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Internationally-renowned conductor William “Bill” Eddins is coming home to Chautauqua.

Eddins will conduct the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra at 8:15 p.m. tonight, July 11, in the Amphitheater in a concert featuring three diverse pieces: Duke Ellington’s reimagining of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a, French composer Maurice Ravel’s “Le tombeau de Couperin” and George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Eddins first set foot in Chautauqua Institution 41 years ago, when he watched his parents perform with the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus. Ever since then, he said, Chautauqua has been a major part of his life.

“I can remember walking in and saying, ‘Wow, what is this place?’ ” Eddins said. “Chautauqua has been woven into the fabric of my life for the past 41 years. … For me, it’s more like coming home than anything else.”

Eddins is music director emeritus of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. He frequently makes appearances as guest conductor with orchestras across the world — including the CSO.

One of Eddins’ favorite pieces to conduct is Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

“The ‘Rhapsody’ has been a calling for me for the last 40-odd years; I’ve played it around the world, and it’s one of my absolute favorite things to do,” Eddins said. “I could probably talk for six or seven hours about it. There are maybe two or three pieces that have had just a ridiculous impact on my life, and this is one of them.”

Eddins said his interest in the piece began when he heard Paul Whiteman’s version. Whiteman, often referred to as the “king of jazz,” commissioned the music with his jazz orchestra in mind. However, Gershwin later wrote an orchestra version of the piece — a version that is far better-known than the original jazz version, according to Eddins.

“That album changed my life,” Eddins said. “I remember getting it and putting it on the record player, and my jaw just dropped. I heard ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ the way it’s meant to be heard for the first time. I’d never realized that I was searching for this, but it suddenly made sense to me.”

Eddins said the jazz version has a light, joyful tone that differentiates it from the better-known orchestral version.

“The Whiteman version is a completely different experience,” Eddins said. “It’s how the jazz bands were in the 1920s and early ’30s, and it has a lot more character. I think it’s a lot more fun, it’s a lot livelier, it’s a lot quirkier, and I think it really captures the essence of what George Gershwin was going after when he wrote this amazing piece.”

The concert will open with Ellington’s jazzy “The Nutcracker Suite.” While Tchaikovsky wrote the original ballet in the late 19th century, Ellington, an American jazz composer, reinterpreted the suite for jazz orchestra in 1960.

Eddins said he often plays the original Nutcracker Suite alongside Ellington’s version to illuminate the two composers’ talents.

“It highlights both Tchaikovsky’s genius and Ellington’s genius — it’s great music in either scenario,” Eddins said. “In many ways they’re totally different, but that same thread of genius comes through the music so clearly. It’s very joyful, and it’s one of those things I think people really enjoy hearing side by side.”

The concert will also feature Ravel’s “Le tombeau de Couperin,” a 1920 Baroque-style composition. Ravel wrote the piece as a memorial to several friends who died fighting in World War I. Eddins said the piece is known for its beauty.

“Any chance you get to program Ravel as a musician, you should, because he was a genius,” Eddins said. “It’s utterly, wonderfully beautiful … and beautifully orchestrated by (Ravel).”

The three compositions come from different composers, genres and countries. However, Eddins said they have one surprising characteristic in common: they all premiered well within one lifetime.

“It shows the amazing fluidity of music; we can go from this ‘Nutcracker,’ that everyone knows, all the way through ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ on the other side of the world,” Eddins said. “You could’ve easily heard the premiere of all these pieces within your lifetime and have a couple decades left to check other things out. It’s astounding, it’s amazing and it’s wonderful.”

Birds, with their colorful feathers, unique calls and astonishing migrations, have given poets plenty of fodder over the years.

Bird, Tree & Garden Club guide Terry Mosher will examine some bird-inspired poems by well-known poets in a workshop titled “The Things Birds Do to Poets,” at 1 p.m. Thursday, July 11 in the Roger Tory Peterson Nature Classroom.

“For the past 2,500 years, Western poets have been writing about birds, have been fascinated by them and have been moved by them,” said Mosher, who taught environmental literature at the State University of New York at Fredonia for 36 years, until he retired in 2012.

As a former president of the Lake Erie Bird Club, Mosher has a deep appreciation for birds. He said he has been birding for about 35 years.

Mosher is amazed how birds are able to fly thousands of miles to Central and South America each winter, even if they were just born and had never made the migration before.

“Their tiny, little brains know how to do this,” he said. “We know they steer by the constellations in the sky, and we know they can read the magnetic fields of the Earth in a way that we can’t.”

At Mosher’s program today, he will read poems about birds by Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, John Haines and Emily Dickinson. He will lead a discussion about the qualities of birds that inspired these writers and many others.

For example, in Robert Frost’s “Dust of Snow,” Frost speaks about being showered with snow after a crow lands on a tree branch above him. The serendipitous moment brightens an otherwise difficult day.

“Birds can lift the human heart when we’re feeling down or melancholy,” Mosher said. “Anybody who has watched the birds knows that.”

In another poem, “The Oven Bird,” Frost plays on the song of the bird species the poem is named after, which sounds like they are saying “teacher-teacher-teacher.”

“Frost listens very carefully to the song of the bird and tries to imagine what the bird might be saying, what the bird might be teaching us,” Mosher said. “The lesson he teaches is really fascinating and moving and interesting.”

Mosher will also present “If the Owl Calls Again” by John Haines, a poet who lived in Alaska and California. In it, Haines writes about what it would be like to be an owl.

“Birds seem to beckon poets, and (poets) want to see what it would be like to get inside their skin,” Mosher said.

He will also present “Vultures” by Mary Oliver, which shows a darker side of birds. The poem centers on a turkey vulture, which eats the carcasses of dead animals.

“They do a huge service by cleaning up nature, but they are extremely ugly and they are very disturbing because they are animals of death,” Mosher said. “They go around looking for death and reminding us of our own death.”

Mosher said birds are a beautiful part of the natural environment in Chautauqua County and on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution.

“So much of the soundscape, the sounds of spring and summer, are bird songs,” he said. “Most people have no idea it’s going on. They just tune them out. But they’re fascinating and beautiful.”

It’s an archaeological portrait of everyday life that Eric Meyers wants to paint in his interfaith lecture — a portrait of lower Galilee, the area where Meyers said Jesus Christ grew up.

“Literary and archaeological material has shown definitively that there was a strong culture of Jewish life established in Galilee,” said Meyers, a Biblical scholar, archaeologist and Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies at Duke University.

In 1981, Meyers was part of the team that discovered the oldest known piece of an ark of the covenant while digging in the Israeli town of Nabratein, coincidentally the same year the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was released.

At 2 p.m. Thursday, July 11 in the Hall of Philosophy, Meyers will present “Jesus in Galilee, A Jewish Perspective,” as part of Week Three’s interfaith theme, “What Archaeology Tells Us About Biblical Times.”

“Other students of the life and ministry of Jesus had thought and concluded that the Galilee was deeply Hellenized, Greek-speaking and influenced by outside culture,” Meyers said. “Recent research has shown that was completely erroneous. There were virtually no known Greeks in the Galilee in the first century, except in the pagan Roman cities that surrounded it.”

According to Meyers, evidence from the hundreds of former Jewish villages and from his own expeditions has given him indications of “a Torah-led, Biblically inspired everyday life (in Galilee).”

“We have ritual baths, we have half-a-dozen synagogues in the north and a dozen or so in the south, especially in a place called Magdala,” Meyers said. “So, painting this picture, we see that Jesus’ ministry focused on the rural communities in the Galilee in the north and avoided cities like Sepphoris that were deeply Hellenized.”

That assessment is in stark contrast to some other archaeological descriptions of Galilee, according to Meyers.

“One (description) is a very Greek version of the Galilee,” Meyers said. “Another is a Jewish depiction of the background of Jesus that is backward, out-of-touch and not informed by Torah or Biblical law.”

Through Duke University and his local Jewish Community Center, Meyers said he’s taken students to archaeological digs in the Galilee area for nearly 50 years.

Meyers said he’s also experienced violent resistance by Orthodox Jews in response to his excavations.

“We’ve been attacked, bullied and had our digs invaded by them,” he said. “They’ve smashed up artifacts and turned over columns, things like that. The Orthodox are against digging graves, which has set back scientific archaeological research greatly in the region. DNA studies know about all sorts of things relating to human disease and health that would be greatly advantageous for scientists and medical research to know about.”

But for his interfaith lecture, Meyers said he wants to focus on demonstrating that Judaism played a greater role in Jesus’ early life and in his community than was previously believed.

“These new studies have shown Jesus and his followers’ deep commitment to the Jewish faith as it was in the early decades of the first century,” he said.

Audience members at today’s lecture can access slides that accompany the presentation from their smart devices at
chq.org/screen.

Kevin Hand credits the vast sky of Vermont with sparking his interest in the interplanetary.

“Growing up under the clear night sky, looking out at the stars; who could stare up and not wonder about what’s out there?” Hand said.

Now an award-winning astrobiologist working with organizations like NASA and National Geographic, Hand explores the climates and oceans of other worlds.

He will bring his extraterrestrial expertise to Chautauqua at 10:45 a.m. today, July 11, in the Amphitheater to continue exploring Week Three’s theme: “A Planet in Balance: A Week in Partnership with National Geographic Society.”

As an astrobiologist, Hand explores life throughout the solar system. He studies the climates of various planets and moons, testing their environments for hospitability and the existence of living organisms. Currently, he’s working on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which will launch a detailed survey of the moon of Jupiter to explore whether the icy sphere could harbor conditions suitable for life.

Hand said he believes that certain moons like Titan and Europa have “tremendous astrobiological potential,” meaning that alien life might exist relatively close to Earth.

“These moons are covered in ice, but beneath their icy shells, we have reason to predict that vast, potentially global, liquid-water oceans exist today,” Hand said. “If we’ve learned anything from life on Earth, it’s that where you find liquid water, you almost always find life.”

Although Hand’s work keeps his attention focused primarily on outer space, he’s been part of a number of scientific expeditions on Earth as well.

While studying for his doctorate at Stanford University, he was chosen by filmmaker James Cameron to help collect marine biology samples from hydrothermal vents in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and East Pacific Rise. Hand has also journeyed deep into the Mariana Trench and to Antarctica to study how life survives in the harshest of climates.

During his morning lecture, Hand will share his knowledge about alien oceans and extraterrestrial climates, as well as his experiences learning about life on Earth. Hand said his work in places like the Mariana Trench has given him insight into how life might be possible outside Earth’s atmosphere.

“Not only did we find life thriving at incredible depths, but we also think we uncovered part of what makes that ecosystem possible; part of what makes the biology work down at those depths,” Hand said.

Hand said he believes that learning about exotic planets and moons in the solar system could teach humans a great deal about biological processes on Earth.

“We don’t yet know how life on Earth originated or what makes life and biology possible,” Hand said. “Through our search for life beyond Earth, we aim to learn more about the fundamental phenomenon that is us.”

In addition to learning more about the intricacies of life and evolution by studying what lies among the stars, Hand’s work aims to bolster humanity’s understanding of the ecological phenomena that occur within Earth’s atmosphere.

“Understanding how our home planet works has been greatly informed by studying other planets,” Hand said. “For example, the greenhouse effect was first understood as something that occurred on the planet Venus.”

According to Hand, to achieve the highest level of understanding about Earth — to best protect and preserve it — knowledge from beyond the planet can be just as valuable as knowledge from within it.

He also acknowledged that not everyone has the ability to study heavenly bodies or to analyze extraterrestrial environments in their spare time.

However, he said that curiosity, exploration and adventure are all invaluable things for everyone who calls this planet home, and that everyone has the ability to enjoy and protect it.

“The more people get out and explore, the more people experience the beauty of our home planet, the more we will want to and the more we will work to protect our home,” Hand said. “We live on this tiny little spaceship called planet Earth, and right now we are messing with the hardware of how that spaceship works when we should be protecting it.”

Having grown up in cities, Rae Wynn-Grant attributes her career interests in wildlife to the television shows she watched as a child.

Although she steered away from her dreams of hosting a National Geographic nature show, Wynn-Grant still found a way to make a difference for wildlife, particularly in areas where carnivores and people engage one another.

Wynn-Grant, carnivore ecologist and National Geographic fellow, spoke at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday, July 10 in the Amphitheater, continuing Week Three, “A Planet in Balance: A Week in Partnership with National Geographic Society.”

“The interesting thing to me about nature shows was that it was pure entertainment,” Wynn-Grant said. “It was just a joyous experience to watch them. What I didn’t realize was that I was being introduced to science. I was watching science, in action, on the screen.”

Because Wynn-Grant had no first-hand experience in nature, she initially found herself uninterested in her environmental science major. To give it another chance, Wynn-Grant chose the most environmentally based study abroad program her school offered: a semester camping in Kenya.

“There I went from the urban space in Atlanta, all the way to southern Kenya where I was able to pitch my first tent, take my first hike and see my first wild animal,” she said. “That moment, at 20 years old, completely changed my life.”

During her semester abroad, Wynn-Grant was assigned a male lion, the head of a local pride, to follow for the entirety of her stay.

“I learned firsthand its predation patterns, what it eats and where,” she said. “I got to learn how much lions sleep. I got to learn about the different female lions he interacted with, the cubs in the pride, absolutely everything.”

Near the pride’s usual residence was a group of Mossi people, an “iconic” East African tribal group. The Mossi herded cattle, and therefore frequently came into conflict with the wildlife. This created what ecologists call a human-wildland interface, a space where people and animals begin to overlap.

“That was fascinating to me because it wasn’t necessarily a danger zone, but there was a lot of potential for human wildlife conflict there,” she said. “It was in that moment, in East Africa, that I developed my expertise.”

 

Thinking her career path was set, Wynn-Grant returned to Africa during her graduate program to study female lions. However, her doctorate advisers sent her in a different direction.

In ecology, scientists are supposed to spend an extended period of time studying one animal without any conservation intervention, so studying an endangered species, like lions, was too risky.

Enter the black bear. Wynn-Grant began studying black bears in western Nevada, a state that had only recently accumulated a black bear population.

“There are bears all over the place,” she said. “There are bears probably a few miles from where we are sitting today, but the state of Nevada is very unique in that throughout the history of this continent, there has never been a black bear population (there) until about five or 10 years ago. It’s brand new.”

Climate change brought the bears into Nevada. In its neighboring state of California, there are roughly 40,000 black bears, many of them living in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. During climate-induced drought years when it didn’t snow and the peaks weren’t icy, black bears went over the mountains and started colonizing.

The bears became so abundant in Nevada that a big portion of Wynn-Grant’s work was going into communities, sedating the bears and taking them back into forests.

“Just like working in East Africa with Mossi tribal people, working in Nevada, I was living with very, very local people living off the land,” she said. “There is a tremendous community aspect to doing wildlife ecology there. So often, I was working with homeowners and with police.”

After a few years of working with black bears, Wynn-Grant started tracking female bears using satellite collars. According to her, knowing where a female hibernates is vital because female bears give birth during hibernation.

“These young ladies are not eating anything for about six months, they’re not drinking any water for that time, they recycle their own waste within their body, they don’t urinate or defecate throughout the entire winter and they have to nurse cubs from six inches long into full size cubs that can leave the den and experience the forest,” she said.

Along with measuring the growth of the cubs, tracking the hibernation locations also impacts local development projects.

“There is always a highway to be built or a resort area to be built or a ski lodge to be constructed in the forest,” Wynn-Grant said. “If I am able to advise developers as to where there is important female den-site habitat versus where is not important den-site habitat, we can make decisions about developing landscape that protect people, but also protect sleeping mother bears.”

After 10 years of studying ecology, Wynn-Grant was ready to challenge herself — and National Geographic Society offered an opportunity to study biodiversity in an unexplored rainforest in Madagascar.

Wynn-Grant agreed and was tasked with looking for ring-tailed lemurs, seemingly impossible because the species had only been found in dry places with low elevation and fruit-bearing trees.

But Wynn-Grant was in an area with high elevation, a tropical forest and very few fruit-bearing trees. Somehow, it also had ring-tailed lemurs.

“I realized what I was doing was broadening my science,” she said. “It was tremendous and it resulted in, I’m happy to say, a very high-level scientific discovery because me and my team found a population of ring-tailed lemurs in this tropical rainforest that was unknown to exist to science.”

After five weeks studying ring-tailed lemurs, Wynn-Grant was still struggling to balance ecology and conservation work in a time when “everything was feeling urgent.”

“Studying lions was urgent, studying lemurs was urgent, even studying black bears in the Western United States felt like there was an urgency because there wasn’t enough space for them,” she said.

Wynn-Grant realized she wanted to stop focusing on the extinction crisis and bringing back what isn’t there. Instead, she wanted to work on preserving what already exists. National Geographic Society’s Last Wild Places does just that.

“There are tremendous expanses of land — whether it is grassland, forestland, ocean habitats — that are huge, they are unfragmented, they are intact and they have tremendous promise — that if we keep protecting them starting today, in 50 years, 100 years, 200 years into the future, we’re still going to have them around,” she said. “We won’t be finding an extinction crisis in these places.”

Another National Geographic project is Pristine Seas, which aims to designate protected areas in the ocean.

“Marine protected areas are a beautiful way to set boundaries in the ocean where no one is going to go and make sure the aquatic life is healthy,” she said. “It is an awesome way to ensure the future of our planet’s survival.”

As a fellow with National Geographic Society, Wynn-Grant has partnered with a Last Wild Places project in eastern Montana called the American Prairie Reserve, the largest nature reserve in the continental United States.

Montana is currently populated by more cows than people, but before American farms took over the Great Plains, the grassland was filled with bison, wolves, mountain lions, coyotes and more wildlife. According to Wynn-Grant, those species are now returning.

“All of those wolves, black bears and mountain lions are moving out of Yellowstone and they’re trying to recolonize historic habitat,” she said. “I like to say that they’re coming home.”

The American Prairie Reserve aims to be the biggest and only place in North America, outside of national parks, with healthy populations of all native species. But there’s an obstacle in the way of that goal. The reserve is in a triangle between Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks, and hundreds of cattle ranches are standing in their way.

The danger to the wildlife is not the cows, but the culture that created the ranches they live on. Wynn-Grant said the cattle ranchers’ ancestors were responsible for grizzly bears going extinct in Montana and therefore, they feel it’s a sign of disrespect to them to bring the species back.

“The culture of cattle ranching is not necessarily wildlife-friendly,” Wynn-Grant said. “It’s changing; there are a lot of groups that are changing it and there are a lot of cowboys themselves that are changing that mindset, but historically and traditionally, it’s very anti-wildlife.”

Therefore, the solutions start with open-minded cattle ranchers. Wynn-Grant works one-on-one with ranchers to discuss alternatives that benefit people and wildlife.

For instance, when ranches go up for sale, National Geographic Society will bid on the land. If they win, National Geographic will allow the ranchers to continue living there under certain conditions.

The main condition is that they have to carry out the wildlife-friendly practices provided by National Geographic on a seven-step scale. The scale stipulates: no tilling; allow for an abundance of herbivores on the land, including deer and antelope; use only rain water and natural streams to hydrate the land; don’t disrupt the landscape with things like fencing; don’t harm bears; try not to deter species of conservation concern; and be mindful of ranch size, as the larger a ranch is, the more wildlife-friendly it is. 

“National Geographic Society and the Prairie Reserve will pay ranchers depending on what level of the scale they are on,” she said. “They are making money by continuing to have their cattle, along with doing this wildlife-friendly ranching.”

Camera traps capturing mountain lions, bison and other wildlife around the Great Plains prove that the conditions are working. The American Prairie reserve now serves as a model for conservation around the world, and although there are no black bears or lions in sight, Wynn-Grant said America’s prairies are where she’ll continue to be found.

“It has helped me discover my place in this work,” she said. “Instead of the race to end the extinction crisis and reverse it, I found that my place is to preserve those areas that are in the best shape, to protect them, to do lots of long-term studies and to feed the world the science about it moving forward.”

Good morning to all you cracked pots at Chautauqua,” said the Rev. David Anderson to the congregation at the 9:15 a.m. Wednesday, July 10 Ecumenical Service in the Amphitheater. His sermon title was “The Power of ‘Alabaster,’ ” and the Scripture reading was Luke 7:36-50.

“Your desperation may be your path to your deliverance,” he said.

The woman with the alabaster jar broke into a male dinner party and pushed her way through her shame to get to the one who could heal her.

“She broke moral, spiritual and sociological laws to get to Jesus,” Anderson said. “There are many pathways to Jesus.”

The woman at the well met Jesus by chance. The bleeding woman tried to meet Jesus secretly because she did not want Jesus to know who was touching him. The woman caught in adultery was dropped in front of Jesus.

“I believe that Jesus is the only way to God the Father,” Anderson said. “But I believe there are 7 billion pathways to Jesus. We all have a story about how we came to Jesus.”

The woman in Luke 7 knew she had a bad reputation as a “working woman.” She knew Jesus would be in a home near her.

“She decided, ‘I will purposefully break the rules to get deliverance,’ ’’ he said. “When you come close to Jesus, when you encounter him in proximity, do you move forward or move away? Some people come so close, so close to healing or victory, but they can’t press through, and they walk away.”

But you have to keep pressing, Anderson told the congregation.

“There is someone here today who is close to the blessing that they want,” he said. “The only way to get the blessing you want is to press through the judgments and social norms, to keep on pressing. No matter what you have done, keep pressing for the blessing. God will bless you, no matter what you have done. Push through the judgments, death, fears, hurt, rejections, whatever is holding you back. Believe you will push through.”

Anderson admitted that the preacher was coming out of him.

“The Spirit is telling me that there is someone in the house today who needs this word, and this word is just for you.”

He asked the congregation to turn to a neighbor and say “push through.”

The woman with the alabaster jar anointed Jesus with her tears and wiped his feet with her hair.

“This means that you have all you need to be at the feet of Jesus,” Anderson said. “To qualify for your deliverance, all you need to do is show up and say to Jesus, ‘I need you.’ ”

Jesus, he said, came for the sick and the unrighteous, not those who have it all together.

“He came for the cracked pots,” Anderson said. “There are religious people who don’t need Jesus, but Jesus wants you to step out in faith. He needs someone who needs him.”

Anderson then posed a question.

“Does anyone need Jesus anymore?” he asked. “We have religions, churches and theologies that say they don’t need Jesus, but tell him to come to the party anyway.”

Jesus is having his own party, and he is the guest of honor.

Jesus’ response is: “Please come. Even if you don’t need me, you can still come,” Anderson said.

In the story of Luke, Jesus asked Peter which person would have more gratitude — the one forgiven little or the one forgiven much. Peter answered, “The one forgiven much.”

“When you have much forgiven, you become grateful, and when you are grateful, you become more loving,” Anderson said. “Those who get God’s grace become the most loving. Some of the most judgmental people are church folk who don’t know they need forgiveness.”

When you see your own sin, Anderson told the congregation, and you see that Jesus is willing to forgive, you will walk out into the world loving more.

“The more you repent, the more you love,” he said. “Your desperation to be forgiven and clean before God may be the pathway to your deliverance. The power of alabaster is your healing grace as you power through to the feet of Jesus.”

Anna Grace Glaize, Christian coordinator for the Abrahamic Program for Young Adults, presided. Rawad Oueiss, a scholarship student with the International Order of the King’s Daughters and Sons from Lebanon, read the Scriptures in Arabic and English. Oueiss studies civil engineering at Notre Dame University, Louaize, in Zouk Mosbeh, Lebanon. Jared Jacobsen, organist and coordinator of worship and sacred music, directed the Motet Choir in singing “With What Shall I Come Before the Lord?” by Jane Marshall. The Jackson-Carnahan Memorial Chaplaincy and the Mr. and Mrs. William Uhler Memorial Chaplaincy support this week’s services.

As she wrote and researched coastal communities represented within Rising: Dispatches From the New American Shore, Elizabeth Rush found herself following the rampikes. Coupled with the lyric essays that fill her book are her own black-and-white photographs of the brittle trees, dead from saline inundation forced upon them by rising sea levels.

“I see them everywhere,” Rush said, describing the salt-riddled trees as “photogenic, but lyric, visually,” a deliberate move away from the images of flood-ruined homes or starving polar bears that typically accompany writing on climate change. She chose the rampike, in part, because it “gives you space to meditate on the issue.”

“A lot of our climate change conversation tends to focus on the apocalyptic,” she said. “(These photographs) are not going to sell a newspaper, but they tell a story.”

The once-living trees are stark proof of the changing climate to which the book bears witness, and a pattern Rush observed only as she herself traveled along the ocean’s edge.

“Writing a book is a process of discovery,” Rush said. “You shouldn’t know when it’s going to end when you start working on something so big.”

Five years in the making and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and for the 2019 Chautauqua Prize, Rising is an elegy for a retreating shoreline and those who endure there, textured with testimony from coastline residents and her own personal reflections on loss and resilience.

Rush — taking a pause from writing a book about her time aboard an expedition to the calving edge of Antarctica’s Thwaites “Doomsday” Glacier — will give her Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle Author Presentation at 3:30 p.m. today, July 11, in the Hall of Philosophy.

Atom Atkinson, director of literary arts, sees Rush’s presentation as not only a new way of thinking through the week’s “A Planet in Balance” theme, but also “an exciting opportunity to show what it looks like when a poet does reportage and how that looks different, especially right after Dopesick (a Week Two CLSC book by Beth Macy).”

“It’s not just the incredible sentences; (Rising) also plays out in a way that reflects a sort of poet’s mind,” they said.

Most reviews of Rising, like David Biello’s in The New York Times Book Review, echo Atkinson’s characterization, and include at least one or more derivatives of the word “poetic.” Like Atkinson noted, the descriptor extends beyond Rush’s lyrical command of language.

She studied poetry and environmental literature at Reed College — “I always wanted to be an environmental writer, but so did half of the state of Oregon,” she said — and, in a 2018 interview for The Rumpus, told Lucia Graves she considers herself “a poet first.” As an undergraduate student writing and revising a collection of lyric poems about women’s bodies and the environment, Rush received a piece of advice from the poet Katie Ford that she carries with her still: “Edit toward exactitude but in the mystery.”

“Most people don’t want to be told how to think,” Rush said.

As a writer, “you want to make an image — something sharp, something exact” while simultaneously avoiding the “prescriptive.” Like the image of the rampike, the page should “leave space for the reader to think for themselves.” It also means that there is more room for delicacy and grace, a significant departure from typical climate change writing that tends toward, according to Rush, the “emotionally cool.”

“Nonfiction isn’t always engaged with creating the most beautiful work, and in writing Rising, I wanted to craft it in such a way that the language had a little bit of a power to intoxicate and to keep people engaged,” Rush told Graves in The Rumpus interview. “There was an idea that heightened language could help engage some folks who might find climate writing a little dry or easy to walk away from.”

She looks to Eula Biss’ On Immunity and Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts as examples of nonfiction that converges the philosophical and personal. Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys Into Race, Motherhood, and History by Camille Dungy, is another favorite, as is Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams. Like Rush, Dungy and Williams are both environmental writers interested in the interactions between human beings and what Rush calls “the more-than-human world.”

“(My relationship to nature) starts with a sense of awe and appreciation, and then quickly moves into a much deeper understanding that human beings and the more-than-human world are not separate at all,” Rush said. “We’re very intertwined and interdependent.”

In her 2015 book Still Lifes from a Vanishing City: Essays and photographs from Yangon, Rush, who has lived and reported extensively in Southeast Asia, records the stories of individuals evicted from their homes in Yangon, Myanmar, against the backdrop of the country’s independence from military rule. It wasn’t until two or three years into her research for Rising that she realized the same questions at the center of Still Lifes seeped through to her newest project.

“How do you define your relationship to home?” Rush asked. “How do forces seemingly beyond your control make you reimagine that relationship? What are the other elements that make somewhere home that you can carry on through relocation?”

Perhaps most importantly, she said, “Still Lifes from a Vanishing City taught me that there’s often an official story of a particular political moment or historical moment, but that people’s lived experience might reflect something really different.”

At the heart of Rising — a book that bypasses expressly political discourse in favor of first-person narratives and, sometimes, stories transcribed directly from the mouths of those affected by floodwaters and erosion — is a democratization of climate change discourse.

Rush knows that many people of her race and class “don’t necessarily live on the front lines” of climate change and so the book centers people of color and poor communities. The challenge, then, is writing in a way that renders climate change an accessible issue. One way to do that, Rush argues, is by side-stepping scientific jargon and other language that could be perceived as alienating.

“How do we make (climate change) not just an issue that folks with enough money to escape to the wilderness in the weekend care about and talk about and vote on?” Rush asked. “I think we need to be a little bit looser with the rhetoric and words that we require and use (when talking about climate change). One of the key basic kinds of labor that climate discourse demands is that we imagine ourselves into other people’s shoes.”

As of last Friday, Rush was about “300,000 words into a shitty first draft” of her book on the Thwaites Glacier, a Florida-sized continent of ice whose slow collapse is one of the most menacing harbingers of global sea rise. She still sees hope in an “upwelling of climate change activist movements,” and a greater awareness of the imminent threat to coastal communities.

She reads her fan mail, too, most of which is from individuals affected by the surging waters she chronicles in Rising.

“Thank you for sharing a story that maps onto my lived experience,” she said, paraphrasing the content of the letters and emails she finds most gratifying. “Thank you for helping me realize we’re not necessarily alone in this.”

Amy Gardner is looking forward to her new position as the associate vice president for major and planned gifts at the development office and enriching the Chautauqua experience through her work.

Gardner is originally from Mayville, New York, and has been coming to the Institution since she was a child. She is excited to be back in Chautauqua and is amazed to see how much the community has changed over the years.

“It’s really exciting for me to come back; it’s kind of like coming full circle,” Gardner said. “I see it in a totally different light, and it’s really wonderful to see how much it’s grown and changed and evolved over the last 20 years. I’m excited to be a part of taking it to the next level.”

This isn’t Gardner’s first job at the Institution. As a young adult, she worked in numerous positions at the Institution and was involved in the Chautauqua community.

“I grew up coming to Chautauqua,” Gardner said. “I was in the Boys’ and Girls’ Club when I was a kid. I worked here as a tour guide and at the Amphitheater.”

Gardner said that coming to the Institution still feels the same, though she now enjoys getting to share these experiences and learning opportunities with her husband and three sons.

“It was really interesting being back and knowing that I was going to be here for the summer, and seeing all of the things that I knew from growing up here,” Gardner said. “Coming into the grounds, it still feels the same. It still feels like this oasis of a place where you can do as much or as little as you want — you can learn as much as you possibly can even in a day.”

Gardner’s position is new to the development office, and she believes her experience and former positions have prepared her for this role at the Institution as a new strategic plan, 150 Forward, charts greater aspirations for new philanthropy at Chautauqua.

She previously worked at the Kennedy Center for a few years doing development, and then at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.

“After Shakespeare Theatre, I went to the University of Maryland where I worked in the College of Arts and Humanities for three years, and that’s where I was before coming here to Chautauqua,” Gardner said.

Gardner is going to be based at the Institution’s Washington, D.C. office during the off-season and will be at Chautauqua during the summer season. She said her previous training and experience will help her bring new ideas and solutions to Chautauqua.

“I feel like I can bring a lot of creative solutions and ideas to really make this an operation that’s going to take us into the next campaign, the 150th anniversary, and the next 10 years for the strategic plan,” Gardner said. “To me, it is really exciting to have that plan in place and to be able to look at it and think, ‘OK, where do we go from here?’ and to have a voice on how that’s going to happen.”

Gardner is looking forward to Chautauqua’s 150th anniversary. She said the sesquecentennial will create an opportunity to spread the story of Chautauqua outside the Institution’s grounds and introduce people to the experiences offered here.

“One of the best things about coming here is not only that it’s Chautauqua, but that it’s a place I love and care about and want to support,” she said. “It’s also a place where I can have a voice and where I can have an impact.”

Despite the importance of the Resurrection, it is one of the least described events in the Bible, according to John Dominic Crossan, and this lack of detail has caused many artists to interpret the event in many different ways.

Crossan, co-author of Resurrecting Easter: How the West Lost and the East Kept the Original Easter Vision, spoke Tuesday in the Hall of Philosophy for the Week Three Interfaith Lecture Series, “What Archaeology Tells Us About Biblical Times.” His talk was titled, “Jesus: From Archaeology to Text.”

“I’m convinced that the Eastern, not surprisingly, is in closer continuity and conformity to what is in the New Testament vision and in pre-Christian Judaism,” Crossan said.

The first example of “visual theology” that Crossan described was in the city of Arelate, now known as Arles, located in the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis around 350 C.E. In the city was what would soon be the largest Christian acropolis in the world. Of course, those who wanted to be buried in the acropolis wanted to be buried in sarcophagi and also wanted, on the center front panel of their sarcophagus, a depiction of the Resurrection.

Crossan said  the “poor artist” assigned the job of carving the depiction was in a bind because the Resurrection was not very well described in the New Testament.

“So, I have to imagine one of those moments of absolute sparks of creativity,” Crossan said. “They’re like the dark matter of the human imagination. We don’t know how it was done, but we know the results. So something like this must have happened.”

The artist must have worked with what was in the New Testament, specifically the story of the two guards put on watch at Jesus’ tomb. They then combined that story with an image on the back of Constantinian coins, depicting two soldiers standing guard, but at rest, as their spears are upside down. In the center is Constantine’s battle standard, also known as the labarum in Greek.

Crossan said that while it is an exciting first attempt at trying to artistically depict the Resurrection, there is no physical body for Jesus; he is replaced by a symbol, the labarum.

“It’ll take 500 years before you ever get the Resurrection moment with the physical body, and there’s two of them,” Crossan said.

The first of the two depictions is on a Carolingian Psalter. Jesus is shown sitting up in the tomb with large eyes. The second depiction, the more interesting one, according to Crossan, shows the two guards sitting on the slab of the tomb. Below them, within the tomb, the viewer can see “the Holy Spirit’s dove” breathing life into Jesus’ body.

So, Crossan concludes that the first depiction had a symbol that represented Jesus. Five hundred years later, Jesus’ body was physically shown. It would take another 500 years, around 1350, for the “Individual Resurrection,” as Crossan called it, to appear, in which Jesus is positioned hovering above the tomb while the guards are either looking up at him in fear and surprise, or fast asleep against the tomb.

“By ‘individual,’ I mean it shows Jesus rising alone,” Crossan said. “There’s nobody else with him. He’s glorious; he’s triumphant; he’s magnificent. He is also very much alone. I call this the Individual Resurrection, and as we know, it becomes eventually the dominant, normative, official image in Western Christianity for Easter.”

Crossan then transitioned to a new site, the Roman Forum between 550 and 750 C.E. This was a time in which the Byzantine Empire held control over Rome and Roman Catholicism, including the papacy. The emperor in Constantinople controlled the election, the life and, if necessary, the martyrdom of the pope in Rome. In other words, during this time period, it was a Byzantine Rome.

Not only was the area under Byzantine control but the pope, Pope John VII, was a pure Byzantine as well. He, as a part of Christianizing the Forum, wanted to turn the Roman edifices into Christian edifices, replacing Roman heroes with Christian heroes. The pope saw an opportunity to reinvent such images throughout the Forum, but also on the ramp that Emperor Domitian used to go from the Forum, up the Palatine hills to his palace. So, beginning with the Forum, the pope made a small shrine to 40 martyrs within the Santa Maria Antiqua, a Roman Catholic Marian church.

When creating the images for the Forum and the churches within, Pope John VII wanted something special for the depiction of the Resurrection.

“He wanted it at a certain site — when he’s going into the church or out of the church, and going onto the ramp or off the ramp,” Crossan said. “It’s like a portal image, … the great entrance and exit, the Resurrection itself. When he entered and exited, he would be reminded of this all the time.”

The depiction of the Resurrection developed based on information from the New Testament and coinage, as was done on the sarcophagi at the Christian acropolis. The artist would have a few specific ideas in mind from both sources. From the New Testament, they would be thinking of the line from the Gospel of Matthew in which it is stated that other people rose with Jesus.

Two images of victory are also found on the back of coins in the 500s and 600s, and both are accurate. The first image is extremely brutal.

“You have the emperor with his right foot on the poor captive’s head, which is bowed to the ground; his neck is down, and his boot is on his neck,” Crossan said.

The second image shows the emperor not trampling on the captive, but bending over him and raising him up. What is even more fascinating, Crossan said, is that the emperor is not just raising this captive, but the captive symbolizes a people or a city — it represents more than one individual. The same can be said for the image of the Resurrection commissioned by Pope John VII.

The depiction is on a wall that lines the ramp, and it shows Jesus dressed magnificently. In his left hand, Jesus holds a scroll, which Crossan said symbolized thinking and philosophy. In the other hand, Jesus holds the limp wrist of Adam. Next to Adam, Eve stands “ambiguously.” In addition to these two, Hades is below the feet of Jesus.

“Now let me be very clear,” Crossan said. “Adam and Eve are the human race. They’re not two people, they are in the Biblical tradition, the progenitors, the personification of the human race. Hades’ place is not hell; he is the gatekeeper of death. He’s not an evil figure. He just has a job.”

Despite the two archaeological sites Crossan mentioned — one being the “Individual Resurrection” and the other being the “Universal Resurrection” —   it would take yet another 500 years of development before Jesus reaches for both Adam and Eve. Eventually, Crossan said, the most glorious Resurrection depiction of all would be created in the Church of the Holy Savior in Chora, now the Chora Museum in Istanbul.

“Jesus, equal hands out there, one for Adam, one for Eve, is taking the whole human race with him,” Crossan said.

With detailed examples of both the “Individual Resurrection” and the “Universal Resurrection,” Crossan said that, in the first millennium, the former or the latter could have become the official image of the Resurrection for all of Christianity.

With the split in Christianity in 1054, the East chose to use the “Universal Resurrection” depiction, while the West stuck with the “Individual Resurrection.”

“Paul says, ‘Jesus is the first fruit of those who have slept,’ and Matthew uses the same Greek words for those who have slept, who rise with Jesus,” Crossan said. “Where are they in any Western image? The only sleepers I see there are the guards, so I think (the ‘Universal Resurrection’) is in greater continuity.”

Crossan then questioned the meaning of resurrection. He said that it has the same roots as “insurrection.” The Greek word is anastasis, which consists of two words: “ana” and “stasis.”

“Stasis is revolution,” Crossan said. “Now it can be either violent or nonviolent revolution. … Only nonviolent revolution can save the human species from escalatory violence that will destroy it. That’s the message. That’s the challenge I get from the ‘Universal Resurrection’ image. It has to do with our species.”

When she was 6 years old, Daina Berry experienced her first moment of discrimination. In that moment, she used her knowledge of history to defend herself.

“I gave my first history lesson when I was 6 years old,” Berry said. “I was called the N-word by my neighborhood bully.”

Her mom marched her down to the bully’s house, and they told the bully about the resilience of African Americans through history. In college, a similar experience happened when a professor made derogatory comments about African Americans in class, and Berry used her historical knowledge to challenge him.

“So, those were definitely two negative experiences that made me want to become a historian,” Berry said.

At 3:30 p.m. today, July 10, in the Hall of Philosophy, Berry will present “Soul Values and American Slavery” as part of the African American Heritage House Speaker Series. Her 2017 book, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, is the material she will draw upon throughout the lecture.

Berry said African Americans survived the horrific period of slavery by believing in what she calls “soul values.”

“It’s essentially a way that I feel African Americans survived slavery, by tapping into this deep spiritual space internally,” Berry said. “It was to value themselves, although their bodies and lives were not being valued — they were being valued monetarily, but there was a certain value that you couldn’t put a dollar sign on.”

Having a soul value didn’t rest on religious affiliation though, as religion is not always connected to a higher power, Berry said. She said no matter what religion a person followed, their whole being was devalued and disregarded — they needed something to hold onto.

“It was an institution that didn’t care — it only wanted the workers,” Berry said. “There had to be something internally and individually to turn to, and I argue that it was their soul values.”

In her lecture, Berry will focus on the plight of African Americans and their fight for respect, through stories from the perspective of slaves. She will discuss soul values, as well as the cadaver trade, where the bodies of slaves were traded in for a price.

Berry said after the transatlantic slave trade closed, women’s bodies became particularly important: Reproduction meant more money for owners.

“As slave people are born, those are free sources of labor for the planters,” Berry said. “Women fight against the sexual exploitation of their bodies, but I will remind the audience that men were sexually abused as well.”

For Berry, it’s important to remember that African Americans are survivors, and she said understanding history is key to understand their resilience.

“For the better part of the first half of the 20th century, scholars and historians who wrote about slavery objectified enslaved people and didn’t look at them as whole human beings,” Berry said.

As Berry pushed down the path to higher education, earning her doctorate in African American studies and U.S. history at the University of Southern California, she realized people didn’t know African American history. She worked with media outlets like NBC, CNN, NPR and others to reach more people.

“I hope that I am speaking in a way that people will understand,” Berry said. “I’m not angry or trying to sway a particular opinion — I am just teaching history based on the primary documents that I’ve looked at over the last 20 years.”

Now, Berry is Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor with appointments in African and African diaspora studies, American studies and women and gender studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Through her work, she reaches a large audience, and she said her students play an important role in her life.

“They help me sharpen my ideas,” Berry said. “The classroom is one of the most dynamic places — I love teaching.”

She hopes audiences at Chautauqua are open to hearing an honest representation of the overlooked parts of African American history — including  within slavery. 

“I hope they are open to working through the pain of slavery because some of this stuff is painful,” Berry said. “I hope they walk away with a better understanding of the American past.”

Berry said the history of African Americans is filled with horrors, and with moments where African Americans have fought against those horrors, which is something she has worked hard to share with her audience.

“We are still fighting against racism and sexism,” Berry said. “I hope that the scholarship of historians — not just me — and uncovering aspects of the past will inform the way we think about today.”

Though Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms have been dead for many years, their music is alive and well in the hearts and hands of Chautauqua’s musicians.

The music of these three great German composers will come to life at 8:15 p.m. tonight, July 10, in the Amphitheater, when Van Cliburn gold medalist Alexander Kobrin performs their work in a solo piano recital.

Kobrin, an internationally renowned pianist, will play three works: Beethoven’s Sonata No. 1, Schumann’s Waldszenen, Op. 82 (Forest Scenes) and Brahms’ Sonata No. 3, Op. 5.

Beethoven’s Sonata No. 1 is an interesting piece, Kobrin said, because it breaks from the traditional sonata format by having four movements instead of three. Beethoven was more willing than his predecessors, such as Joseph Haydn (who he dedicated the piece to) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, to experiment with the structure of the sonata; he was innovative for his time in his approach to composition. Kobrin finds the piece to be “brave, brilliant and intense.”

Schumann’s Waldszenen, a collection of nine short piano pieces, is rather pastoral and focused on the portrayal of nature, thus the title “Forest Scenes.” The importance of nature is a common characteristic of Romantic composers like Schumann. But the set also has its darker moments, with some pieces ruminating on graveyards and death.

“Here you have a reflection of Schumann’s personality, which would take him to a very extreme state of mind in a very limited amount of time,” Kobrin said. “From one quick piece to another, you get this very hot and cold sweat, so to speak.”

The alternation between light and dark, and the quick transitions between contrasting imagery brings a psychological element to the set, which Kobrin finds fascinating.

“I think it’s very exciting not only to play, but to listen (to),” Kobrin said.

Brahms’ Sonata No. 3 is a “remarkable piece” because it has five movements; with two more than the traditional sonata, it is as long as a symphony. It is one of the sonatas that Brahms wrote at a very young age, before he turned 20.

“This sonata also has very interesting experiments,” Kobrin said. “For example, the fourth movement serves as a memory — it’s actually called ‘memory’ or ‘remembrance’ — and the motive comes from the second movement of this sonata.”

Although the piece is meant for only one or two instruments, Kobrin said it captures the feel and sound of a full symphonic orchestra.

“It’s a beautiful piece, no doubt one of Brahms’ highlights, I think,” Kobrin said.

Though there is not necessarily a clear theme across all the pieces, there is a connection between the composers. Schumann and Brahms were peers and close friends, and both were admirers of Beethoven, who influenced them significantly. Additionally, all three are German composers; Kobrin chose their work because he is fond of German classical music.

This will be Kobrin’s second year visiting Chautauqua, and his first time performing on the Amp stage. Kobrin is excited to perform here for the same reason he is excited to perform anywhere: the thrill of sharing the music, and being a part of the music.

“It’s like time travel or travel into a completely different world — and most importantly, many different worlds,” Kobrin said. “This journey really excites me, that’s why I do this; it’s like breathing the best air possible.”

Kobrin gave a master class to School of Music piano students on Monday, but tonight’s will be his last public performance before his guest residency at Chautauqua ends this weekend.

“I always hope that the audience finds something for themselves,” Kobrin said. “Music is a very subjective thing, and it’s like a story with no words. … I hope that they will be moved.”

Only a few kilometers away from Nazareth is an excavation site called Sepphoris, a place that Carol Meyers discovered was multicultural in antiquity.

“It’s one of the things that drew us to the site,” said Meyers, a field archaeologist and Mary Grace Wilson Professor Emerita of religious studies at Duke University. “It seems to show that the Romans, Jews and Christians could co-inhabit a place with no problems, at least that we could find.”

Ancient Sepphoris is said to be the birthplace of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ — although, according to Meyers, “there’s no archaeological evidence to prove it or disprove it.”

At 2 p.m. today, July 10, in the Hall of Philosophy, Meyers will talk about “Jews, Christians, and Romans: Multiculturalism at Ancient Sepphoris.” Her lecture will be a continuation of the Week Three interfaith theme, “What Archaeology Tells Us About Biblical Times.”

Meyers, one of the world’s foremost feminist Biblical scholars, began teaching at Duke University in 1977.

Meyers said being a feminist Biblical scholar means “using whatever resources we can find to make the place of women in Biblical times more visible to us.”

“We tend to take for granted the Biblical text,” she said. “To begin with, of all the named people in the Old Testament, only about 10% to 15% of them are women. So right away, since you know that the population at the time was more than 10% to 15% female, you see that they’re being shut out of the story. One of my goals is to find them, make them visible and learn something about their lives.”

Along with her husband and fellow Duke University faculty member, Eric Meyers, Carol Meyers has led thousands of students on archaeological digs in the Middle East.

“For me, the most rewarding thing was the interactions with students and other professors,” she said. “The human aspect of the project was just as important to me as anything we might find. Humans are endlessly interesting, so it certainly doesn’t get tedious. The work itself might get tedious, but the interactions with other people do not.”

Meyers said that living in harsh working conditions for long periods of time with students and professors eventually helped to break down perceived social and academic barriers between the two groups.

“When you’re with students 24/7, under rather harsh living and working conditions, it really breaks down any hierarchies that might exist in the university between students and faculty,” she said.

And while funding and completing the archaeological digs was difficult in and of itself, Meyers said the teams often encountered local resistance while working at dig sites.

“Not all the local people were happy with non-Jews excavating, say, an ancient Jewish synagogue,” she said. “And they weren’t happy with the way students were dressed, wearing tank tops and short-shorts.”

According to Meyers, it wasn’t possible to argue their reasoning for excavating particular sites with locals, especially Orthodox Jews.

“But what we agreed on was to have students, while they were in the field, to wear whatever they wanted,” she said. “When we walked through the village to the place where we had our field site, we agreed to cover up.”

Part of the thrill of archaeology, according to Meyers, is that “you never know what you’re going to find until you actually dig.”

“Archaeologists are always offended, to some extent, by their own presence (at a site),” she said. “And in the 1980s, when we began the project, there was a lot of turmoil. And there still is — turmoil in terms of Jews and Arabs not getting along so well. So the possibility that Jews and people of other religions did get along, was very enticing for us.”

That possibility is the reason Ancient Sepphoris is such an interesting place for Meyers and her students.

“The past can be meaningful,” she said. “Terrible things have been done in human history. But there are also glimmers of light. I hope that looking at Sepphoris will provide one example of that.”

Audience members at today’s lecture can access slides that accompany the presentation from their smart devices at
chq.org/screen.

Rae Wynn-Grant is dedicated to fostering greater understanding of a peaceful, conservation-minded coexistence: between people and large carnivores.

Wynn-Grant will deliver the morning lecture at 10:45 a.m. today, July 10, in the Amphitheater, as part of Week Three, “A Planet in Balance: A Week in Partnership with National Geographic Society.”

Wynn-Grant is a carnivore ecologist who has expertise in using statistical modeling to understand how human-like systems can affect spatial patterns of carnivore ecology and behavior. Wynn-Grant has taken trips to study the grizzly bear population in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, as well as lions in Tanzania and Kenya.

A fellow with National Geographic Society, Wynn-Grant works on carnivore conservation through National Geographic’s Last Wild Places initiative, in partnership with the American Prairie Reserve, exploring avenues of grizzly bear conservation related to human-carnivore interaction.

Originally from California, Wynn-Grant has always loved science and the outdoors, citing her favorite shows on the National Geographic television network as inspiration.

In an interview with National Geographic earlier this year, Wynn-Grant described what it means to work with the organization she loved as a child.

“When I was a young teenager, I used to tell people I wanted to host a nature show on National Geographic,” Wynn-Grant told National Geographic in February. “It was the only career path I was interested in, and of course I had no idea how it could be accomplished. As a city kid without much experience in the outdoors, I felt very different from the hosts I saw on TV, who were typically older, white males, but I shared their affinity for studying wildlife.”

When Wynn-Grant was introduced to wildlife ecology in her final years of college, she was immediately hooked.

“It was at that point I realized that there was a science career that could give me the adventures I was seeing on the National Geographic Channel,” Wynn-Grant told National Geographic. “It is a tremendous honor to be part of the NatGeo family, especially in a science capacity — it is truly a childhood dream come true.”

Wynn-Grant is also Equity, Inclusion & Diversity Officer on the board of governors for the Society for Conservation Biology, which works toward an environment of inclusion for scientists of different races, religions and identities.

In the future, Wynn-Grant said she hopes to make allies of her colleagues, to dismantle the barriers that exist in working environments and increase access to positions in STEM-related fields and organizations.

After graduating from Emory University with a Bachelor of Science in environmental studies, and getting a Master of Science from Yale University in environmental science, Wynn-Grant received a doctorate in ecology and evolution from Columbia University.

In her postgraduate research, Wynn-Grant went abroad to Africa to study lions and carnivore interactions in human-made environments, eventually moving on to work with the bears she loves.

“One of the major similarities is that both East African lions and North American black and grizzly bears often live at the interface with human communities, causing problems that can threaten conservation efforts,” she told National Geographic. “All of my science work is dedicated to helping people and carnivores coexist peacefully, no matter in which part of the globe.”

Song will ring out in a diverse mix of genres, languages and vocal ranges when voice students in the School of Music perform their second concert of the season.

At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 10 in Fletcher Music Hall, nine students will sing a mix of pieces by a wide range of composers, from Claude Debussy to Alban Berg.

The students who signed up for this concert were able to choose their own pieces to perform, giving them a chance to share their own passions and personalities.

“This is not a themed recital, but a real potpourri of music from a variety of our singers in a variety of languages,” said Donna Gill, head coach of the Voice Program.

French, German, Italian and Polish are among the languages to be featured in the pieces. Though there will be no written translations, voice instructor Joan Patenaude-Yarnell and student Evan Lazdowski will read each piece in English before it is sung.

It will be bass-baritone Daniel Loganbill’s first time performing at Chautauqua; he will be singing two pieces from Johannes Brahms’ song cycle “Vier ernste Gesänge” (Four Serious Songs). Of those four songs, each of which are based on a Bible verse, he will be singing the first and the last. The first is called “Denn es gehet dem Menschen” (As it is with men, so it is with the beast), which comes from Ecclesiastes 3:19-22. The piece ruminates upon the “vanity of vanities” that humans believe they are intrinsically different from animals and will go to a different, higher place after death.

“It’s focused on this idea of death,” Loganbill said. “Brahms composed the work in 1896, and in the five years before that, he lost seven friends, so he was really focused on death.”

The fourth piece in the song cycle is called “Wenn ich mit Menschen und mit Engelszungen redete” (When I speak with the tongue of men and angels), which comes from 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 12-13. This piece is much lighter in its subject matter; it is what Loganbill called a “love song” and an exploration of agape, the Greek word for the unconditional love between God and man.

“It’s basically a religious confession for Brahms,” Loganbill said. “He has these three really dark (pieces) focused on a dark vanity of life, and then he attaches this love chapter. … I think Brahms actually sees a lot of hope in that passage.”

Mezzo-soprano Sarah Zieba will be singing “Nocturne” by Samuel Barber, a poem by Frederic Prokosch set to music, and “Perduta ho la pace” by Giuseppe Verdi, which translates to “I have lost my peace.” The latter piece is about a woman whose lover has just left her, and explores the sadness, longing and anger that she feels.

“I love the lines,” Zieba said. “Verdi was really the master of melodies and making long, flowing lines.”

Zieba hopes to connect with the audience, even if they don’t understand the words she sings.

“The one thing that I think distinguishes singing from other types of music is that people can connect to words more than they can to just simply music, just because it’s more of a common language,” Zieba said. “And even if it is in a different language, the emotion in which I express those words — I hope to come across.”

Mezzo-soprano Erin Wagner performed in last week’s student voice concert and hopes to build upon that experience. She will be singing Berg’s “Sieben frühe Lieder” (Seven Early Songs). These seven short pieces are Romantic in style and theme, mostly focused on nature and emotion. They are titled “Nacht” (Night), “Schilflied” (Song Amid the Reeds), “Die Nachtigall” (The Nightingale), “Traumgekrönt” (Crowned in Dreams), “Im Zimmer” (Indoors), “Liebesode” (Ode to Love) and “Sommertage” (Summer Days).

“I picked them because the music really moved me whenever I listened to it previously before I had even sung it,” Wagner said. “It just kind of grabs you. … It sucks you in.”

Bass-baritone Marcel Sokalski will also be returning for his second voice concert of the season, and will sing a set of Polish songs by Stanisław Moniuszko, including three art songs and an aria from the opera Halka. One is about a seamstress with multiple suitors, one is a somber piece about a son gone to war, one is a nostalgic piece about a river and the aria is set during the singer’s wedding when he sees a woman he used to be with.

“I hope people enjoy it because it’s music that you rarely hear unless it’s a specific Slavic concert,” Sokalski said. “It’s like other languages like Hungarian, which isn’t done a lot, or Czech, not as much, or Russian. There’s such great repertoire out there and it’s nice to be able to just dive in and listen to it with open ears.”

Five other students will be performing: soprano Shan Hai, mezzo-soprano Meredith Smietana, tenor Nicholas Farrauto, soprano Merissa Beddows, and soprano Amanishakete Cole-Felder. They will be singing pieces by Debussy, Hector Berlioz, Paolo Tosti, Giacomo Puccini, John Adams and Brahms.

“It’ll be consistently interesting because there will be so much diversity in what people are going to be singing,” Loganbill said. “Lots of different voice types, lots of different types of genres, eras, musical styles, diverse composers, opera, art song — you’ll get a lot.”

Through the character of the pastor’s wife, Elizabeth, The Christians playwright Lucas Hnath describes the play’s main character, Pastor Paul, as “magnificent.”

And although Paul himself denies it, as he passionately entreats his congregation to follow him down the radical new path he’s chosen, gravitas and grandeur are undeniably a part of his character.

As the Chautauqua Theater Company took on bringing The Christians to Bratton Theater, costume designer Andy Jean tackled the task of making sure Paul, played by guest artist Jamison Jones, looked the part. The show runs through the weekend, with performances at 2:15 p.m. Wednesday, July 10, 4 p.m. Thursday, July 11 and Friday, July 12, and again at 2:15 p.m. Sunday, July 14 in Bratton Theater.

“Costumes are the immediate signifier of so many things about a character,” Jean said. “For this show, people are presenting their best selves, and we wanted their clothes to reflect that presentation.”

Jean said the first goal for designing costumes for The Christians was to make the characters appear realistic and grounded. Making sure that, alongside the set design, the clothing matched the church setting was important for creating the world of the play.

After that, however, Jean was able to dig into the details of each character’s outfit to determine what the subtleties of their clothing said about them. According to Jean, each character’s dress was important to signify both their level of affluence and confidence.

For example, when Paul first informs the church of the dramatic crisis of faith he has encountered, he’s sharply dressed in a crisp gray suit with a bright blue shirt underneath. By comparison, the character of Associate Pastor Joshua, played by conservatory actor Ricardy Fabre, is more subdued in brown and navy blue clothes, as his confidence is shaken by Paul’s sermon.

“The choices were very specific in signifying ranking within a scene, especially between Joshua and Paul,” Jean said. “They have very different roles, and it was important to convey that through what they were wearing.”

As the church is rocked to its core, the clothing changes to reflect the tumultuous turn of events.

Elizabeth sheds her prim, pink pantsuit in favor of more relaxed, everyday clothing as she pulls away from the church.

Paul, proper and put-together at the beginning of the play, slowly unravels as the weight of his actions presses down on him. Over the course of the latter half of the show, he loses his suit jacket, rolls back his sleeves, takes off his tie and ruffles his hair, turning the once-proud pastor into a wrinkled wreck. 

Joshua returns after being ejected from the congregation, still dressed in a suit and tie, but in contrast to the now-disheveled Paul, his confidence is all the more obvious.

“I wanted the audience to understand that, at the end of the day, these characters are people, they’re humans,” Jean said. “Things affect them. Through the small details, especially for Paul, their humanity comes out.”

Jean said that at any point in the play, characters should be presented as alive and active; people the audience can engage with and relate to in order to better connect with the show’s  messages.

“Because this play brings up so many wonderful questions, we want the audience members to feel like there’s no disconnect,” Jean said. “We want them to be a part of that conversation.”

Heads-up all book lovers and porch sitters: “Porch Reads 2019” is the topic for this week’s Chautauqua Speaks program sponsored by the Chautauqua Women’s Club.

At 9:15 a.m. Thursday, July 11 at the CWC House, Scott Ekstrom, Earl Rothfus and Atom Atkinson will share insights and recommendations based on their unique perspectives as year-round Chautauqua Institution staff.

Ekstrom is director of Smith Memorial Library; Rothfus is Chautauqua Bookstore manager; Atkinson is director of literary arts.

“I hope to talk a little bit about what forces influence my collection development, what people are reading at the library and how my own reading tastes have changed through the years,” Ekstrom said. “I’ll be bringing a random stack of books to mention.”

Ekstrom grew up in Chautauqua County and earned his Bachelor of Arts in English and secondary teaching certification in English at Houghton College. He taught Advanced Placement English at Christian Central Academy in Williamsville, New York, for two years before heading to England for graduate studies.

“I was interested in performing and theater as a kid, and then I stepped away from it,” Ekstrom said. “But I had an interest in literature in 3D. I was looking for a master’s degree for permanent (teaching) certification.”

Because the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and King’s College London offered a jointly taught one-year program in text and performance, Ekstrom studied there. He said that in the mornings he took literature-based courses at King’s, and in the afternoons and evenings he focused on scene studies at RADA.

“We were on our feet with working professionals,” Ekstrom said.

Returning to Western New York, he taught for one more year — this time middle school students at Westfield Academy and Central School.

Ekstrom’s deep interest in theater led him to New York City, where for several years he worked for Manhattan Church of the Nazarene, that also housed the Off-Broadway Lamb’s Theatre. Periodically he left for “acting gigs,” including a tour of the musical Ellis Island.

Theater also took Ekstrom to Los Angeles before he returned home and began working for the Institution — first in the Chautauqua Bookstore’s book department and then as director of Smith Memorial Library.

“My creative outlet changed focus from performing to writing,” Ekstrom said. His first book, Confessions of a Christian Sinner, was published two years ago. He said it is a “spiritual memoir.”

Rothfus said he will discuss the increasing challenge of curating “a collection in a small space when the number of choices, in terms of titles and genres, continues to grow at a significant pace.”

“I’ll talk some about Chautauqua best sellers over the last couple of years, and what types of books those tend to be — not usually ‘blockbuster’ fiction authors like James Patterson,” Rothfus said.

And if time permits, Rothfus will discuss “the use of technology and software to help develop a collection that makes sense for our clientele.”

Having recently undergone a significant renovation following consultations with design firms, Chautauqua’s popular, independent bookstore is better able to accommodate the heavy traffic that flows through it day and night throughout the season.

Rothfus also manages the Odland Screenhouse on the west side of the Amphitheater, and is responsible for the purchasing, receiving and transference of all Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle books.

Atkinson will discuss how CLSC books are selected each year.

“I will share some glimpses into how we field and discuss suggestions for CLSC selections, as well as various factors that shape the selection process — especially our hopes for how books can live on the grounds (and) in discussions in CLSC circles across the country,” Atkinson said.

Atkinson “will bring along some of this year’s selections to discuss as literature (and) also as program choices.”

In addition to the CLSC, Atkinson’s work includes the Chautauqua Writers’ Center, The Chautauqua Prize, The Chautauqua Janus Prize and the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival.

Atkinson — who earned a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and a MFA at Louisiana State University — taught creative writing at Interlochen Arts Academy and Summer Camp, the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, the University of Utah and LSU, and was the artist-in-residence for creative writing at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School.

Atkinson is part of a collective of six poets who launched Line Assembly in 2013, a national five-week tour of public poetry readings and workshops that were free-of-charge and filmed for a documentary.

The Academy of American Poets honored Atkinson with the Larry Levis Memorial Poetry Prize, and LSU honored them with the Robert Penn Warren MFA Thesis Award for poetry, and the Kent Gramm MFA Award for nonfiction.