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“After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, everyone wanted to celebrate him,” the Rev. Otis Moss III said at the 9:15 a.m. Wednesday Ecumenical Service in the Amphitheater. “But when he was living, almost everyone had an issue with Dr. King.”

Moss’ sermon title was “Repairing the Jericho Road,” and the Scripture reading was Luke 10:25-37. The sermon was interrupted frequently by applause from the congregation.

“Carl Wendell Hines, Jr. encapsulated the way America viewed Dr. King in a poem, ‘A Dead Man’s Dream,’ ” Moss said before he quoted the poem.

“Now that he is safely dead / Let us praise him. / Build monuments to his glory. / Sing Hosannas to his name. / Dead men make such convenient heroes. / For they cannot rise to challenge the images / That we might fashion from their lives. / It is easier to build monuments / Than to build a better world. So now that he is safely dead / We, with eased consciences will / Teach our children that he was a great man / Knowing that the cause for which he / Lived is still a cause / And the dream for which he died is still a dream. / A dead man’s dream.”

Moss said all types of churches have issues with King.

“The holiness churches, the Evangelical churches, the liberal churches, the secular liberals, even the black churches had problems with King,” Moss said. “But his home was Ebenezer Baptist Church, he was a Morehouse graduate; America was his pulpit, and humanity was his congregation.”

The Jericho Road was the focus of Moss’ sermon. The road, 18 miles long, stretched from the heights of Jerusalem to the economic center of Jericho.

“The road was maintained for the privileged, but it was built by the poor,” Moss said. “Rome ensured that the road was kept up for the economic benefit of those who had power. It was the Internet, FedEx, Amazon of its day.”

Rome wanted labor and was not concerned with the rights of the poor. Jericho was an economic powerhouse and had military strength; it was built on an aquifer.

“There was free water with no lead, no contaminates; if you have money you always have good water,” Moss said. “It was a gated community with walls high enough not to see the pain (outside). I have been trying to find a good translation for the name Jericho. I came across fragrance and oasis, but the closest translation came from the Spanish — Mar-a-Lago.”

“Herod spent his winter there,” Moss said. “The tender eyes of the privileged did not want to see the pain of the Hebrews. It is said that his palace was a tragic phallic symbol of a man who wanted to put his name on everything.”

So people turned to robbery for survival.

“We have the desire to hide from the horrors we have created,” Moss said, “but we have been given a divine command to heal the breach.”

Moss quoted Mahatma Gandhi’s seven deadly sins: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce (business) without morality (ethics), science without humanity, religion without sacrifice, and politics without principle.

“So far America is batting 1,000,” Moss said. “America is Jericho building walls not bridges, putting people in jail instead of giving scholarships, allowing wealthy people to buy their child’s way into college.”

Moss said in the United States, “We invest $136,000 a year, per person, to incarcerate people. We spend $11,000 a year to educate people. Something is wrong. If I was running for president, and I am not, I would flip the script and apply $136,000 to education so everyone can make their way.”

Something has happened to our moral compass, Moss said.

“People talk about making America great again and I ask what year — 1955, 1913?” Moss said. “What they mean is, ‘Let’s make America white again.’ ”

Moss set a challenge before the congregation.

“Let’s make America just, moral, ethical, repentant, prayerful, equitable so that it will become what we have been striving for since the founding,” he said. “We are short-sighted if we fail to see the power of the spirit.”

The man in the story was walking between two walled cities that were closed to the poor. Jerusalem was the holy city, the city of religion. Jericho was the city of wealth.

“The road between was a road of pain and poverty,” Moss said. “The poor lived there between religion and riches. Religion shut them out, and riches had no moral center and the poor suffered.”

Moss said he takes issue with calling the parable “The Good Samaritan.”

“He was just a Samaritan, a decent human being,” he said. “To call him a ‘good’ Samaritan is like calling someone a ‘good’ black or a ‘good’ Jew.”

The priest in the parable crossed to the other side of the road, as did the Levite, but the Samaritan showed compassion.

“The priest has set up theological walls, and the Levite had set up ideological walls,” Moss said. “These three different people worship the same God and all had religion, but only the Samaritan had a relationship with God.”

Moss then told the congregation: “Never be in line to close the door.”

“You may not go to the border, but you can be an advocate for people at the border,” he said. “You may not march, but you can stand with the people at Standing Rock. You may not have been at Stonewall, but you can stand with every queer person. You may not live in Haiti, but you can stand with them as they rebuild their economy. You may not be protesting in Nigeria, but you can stand with the little girls who need to come home.”

The church should be the home of the broken who can be invited back in and fixed. It should be the home of those who were forced out, so they can be brought back in.

“We can’t cancel people, we can’t dismiss them,” Moss said. “You can’t delete a human being or unfriend pain. Everyone has work, everyone has a corner to work. You might be a poet or an artist. You might not go to jail, but you can provide bail. If you don’t have the means, you can pray.”

Moss continued by telling the congregation that America needs to “reach out to those hurting on the Jericho Road.”

“The Samaritan provided housing, health care and wages, and the marginalized were blessed. If America is going to be America, we must have a Samaritan framework for those who have been pushed out.”

Martin Luther King Jr. thought it was possible to save America. Moss believes that we can save America if we come together: Native Americans, Black Lives Matter, immigrants, women, the LGBTQ community, differently abled.

“Difference is not deficient,” Moss said. “There is a tapestry built when we stand together as allies. With love in one hand and justice in the other, when they marry, we will see transformation and liberation. When the Samaritans rise up, America can be changed. It is time to repair the Jericho Road.”

The Rev. John Morgan presided. Anna Grace Glaize, Christian coordinator for the Abrahamic Program for Young Adults, read the Scriptures. The Motet Choir sang “Idyll of Praise,” by Craig Courtney. Jared Jacobsen, organist and coordinator of worship and sacred music, directed the choir. The Gladys R. Brasted and Adair Brasted Gould Memorial Chaplaincy provides support for this week’s services.

According to Julie Washington, the only thing more powerful than language is access to language itself. 

Washington, professor and chair of the Department of Communications Sciences and Disorders at Georgia State University, gave her lecture “The Power of the Spoken Word” at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday, July 24 in the Amphitheater, continuing Week Five, “The Life of the Spoken Word.”

Language is a “rule-governed and symbol system,” where words are put together to make meaning and represent actions, objects and ideas. It’s also an innate, human skill.

“Language is learned in speech communities the way we use it, but we come into the world wired to use language,” said Washington, who specializes in understanding cultural dialect use in young African American children, with an emphasis on language assessment, literacy attainment and academic performance. “Unlike reading, which is a learned skill and something that is imposed on the brain, most children come into the world wired to use language.”

Every language has dialects, or subsystems of a particular language. For example, American English has dialects such as Appalachian English, Southern English and Midwestern English.

More than anything, language is power.

“When you have the ability to communicate and use language well, it helps you to propel yourself forward — in your career, in your life, in education,” Washington said. “The ability to communicate to others in a way that many people can understand is powerful.”

Language is powerful, but only with access. In the case of children growing up in poverty, Washington said access is their main limitation.

“It’s not about just not having any language at all, but having a language system that allows you to have access to education, to have access to jobs, to have access to a larger, more prosperous society,” she said.

But what happens when the language of one’s community impedes their access? Washington said this question characterizes the way language affects literacy, particularly with African American children who grow up in poverty. Washington was introduced to the concept as a faculty member at the University of Michigan, when she was asked to go into the local school district and discuss ways to close the achievement gap between minorities and their white and Asian counterparts. There she saw the overrepresentation of African Americans in special education programs.

“Many of those kids were qualified as speech and language impaired, so I knew whatever was going on, we were contributing to the problem,” she said.

Washington said the biggest problem facing those “speech and language impaired” students was that their schools were failing to teach the fundamentals of reading by the time they reached third grade.

“That’s how I got interested in reading and the relationship between reading and language, how language propels reading, how important reading is for language and how important language is for reading,” she said.

The majority of African American fourth graders — 80% — read at a basic level or below. Only 18% are considered proficient readers, but proficient only means they can read at grade-level. Those statistics are now being considered a “high impact public health concern.”

“In almost everything that you do, it requires you to be able to read and write,” Washington said. “The inability to do so really hampers individuals and puts a ceiling on the success that they can have. At this point, the failure with children is less about skills and abilities or achievement, and more about access.”

As a result of limited access, the problem is also being referred to as a “health disparity,” “preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health that are experienced by socially disadvantaged populations.” Washington said the most important word in that definition is “preventable.”

“There are some things that are malleable and preventable that we can do something about, and then there are things that we can’t — this is not one of those things that we can’t do something about,” Washington said.

In one of the poorest communities in Atlanta, the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home of the Atlanta Falcons, was built in 2018. As a way to provide employment opportunities in the area, the stadium’s development team decided to hire construction workers directly from the community. One of the hiring requirements was reading at a third-grade level. What percentage of applicants were able to read at that level? Zero.

“When you think about the reading problems in this country, many of us who are well-educated are reading at high levels, but we’re in a rarefied group in the United States,” she said.

In Washington’s research, she found that a lot of students’ literacy progress halted between second and third grade, the years where students are supposed to learn to switch from learning to read, to reading to learn.

“So many students, even if they have mastered the basic, foundational components of reading, are not able to put those things together to create meaning,” she said. “Unless you can extract meaning from what you read, you are not a reader.”

To understand the role of language in health disparities, Washington studied African American English. In the past, the dialect was referred to as black English, Nonstandard Negro English and Ebonics. Washington mentioned the controversial “Ebonics” term to acknowledge that she is talking about the same system, just not in the same way.

“I’m not talking about all of the political and social baggage that is attached to this system,” she said. “That has consequences for kids. It has real consequences.”

Dialects are divided by low prestige — dialects with a negative connotation — and high prestige — dialects with a positive connotation. According to Washington, British English is the highest prestige dialect.

“When you hear somebody with a British accent, who is using British English, you think they’re high class, they’re related to the Queen and they’re educated and smart,” she said.

In the United States, Bostonian English is considered high prestige and Southern English is considered low prestige.

“Speaking a low-prestige variety has consequences,” she said. “It has consequences for you in your life because you’re always trying to prove yourself, or because people automatically think these negative things about you and you may not be able to prove yourself.”

To avoid the negative effects of speaking low-prestige dialects, people learn to code-switch. Washington was introduced to code-switching while working on a literacy project where students had to retell stories after hearing it read aloud. Washington read Are you My Mother? — a children’s book where a baby bird goes on a journey trying to find his mother. Many times throughout the book, the bird asks “Are you my mother?” and characters reply “I am not your mother.” When the little girl retold the story, she said “Is you my mama?” and “I ain’t none a yo’ mama.” In witnessing her code-switch, Washington had an epiphany.

“I thought about how much work she had to do in order to retell that story,” Washington said. “She had to listen to it in a language system that wasn’t being used in her home, recode it, hang on to the sequence and the vocabulary and tell me the story again.”

The ability to code-switch based on the environment one is in is a powerful skill, but unfortunately, only two-thirds of children who need to learn the skill will acquire it in school. In Washington’s research, she found that if students don’t learn how to code-switch by third grade, they never will.

“The ability to code-switch is actually critical, but these high-dialect users are the kids we are focused on now,” she said. “This is not just that if you speak dialect, you will not be able to read; what we have learned is if you speak a lot of dialect, you’re going to struggle to read because you have so much work to do to get to the Are you my Mother? text.”

But if it has been proven that code-switching is critical for learning, why isn’t it taught in schools? Washington said that doesn’t work because teachers use contrasting oral and written languages to teach code-switching, and by the time a student is old enough to write, they are most likely “already failing at reading.”

A more concrete solution is to prioritize reading in schools — if one can read, they have access to text, which facilitates code-switching.

While teaching code-switching and reading are both important, Washington thinks too much emphasis is placed on changing the children, instead of the models they learn from.

“Our failure to teach them to read has contributed to the failure to learn to code-switch,” she said. “We have to be able to do both. One way to do that is to teach code-switching, the other way is to make sure teachers are actually using the language of the classroom.”

Washington said people also need to start respecting students’ home languages.

“The same is true for the school language; if we want kids to learn it, we have to recognize that valuing and respecting it impacts the way it is taught,” she said. “What we are trying to do with (home language) is eradicate it — stop that. If we were allowing it to be something else, then we might be able to bridge what kids currently know with what we want them to know.”

As she talks to more people about the problems facing low-income students, Washington said she has become increasingly frustrated with the narrow path ahead. Thus, she concluded her lecture with a call to action, hoping increased awareness will lead to a more hopeful future — a future with answers.

“We need some solutions to this; it’s a long-standing issue,” Washington said. “These kids have been having trouble with reading for as long as we have been measuring it. We are losing generations and generations of kids who aren’t learning to read and, therefore, don’t have access or a way to get out of the cycle that they’re in and aspire to something higher than that.”

Despite being in and out of trouble with the government, Beaumarchais was a man of many talents. From watchmaking to diplomacy, the French polymath Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais produced work that helped change the landscape of the 18th century.

Between his struggles and accomplishments, he wrote six plays and many short comedic scenes. In the late 1700s, he wrote The Figaro Trilogy, which includes Le Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville), Le Mariage de Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) and La Mère Coupable (The Guilty Mother).

Ned Canty, the general director at Opera Memphis, said the plays have retained their popularity because they are still relevant.

“It’s as relevant today as it ever was,” said Canty, who has directed several Chautauqua Opera productions in the past. “The timelessness of those particular characters, and conflation of political power or wealth with the power to do whatever you want with people, is still a thread of human history right up to today.”

Soon after their momentous successes in theaters, each play became an opera from famous composers like Gioachino Rossini and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 25 in Norton Hall, Chautauqua Opera Company will perform the first of installment of its Trilogy Weekend with Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia. This performance marks the beginning of Chautauqua Opera’s first-ever festival — in celebration of its 90th year — where audiences can see three operas in three days. 

In 1732, Beaumarchais was born in Paris to watchmaker André-Charles Caron as the seventh of 10 children. His childhood was comfortable, and he learned watchmaking from his father. Equipped with his wit and clever hands, he invented a new escapement mechanism in 1753, which made watches more accurate. Canty said his mentor tried to steal his idea, leading Beaumarchais onto the path to fame.

“His mentor in watchmaking stole the idea to make it his own,” Canty said. “So it was his first lawsuit that Beaumarchais was involved in, one of the first things that brought him to fame.”

The invention, coupled with letters he wrote to the French Academy of Sciences to prove the invention was his, caught the attention of the French Court. With that, his popularity soared and impressed King Louis XV.

He became a fixture in the home of Le Normant d’Étiolles, the husband of the king’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour. There, he staged his first parades, a form of comedic French street entertainment.

Beaumarchais married widow Madeleine-Catherine Franquet, who helped him purchase a position at court. He adopted the name “Beaumarchais,” which was derived from Franquet’s estate. A few months after their wedding, Franquet died. Soon after, Beaumarcais met rich army supplier Joseph Pâris-Duverney and collaborated with him on many business ventures.

In 1764, he traveled to Madrid, where he attempted to settle business deals on behalf of Pâris-Duverney. All the while, he basked in the Spanish lifestyle, which later influenced his Figaro plays.

When he returned to Paris, he and Pâris-Duverney entered into a questionable timber enterprise. Once Pâris-Duverney died, his estate passed to his nephew-in-law, who tried to have the timber contracts annulled.

Faced with financial ruin, Beaumarchais published a series of witty memoirs that helped him win his case in the court of public opinion and, eventually, his case against Pâris-Duverney’s relatives.

During this time, between 1757 and 1763, Beaumarchais had put pen to paper in more parades for the private amateur theaters in Paris. He established himself as a writer with his first dramatic play Eugénie in 1767.

People accused Beaumarchais of marrying for financial gain; he had many lovers throughout his life. The next year, he married his second wife, Geneviève-Madeleine Lévêque. She died in 1770, just after she had their son Augustin, who died two years later.

In 1770, he produced another drama, Les Deux amis, which was not well received. Canty said Beaumarchais’ life experiences and witty nature made him more skillful at writing comedies.

“He just didn’t have the same gift for (drama),” Canty said. “(His dramas) never reached the same velocity that his comedies reached.”

With the failure of Les Deux amis in mind, Beaumarchais returned to the parades, which led him to his next venture — Le Barbier de Séville.

The play — set in Seville, Spain — follows the love-struck nobleman Count Almaviva who hopes to make Rosina fall in love with him. Rosina is the ward of the grumpy Dr. Bartholo, who hopes to marry her when she becomes of age. Figaro, the Count’s servant, helps Count Almaviva meet Rosina. The play and its characters were heavily influenced by Beaumarchais’ personal life.

After Le Barbier de Séville was rejected by the Théâtre Italien, a theater in France where Italian-language operas are performed, Beaumarchais revised it in five acts. In 1773 and 1774, the play was accepted by the Comédie Française, a state theater in France.

The performance was delayed because between 1773 and 1774, Beaumarchais had an altercation with a prominent duke. He was briefly jailed, and when the court ruled in Beaumarchais’ favor, his popularity went through the roof.

The court limited his civil rights, so to earn his freedom, Beaumarchais completed secret missions for the French government. After traveling across Europe as a spy where he protected the French crown by buying off certain journalists, Beaumarchais was granted permission to perform Le Barbier de Séville. Throughout this time, he began his relationship with Marie-Thérèse de Willer-Mawlaz.

Le Barbier was a complete failure. Unfazed, Beaumarchais took three days to revise the play to four acts. Then, it received boundless applause.

The play has since been musically adapted several times. The first to reach mainstream success was Il Barbiere di Siviglia by composer Giovanni Paisiello, which premiered in 1782.

In 1816, 17 years after Beaumarchais died, a 24-year-old Gioachino Rossini premiered his version of Il Barbiere di Siviglia in Rome. Despite a tumultuous opening night filled with angry Paisiello fans and stage mishaps, it quickly became a huge success.

Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, which he composed in under three weeks, is still regarded as one of the greatest comedy-within-music masterpieces.

Chautauqua Opera performed Rossini’s famous opera earlier this season, on July 5 and July 8. Kathleen Smith Belcher, director of Chautauqua Opera’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia said to approach this opera, the text is key when looking at the intricacies of each character.

“I start with the text first, and I look at who these people are,” Smith Belcher said. “Things like: What do they want? And how are they going to get it?” 

Beaumarchais’ first story in his trilogy pushed the 18th century envelope and his characters showed the author’s “combative personality,” according to Oxford World Classics’ Beaumarchais: Figaro Trilogy, a new translation by David Coward.

Baritone Daniel Belcher, who plays Figaro in Chautauqua Opera’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, said at its core, the opera is about people and relationships with a bit of political commentary from Beaumarchais amid the comedy.

“It’s about the young love and innocence,” Belcher said. “And the Count goes to Figaro, who is of much lower class, for help.”

In the play Le Barbier, Beaumarchais exemplified the importance of hard work even after an initial failure. Even as an opera, his story and beloved characters captured audiences’ hearts, Canty said.

“There are plenty of plays that were produced during that same year that no one has ever heard of or done again because it didn’t capture that basic human relationship,” Canty said.

For the next three weeks, Bratton Theater will serve as a window into the past and a portal across the Atlantic Ocean as Chautauqua Theater Company stages Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors.

The show will take audiences on a journey to Brighton during the 1960s, and place the characters smack in the middle of an absurd adventure as one man attempts to juggle working for two different, highly-volatile employers without either of them finding out, pursuing the girl he’s become infatuated with, and constantly on the hunt for his next meal.

Director Andrew Borba said the show, set to the tune of a live, Beatles-inspired band, will be nothing if not a good time.

“The show will be an absolute blast,” Borba said. “Personally, I love a big farce, and I think the audience will too, because it’s just so much fun.”

For those eager to experience a bit of that fun ahead of the show’s opening on Friday, CTC will be hosting a Brown Bag discussion, “Commedia Re-imagined: One Man, Two Guvnors and Why Physical Comedy Stays Funny,” at 12:15 p.m. today, July 25, in Bratton Theater.

The discussion will give attendees the opportunity to talk to members of the production’s cast and crew about the show’s plot, themes, costumes, comedy and more. Anyone interested is encouraged to come prepared with a question for the cast and a brown bag lunch — fish and chips optional.

Borba said that, while the show might not raise deep, philosophical questions like CTC’s previous show, The Christians, there’s a lot to dig into nonetheless.

“Much of our programming has a tendency to lean into the inquisitive or engaged nature of Chautauqua, but occasionally it’s a tonic,” Borba said. “Despite that, this is not empty fluff. It’s a farce, but there’s a lot of things going on in farce.”

CTC Managing Director Sarah Clare Corporandy agreed, and said that the show, in its humor, will give Chautauquans a chance to kick back and enjoy the ride.

“You’re going to walk out smiling and feel like you had a good, hearty, two-hour laugh,” Corporandy said. “And that really feeds the soul. So you can go from The Christians, which feeds the soul with these questions, to One Man, which will feed the soul with humor and comedy and relaxing.”

In bringing the fast and funny show to its feet, CTC will merge colorful costumes, live music, practical effects, authentic accents and dynamic stage combat into one production.

“It’s a big, big show,” Borba said. “There’s a lot going on, and a lot that we can’t wait for people to see.”

To the untrained eye, it might look like arborist Craig Vollmer is administering a lie detector test to a tree.

One of the ways he assesses trees is by drilling a needle up to 18 inches into a tree trunk. A piece of paper will print out with squiggly lines that have peaks and valleys.

But instead of indicating whether or not the tree is lying, the tool, called a resistograph, tests how dense the tree is.

“As the needle penetrates the wood, it’s actually calibrated to measure the resistance it meets,” Vollmer said. “The denser the wood, the higher the resistance. If the wood is soft, it is because it is decaying; it will register that.”

Vollmer will demonstrate the use of a resistograph at a Bird, Tree & Garden Club Tree Talk at 1 p.m. Thursday, July 25 at the Burgeson Nature Classroom.

Vollmer currently works as regional manager and chief forester for FORECON, a natural resource and forestry consulting firm headquartered in Falconer, New York. He has worked as a forester and arborist for about 30 years, the last 13 at FORECON.

He received his associate degree in natural resource conservation from SUNY Morrisville, a bachelor’s degree in forest resource management and master’s degree in forestry from Syracuse University.

At FORECON, Vollmer assesses trees for private and municipal landowners.

“I look at the tree from top to bottom, evaluating the health and the condition of its crown,” he said. “I look for structural defects that might present problems for creating hazardous conditions, look at the roots and give an overall evaluation.”

The resistograph is just one tool Vollmer uses to evaluate the health of a tree, and it can detect whether a tree is decaying. Trees typically begin to decay when their bark is wounded.

“Usually it’s a wound of some kind where the bark has been taken off, or an insect has caused damage and allowed the wood to be exposed,” he said. “There’s all kinds of spores and fungi in the air. When they land on an open wound, they set up shop and start to break down the wood.”

Once he has determined that a tree has a problem with decay, Vollmer applies treatments including insecticides, fungicides and fertilization.

“I work hard to find every reason I can to keep a tree first, and remove it as a last resort,” he said.

From 2013 to 2015, Vollmer worked on an assessment of all of the trees on Chautauqua Institution-owned land — a total of about 4,000 trees at the time.

He assigned numbers to all the trees, mapped them and prioritized which trees should be dealt with first.

“We have certain trees that are flagged for an annual inspection because they have a structural defect,” he said. “We usually do inspection of these trees annually.”

Vollmer also updates the map he created to reflect where new trees have been planted, and old ones have been taken down.

Vollmer said he first got into forestry because he wanted to be able to spend his days outside; now he enjoys that continued opportunity and exploring tree and forest issues.

“Every tree has a story, and I like the challenge of figuring it out,” he said.

Thanks in part to the people of the Burned-over District, America is a country where women have the right to vote, slavery is illegal and the temperance movement effected policy change at the federal level.

Beginning in the early 19th century and fueled by the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening, the Burned-over District encompassed a region of western and upstate New York where social and religious revivalism had reached a fever pitch.

“Protestant Christians, living in upstate New York and elsewhere, wanted to solve a bunch of different problems,” said Adam Jortner, an author, scholar of early American history and Goodwin-Philpott professor of history at Auburn University. “They wanted to use their faith to address social problems in substantial ways.”

At 2 p.m. Thursday, July 25 in the Hall of Philosophy, Jortner will give his lecture, “How the Burned-Over District Changed America,” continuing the Week Five interfaith theme, “Chautauqua: Rising from the Ashes of the Burned-Over District.”

“Every single person who’s talking this week is going to have a different idea about why the Burned-over District became what it was,” Jortner said. “I’m going to say it was all about organization. A guy named Charles Finney recreated the American revival and made it into what we know it as today — a highly organized and highly effective movement.”

According to Jortner, Finney stewarded Evangelical organizations for revival that were later used to conduct social reform.

“Frances Willard, president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, used the basic revival model started by Finney,” he said. “Susan B. Anthony, in the suffrage movement, basically used that same revival model.”

In 2012, Jortner published his book, The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier.

“(The Gods of Prophetstown is) a hidden history about the Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa, the brother of Tecumseh,” he said. “He probably organized the most significant resistance to U.S. control of Indian lands in the history of the U.S. … He essentially created a Native American city out there.”

Jortner said his book was about both Tenskwatawa and William Henry Harrison, a U.S. territorial governor and ninth president of the United States who led a military strike against Prophetstown.

“It’s looking at those two men, and how religion influenced how they saw the world and what they did,” he said. “Ultimately, I think it’s about how the War of 1812 was actually really important, and we just don’t remember it because we lost to Canada.”

But for Jortner’s lecture today, he said his primary goal is to discuss the gradual shift of social movements, as opposed to rapid change.

“These are changes that took a century to take place, sometimes,” he said. “I think that’s a valuable lesson. It was all locally done work by people who were excited about their faith. They worked at it and worked at it. A lot of them lived and died and never saw the broad changes that they initiated. But the changes did happen.”

Deaf Republic emerges from a confession. “We Lived Happily during the War,” a narrator admits in the title of the opening poem, the first of poet Ilya Kaminsky’s long-awaited collection. The book’s cardinal, double-edged metaphor is this: After an occupying soldier executes a deaf boy at a protest, the entire country is rendered deaf. Is it an act of defiance? Is it the only way to live, as a way of life collapses?

The author of the Dorset Prize-winning book Dancing In Odessa, Kaminsky grew up in the former Soviet Union and lost most of his hearing at the age of 4. Escaping religious persecution, his family immigrated to the United States when they were granted political asylum in 1993. After the death of his father one year later, Kaminsky began writing poems in English — a language he has never clearly heard.

In a 2018 interview with Edward Clifford for The Massachusetts Review, Kaminsky described writing in his second language as “a parallel reality, an insanely beautiful freedom.”

“There is a beauty in falling in love with a language — the strangeness of its sounds, the awe of watching the sea-surf of a new syntax beating again and again the cement of your unknowing,” he told Clifford. For Kaminsky, the “miracle of metaphor” is full of possibility.

An editor, translator and globally feted poet, Kaminsky will give his Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle Author Presentation on Deaf Republic at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, July 25 in the Hall of Philosophy. In a week dedicated to “The Life of the Spoken World,” Kaminsky’s presentation is one of many poetry-centric literary arts events, including the book launch for Speak a Powerful Magic, an anthology of 10 years of Traveling Stanzas, as well as two respective Brown Bag craft lectures from poets Shara McCallum and Abraham Smith.

Atom Atkinson, director of literary arts, noted how the unique perspective of Deaf Republic and its author provides a fresh window through which to experience this other programming.

“The world has been waiting for another book by Ilya Kaminsky for a while, and I am part of that world,” they said. “As a poet, and as someone who is of the poetry world, I am especially interested in thinking about how poetry books don’t just illustrate that poetry can be resonant with the content that we’re discussing, either during a week or during a season or in the world at that time, but also can be a whole other way into thinking and feeling that can only happen through poetry. It becomes a book very much about asking the reader, especially hearing readers, to reconsider what silence is, what we mean by that when we say it.”

Deaf Republic unfolds into a poetic parable of oppression and resistance; its lyric poems follow the townspeople of Vasenka as they enact a refusal to hear. There is Alfonso and Sonya, newlyweds and gifted puppeteers, and their child Anushka. There is Galya Armolinskaya and her girls, who orchestrate an insurrection against the invading forces in sign language and seduction.

“You see what it means to live in a dangerous world, or a dying world, as human beings,” said Sony Ton-Aime, Wick Poetry fellow and self-described Kaminsky “fanboy.”

It is nearly impossible, according to Ton-Aime, to exist outside one’s “cocoon,” in order to write about the world. But he said that Kaminsky sees “the world as it is, without the fear of being in it, without the fear of dying — but all of those (fears) are there.”

“In (Deaf Republic), you still fall in love,” Ton-Aime said. “You still struggle in the human things, but the world around you is crumbling and you’re going down. To face falling in love in a dying world would be senseless. Why would I have children, why would I bring them into this world? The only reason I think that is because I cannot face this world. But he’s facing it.”

Kaminsky is “not a documentary poet” but “a fabulist,” he told Clifford.

“And, yet, the world pushes through, the reality is everywhere in this fable,” he said. “My job is to make this border between the shelter of fable and the bombardment of reality a lyric moment, I feel.”

In the interview, Kaminsky characterizes the United States as “currently harassing/bombing/taking advantage of more than half of this Earth’s population.” He considers himself an American poet, but prefers another label.

“What is my American experience?” he asked Clifford. “It is laughing with my friends, to making love to my girlfriend, fighting with my family, loving my family, loving the ocean (I love water), loving to travel on train, loving this human speech. But we all have these things, don’t we? Yes, we do. And therefore, I fiercely resist being pigeonholed as a ‘Russian poet’ or ‘immigrant poet’ or even ‘American poet.’ I am a human being. It is a marvelous thing to be.”

When J. Ekela Kaniaupio-Crozier was growing up, her grandmother gave her a gift she would treasure for the rest of her life. Years later, Kaniaupio-Crozier is taking that gift — her native language — and sharing it with the world.

In keeping with the Week Five theme, “The Life of the Spoken Word,” Kaniaupio-Crozier, a Hawaiian language expert who works with the Kamehameha Schools as a Learning Designer and Facilitator, will talk about the cultural importance of language and how technology can help in preserving it during the 10:45 a.m. lecture Thursday, July 25 in the Amphitheater.

“As we looked at various ways to explore the larger theme of ‘Life of the Spoken Word,’ we learned of Ekela’s decades-long work of making ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i more accessible, now with the added tool of technology,” said Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education.

Kaniaupio-Crozier has spent the last 40 years working to make Hawaiian language and culture reach beyond her home state.

“Language is such a driver for people to recognize the heart of a culture; they begin to have an empathy for our people, just because the language has been shared,” said Kaniaupio-Crozier, who helped the language learning app and website Duolingo develop its ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i curriculum. “The more and more we share on whatever platform, more opportunity we have to share our culture.”

Kaniaupio-Crozier believes that with technology comes a promise of wider reach and an opportunity to influence the world.

“This is a story of keeping spoken language alive, language that’s use was banned in public schools by the U.S. government and, if not for the commitment of Ekela and many others, may otherwise have vanished altogether,” Ewalt said.

The mandated use of English language that came with the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii by the U.S. government at the end of the 19th century, pushed the native Hawaiian language to the point of extinction. For Kaniaupio-Crozier, this knowledge came packed in stories that her grandmother relayed from her experiences.

“She told me about being beaten in school for speaking Hawaiian,” she said.

The language, as it is known today, rose out of the Hawaiian Renaissance, a cultural movement inspired by the Civil Rights Movement that swept through the state in the 1960s. The Hawaiian Renaissance was an organized effort by teachers and community leaders who mobilized community elders to pour in their knowledge to rebuild the Hawaiian vocabulary, which was further strengthened by old newspapers and written records.

According to UNESCO, the Hawaiian language is still critically endangered, but it has risen from the ashes to become a living and thriving language. The growing number of Hawaiian language education options at primary and secondary school levels, in college, and the motivation to speak it at home, is giving rise to a generation of second-language speakers.

The Duolingo curriculum that Kaniaupio-Crozier helped design is a step closer to the goal of keeping the Hawaiian language alive by making it accessible to whoever wants to learn and use it. To her, preserving a language “preserves who we are.”

“I didn’t choose it, it chose me,” she said about her connection to the Hawaiian language.

That connection, Kaniaupio-Crozier, said, has been instilled in her own children, who she described as having a “different world view” in that they are more aware of people’s differences and similarities, and have a sense of respect for everyone’s beliefs.

“(The Hawaiian language instills in us) a deep seated Aloha for the land that others may not understand,” she said.

The first time Amythyst Kiah heard a black person playing the banjo, she was listening to Rhiannon Giddens perform with her band, Carolina Chocolate Drops.

“That was my first exposure,” Kiah said. “(I) found out, ‘Wow, there was a whole tradition of this.’ ”

Ten years after picking up the instrument, Kiah joins Giddens on tour as one-fourth of the Americana folk group, Our Native Daughters.

“It’s a huge deal because this is a person I looked up to,” Kiah said. “To have been following her career for so long and to actually work with (her) has been pretty amazing.”

Our Native Daughters will perform at 8:15 p.m. Thursday, July 25 in the Amphitheater. They will play songs from their debut album, Songs of Our Native Daughters.

The quartet formed in 2018, when Giddens invited Kiah, Allison Russell and Leyla McCalla — all banjo-playing, multi-instrumentalist women of color with backgrounds in blues and folk — to collaborate on the record.

Songs was released in February, by Smithsonian Folkways. Giddens produced the 13-track album with American fiddle and banjo player Dirk Powell.

The album explores themes of inherited trauma and the legacy of slavery in North America, specifically from the perspectives of black women.

“Songs covers the peril of the transatlantic slave trade, working through that struggle of coming out of bondage and then … no longer being in chains (but) still having this crushing societal oppression because of your ancestral past,” Kiah said.

Kiah said Songs also carries a message of “hope for the future.”

“(It’s about) seeing … that black people can overcome some of these societal pressures and expectations, and also seeing other people rallying who want equality for all,” she said. “It will be an emotional rollercoaster to say the least — for everyone involved.”

The banjo is featured prominently on the album. Kiah said another central theme of the project is reframing popular conceptions about the instrument.

“The banjo has been synonymous with bluegrass music, with white (musicians), and it’s associated with a certain kind of music and a certain demographic,” she said. “(But) its roots are spread out more firmly than that.”

She said her favorite part of creating Songs was collaborating with three other musicians who could relate to her experience as a woman of color in the Americana music industry.

“To sit down and have that moment of, ‘I 100% understand your experience and what you’ve gone through,’ … is priceless,” Kiah said. “And it’s something that I think a lot of (white) people in Americana probably take for granted.”

Our Native Daughters’ tour around the East Coast, which started Tuesday, is the first time all four members have performed together since recording the album last year.

“We can finally have that live face-to-face engagement with the audience, and really see and feel their response as we go through the songs,” Kiah said. “That’s really exciting for me to be able to share that.”

She hopes Songs of Our Native Daughters can be a vehicle for conversations about racism and inequality in 21st-century America.

“We have a hard time talking about racial issues because people either get so upset they don’t want to talk about it, or people get defensive,” Kiah said. “So through our music we’re hoping the conversation can be had, because … that’s going to be the only way to move forward.”

Chautauqua was founded 14 years after the Burned-over District ran its course. Many may think that Chautauqua has no connection to the Burned-over District, but Spencer McBride, a historian, author and editor for The Joseph Smith Papers, said that solid connections exist between the two.

On Monday, McBride opened Week Five’s interfaith theme, “Chautauqua: Rising from the Ashes of the Burned-Over District,” in the Hall of Philosophy with his lecture, “The Origins and Legacy of the Burned-over District.”

The Burned-over District, McBride said, was an early 19th-century movement, in which religious revivals became popular nationwide, and locally in Western New York.

It took place, McBride estimated, between 1790 and 1860, and it was a part of a national development termed “The Second Great Awakening,” which was a revival of religious fervor that drove Americans to churches. The movement spanned as far as Britain, and as close as local cities and regions in New York, including Buffalo, Albany, Rochester, the Finger Lakes and Chautauqua.

McBride said this deep religious fervor in the 1790s doesn’t imply that there was no religious presence in America prior to that. Before this Burned-over District, in the Revolutionary War era, there was a “very rational approach” to religion by preachers who were predominantly from the elite class. In stark contrast, coming into the 1790s, religion was growing more personal and influential.

“What we see in the Second Great Awakening,” McBride said, “is this move for people to experience religion, to become converted through a spiritual experience that they felt.”

Because of those “spiritual experiences,” many entered ministry claiming it was their calling. They were called by the spirit to serve in ministry, which completely destroyed the commonly held belief among preachers that one had to be from the elite class to preach. So, throughout the country in the 1790s and into the 1800s, many who felt a calling studied the scriptures and became ministers.

“And the driving engine of all of this is the revival meeting,” McBride said. “Often held outdoors, a revival meeting would take place over several days, and you’d have preachers preaching enthusiastically, encouraging their congregations to seek salvation, to be saved, to have that spiritual experience of conversion that ultimately changes their lives.”

The meetings were so effective, McBride said, that church membership rapidly grew throughout the country — from 2 million in 1790, to over 20 million in 1860. The number of preachers tripled — instead of one minister for every 1,500 Americans, there was a preacher for every 500 Americans in 1850.

Even though this change was nationwide, some areas experienced religious fervor more intensely than others. So, McBride asked, why was Western New York a highly concentrated area of religious fervor? One answer, McBride said, is termed the Yankee Invasion.

“There is a huge population in Western New York following 1790,” he said. “One of the results of the American Revolution, and one of the reasons some people felt inclined to fight against the British, is King George and the third parliament had declared after the Seven Years’ War that there could be no white settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. Well, after the revolution, a settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains opened up and many were anxious to get there between the years 1790 and 1820.”

In this 30-year period, a flood of people left New England for Western New York. This meant that about 10% of the American population was on the move. McBride said that, in addition to being a large group, 60% of the people moving were under the age of 25. What this meant was that a lot of families in New England were sending their children off to New York.

And, as a cautionary measure to keep their children from losing religion during this move, families sent missionaries — who knew that when one is young, it is easy to question or reconsider one’s religion — to New York to encourage their children to continue attending church.

“We don’t often use the word ‘marketplace’ when we talk about religion,” McBride said. “But if we think about it in terms of a marketplace, there were more religious choices than ever, and here was a large group of people anxious to consider those choices. And so, this demographic shift makes New York a prime spot for religious revivalism.”

So, how did the name, “Burned-over District,” come about? McBride said the religious fervor from 1790 to 1860 was not necessarily constant, but there were actually surges of religious intensity that would last a couple of years before dying down.

For example, Charles Finney — one of the best known revivalists, who was remarkably famous for his preaching — arrived in Oneida County in 1826 to preach. But not many people showed up to listen to him talk because he had arrived at the tail-end of a wave of revivalism, and people didn’t want to hear him.

“And so, Charles Finney wrote a letter, quite frustrated, in 1826,” McBride said. “And he said, ‘I found that region of the country, what in the western phrase would be called a burnt district. There had been a few years previously, a wild excitement passing through that region, which they called a revival of religion. And it resulted in a reaction so extensive and profound as to leave the impression on many minds that religion was a mere delusion.’ ”

Finney termed Western New York the “Burnt District,” and McBride said the name eventually evolved into the “Burned-over District” because of a young historian from Harvard University, named Whitney Cross, and his dissertation adviser, who both felt that the “Burnt District” didn’t sound right.

Western New York stands out as part of the Burned-over District, McBride said, because there was a large number of new religious movements in the area.

“The Shakers originally came from New England, and they come to a settlement just outside of Albany called Watervliet,” McBride said. “You get the rise of the Mormons, … the Oneida perfectionists … (and) spiritualists.”

Some of this religious revivalism coincided with social reform, McBride said.

Examples of these social reforms are abolitionism, the temperance movement, the women’s rights movement and a great number of political reforms heading toward stronger democracy.

“Now, this is not to say that all of these reforms were necessarily religious reforms,” McBride said. “You could be an abolitionist without being a devout Christian. You could fight for women’s rights without being a devout Christian, so on and so forth. But we also see, in other parts of the country, religion being used to confront or battle these reform movements.”

For example, Angelina Grimké, a prolific writer and women’s rights activist, wrote about Christians in the South who were using the Bible to defend slavery, and people who used Christianity to defend the idea that men should have more power and more rights than women.

“This is an important caveat,” McBride said, “because … people walk away thinking that those who are actively involved in their religion and their religious community will always push for social reform, but that’s not the case, and it’s important for us to recognize that.”

Despite the disagreements among the people inside and outside the reform movements, the Burned-over District is essential to the national history of religious revivalism and social reform because those who were in New York during the Burned-over District took all of the religious views, practices and social ideas with them when they moved west, McBride said.

“Chautauqua actually falls outside the chronological boundaries of the Burned-over District, which ended in 1860,” McBride said. “Chautauqua was founded 1874, so, what’s the connection?”

During the Burned-over District’s surge, religions like Protestantism, Baptistism and Methodism experienced extreme growth.

“Prior to 1790 in the United States, we’re talking about a total population of fewer than 10,000 Methodists,” McBride said. “You get to over half a million, and approaching a million, Methodists by the time you’re in 1850.”

After the Burned-over District smoldered out, Methodist Sunday school teachers began setting up camps at Chautauqua, which marked the beginnings of the Institution that serves as a “bastion for educating as many people as can be educated,” McBride said.

McBride concluded his lecture with some thought-provoking questions for the audience.

“Do we see social change influencing or changing religion in our own time?” McBride asked. “Similarly, what role is religion currently playing in present-day reform movements, and on what side of the reform movements do different people’s religious views place them? On a personal level, how does our faith drive us to real action to make our communities better, … stronger … (and) safer?”

As a historian, McBride said, the one question to hold onto throughout the week is, “How does the history of the Burned-over District, of religious and social change, influence the way you understand the world today, and how will it affect the way you build the world of tomorrow?”

Larry Arnn said college campuses in September and October are as “happy as Disneyland,” but by late March and April, they’re “madder than Hell.” Given those seasonal extremes, Arnn said there is no better time than summer to discuss the purpose of free speech, and the threat it’s under, both on and off college campuses.

Arnn, the 12th president of Hillsdale College and professor of politics and history, spoke at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday in the Amphitheater, continuing Week Five, “The Life of the Spoken Word.”

“If you were to ask a college president what they think of freedom of speech on, let’s say, April 10, the answer is ‘tell them to shut up,’ ” he said. “Now, the nearest thing to quiet at a college comes in the month of July, so I feel better about it all right now.”

Speech, derived from the Greek word logos, is a fundamental word, as Arnn explained by paraphrasing Aristotle’s Politics.

“Speech, logos, served to reveal the advantageous and the harmful, and hints also at the just and the unjust,” he said. “For it is peculiar to man, compared to other animals, that he alone has a perception of good and bad, of just and unjust and the other things of this sort. Community in these things is what makes a household and a city.”

Aristotle’s claim is that human beings are defined by their ability to talk. Arnn cited an example from his own family, where they have raised children and boxer dogs. For the first two years of the children and the dogs’ lives, Arnn said the two are very alike.

“They don’t know much, they live on the floor, they eat each others’ food and, interestingly enough, they hear all the same things,” he said.

At about age 2, the children start talking, but the dogs never do. After about six months of talking, Arnn said children seem to “know everything.”

“How did they learn those things?” he said. “It’s a kind of magic that happens in the soul. No dog has ever started talking and no child has ever been taught to talk because there isn’t anywhere to start. They have to understand something just to get started.”

How do humans learn speech all on their own? Aristotle said that it’s an ability to use a certain kind of word that only humans can. Arnn used two examples: a tissue box and a “speaker box” — the dais he was standing on. Children are not able to use a reference, like a vocabulary card, to learn “box” because the two boxes look very different.

“We use common nouns, and all speech is made possible by that,” Arnn said.

If Arnn were to rip the tissue box to pieces, he said the box would “lose its goodness.”

“Aristotle says at the same time and in the same motion, it loses the being of the box,” he said. “That means that our understanding of ‘kinds of things’ is written in this perception of the essence, or good, or being of each thing before us, and that’s how we think of things being just or unjust because each individual is different.”

Once one understands there is a unique meaning and being to things such as man and dog, that lays the groundwork for knowing no two things can be treated the same. Arnn said Thomas Jefferson proposed this concept in the Declaration of Independence, when he wrote, “The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”

The same point has been made at various times in history. In a Lincoln-Douglas debate, Stephen Douglas asked why the federal government did not protect his slave the way it protects the rest of his property, to which Abraham Lincoln replied that Douglas did in fact know the difference between a human being and inanimate objects.

“If you read a lot of Aristotle, it will teach you to think like that, because he claims that the good is undeniable, even if it is ignored or willfully denied,” Arnn said.

Ultimately, Arnn said humans are identified by their ability to speak, thus restricting that ability would be the same as telling “dolphins they can’t swim.”

College is derived from the Latin word collegium, meaning partnership.

“It means it’s something to do together and remember, the ground has been laid for us to do things together most radically in speech because what speech means is whatever we can think, we can say,” Arnn said. “When we are talking, we are just thinking out loud, and when we are thinking, we are just talking to ourselves.”

In the minds of classic thinkers, Arnn said the political community is the highest and closest form of community — except for the community of friendship, which is formed around “the contemplation of the ultimate things.”

According to Arnn, that is what a majority of colleges in America were founded on, as seen in the mission statements of schools like Hillsdale.

“(At Hillsdale) we love freedom, we love independence, we love equality and we love learning,” he said. “A community of learning needs to be close.”

Because of the commitment to partnership in learning, Arnn said there are rules in place at  Hillsdale to uphold those standards.

For example, discussions at Hillsdale require continuity. When professors ask students what a certain thing is, they are not allowed to answer with phrases like “To me it means …”

“If you try to set up, what does it actually mean, what does it in fact mean, it’s harder now,” Arnn said. “One of Socrates’ favorite questions is, ‘What is it for a thing to be good?,’ and that’s not simple, it’s just sublime. To seek it, there is no higher activity, no more joyous activity and it’s to be done together.’ ”

Aristotle has a list of intellectual virtues, and the highest virtue of knowledge is contemplation, the immediate beholding of “ultimate beautiful things.” According to Arnn, that is what a college curriculum is all about.

“Aristotle said some kinds of things are good for their own sake, and then there are some that produce a product,” he said.

Arnn ran through a list of things: bottle-making, bottle, drinking, health.

“When you get to health, you get to something everybody needs and then if you put victory, health, and intelligence and sufficient together in a list, then you realize that you can have all of those things, that they are good for their own sake and that means that they stand at a higher dignity than the lower things that produce them,” he said.

On the other hand, one could have all of those things and still be “miserable.”

“The point is, what would you add to those things that would make you completely what you are, and therefore possible to be happy?” Arnn said. “That’s the subject of Aristotle’s ethics, and that’s also the subject of college — it’s to find out the things that are beautiful to know for their own sake.”

Once people behold “high and beautiful things,” they are able to draw conclusions about those things, what Aristotle considers wisdom.

“Wisdom takes time, which means when you’re young it’s hard to be wise,” Arnn said.

But in college, freshmen are thrown into a population of professors and students wiser than they are. Arnn personally interviews every professor before they get hired at Hillsdale and said they are all used to being the smartest person they know, so Arnn said they are making a “crazy choice.”

“They are going into a line of work where they’ll never get rich and they’ve got a mountain to climb,” he said. “It will take them their whole lives and they won’t get to the top, and they want that.”

Professors lead the academic community with knowledge, experience and ability that students are unable to possess that early in their lives, the main reason “colleges need to go on for a long time.”

College also produces a pathway to God. Aristotle described the idea of God as a perfect being that can “see everything at once.” Moving from one thing to the next would imply imperfection. Thinking about one thing and then another would imply dissent. Therefore, the only thing God really thinks about is himself.

Arnn said that concept applies to everyday life in the way people deal with trials in their personal lives. For example, Arnn said by spending time at Chautauqua Institution, people are putting their focus on themselves, giving them an opportunity to work through their struggles.

“That is longing for God,” he said. “College is reaching God as he can be known, both in reason and in faith.”

College also produces friendship, what Arnn considers “utility, pleasure and the contemplation of the highest things together.” The only speech rule at Hillsdale is one can say anything they want to if they can say it in a “civil and academic manner.”

“(That rule is) because we are here to be friends and to figure things out together,” he said.

Arnn said what he sees on college campuses now is a “staggering and dangerous thing,” far from the original intentions of speech and college.

Speech can be lethal, even if no harm is intended, and even if someone outside of one’s community cannot perceive the harm in it. According to the current claim at Williams College in Massachusetts, one can be “ignorant of harm if they’re guilty of whiteness,” Arnn said.

“They have repudiated everything that has gone on, but the students claiming these things can’t possibly know much about that because it takes a while to learn,” he said.

Arnn said this ignorance is apparent even at Hillsdale, where even though students believe being conservative means they’ll be accepted into the school, they are always unable to tell Arnn what it means to really be a conservative. To those students, Arnn said, “cut it out.”

“You’re supposed to get an education now,” he said. “You’re going to read these books, you’re going to listen, you’re going to formulate your own arguments, you’re going to try to argue and you’re going to step right outside these opinions that you have because philosophy, according to the classics, is the refining of opinion into truth. That’s the work of a college.”

Arnn finished with a quote from Darel Paul, professor of political science at Williams College. The quote is from Paul’s essay in Areo Magazine, “Listening to the Great Awokening.” 

“In ages past, administrators and academics believed the mission of higher education to be the pursuit of knowledge (University of Chicago: ‘Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched’; University of Cambridge: ‘Hinc lucem et pocula sacra’) or even truth (Harvard University: ‘Veritas’; Yale University: ‘Lux et Veritas’),” Paul wrote. “Today, they pursue Social Justice. Under that banner, anti-racist activists hope to do to higher education what Soviet communism did to fine art, literature and music.”

Paul went on to discuss Trofim Lysenko, a Russian critic of genetics and science-based agriculture. Lysenko tested two generations of crops around his theories and both failed, but at the time, criticizing him was illegal and led to the death penalty. As a result of his agricultural failures and the state’s death penalty, Arnn said around 20 million people died.

“Without a comparison of views around people willing and able, two qualifications to do any difficult thing, willing and able, and without that friendship, the crops are going to fail and no one is going to know what’s good,” Arnn said.

Arnn bets Paul is a “modern academic liberal.” Although Arnn said that is a much better thing to be than someone like Lysenko, he still disagrees with a vast majority of Paul’s claims.

“If you read through that article, you can see there is a rejection of human reason in these claims that are being shouted on college campuses today,” Arnn said. “If you think about it for a minute, that is utter and complete foolishness. If you say reasoning matters not at all, that is a rational assertion — reason being all we’ve got. Somehow, they’ve done something worse than lose their mission, they have moved in final opposition to that mission and that’s why I think civilization is at stake.”

As for what to do going forward, Arnn said the solution is simple.

“You should learn to talk in an academic and civil way with others, whatever they think,” he said.

They fly through the air with the greatest of ease, but it’s all on their own; they don’t need a trapeze.

At 7:30 p.m. tonight, July 24, in the Amphitheater, the Jabali African Acrobats will swing and jump their way onto the stage as part of Chautauqua’s Family Entertainment Series.

The troupe mixes the techniques of both Chinese and African acrobatics to produce a dynamic, energetic show complete with tumbling, flipping, dancing and swinging. Past performances have featured acts like the Congo Snake Dance, the Flaming Limbo Bar Dance and their signature Skip Rope Footwork.

Rosemary Hable, president of Class Act Performing Artists and Speakers, said the performance is one-of-a-kind. Class Act is the organization that connects the Jabali Acrobats to audiences in the United States.

“I think audiences who come see the show are in for an awe-inspiring performance,” Hable said. “Even now, when I see the show, I’m amazed at the talent and skill on display; it’s truly something you won’t find anywhere else.”

According to Hable, the Jabali performers bring a unique twist to the traditional acrobatics show. She said that in addition to feats of juggling, flipping and twirling, the performers add acts like chair stacking and complex rope-skipping footwork that is entirely unique to their troupe.

Hable said that despite the focus and intensity the acrobats pour into their moves, they also add an element of comedy to each show to ensure that audiences will be entertained in a multitude of ways.

One of the goals of the FES is to provide Chautauquans with experiences that will broaden their horizons and connect them with acts they might not be able to see anywhere else. Hable said that for those goals, the Jabali acrobats definitely fit the bill.

“It’s a uniquely cultural experience,” Hable said. “I think that audience members today, children especially, don’t get the chance to be exposed to African culture very often. (The Jabali acrobats) bring a great chance for people to come and connect with a great source of some amazing culture.”

The acrobats train at a school in Mombasa, Kenya, where they master their craft and form connections with one another. After members of the school graduate, they travel around Kenya, performing at various venues and, through companies like Class Act, even bring their talents to international stages.

Hable said the show will be suitable for audience members of all ages, and that the performance will be one that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats.

“I encourage anyone with even a small interest in the show to come out,” Hable said. “It really is an amazing, exciting performance.”

After a decade-and-a-half of service to the Chautauqua community, Chair Jim Pardo is stepping down from the board of trustees

Pardo, a lawyer by trade, first served on the board as a two-year-termed community member of the Asset Policy Committee, then as a trustee for seven years and finally as chair of the board for six.

During his tenure, he oversaw the appointment of the 18th president of Chautauqua Institution; the renewal of the Amphitheater; the pending absorption of the Chautauqua Foundation back into the Institution; and the approval of the 150 Forward strategic plan, for which he served on the working group committee.

Currently, Pardo — along with Institution President Michael E. Hill and Strategic Planning Working Group Chair Laura Currie — is leading a series of Strategic Plan Information Sessions for Chautauquans to engage with 150 Forward.

Pardo will officially vacate his seat in the fall, succeeded by incoming Chair Candy Maxwell on Oct. 1.

How did you discover Chautauqua?

My wife is from Buffalo; we visited her parents when our children were very young and it was a very hot week. … The house wasn’t air conditioned, and as a result, no one in the three generations had a good week.

And I went back to Atlanta, where I was practicing, and one of my partners, who’s a lifetime Chautauquan, asked me how the week went and I told him very candidly that it did not go well. And he said “next year come to Chautauqua.” And so we did; we came over for a day and we were intrigued by it.

We rented a house for the next summer for two weeks — or three weeks, Mary and I don’t remember. … It worked out very well, so we did it the next year, the next year, the next year, the next year. So we went for two to three, three to five, five to six (weeks), like everyone else.

We were introduced to (the Institution) like so many other people — by someone who had found it before — and we found it to our liking, and we started with a small stay and continued to a larger stay and have been here forever.

How has your last season as chair been so far?

Most of the things we were looking to wrap up before the transition to incoming Chair Candy Maxwell have been wrapped up. So, the joke is my duck is lame, and that’s probably a good thing.

But for the rain, this year has been a really remarkable season from a programming standpoint and from a census standpoint.

We had a board meeting last weekend and that went well. We have one more left in my tenure and then we will pass it to Candy and the new leadership.

How have you been preparing for the transition?

The transition is nearly complete. … The selection of Candy was effective in early February. … That allowed Candy and me a couple extra months to just talk on the phone or email back and forth; it allowed President Michael E. Hill to start bringing Candy into some conversations.

The board in its May meeting made it official by electing her Chair Elect, so the formal transition started then.

When you look back on your tenure on the board, what jumps out to you?

The easy and obvious answer you would give to that question in a public setting is the timely completion of the Amphitheater on budget and the return of the community around that without the discord that preceded it — that’s the easy answer. 

We chose a new president; we went from Tom Becker, who was an Institution legend, to Michael, who is rapidly becoming an Institution visionary.

I think that the joint decision by Chautauqua Foundation and the Institution to return the development function and development personnel from the Foundation back to the Institution where it sat up until 1991, and allowing increased investments into development efforts without putting a strain on endowment or endowment income, could easily wind up being the most important thing the board did during the tenure that I was on it. That could be a real game-changer up here. 

Small things: Easing the alcohol policy to allow the serving of spirits seems to have been received well on the grounds. As we said on the board, we weren’t actually sure what the community reaction would be, but it seems to have been well received.

What I appreciated most — and I say this with all seriousness — there are between 65 and 70 individuals who have been on the board during the 15 years I’ve also been on the board. … When you include spouses and partners and significant others, then suddenly you’re closing in on 150, and if you take the people who were on (auxiliary boards) suddenly you’re in the 200s.

That’s the great benefit that I take away from being on the board — and there are wonderful things that have happened inside the Institution — but from a purely personal standpoint, that’s 200 to 250 new friends that are dear to me.

Is there anything you would redo if you could?

My temperament and demeanor are not always suitable for public consumption. I have a very short fuse when it comes to some issues.

I wish I could take all of those responses back and stuff them back down my mouth and chew on them for awhile and let something more civil come out. You don’t always have that luxury.

But honestly, I think the community has grown with me as I have grown with the community. … I think we have all learned our respective strengths and weaknesses.

Do you have any advice for your successors?

I don’t have any advice for Candy. … She doesn’t need advice from me; she’s going to be a tremendous chair.

What’s your hope for the Institution in the future?

We have such a luxury right now in that we’re not worried about being here tomorrow or next year or five years from now; we have a stable economic base, which allows us to have a more visionary approach to strategic planning.

If we do the things well that we’ve outlined for ourselves in the strategic plan over the next five years and over the next 10 years, then we have the capacity to set the foundation for this place to be here another 150 years. … We’re changing the focus; we’re changing the economic model.

How have you seen Chautauquans engage with the strategic plan?

I think the reaction has been good. … (The Strategic Plan Information Sessions) have been well-attended; the questions have been very good, comments have been very good.

(Data collection for the plan) was so extensive that the executive summary that we received was over 100 pages long. … Once we had the input, everything fell into place. I’d like to tell you it was an onerous process — it was a time consuming job, but it wasn’t an onerous job; it was a lot of fun.

The work product was well received by the board at every instance, and I think, as a result, the final product is being well-received by the community.

What’s next for you personally?

My tennis hopefully will not get any worse. … (We’re) getting a dog.

We will come up here every summer, we’ll enjoy being here with our friends, and we look forward to seeing what Candy and her successors over the years, and Michael and his successors over the years, wind up doing. I think it’s an opportunity for great strides and a lot of good work.

“Neighbor , oh neighbor, I know this is a challenging text, but this is us,” the Rev. Otis Moss III said at the 9:15 a.m. Tuesday Ecumenical Service. His sermon title was “This Is Us, Part 2,” and the Scripture text was 2 Samuel 13:1-21, the rape of Tamar.

Moss retold the story of Tamar using his “sanctified imagination,” the New International Version of the Bible and the OM3 (Otis Moss III) version. Amnon, a half brother of Tamar, was obsessed with her. “He made himself ill, he was so obsessed with her,” Moss said.

Amnon had a cousin, Jonadab, who was his adviser, and when Jonadab learned why Amnon was looking so haggard, he advised Amnon to pretend to be sick and ask King David to send Tamar to cook for Amnon. Tamar made bread for Amnon, and then he sent everyone out of the room. He grabbed Tamar and forced her into bed with him. Tamar begged, “Don’t do this wicked thing. Where would I go? And you would be a wicked fool.” Amnon violated her and then hated her.

“He told her to get up and get out,” Moss said.

Tamar told Amnon that sending her away would be a greater wrong than what he had already done, but Amnon had a servant put her out and bolt the door.

“She had been wearing the beautiful robes of a virgin princess,” Moss said. “She tore the robe and put on sackcloth and ashes. When she got home, her brother Absalom asked, ‘Has he been with you?’ ”

When she said “yes,” Absalom was furious, but he told her not to talk about it. Absalom went to King David, enraged.

“Absalom hated Amnon but did nothing,” Moss said. “King David was furious, but he did nothing. He did not speak up for his own daughter. Somehow we do a poor job of addressing the messy truth of life. The Enemy, as the Pentacostal church says, seeks to silence your voice, and you have to gather with others to have the power to speak.”

The MeToo Movement, founded in 2006 by Tarana J. Burke, has raised awareness of the pervasiveness of assault and sexual abuse in society. It became hashtag #MeToo when actress Alyssa Milano tweeted it in light of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations.

“Tarana Burke founded MeToo after hearing the cries of people who had been assaulted and abused; it went viral when a famous woman, who was white, used it,“ Moss said. “We don’t want to talk about sexual assault and abuse. It is an open secret in our communities; we have failed to speak with power about violations in the community.”

Being silent will not make the issue go away.

“People need to hear a word from the pulpit so they will be lifted up and find God’s compassion. Many people are on the edge of freedom, but they are shackled by shame,” Moss said.

Tamar had known injury in her own home, and the pulpits of the church, Moss said, “have been used as lecterns of injury.”

“I want to say today that collectively, we are sorry,” he said. “We are sorry, Tamar, that you were not allowed to tell your story; you were denied the opportunity to confront human misbehavior and feel divine action. We are sorry, Tamar, that we sent you back to your abuser. We are sorry, Tamar, that we did not call the shelter. This is our collective failure, whether you are part of a denomination, an atheist, a humanist, a none. If we are human we must confront the horrors of humanity.”

This Biblical story begins with the depravity of Amnon, but he had an enabler — his cousin Jonadab.

“Amnon found a cousin to collude with him to violate his sister,” Moss said. “There is usually collusion by people on the payroll, deacons, the pulpit, the board and in spaces of power, like a white house in D.C.”

Collusion is pathetic, Moss said.

“Tamar was stalked by two men who were supposed to protect her,” he said. “God wants you to hear this — it was not your fault, Tamar. It was not your ornate robe. If you never hear it again, hear it now — it was not your fault, Tamar.”

Moss said he has “issues with (King) David,” as well.

“(David was) a father who would protect Israel but not his own family,” he said. “You were a public success but a private failure. You were a great leader but a bad father. Amnon was following your lead. You were a violator of Bathsheba. My wife, Monica, says that children are great observers but terrible interpreters. Amnon thought that this is what it means to be a man. David, I have issues with you.”

Tamar was not without agency. Absalom told her not to say anything, to keep her voice down, to keep the story off the front page.

“Tamar rips her robe that indicated her royal status and put on sackcloth and ashes,” Moss said. “It was a sign that something horrendous had happened, and in my sanctified imagination, I hear all the women in the palace whispering about what happened and then all the women in Israel went around in sackcloth and ashes, an early MeToo Movement.”

Moss told the congregation, “Just because you are in power, it does not mean you have moral principles. Just because you are in power, it does not mean you have a moral compass. There is a man in power who has no moral compass and no principles — and his name is David.”

By tearing her robe, Tamar was saying, “I am valuable, I am still here and I will not be silent.”

“Are we willing to stand with those who wear sackcloth and ashes, or are we going to ask them if it actually happened and ask them to testify before men about what happened?” Moss asked.

Someone can shift from sackcloth and ashes, Moss said, when they are “attuned to how God is moving.” Moss’ beloved sister, Daphne, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. She came home from Spelman College one summer and was deeply depressed most of the season. Just as she was about to go back to Spelman, her mood lifted. Moss asked her what happened. Daphne told him she had been listening to some old disco music on the radio, and she heard lyrics that moved her spirit. The song was “I Will Survive,” sung by Gloria Gaynor. Moss quoted a few lines from the song: “Did you think I’d crumble? Did you think I’d lay down and die? / Oh no, not I, I will survive / Oh, as long as I know how to love, I know I’ll stay alive / I’ve got all my life to live, and I’ve got all my love to give / And I’ll survive, I will survive.”

“We must speak with authority to those we know are survivors,” Moss said. “They will survive and thrive when they are around people who lift them up. I apologize again if you have been injured by the pulpit. We have much to learn from you of God’s power and grace. You will survive; I will survive.”

Moss asked anyone in the congregation who was a survivor or knew someone who was a survivor to stand.

“You are a survivor,”  he said.

Then he invited the whole congregation to stand and join hands.

“Know that you are loved, you are powerful, you are gifted, you are a survivor, you shall thrive,” Moss said. “This is us. Know that God is God and you are beyond broken. You are a survivor.”

Norma Rees remembers a couple distinct moments from last year’s annual Robert Pinsky Favorite Poem Project, which marked the event’s 10th anniversary at Chautauqua Institution. One: A woman read a poem that her mother — watching in the audience at age 93 — had read to her during her childhood. And two: A young woman from the Chautauqua Theater Company gave a dramatic reading of “Catch the Fire” by Sonia Sanchez, a politically charged poem, to conclude the event.

“It was an amazing way to end,” said Rees, former president of the Chautauqua Literary Arts Friends.

Four or five years ago, Rees “was fortunate enough” to participate in the project herself by reading Dorothea Mackellar’s “My Country,” an ode to Rees’ native Australia. Having taken over from the person who brought the Favorite Poem Project to Chautauqua, longtime CLAF member, Georgia Court, Rees is in her second year as organizer and emcee of the afternoon. Continuing 11 years of CLAF tradition, about 20 Chautauquans will read their favorite published poem through the Robert Pinsky Favorite Poem Project, an initiative first conceived  by the 39th United States Poet Laureate, at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 24 in the Hall of Philosophy. 

Traditionally, the event’s most consistent readers have been retired Chautauquans who are on the grounds for the entire season. Now, as the Institution sees an uptick in visitors who are on the grounds for only a week or two as opposed to nine, Rees hopes to see a more diverse generational demographic, both at the podium and in the audience.

“It’s a thrill to read your poem up there,” Rees said. “Lots of famous people have spoken from the dais at the Hall of Philosophy. It’s an unusual opportunity to be able to get up and speak and read your poem.”

Asides from Rees’ increased advertising efforts, the Favorite Poem Project remains as it always has. Chautauquans who submit a poem to read are asked to provide a short statement describing why they find the piece meaningful. Rees and a committee of CLAF members then select the poems and organize an “unexpected” order of the poems “so it keeps people’s interest.”

“We try to ask people, if they want to read a long poem, that they choose stanzas of that poem that particularly speak to them so that they’re not reading the whole Iliad,” Rees said.

Atom Atkinson, director of literary arts, characterized the Favorite Poem Project as aligned with the “spirit” of lifelong learning that infuses programming at the Institution.

“Especially in this instance, you’re not illustrating anything except for your deep appreciation on a human level for a poem,” they said. “And (the Favorite Poem Project) is an especially accessible program for a participant or an audience member. I think that word, (accessible), can get used in a way that makes it seem less important or less meaningful, and I think an event like this illustrates how that’s not true. Each person that gets up there is there because of how meaningful (a poem) is.”

The afternoon welcomes everyone from longtime Chautauquans to folks who are visiting for the first time. For Atkinson, that synergy “makes for one of our most Chautauquan events of the season.”

“We encourage people to come and listen,” Rees said. “It’s a wonderful way to spend an hour in the afternoon. I think the tradition is part of the story.”

There is a figure standing atop a sunset-shaded mountain. The silhouette, with arms outstretched, basks in the otherworldly glow of paint-splattered stars.

This is the cover for Speak a Powerful Magic, an anthology compiling 10 years of the Traveling Stanzas Poetry Project, a program from the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University, devoted to fostering communal experiences through poetry. As part of a collaboration with Chautauqua Institution, the book includes two community poems from outreach writing workshops at Clymer Central School and Jamestown High School in Chautauqua County.

For David Hassler, director of the Wick Poetry Center, Speak a Powerful Magic is not only a comprehensive book of poems, but also a robust example of Traveling Stanzas’ mission in a “beautifully designed and printed” package.

“We wanted this book to celebrate and honor the poems and designs of our Traveling Stanzas project and to help our stanzas travel further out into the world,” Hassler said. “We hoped that people would be attracted to the quality of its production and might display it on a coffee table, open to a page they loved, as you would an exhibit catalog or art book.”

After a special lecture from award-winning poet-in-residence Shara McCallum on “The Role of the Poet” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 24 in Room 101 at the Hultquist Center, the literary arts community will move to the Poetry Makerspace for a reception and celebration of Speak a Powerful Magic, featuring snacks and refreshments. McCallum, who spent time in residence at the Wick Poetry Center when its staff was first developing Traveling Stanzas, is “excited” to experience the new Poetry Makerspace location — a place where poetry and “everyday lives” converge.

“We thought, because (McCallum’s) talk is so precisely about poetry and about the week’s theme (‘The Life of the Spoken Word’), that it would be a great occasion to move right from her talk to celebrating Speak a Powerful Magic and all the work that we do with Wick Poetry Center through the Poetry Makerspace,” said Atom Atkinson, director of literary arts.

Madwoman, McCallum’s most recent collection, is about race, memory, womanhood and rage, reflective of her experience as a black Jamaican immigrant and her contemporary social context: Donald Trump’s presidency, the #MeToo Movement, the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. According to McCallum, the timing of this lecture means she can “talk about her role as a practitioner (of poetry) as well as that of a reader.”

“I am deeply disquieted by the idea that it’s enough to claim our identities, even though that’s something I deeply believe in and something I have struggled with,” McCallum said. “I think it’s possible to use (my identities) as a kind of cop-out from engaging with work outside the poem. When am I making a statement that has more to do with just myself, is it truly a political gesture? But I do recognize that the enormity of (claiming one’s identities) is really all the politics that some people can manage.”

An English professor at Pennsylvania State University, McCallum thinks that “teaching feels like a more active engagement,” and looks forward to learning from her audience in informal discussions after her evening lecture.

“The conversation ends up being some of the most interesting parts of any lecture you attend,” she said. “I want to hear what others have taken away.”

Hassler describes Traveling Stanzas as just the physical spot for such improvised moments of collaboration and creativity. After all, it’s in the name.

“I love that the word ‘stanza’ in English means ‘a section of a poem,’ but it comes from Italian, where it means, literally, ‘a small room,’ ” Hassler said. “So, we like to think of these traveling stanzas as offering moments of pause, or little pockets of time, in which we can slow down and step out of our normal busy lives, and enter into the room of a poem and see what kind of meaning bubbles up and what kind of memories and reflections are triggered in our own thinking.”

Last year, he witnessed a man and woman encounter Traveling Stanzas in a short interaction that exemplified the innovative and democratizing power of the space.

“The husband immediately announced that he was not the ‘creative one’ and couldn’t write a poem,” Hassler said.

The woman played with the wooden block letters on the Stanza Wall while Hassler convinced her husband to sit down at the Emerge iPad station, with an app that facilitates a digital version of erasure or black-out poetry.

“He did not have the anxiety of a blank page, but instead was able to simply tap the words in a text that resonated with the theme of discussion during that week at Chautauqua,” Hassler said. “He made a ‘found poem’ that he liked and printed it as a postcard and displayed it on our gallery wall. So in a matter of 10 minutes he created his first poem and became, in essence, a ‘published poet.’  ”

Looking forward to the next 10 years of Traveling Stanzas, Hassler hopes to replicate and multiply experiences like that of the man at the Emerge iPad station. Continuing the program’s collaboration with the Institution and the literary arts, he wants to bring Chautauqua County students to the Makerspace and create a “writing experience” for students and teachers, as well as brainstorm fresh displays for the grounds and larger community.

“I love witnessing that ‘a-ha’ moment in a visitor to our Poetry Makerspace, when they rub two words together in a new combination and make a spark of new meaning for themselves,” Hassler said. “I believe we all have the capacity for the leaping thought of poetry, and it is available for us all to make meaning of our lives and to share that meaning with others.”