2011 Week Three

It’s cool outside and probably cloudy, since the sun is still deciding whether to make an appearance this morning. You blink several times, shove your gate pass blindly in the direction of a sleepy attendant and wheel your bike through the Main Gate. You enter the Welcome Center, glimpsing a simple black-and-white sign guiding you toward your destination. You open the door. A blast of heat. You take a seat with 20 other Chautauquans of all ages. You breathe deep and begin.

It’s easy to sit in a lecture and hear about how to fix the government or how to find the common good, but a challenge for Chautauquans is taking those lessons and calls to action outside the gates. Susan McKee and Hal Simmons have done just that — actively taking what they learn here at Chautauqua and putting it into action.

The Athenaeum Hotel general manager kept calling, but Michele “Mickey” Murray wouldn’t return his calls. This went on for several weeks in 1993, the GM calling, Murray suspecting he wanted to offer her a job at the Institution. For her, having a summer vacation that year was more important.

George Murphy, Chautauqua’s vice president and chief marketing officer, said he wants Chautauqua to “own” surrounding marketing areas and “attack” problems at the Main Gate, but most of all, he wants to draw people in. Murphy spoke to nearly 60 people Wednesday on the Hultquist Center porch about the Institution’s recent marketing strategies and the effects of the WNED documentary “Chautauqua: An American Narrative.”

SLIDESHOW: At 2 p.m. Wednesday, rows of Boys’ and Girls’ Club campers lined the shore behind Beeson Youth Center. Dressed in swimwear and wrapped in beach towels, the kids eagerly awaited instructions from Chuck Bauer, Club’s aquatic director, who stood on the dock in front of them, megaphone in hand.

The works of John Adams, Leonard Bernstein, Jonathan Dove, Benjamin Britten and Lee Hoiby, among many others, will be featured in the Opera Highlights concert, held at 8:15 p.m. Saturday in the Amphitheater. The performance will feature eight Apprentice Artists from the opera company’s Young Artists program and members of the CSO, under the baton of Steven Osgood.

Scholarship. It’s a concept that serves as a synonym of sorts for hope and opportunity, a chance for students who wish to expand their minds to study and learn in places they may not otherwise be able to afford.

It has become a national mantra, moan and, perhaps, a national illusion that civility in political discourse was the rule and now has been supplanted by ravening partisanship. Whatever the historical fact, Gina Barreca, author, lecturer, columnist and humorist, offers a thoughtful yet witty take on the “End of Civility” at the Contemporary Issues Forum 3 p.m. Saturday at the Hall of Philosophy. She is a practitioner of the theory, “If they are laughing, they are listening.”

Benjamin Elijah Mays’ earliest memory was his father pleading for his life before a lynch mob. His formative experience with race relations would affect the path of the rest of his life.

The buzz around the young conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya is that he’s in the running to succeed the departed Stefan Sanderling as the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra’s music director.

Elaine King will deliver her lecture, “Artists, Nature and Environmental Change” at 7 p.m. tonight in the Hall of Christ. King, who is an art critic and historian and a professor in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, said her lecture will focus on artists’ portrayal of nature within a historical context. But the discussion will not focus strictly on paintings or pastel colors — it will be a broader dialogue about the evolution of the natural world and current environmental problems.

Equipped with a brand-new, lemon-yellow wagon that matches his famous lemon tarts, Herb Keyser is back in business for the season. Every Monday morning, Keyser marches up and down the brick path in front of the post office selling his homemade lemon tarts to those waiting in the ticket line for the Logan Chamber Music Series. With his lemon tarts, Keyser found a fun and creative way to fundraise; he donates all of the proceeds to the Chautauqua Fund, sometimes multiplying his initial investment in ingredients almost five-fold.