The church has a unique location of being a village,” Moss told Tyler Sit for Ebony in 2017. “I know of no other institution that has the ability to bless a baby, care for an elder, fund a scholarship for a teenager, work with a couple on the verge of divorce, organize a neighborhood after a shooting, visit people in jail, advocate against mass incarceration, have a farmers market, employ people who come out of prison, and help people understand how all of that is related to what (theologian Paul) Tillich calls ’the ultimate concern,’ the love of Christ.”

Moss is on the boards of Auburn Seminary and the Faith-In-Place/Action Fund, and is chaplain of the Children’s Defense Fund’s Samuel DeWitt Proctor Child Advocacy Conference and a senior fellow in the Auburn Seniors Fellow Program. He was named to the inaugural “Root 100,” a list that “recognizes emerging and established African American leaders who are making extraordinary contributions,” according to The Root’s website.

Moss is an honors graduate of Morehouse College, earned a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School, and a Doctor of Ministry from Chicago Theological Seminary. He is the author of Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World: Finding Hope in an Age of Despair; Redemption in a Red Light District and The Gospel According to the Wiz: And Other Sermons from Cinema. He co-authored The Gospel Remix: How to Reach the Hip-Hop Generation with three other contributors, and Preach! The Power and Purpose behind Our Praise, with his father, the Rev. Otis Moss Jr.

Ira Glass has made storytelling his life for the last 20-odd years — and this weekend, he will speak on the storytelling process at Chautauqua.

Glass will speak at 8:15 p.m. Saturday, July 20 in the Amphitheater. His talk, “Seven Things I’ve Learned,” will share lessons from his life and career — anecdotes on creativity, passion, failure and success. He plans to use audio clips, music and video to walk the audience through his storytelling process.

Glass is the creator, producer and host of “This American Life,” a weekly radio show and podcast with over 2.2 million listeners. Since he created the show in 1995, Glass has hosted nearly 700 episodes. The episodes focus on nonfiction storytelling, as well as essays, short fiction, found footage and whatever else demonstrates the facets of “American Life.”

Stories are everywhere, Glass said, but it takes great determination to tell those stories in an engaging way.

“It’s hard to make something that’s interesting,” Glass told The A.V. Club in 2003. “It’s really, really hard. … It’s like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that’s written or anything that’s created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity. … So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will.”

But even if mediocrity is the natural state of writing, Glass told A.V., the natural state of the world is excellence — a planet of stories waiting to be told.

“We live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing,” Glass wrote in his 2007 anthology, The New Kings of Nonfiction.

At roughly 60 minutes each, episodes of “This American Life” are longer than many of the “binge-worthy” media  — 30-minute Netflix shows, 5-minute YouTube videos, and 280-character Tweets. Glass said in an interview with The Buffalo News last week that the division between these two media types is more nuanced than people often realize — we still want a “nice story.”

“The idea that we have these really short attention spans because we’re all on our phones all the time is a really incomplete reading of what’s happening and a primitive reading of what’s happening,” Glass told The Buffalo News. “The greater truth is we’re all pretty flexible, and it’s nice to have something to read when you’re in an elevator or waiting for your food. And it’s also nice to settle into a nice story.”

Glass’ visit to Chautauqua is a long time coming. Deborah Sunya Moore, vice president of performing and visual arts, said Glass was the very first evening entertainer booked for 2019 — over a year ago. She said his passion for storytelling made him uniquely suited to open Week Five: “The Life of the Spoken Word.”

“Very early on, we knew that we were going to have a theme on spoken word, and as soon as we started talking about that, we agreed that perhaps the special entertainment that weekend would not be a band — it would focus on the spoken word. And the main name we thought of, of course, was Ira Glass.”

Glass is a “main name” of storytelling after decades of work. In a 2009 interview on storytelling that has since been featured in the viral video, “The Gap,” as well as several other videos now available on YouTube, he advised young storytellers to keep practicing their craft.

“It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions,” Glass narrates in the video. “And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s going to take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just got to fight your way through.”

As the curator for one of Brooklyn’s most popular boutique hotels, artist Kimia Ferdowsi Kline knows she occupies a unique space.

“I’m Iranian; in addition to being female I’m also a minority,” she said. “I’m really conscious when I’m curating in a space, who I’m giving a voice to, who I’m giving opportunities.”

Kline will be speaking at 7 p.m. Friday, July 19 in the Hultquist Center as part of the Visual Arts Lecture Series. She will be discussing the last five years of her artistic practice and her work as the director of art programming for the Wythe Hotel.

At the Wythe, Kline purchases art for the hotel’s extensive permanent collection; original works from New York-based artists are featured in every hotel room. She also curates a new exhibition in the hotel lobby every three months and organizes a number of programs for hotel guests and members of the community.

She uses her job to introduce work from artists she believes might be overlooked elsewhere.

“Typically, these positions are held by Caucasian individuals or male individuals and the percentages of minorities or females in collections like this are pretty slim,” Kline said. “In my case, it’s the majority; the majority of the people in the collection I work with are women and minorities, so that’s a big difference.”

As an artist, Kline is represented by Turn Gallery in New York City, and works primarily in figurative painting and sculpture.

In her talk, Kline will discuss how her work deals with her identity as the daughter of Iranian immigrants. Her family fled Iran before Kline was born because of religious persecution during the  Iranian Revolution, and for this reason she is still unable to visit the country. She grew up in Nashville, Tennessee.

“It’s hard to pinpoint what part of me is Iranian and what part of me is American,” Kline said. “But I would say the underlying current in all of my artwork is basically this longing and this inability to return to my homeland and how that plays out in my life.”

Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution’s newest exhibition may feature works all based on realism, but visitors shouldn’t expect every piece to look the same.

“My goal in curating ‘Getting Real,’ was to see how close I could balance abstraction and realism without completely pushing the imagery to one side or the other,” Judy Barie, Susan and John Turben Director of VACI Galleries wrote in her curator’s statement.

“Getting Real” will open with a reception from 3 to 5 p.m. Friday, July 19 in the Strohl Art Center’s Main Gallery. The exhibition, which features work from seven artists selected by Barie, will remain on display through Aug. 20.   

Each artist in the exhibition offers a unique interpretation of realism, using the mediums of paint, paper and glass. Most of the pieces will be mounted on the walls, with paper and glass works from Pittsburgh-based sculptor Elizabeth Fortunato around the gallery.

Sarah Williams is a painter and associate professor at Missouri State University. Her paintings in “Getting Real” are all nightscapes of houses and stores inspired by the small town in Missouri where she grew up.

“My work is all nocturnal scenes, and I like to use that heightened sense of drama that happens with high contrasts (and) glowing lights to give those structures not only a sense of mystery, but also this aesthetic appeal,” she said. “It slows people down and makes them realize that there is something really unique and interesting about those things that, during the daytime, I think people tend to just drive right by.”

Williams has experimented with different styles but said she chooses to paint realistic works because of their accessibility.

“I like being able to have something that the viewer can automatically relate to as kind of a visual hook,” she said. “And if I can get them to stay, I can start giving them more information.”

William Steiger is a New York-based painter. He works primarily with architectural and mechanical imagery and has paintings and collages featured in the exhibition.

He said  realism is not the ultimate goal in his work, but something he uses as a jumping off point.

“The paintings come together through a process of observation, memory and imagination,” he said.

Steiger utilizes a white background for many of his paintings, requiring the viewer to fill in certain details, possibly without even realizing what they are doing.

“I thought about the light source a lot … and the details that the brain fills in,” he said. “There are certain surfaces that are the same color of the sky; there are no lines there, (but) the viewer completes the image by looking at the details that are there.”

Shelley Reed is a New York painter whose pieces are inspired by art history. She “appropriates” different images from historical works to create new paintings, with a focus on plants and animals. She works in black and white to emphasize the detail and structure of her work.

“I love color, but (it) can be very seductive,” she said. “One can end up looking at the painting and (only) appreciating what the color is saying. … A red rose is beautiful because of the color, but what if you take that away?”

Reed said her pieces are works of “suggested realism.”

“It’s a little bit of an echo,” she said. “It’s about what’s happening in the shadows, in the shade.”

Besides being representative of the works Reed is inspired by, she uses realism in her paintings to engage with viewers.

“Realism allows for storytelling, and not just mine,” she said. “It’s about me putting the pieces together for the viewer to tell their own story.”

Science has provided strong insights into the aging process, but Kate de Medeiros and Ron Cole-Turner are challenging the data, using culture to make the statistics less about numbers and more about the people they represent.

De Medeiros, the O’Toole Family Professor in Miami University of Ohio’s Department of Sociology and Gerontology, and Cole-Turner, the H. Parker Sharp Professor of Theology and Ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, joined Vice President and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education Matt Ewalt in conversation at 10:45 a.m. Thursday in the Amphitheater, continuing Week Four, “The New Map of Life: How Longer Lives are Changing the World — In Collaboration with the Stanford Center on Longevity.” The two served as replacements for Joseph F. Coughlin, director of MIT’s AgeLab, who canceled due to health reasons.

“We can certainly look to literature, to mythology and to other things to give us clues into areas that science is now kind of taking up again,” de Medeiros said. “It’s exciting to be able to have data to pair with a lot of these ideas, but we inherit a very rich cultural history that helps us shed light into this meaning of growing older.”

With backgrounds in sociology and theology, respectively, de Medeiros and Cole-Turner provided insight into “The New Map of Life” by discussing longevity with respect to expectations of aging, age-shaming and wisdom.

Two central metaphors, “old age as childlike” and “pushing one’s limits,” can lead to misleading portrayals of older generations.

“That leads to things like elderspeak or treating older persons in an infantile way, or somehow devaluing the contributions an older person makes,” de Medeiros said. “We need to challenge some of the ways that aging is portrayed and the way that, because of that, it shapes our own experiences of growing older and our expectations.”

Those expectations, along with other aging misconceptions, drive people’s fears of getting older.

Cole-Turner and de Medeiros agreed that older generations are often mischaracterized as dependent. To Cole-Turner, people — no matter the age — are not independent to begin with.

“Recognizing that we are all, always, dependent upon the natural world, upon the human community, upon the work of others, upon commerce,” he said. “We are all always mutually interdependent and to let go of control, let go of the illusion that I am independent, that I not only did it my way, I went right to the very end doing it my way — let go of that.”

This idea of dependency in old age is particularly relevant to the idea of “age-shaming,” which de Medeiros said is so embedded in American culture that people engage in it without even realizing — in fact, most people do it to themselves.

“We might say, ‘Pardon me, I’m just old,’ or ‘I’m having a senior moment’ or, ‘What do you expect from an older person like me?’ ” she said. “I hear this a lot from other professors on campus, and what that does is reinforce that aging is bad.”

De Medeiros said older generations are not the only people engaging with age-shaming narratives. Children have also been exposed to age-shaming culturally — particularly through literature, film and television.

“If you look at children’s books, if older characters are present, they are either inconsequential or portrayed as incompetent,” she said. “If you look at Disney and you look at older characters, with some exceptions, older women are often these terrible witches that are trying to steal the youth to stay young.”

De Medeiros recently saw “Today Show” hosts use the new FaceApp to age their faces, something she struggles to find humorous.

“The app could also change your gender, but they would not dare do that because that would be offensive,” she said. “It begs the question, ‘Why is that funny?’ And why do we not do something about that?”

Technology presents a variety of problems and opportunities in aging. In regards to transhumanism, Cole-Turner said human beings should be able to use technology and resources that push them “beyond human limits,” such as using artificial intelligence to make up for the cognitive limits humans develop in old age.

However, in some cases, Cole-Turner said technology is damaging to the aging process, as people are driven to live longer in hopes that more inventions will continue to pile on extra years.

“It’s almost like I want to last long enough to benefit from the future goodies that technology offers,” Cole-Turner said. “If there ever is a pill to make us smarter, some sort of brain interface or some sort of cognitive enhancement that we can take successfully, I want to be around when it’s available. It’s almost a fear of missing out on the technological future that drives some of them.”

Cole-Turner said the problem of technology was most recently apparent in “Snapchat dysmorphia,” a phenomenon where plastic surgeons experienced a rise in patients wanting to look like their edited selfies.

“How do we make sense of that?” Cole-Turner said. “How do we make sense of this waiting period, waiting for that? How does that create a dysmorphia in our life map, not just in our understanding of our face, but in our life map? (We are) waiting for technology to become our savior, our deliverer from that fear, which are these images of aging that are not always too flattering.”

While the age-shaming narratives are wholly negative, “wisdom” has traditionally been a largely positive characteristic of older generations. But Cole-Turner said the concept of wisdom is not always fully understood, as wisdom must come from experiences — even those that are different from your own.

“I am wondering if we are missing wisdom because we are looking in only perhaps one place,” he said. “There is a wisdom that comes from experience that may be different from our own: Experiences of suffering, experiences of surviving in a racist culture, experiences of being marginalized and pushed to the side.”

Cole-Turner said a fuller wisdom requires transcending the mind, stretching the limits of empathy, unity and connectedness.

“That, to me, is the wisdom that pays these social benefits in terms of being slower to provoke, slower to react, slower to think badly of other people, more willing to say ‘I don’t agree with that, but that comes from a different perspective and I want to understand,’ ” Cole-Turner said.

De Medeiros said there are two sides to the coin of wisdom, as some people argue that wisdom warrants the dismissal of other people’s feelings.

“Some people argue that wisdom actually robs people of the power of being angry, because to be wise you are contemplative, you’ve come to terms with things, you’re not angry and you’re not demanding,” she said.

Going forward, de Medeiros said there are opportunities for society to change the conversation about aging. It starts with one word: inclusion.

“We see very few examples of older people being represented in positive ways and certainly even when so, it is such a small percentage of things,” she said. “We see older characters in movies, in television shows as being silly. We don’t have that kind of inclusion.”

In order for that inclusion to drive a more positive narrative, de Medeiros said people need to take the word “elderly” out of their vernacular.

“The term ‘elderly’ is a term that we don’t use in gerontology because it stereotypes a group of people based on age in generally negative ways,” she said. “It’s never used as a word of empowerment, it is always used to victimize, to draw pity or to draw ire.”

For Cole-Turner, changing the way the world views aging starts by claiming the course of one’s own life.

“However old or young you are, narrate your own life and recognize that whatever exactly is going on demographically, whatever exactly is going on technologically, it presents unique challenges,” Cole-Turner said. “But it presents unique opportunities for you to live into that uncharted future, in which you will only at the end discover who you are really meant to be.

The ego structure that one develops in the first half of their life is a container; many can never let go of that container because they put so much time and effort into building it, said Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM. However, letting go of that container is key to transitioning from the first half to the second half of life.

“One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening,” Rohr said, quoting Carl Jung. “And, what in the morning was true, will at evening have become actually a lie.”

Rohr, a Franciscan priest of the  New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, continued his lecture series in the Hall of Philosophy as part of Week Four’s interfaith theme, “Falling Upward: A Week with Richard Rohr.” The third lecture, presented on Wednesday, was titled “The Resistance.”

He began the lecture by recapping what he had discussed on Monday — the development of an ego structure. Then, he explained that this structure, also termed a “private salvation project” by Thomas Merton, is supposed to be taken away by God in order for one to receive the “real thing.”

“Anyone who wants to save his life must lose it,” Rohr said. “Anyone who loses her life, what she thinks is her life, will find it.”

Another term of Merton’s that Rohr used was “necessary suffering.” According to Rohr and Merton, people deal with a lot of unnecessary suffering because they will not accept the legitimate suffering that comes from being a human being. This is where, Rohr said, resistance originates.

More specifically, Rohr said suffering happens when one is not in control, making it difficult for people to let go of what they cannot control. And, when people resist letting go, the ego structure, or “container,” cannot expand and brings 10 times more suffering to people.

Rohr quoted the Gospel of John, saying, “Unless the single grain of wheat dies, loses its shell, loses its cover, it will remain just a single grain. But if it dies, let go. It will bear much fruit.”

Death, Rohr said, is where people struggle most to let go.

“What makes people neurotic is the result of refusing legitimate suffering,” Rohr said. “I can’t prove it or disprove it, nor do I need to, but … I’ve certainly seen it in myself. Neurotic behavior is the result of refusing that legitimate dying.”

Rohr said in that order to let go and accept such necessary suffering, one must have a well-developed ego structure. Between his disciplinarian mother and his kind father, Rohr said he was given a good balance to develop a good character. While his father was kind and soft, his mother would spank him and his siblings when necessary. And, she would say to them when she had to spank them, it was hurting her more than it was hurting them.

“You can waste an awful lot of years (thinking), ‘I didn’t deserve, I didn’t deserve,’ ” Rohr said. “Well, who of us deserves anything?”

Such experiences — ones people think they don’t deserve — remind Rohr of Jesus and how Jesus never played the victim or victimized anyone else. But even imperfect humans can learn to be more like Jesus and “let go.”

“Just learn from your wounds,” Rohr said. “That’s why the resurrected Jesus is shown holding his wounds after the Resurrection. That’s no small symbol. … Julian of Norwich says, ‘Your wounds are your glory. Your wounds are your honor.’ ”

Rohr said by not transforming the pain of legitimate suffering, one transmits it. Rohr learned this through the church and, although he never suffered from any tragic event himself, he experienced his own suffering through doubting himself and his preaching, and developing a form of self-hatred.

“That creates a different kind of darkness … that you wonder if it will ever end,” Rohr said. “Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.”

Rohr developed what he called initiation rights — five universally communicated truths — in the ’90s. He said these were what people struggle to accept and follow. One of them is “everyone is going to die.” God has been alive forever, and has seen billions die, so there is no need to have a large ego when the truth is, everyone will die someday, Rohr said.

Another message is “no one is truly in control.” But Rohr said the most important message is “the way up is the way down.”

“The last will be first and the first will be last,” Rohr said. “If you seek too much to climb, to achieve, to perform, to succeed, you don’t know what most of the world has to suffer or feel like. In other words, you have no access to compassion. You have no access to love.”

Rohr said he had once lived behind a Catholic church, and that was where the Alcoholics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous would smoke before or after meetings. So, he began to get to know them, and they invited him to their meetings. At these meetings, Rohr said he had never seen people more open about their shame.

“I’d be willing to bet most of us in this room have areas of shame that we can’t talk about,” Rohr said. “It’s just, it’s too hidden. It’s too painful. It’s too dark. It’s a territory that we haven’t walked in yet. We don’t have the words for it. It isn’t really bad will or malice. We have to be led there usually by someone else telling their story, and we see their courage and learn their vocabulary, and we do the same.”

Annie Dillard once wrote: “In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us that, if you ride these monsters down, the young would call it wrestling with your shadow.”

The shadow is not bad, Rohr said. The shadows are those depths, the shame that one tries to avoid. And, in order to address it, one needs “truth speakers” who will not guilt or shame them for trying to confront the actions that have caused such internal damage.

Accepting the natural occurrences in the cycle of life make for an easier death, Rohr said, but that acceptance — though necessary — is difficult.

“Nothing lives unless something else dies,” Rohr said. “And the whole natural world seems to surrender to this cycle except one species — you and me. And, I think to receive the God of grace with freedom, is to find your way through the resistance.”

The key to getting through the resistance is being able to properly work through the stages of growing up, waking up and showing up, he said. Then, one needs to learn to let go.

Fifty years ago, nearly to the day, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to step foot on the moon. In the decades since, humanity has set its sights on even greater heights — and today, retired astronaut and U.S. Navy Captain Scott Kelly will talk about how his work has brought our species closer to achieving those lofty dreams.

At 10:45 a.m. Friday, July 19 in the Amphitheater, Kelly, who spent almost a full year in space during his last mission aboard the International Space Station, will speak on his time orbiting Earth and how it affected his body and mind as a conclusion to Week Four, “The New Map of Life: How Longer Lives are Changing the World — In Collaboration with Stanford Center on Longevity.”

“We close the week on longevity — identified as both one of our greatest achievements and one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century — with an exploration of humanity’s future,” said Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education. “We’ve asked Scott Kelly to share insights into his year-long mission in space and how the mission helps us better understand space travel’s effects on the human body. How do the risks to human health and performance inform our journeys into the cosmos, from near-future missions to the moon and Mars, to our missions well beyond?”

Kelly will begin the lecture by discussing, with photo and video accompaniment, his journey and story as an astronaut. He will share stories from his time in space — 520 days in total, including nearly a full year spent on the ISS, from March 27, 2015, to March 2, 2016.

In his 2017 memoir Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery, Kelly wrote extensively about his year-long mission, the challenges that came with it and the unique perspective of living in space.

“It’s hard to describe the experience of looking down at the planet,” he wrote in his memoir. “I feel as though I know the Earth in an intimate way most people don’t — the coastline, terrain, mountains, and rivers. … Sometimes when I’m looking out the window it occurs to me that everything that matters to me, every person who has ever lived and died (besides the six of us) is down there.”

There are many things Kelly experienced that can’t be found on Earth, including spacewalks, where his spacesuit was the only thing separating him from the cold vacuum of space; moments spent observing storms, air pollution and auroras from above the atmosphere; and the smell of space — “slightly burned and slightly metallic,” he wrote.

After Kelly’s presentation, he will sit down for an armchair discussion about what he and NASA learned from the research conducted on the ISS and on his own body.

As part of the mission, Kelly participated in the “Twin Study” with his identical twin brother, Mark, who is also a retired astronaut. Mark remained on Earth while Scott went to space, and the differences in their bodies upon Scott’s return helped increase understanding of what space travel does to the human body.

The study, which was published in April, reported that Kelly experienced a shift in fluids in his upper body, some structural changes to his vision, minor genetic changes and DNA damage and thickening of his carotid artery wall. These changes, along with the parts of his body and physiology that remained the same compared to his brother’s, are helping scientists understand how the body is affected in space and, just as important, in what ways it is unaffected.

“Results and scientific papers will continue to emerge over years and decades, based on the four hundred experiments we conducted over the year,” Kelly wrote in Endurance. “We need to see many more astronauts stay in space for longer periods of time before we can draw conclusions about what we experienced.”

Kelly will also discuss the physical and mental challenges of living in space for a year. During that time, Kelly only saw 14 other human beings in person. In Endurance, he wrote that he sometimes felt disconnected from his family on Earth; he missed nature and being submerged in water, he missed gravity and grocery stores, he missed the colors of clouds and doors, he missed rain and many other Earthly comforts.

“In the future, there will be a word for the specific kind of nostalgia we feel for living things,” he wrote.

Still, living in space was an adventure few other humans get to experience, and Kelly wrote that he would miss the thrill of surviving, “the sense that life-threatening challenges could come along and that I will rise to meet them, that every single thing I do is important, that every day could be my last.”

Though Kelly’s time in space is over and the “Twin Study” has been published, he will continue to be a resource of scientific study for the rest of his life, as scientists observe any long-term effects of his stay among the stars.

As the 50th anniversary of man’s first steps on the moon approaches — on Saturday — Kelly will also discuss the impact of his work on future generations of astronauts and how humanity might someday take its first steps on Mars.

“If we want to go to Mars, it will be very, very difficult, it will cost a great deal of money, and it may cost human lives,” Kelly wrote in Endurance. “But I know now that if we decide to do it, we can.”