The Chautauquan Daily

On May 1, a team of highly trained Americans killed Osama bin Laden. After the United States spent 10 years hunting through the Middle East, bin Laden finally was found and struck down near the Pakistani capital. Americans were happy. Pakistanis were not.

SLIDESHOW & VIDEO: Scenes from Friday morning's Children's School's Independence Day Parade

Johanna Mendelson Forman began her lecture on Thursday with a chilling scenario. “If you can imagine a whole city … that is filled with tents, and you’re sleeping alone, and maybe you don’t even have a full tent around you; you don’t even have four walls, but you have blankets or quilts, sometimes blue plastic sheeting that’s given out by humanitarian agencies. There’s no electricity and no lights, so it’s dark,” she said. “And suddenly you hear a rustling, and then you hear the sound of the knife cutting through the sheeting. And before you can scream, a man, or a group of men — often they come in gangs — crashes through the opening. They grab you. They push you down. They rape you. And often, all of this is done in front of your children.”

The Chautauqua Theater Company costume shop is accustomed to the process of constructing garments for plays, but a modern twist on Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” has made this time a unique blend of Victorian and modern styles. Olivera Gajic, designer of the costumes for the production, said she has worked with Brian Mertes, director of the production, approximately a dozen times on past productions, and nearly half of those times involved Chekhov plays. This has allowed them to develop a comfortable system for getting the design of costumes fitted with each play and character.

Guest Review And how we love our animals. Our animals. We tame them. We worship them. We sleep with them. We admire them. We eat them. We use them for sport, for fashion, for profit. We nurture them, cultivate them, hunt them, kill them. They are devils. They are gods.

Steve Martin and his wife, Anne Stringfield, sat in a small venue in New York City called Joe’s Pub. Martin had released his bluegrass album “The Crow,” but that was mostly a solo album, although it featured several famous musicians. He didn’t expect the band playing onstage — one that his wife had known since before their marriage — to ask him to join them.

Near the beginning of every Chautauqua summer, the sounds of children belting out patriotic tunes fill the air as the highly anticipated Children’s School Independence Day parade marches through the grounds. This year will be no exception. Today at 10 a.m., the children of Children’s School, along with Group 1 and Group 2 from Boys’ and Girls’ Club, will leave the Children’s School building, march down Pratt Avenue, stop at the Colonnade to sing several songs and proceed to the Amphitheater for a bit more singing.

To close the first week of the Interfaith Lecture Series, Sister Carol Keehan will discuss the economics of maternal health in her lecture, “Will U.S. Health Reform Advance Maternal and Child Wellbeing?” At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Keehan will address the misconceptions that people often have when examining maternal and child health and the relationship between money and health care.

“She was there for many of the most important firsts: the first moments of startled clarity, the first phone calls from Washington to Islamabad, the first high-level meetings. On Thursday morning, Sept. 13, she brought the list of eighteen key military demands to President Pervez Musharraf and sat stiffly in his office for forty minutes until he answered the question she’d carried from the president: ‘Are you with us in this fight?’ When he said, ‘I am, without conditions,’ she got up and left.”

As a pediatrician at an inner-city hospital, Dr. Helene Gayle found herself treating the same patients over and over. These children weren’t necessarily facing a particular disease — their visits had more to do with their family situations, events they couldn’t solve on their own. “After a while, I realized that if I really wanted to have an impact on these children,” Gayle said, “it wasn’t by practicing individual medicine.”

It’s all about women, and she’ll explain why in fives. “For ancient Egyptians, five was for worship” — Dr. Afaf Meleis raised her right hand — “and it was for offerings” — she extended her right hand — “and it was on temples to keep the evil eye away, which now is the khamsa that’s used in so many cultures … (and) brings its owner happiness, luck, health, good fortune and safety. And that’s what we want to bring to women of the world.”

Guest Review I’m sorry, but this show is just not the way it is supposed to be. It’s off-kilter, sometimes upside-down and usually topsy-turvy. Give this 54th version of Chautauqua’s juried Exhibition of Contemporary Art a nudge and it would tumble over the line, across that careful border that too often marks what is right for art and what is supposedly not.

North Carolina Dance Theatre in residence with Chautauqua Dance will confront a notorious conflict in its first performance: good versus evil. The annual Dance Salon, held at 8:15 p.m. tonight at the Amphitheater, will include five dances. It’s a chance for the audience to see a performance with more challenging and abstract works, said Mark Diamond, associate artistic director of Chautauqua Dance.

The Hebrew phrase “Tikkun Olem” means “repairing the world.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his disciples, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” in Matthew 5:9. In Hinduism, the concept of karma guarantees that people who are charitable and kind will benefit in the next life. The teaching of “earthly Buddhism” is an environmental approach to repairing the world.

The summer’s theme for the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle is challenge, and for the war-torn African children of Say You’re One of Them, the season’s first selection, their greatest challenge is survival. Uwem Akpan’s short stories detail the children caught in the crossfire, both their tragedy and their strength. The author will speak at the CLSC Roundtable at 3:30 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.

A journalist who has reported from South Africa and the Middle East will conduct an interview on the Amphitheater stage today. Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a freelance journalist based in Johannesburg, will interview Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE USA, at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater. They will discuss CARE’s work in the global health sphere.