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Laura Currie has served Chautauqua Institution for over a decade; first on the board of trustees, then the Chautauqua Foundation Board of Directors and, most recently, as an instrumental part in the making of the 150 Forward strategic plan.

The strategic plan is a series of objectives and cross-cutting imperatives synthesized by a 13-member Strategic Planning Working Group, which Currie chaired.

The process took 18 months of data collection, deliberation and presentation. Now, the plan is on full display at weekly Strategic Plan Information Sessions at 3:30 p.m. Thursdays in the Hall of Christ. Additionally, Chautauquans can voice concerns, leave comments or ask questions about the strategic plan through the online forum at 150FWDFeedback.chq.org.

Can you talk about your time at Chautauqua and the various leadership positions you’ve held?

I actually grew up here. I am a native — I went to Chautauqua High School. So my parents brought me (to the Institution) as an infant. We lived across the lake in the winter and here in the summer until I was in fourth grade, and then in fourth grade they sold the cottage … and the house across the lake and bought a house on the grounds.

We have come back every year, … and then 10 years ago I was asked to go on the board. I served two four-year terms on the board of trustees, and six of those eight years I also was a trustee director, so I was on the Foundation board as well.

I had been off (the board) a few months when Chair Jim Pardo and President Michael E. Hill called and asked me if I would chair the Strategic Planning Working Group, which is a great committee. It was really neat — it was half staff and half volunteers made up of current board directors and former board directors.

What was the working group’s process? How did you gather and consolidate data to create what would become the strategic plan?

We really wanted to hear from Chautauquans, so Michael started listening tours in January 2018, when he did his off-season traveling. … We hired a consulting firm that helped us design a survey that went out to all the primary addresses in Chautauqua’s database. We got 1,300 to 1,700 responses, which our consultants were just amazed by — that’s a huge response.

The consultants also did for us a series of small group listening sessions that were really categorized; we had people who had small children, … people who were first-time Chautauquans, people who were longtime Chautauquans, people who were renters, people who are owners. We tried to get a group together with our consultants within each of those segments to really drill down deep into some issues that they felt we should be thinking about.

There were 51 individual one-on-one interviews that the consultants did on our behalf. And then Michael, Jim and I did listening sessions last summer every week at the Hall of Philosophy, and then the two trustee open forums on Saturday mornings were turned into listening sessions.

So we really got all that input before the committee did really much work at all. We met and went over what the consultants were going to help us with and the process of what we were looking at. Then we pulled all of that data together as well as all of the things Michael and the administration were doing with IDEA and the campus master plan. We took all of that and began our deliberations over everything and shifting through what came out.

What were the overarching themes that came out of the data collection?

The lake, diversity and the grounds.

People are interested in their experiences here, but there is a lot of interest in, “If I can’t be here the whole nine weeks, how can I still feel connected while (the season is) going on,” or “How can we all be connected outside of the nine weeks?”

How much of the plan is administrative goals versus community input?

The actual goals themselves came from the community; the measures of success, … those came from the administration. So how it will be operationalized is coming more from the administration with the oversight of the board, but really what we’re doing and what needs to happen came from the community.

For someone who has not read the full plan, how would you concisely sum up 150 Forward?

We have four main goals and then four — what we finally ended up terming — cross-cutting imperatives. … (These) are imperative; we have to bring those four things into our DNA. IDEA — inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility — has to become part of our DNA in a bigger way.

Technology — we’re just behind, and we need to catch up. … Labor and talent — huge — for during the season and then the off-season, and strategic partnerships. We’ve been really good at partnerships in the past, but I think that’s going to be the key to a lot of different things.

Goal-wise, the lake stood alone because it’s imperative that the lake be saved. Even though we have a small footprint on the lake, … we have a unique ability to be able to convene all the voices around the county and hopefully have a concerted scientific effort toward solving its problem.

That came from the community; IDEA came from the community, not “messing this place up” — that’s what we heard all the time; “don’t mess this place up” — came from the community … and taking us outside the grounds and making sure we are financially stable way into the future.

Through this whole process, what was your role in chairing the working group?

Really just being that lead person, but then bringing the diverse voices together with the committee and being the liaison between the administration, the consultants and the committee.

We had several in-person meetings in D.C. — just the committee did — and then we came up for the board meetings as well, and then we had — I can’t even remember how many — video conference meetings.

It’s a fabulous committee; they were just great. And then Shannon Rozner, the new vice president of strategic initiatives, joined us …  and has just been fabulous to work with.

One of my big things I want to get out is that this is a plan for all of us — it’s not just the board, or this committee or the administration — this is all of Chautauqua. Our voices are in it, and we also have to be a part of it to make it work.

Now that the working group’s job has wrapped up, what’s your role?

There is a new committee formed with just board members, chaired by Candy Maxwell, the new incoming board chair, that’s looking at the actual details of the goals and working with Shannon, Michael and the administration on how they are going to prioritize and (oversee) it.

I’m not in that process since I’m no longer on the board. So my part is wrapping up, and they are taking what we did and moving it to the next step.

How have Chautauquans responded to the plan?

It has been very positive at the two Strategic Plan Information Sessions we’ve had so far and just in my everyday conservations with people. … People have been really pleased from what I’ve heard.

Ideally, what does Chautauqua look like to you when it reaches its sesquicentennial?

I hope that we really have a more diverse audience. … I hope we have reached out more to the Chautauqua community. I would love to know the lake is on its way, by that time, to being saved.

Hopefully maybe even tucking away a few of those cross-cutting imperatives.

What’s next for you?

I’m just going to enjoy being here, going to a little more programming this year.

I’m just happy to have been a part of what I have been.

Growing up in the 1980s, Kristin Romey, an archaeology editor and writer for National Geographic, left the church with no thought of looking back. After she began her career in archaeology writing, though, Romey was forced to “dust off” her Bible.

“I tended to see the Bible as a tool that was wielded for political purposes,” Romey said. “It was not a source of inspiration for me, much less a source of information.”

Romey, who spoke on the Amphitheater stage last summer, returned to the Institution Monday in the Hall of Philosophy, for the Week Three Interfaith Lecture Series, “What Archaeology Tells Us About Biblical Times.” Her talk was titled, “In the Footsteps of Jesus: A journalist’s quest into the origins of Christianity.”

Romey first became familiar with the historical Jesus after National Geographic assigned her to write about the restoration of the tomb of Jesus Christ, which was at first difficult since she had left the church many years prior. But Romey began to use the Bible as a tool to ask specific questions.

“What can archaeology possibly tell us about Jesus Christ?” Romey asked. “What’s even the value of archaeology to people who have faith in the man declared to be the son of God? How will building foundations or a couple inscribed stones make a difference to those who already believe?”

Romey said Biblical archaeology began in the 1800s. Archaeology was in its early development because people were in need of the context that helped them piece together what history looked like. The men who began this type of archaeology were American and European, who were eager to find some of the most intriguing places in the Bible. Christian pilgrims and curious people were just as interested, many wanting to see the Holy Land.

“The words of the Archbishop of York, who was a huge supporter of Biblical archaeology, early on … still ring true 160 years later,” Romey said. “He wrote, ‘If you really want to understand the Bible, you must also understand the country in which the Bible was first written.’ ”

With the archbishop’s words in mind, Romey began her “eye-opening” work on the tomb of Jesus Christ. When she first saw the tomb, though, Romey was not impressed nor touched by it.

“It felt like a circus,” Romey said. “It didn’t feel like reverence.”

Within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, there is a little house, called aedicula in Latin, that holds the tomb. The house was built in 1500, and had been restored in 1800. However, the house fell apart again by 2016. The condition of the house was so bad that the Israeli government threatened to shut down access to the tomb, Romey said. All of the churches that “laid claim to the Holy Sepulchre” came together and began planning the restoration of the house.

“I spent nearly a year traveling back and forth to Jerusalem to document the restoration,” Romey said. “And as I dove deeper into this project, I realized that I had to get a better handle on the archaeology of the site. The obvious question was: Can we prove Jesus was buried here? Step back and ask an even bigger question: Do archaeologists even believe that Jesus existed as a historical figure?”

Despite the many people who dismiss the existence of Jesus as an authentic historical figure, Romey knew that it made sense for Jesus to have existed.

“I have asked every archaeologist that I know who works in the Middle East, whether he or she is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, what have you, and they … don’t doubt it one bit,” Romey said. “(Jesus) fits too neatly into the narrative of the New Testament, but outside of that, what archaeologists understand about first century Roman Palestine.”

Romey said archaeologists tend to agree on the legitimacy of the tomb of Christ.

The trick was finding the evidence to support what is already known or suspected about history. Most people in history had not left a stamp behind for archaeologists to find. And, within archaeology, everything that has been discovered is accompanied by physical evidence in archaeological records.

With that assurance of other archaeologists that Jesus did exist, though, Romey’s goal evolved — she wanted to figure out why the tomb is likely located at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Romey said, was outside the walls of Jerusalem, on a main road that led to the port. The Romans liked to crucify criminals outside the walls of Jerusalem because that was where the most heavily trafficked roads were, and these crucifixions, by being placed on main roads, served as warnings. 

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built on an “ancient limestone quarry.” At that time in Jerusalem, during what is known as the Second Temple period, rich people could be buried in a natural cave or one carved out by hand, which would come with “niches and maybe a little bench or a rock bed.”

When someone passed away, their body was laid on the stone bed in this cave, or tomb. After a year, family members would return to clean up the bones from the table, place them in a box and store them in one of the niches in the wall of the tomb.

“Sure enough, Holy Sepulchre is built on a limestone quarry that got turned into a high-end, Jewish cemetery that was active in the time of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ,” Romey said. “And you have in the New Testament, Joseph of Arimathea (saying), ‘Hey, he could use my tomb. He’s got to get down before sundown.’”

Romey looked to an event after Jesus’ crucifixion: a revolt in Jerusalem in which the city was deserted in 70 A.D. It was not inhabited until 65 years later, when the Romans returned and established a colony. Romey said the people in this colony became irritated with the “pesky men” hanging around the burial grounds of “the weird, Jewish magician who was crucified.” So, the people decide to build a temple to the goddess of love over the tomb.

“Later, in the 330s, Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor and his mom, Helena, start locating all of the sites associated with the life of Jesus Christ in the Holy Land, so that they could be consecrated and honored,” Romey said.

In Jerusalem, Helena tore down the Roman temple, removed the top portion of the cave and created a shrine around the tomb. These were the stories Romey knew going into one night in October 2016, when it was time to lift the marble inside of the tomb where Jesus was allegedly buried.

“Underneath this little couch, they lift off the marble and there is another stone slab,” Romey said. “It’s a big slab of rock, it’s got a big cross carved in it, and it’s been shattered straight down the middle. Underneath that is a limestone burial bench of a Second Temple period Jewish tomb.”

Admittedly, archaeologists cannot determine who the cave belonged to, but it was determined that the tomb they lifted the marble from was the same tomb that Helena built a shrine around.

“We can say for certain that this site has been continuously venerated as the burial site of Jesus Christ for nearly 1,700 years,” Romey said.

With such an exciting discovery, Romey’s mind filled with other places in the Bible to explore: Via Dolorosa, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Zephyrus. One place that stood out the most to Romey, though, was northern Galilee, where Jesus met with his first apostles. Romey talked of a brutalist, modern church that was built there on ruins by the Franciscans in the 1960s.

Through a hole in the church, there are a series of basalt houses visible. In one of those houses, after Jesus died, Christians turned it into a place of worship. Additionally, a boat, found in the 1980s, rests on the bank. It was a Roman fishing vessel from the first century that gives insight into the economic situation of a Jewish fisherman at the time.

Romey returned to Jerusalem just two weeks ago because she had heard that restoration work was being done on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There, she visited with some friends and spoke with some Franciscans and Armenians who had done the initial restoration of the tomb in which they used ground penetrating radar.

Using the radar, it was determined that the church is in danger of collapsing, so the next project is to pull up the church floor and restore it. While doing that, Romey said Roman ruins underneath the church will be exposed, presenting an opportunity archaeologists have never had before.

“So, here we go,” Romey said. “We are just at the tip of exploring sites that are going to give us more information about understanding the first century Roman Palestine.”

What does it mean to be anointed by God?” the Rev. David Anderson asked the congregation at the 9:15 a.m. Tuesday Ecumenical Service in the Amphitheater. “And what kinds of people does God anoint to do the work of ministry?”

Anderson’s sermon title was “The Power of ‘Anointing,’ ” and the Scripture text was 1 Timothy 1:12-17.

Paul, in his letter to Timothy, told him not to let people look down on him because he was young.

“Paul told Timothy not to fear to do his ministry because he was young,” Anderson said. “You fill in that blank. We say to ourselves ‘God could not use me because I am ____.’ ”

But, Anderson said, “you are appointed and anointed.”

“Paul, in these verses in Timothy, is telling his story,” he said. “He was a blasphemer, a persecutor and a violent man. I can hear Paul saying, ‘I was messed up but God appointed me to do his service.’ ”

We all have fill-in-the-blank moments, Anderson told the congregation, when we ask, “Why did God call me?” Paul was humbled to be called and because of God’s mercy, grace and patience, God could actually use Paul in ministry.

“Is there anyone here who knows God’s mercy?” Anderson asked. People in the congregation responded with an “amen” or raising their hands. “Anyone who knows God’s grace, God’s patience? We owe God a debt of gratitude for the grace we have been given that we did not deserve.”

Paul said he was appointed to serve God. The Greek word used here, themenos, means that someone is set in place to serve, not ordered to serve.

“It is like God put his thumbprint on Paul and designed him for the service to which he was appointed,” Anderson said.

Paul was an unlikely choice to be an apostle, Anderson said, but “the design does not have to make sense to anyone but the designer.”

“You have been thumbprinted by God; you are uniquely different from any other person,” he told the congregation. “You have not been ordered to serve but designed and arranged and ordained by God who is designing your story to serve him and his servants. You are uniquely qualified to be you; you have no need to be jealous of other people’s talents.”

If your service is your purpose, then your strength is your power.

“If appointing gives you purpose, anointing gives you power,” he said to the congregation. “God will give you the power if you have a purpose.”

Anderson shared some of the faith journey he also described at the 5 p.m. Sunday Vespers in the Hall of Philosophy. 

“When I was 18, I decided that I could not ride on the faith of my mother’s ‘amens’ or my preacher father’s ‘hallelujahs,’ ” he said. “I was having a good time but I had no purpose. I prayed in the car to give my life to Jesus to find my purpose.”

Anderson believes that everyone, whether rich or poor, black, white, Asian or Latino, is in need of salvation, in need of the power and peace of God. He also believes he was called to build a multiracial church.

He asked his roommate, Brent Zuercher to “be the money guy” in building a multiracial church. Zuercher told him he was not interested. He said, “I am cool with you but not with your people.”  Anderson asked Zuercher to write to him and explain his issues with black people.

“I found that Brent was at an elementary level of investigating, and I was at a graduate level of living,” Anderson said.

Their correspondence became the 2001 book, Letters Across the Divide: Two Friends Explore Racism, Friendship, and Faith.

God is not only into those who have it all together, Anderson said, but can use people who don’t have it all together.

He closed with a story of a servant who went down to a creek every day to get water with two pots balanced on his shoulders. By the time he got home every day one pot was full, but one was only half full.

The older, cracked pot said to the servant, “It is time to retire me.” The servant said, “Actually, you do have a purpose, and I will show you tomorrow.”

The next day, as they came back from the creek, the servant said, “Look at the side of the road.” On the side where the cracked pot was carried, were flowers. The servant said, “I throw seeds there, and the water falls on them so the master can see the beautiful flowers.”

“You are not too old, not too broken to still serve,” Anderson said. “All you creatively cracked pots for Christ are appointed and anointed by God. Let all Chautauqua say ‘amen.’ ”

Anna Grace Glaize, Christian coordinator for the Abrahmic Program for Young Adults, presided. Katalin Nagy, a scholarship student with the International Order of the King’s Daughters and Sons from Ukraine, read the Scriptures in Ukrainian and English. She studies English language literature at the Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian College. The Motet Choir sang “Choose Something Like a Star” by Randall Thompson, with words from a poem by Robert Frost. Jared Jacobsen, organist and coordinator of worship and sacred music, directed the choir. The Mr. and Mrs. William Uhler Follansbee Memorial Chaplaincy and the Jackson-Carnahan Memorial Chaplaincy provide support for this week’s services.

For a moment, no one breathed. The Hall of Christ was filled to the brim with soccer fans on the edge of their seats, eyes glued to the projector screen. People squeezed their hands together, as if in prayer, and murmured comments of confidence to their team.

Midfielder Megan Rapinoe stood ready for the penalty kick, eyes on the goal. It was the 61st minute of the game — the final chance for the United States Women’s national soccer team to hold the world championship title for the second World Cup in a row, or for the Netherlands to take the title for themselves.

Every four years, soccer fans all over the world watch the most suspenseful match of the FIFA World Cup — the final. The tournament enraptures the world, exhibiting the strength and passion from each country. At 11 a.m. on Sunday, Chautauquans gathered in the lobby and sun room of the Athenaeum Hotel and the Hall of Christ to view the U.S. Women’s Team fight for the championship title.

The whistle blew, Rapinoe kicked and the ball flew straight into the right side of the goal. The U.S. Women’s Team scored the first goal of the game. And the fans went wild — standing, jumping and cheering, almost on the brink of joyful tears.

The game began as all soccer games must, with the national anthems of each team and then, the kick off. In the Hall of Christ, soccer fan, coach and referee Lito Gutierrez sat in an aisle seat so he could get an unobstructed view of the game. He didn’t look away from the screen, cheering in support of all the players as they sprinted down the field.

For Gutierrez, women’s soccer isn’t an afterthought. He spoke of his daughter and said women’s soccer is an important way for women to show strength.

“The fact is that now, all over the world, women’s soccer is coming through,” Gutierrez said. “And it’s coming through just gloriously.”

He said as a man who grew up with men’s soccer in Argentina, the women’s game is much stronger than the men’s.

“The women’s game is much cleaner and much more fluid than the men’s game,” Gutierrez said. “There’s very little drama; if they get hurt, they get up and move on.”

Half-time rolled around with no goals scored by either team. The Netherlands just missed a penalty kick, letting U.S. soccer fans everywhere breathe a sigh of relief. The fans in the viewing party in the Hall of Christ had to get up and stretch the stress out of their joints.

The game was intense as more shots on goal were taken, but the Netherlands’ goalie, Sari Van Veenendaa, was a force to reckon with for the U.S. Women’s Team. In the Athenaeum Hotel sun room, soccer fan Maggie Bauman dressed in the U.S. Women’s team jersey. For her and her family, watching soccer is a favorite pastime. She said it’s amazing to watch.

“I love seeing the work ethic that they all have in this team,” Bauman said. “They’re representing our country and they are also just working really hard for this — I think it would be awesome if they could pull out this win today.”

The second half quickly brought people to their feet as Rapinoe scored the first goal for the team. Soon after, midfielder Samantha Mewis sought out midfielder Rose Lavelle and passed the ball. Lavelle had nothing but space in front of her when she drove the ball straight into the goal.

The crowds in the viewing parties and on the screen cheered triumphantly. Gutierrez jumped in pure joy and put his hands in the air, clapping. He said the game was amazing and that each player communicates with others on the field, which is a product of good coaching.

“You have a player like Crystal Dunn who is playing from a defensive position — she’s all over the field,” Gutierrez said. “She’s up there playing with Rapinoe in the front area, and that’s superb.”

He said the communication on the field shows that the players are comfortable with each other, and that they have an incredible connection.

And there was a passion and  connection among the people at the viewing parties. Whether or not fans knew each other, there was a relationship, based on each person’s passion for their team.

Marsha Opalk, who was watching in the Hall of Christ, has been coming to Chautauqua for many years. She said the viewing parties are something she hasn’t seen before at the Institution, and it was exciting to watch with other fans.

“This is just one great added feature for Chautauqua,” Opalk said. “I mean, look at all the people that were cheering and yelling — it was great.”

In the last minutes of the game, Netherlands ran tirelessly to score a goal, but the U.S. tightened up their defense. Even as both teams substituted key players, the U.S. didn’t budge — they were intent to win. Rapinoe ran off the field and was replaced by Christen Press; everyone cheered in the Hall of Christ and on screen, giving Rapinoe a standing ovation.

The final whistle sounded. The U.S. Women’s team won the World Cup title for the fourth time in its history. Each viewing party erupted with the sounds of cheers, excitement and whistles. In the stadium in France, American fans chanted “equal pay.”

The U.S. Women’s Team brings more revenue and wins more games than the U.S. Men’s Team, but the U.S. Women’s Team is paid much less than men in all areas. Particularly, in the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, the total prize money was $30 million, and champions walk away with $4 million. In the 2018 Men’s World Cup, champions won $38 million from a total of $400 million.

Sunday’s win was about more than a trophy; it was a showcase of strength and passion in women’s soccer.

“(The U.S. Women’s Team) played together very well — the passion is just incredible,” Gutierrez said. “I love it, I just love it.”

Chautauqua Theater Company’s performance of The Christians takes audience members through the life of a charismatic pastor as he crashes through a crisis of faith. The pastor, Paul, takes his congregation with him as he drastically changes his religious beliefs.

He tells them he no longer believes in hell.

This choice comes in response to his personal realization that all sins should be washed away after death, and that everyone deserves salvation.

The ramifications of this decision ripple outward through his entire community. And the message of this play, one of challenging beliefs and examining relationships, has rippled outward through the Chautauqua community.

Members of the various denominational houses on Chautauqua’s grounds reacted to the play, which continues its run at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 9 in Bratton Theater, in a variety of ways.

During a number of talkback sessions after each performance, audience members were invited to share their thoughts on the show. After the talkbacks, members of the Chautauqua community took the discussion further, conversing on their porches, in restaurants and at religious services.

The Rev. Katie White, host at Chautauqua’s Baptist House, admired The Christians’ call for increased acceptance.

“I wish I could inject that message into everybody, including those who call themselves Baptists,” White said.

White spoke to the mission of her denomination, saying that universal salvation has always been something they have preached. So White was happy to see the message of tolerance written into The Christians.

Deacon Ray Defendorf and his wife, Patt, of Chautauqua’s Catholic House, were impressed by the way CTC actors portrayed the members of a religious congregation while presenting a message that felt weighty and worthwhile.

“There was no inauthenticity in their performance,” Patt Defendorf said. “And after seeing it, all I could think was ‘Wow.’ I had a disturbed sleep the night after I saw it. I needed to talk with others about it.”

Both Defendorfs expressed appreciation for the theater company for taking on this play.

“(CTC) does a tremendous job of getting diversity in their themes,” Ray Defendorf said. “People are talking about it, and coming away thinking more than they would’ve otherwise.”

The Rev. Paul Womack, host of the United Methodist Missionary Vacation Home, said he liked the play, but saw some disconnect between the conflicts of the show and the hearts of the characters, especially Pastor Paul.

“I thought that the actor did a tremendous job,” Womack said. “But a lot of times, based off conversations I’ve had with other people of faith, big questions like the one (Paul) grapples with aren’t intellectual questions; they’re heart questions.”

Womack said he didn’t get a sense of the real gut reaction in Pastor Paul. He thought that while the character went through a volatile journey within his own head, the raw, emotional processes that Womack expected to see were missing at times.

Though some audience members had issues with the play, Womack, White and the Defendorfs all saw the performance as valuable to the ongoing conversation surrounding faith, acceptance and internal struggle.

“In my sense, it serves a valuable purpose in furthering this conversation,” Womack said. “It may not bring up anything that hasn’t been talked about before, but it’s gotten folks talking.”

White concurred, saying that The Christians is one brick on the path to a solution.

“This is a conversation we’ve been having for a very long time,” White said. “And it’s one we ought to keep having for a long time to come.”

For Ray Defendorf, simply putting the message of universal salvation out into the world is worthwhile.

“I love to think that the powerful thing of coming to the conclusion that there is salvation outside the church for people of other religions is helpful,” he said. “I’m confused as to how it even remains a question at all.”

The Christians has kept the ball of discussion rolling at Chautauqua, and with a week left in the show’s run, more discussion is undoubtedly to come.

With many strong ties to all kinds of faiths, Chautauqua is a community uniquely positioned to react to and discuss the issues of The Christians. But Patt Defendorf believes the show would, and should, have an impact wherever it was shown.

“I would hope that anyone who sees it, if they have personal power within their community, would bring this show to their community,” Patt Defendorf said. “We need to be having these discussions, and the impact of shows like these can be more expansive than anyone expects.”

Dan Zanes has trouble pinning down exactly what kind of music he plays.

“I think we call it folk music,” he said. “Or maybe social music? Folk music? All ages, social folk music. Something like that.”

But the Grammy Award-winning artist is sure of one thing: The music he plays is for everyone.

“It’s always important to us that everybody is a part of the show,” he said. “It’s an intergenerational experience. Very communal.”

Zanes and his wife, Haitian-American jazz musician Claudia Eliaza, are bringing their energetic act to Chautauqua at 5 and 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 9 in Smith Wilkes Hall, as part of the Family Entertainment Series.

In keeping with the goal of the FES to provide entertainment for individuals of all ages and inclinations, the musical duo said the show will be sensory-friendly. 

“We want to open the door as wide as possible,” Zanes said. “If someone who is on the autism spectrum wants to come see us, we make sure that they and their family are able to enjoy the show. Above all, we want these shows to be fun, and we want everyone to have access to that fun.”

As a part of that attitude of accessibility, the couple said they encourage audience members to stand up, dance or sing along. The environment of the show, they said, will be one of relaxation and celebration; everyone is encouraged to have fun, whatever that means to them.

Zanes and Eliaza incorporate a variety of instruments into their performance. Both artists sing and play guitar and percussion instruments. Zanes plays mandolin and harmonica, and Eliaza plays flute and trombone. Working in tandem, the duo covers a wide range of the instrumental spectrum to bring a variety of sound to the stage.

The husband-wife team will be performing a diverse lineup of songs at their Chautauqua performance. Everything from some of Zanes’ greatest hits like “All Around the Kitchen” and “House Party Time,” to recent tracks from the couple’s songbook Dan Zanes’ House Party!: A Family Roots Music Treasury, are fair game to appear onstage.

Eliaza is a certified music therapist, and has experience helping listeners find peace and happiness in music. She said today’s performances will be ones where everyone can be comfortable being themselves.

“The shows are not intimidating,” Eliaza said. “Even if you don’t sing or don’t feel that you have a voice, I think a lot of people who come to our shows feel very comfortable and even express themselves vocally.”

And although the show is a part of the FES, Zanes said no one should feel excluded if they don’t have children. Instead, he doubled down on his “music for everyone” message.

“We think the shows feel kind of like a family reunion,” Zanes said. “Sometimes the music is for the older folks, sometimes it’s for the younger folks, but nobody gets left behind.”

Maggie Smith’s greatest professional success hinges on a cycle of grief.

Her poem “Good Bones,” which Public Radio International proclaimed the “Official Poem of 2016,” went viral during the tumultuous year — a year in which 49 people in the Pulse nightclub shooting were murdered, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States and British politician Jo Cox was assassinated.

As news of fresh tragedy and growing uncertainty assaulted headlines, Smith’s description of living in a world that seems “at least / half terrible,” moved readers to share the poem on social media, giving “Good Bones” a life of its own. Like clockwork, it reappears on timelines when world anxiety is at its peak.

Smith wrote the poem a couple years before the events that buoyed “Good Bones” to its viral fame, she told Katherine Gibbel in a 2017 interview for The Rumpus.

“It’s a strange thing, because it’s a blessing and a curse,” Smith told The Rumpus. “But professionally, ‘Good Bones’ is the best thing that happened to me, of course. And the best thing that happened to me because of bad things happening to other people. And that’s something that I struggle with.”

As the Week Three poet-in-residence at the Writers’ Center, Smith will give her Brown Bag lecture “Make It New: Writing Poems as (Re)Discovery” at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, July 9 on the porch of the Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall. The subject, Smith said, “absolutely applies” to both her body of work and what she hopes to accomplish in her Chautauqua workshop.

“Without giving too much away, (the lecture is) really about re-vision: writing and reading poems as a way of making a familiar world — familiar landscapes, experiences, relationships — new again,” she said.

It might be helpful, in other words, to experience the world through a child’s eyes.

Smith is the author of five books of poetry, including Disasterology, winner of the 2013 Dream Horse Press Poetry Chapbook Prize, and The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, the gold medal winner for poetry at the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards. A lifetime Ohioan, she is an editor-at-large for The Kenyon Review, and has received six Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council. Her 2010 book, The List of Dangers, published by Kent State University Press, won the Wick Poetry Series Chapbook Competition. (Traveling Stanzas, the interactive exhibit that occupies the Poetry Makerspace in the Hultquist Center, is a product of Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center.)

“Good Bones,” the titular poem of her most recent collection, is a parent’s confession, an admission of an almost-hopeless feeling hidden away from the perked ears of her children.

“Life is short and the world / is at least half terrible, and for every kind / stranger, there is one who would break you, / though I keep this from my children. I am trying / to sell them the world,” the poem reads. 

As a whole, the book is full of Smith’s children, like the poem “What I Carried,” in which an “I” character “(carries her) fear of the world” in a terrifying and unwieldy attempt to protect the innocent; or “Parachute,” in which a daughter asks if the narrator knows anyone who “got dead in a fire.”

“I think I’m writing better poems as a mother than I wrote before — though I certainly have less time in which to write them,” Smith said. “Part of this, of course, is that as we get older, we grow in our craft, whether we have children or not. But my children help me see the old, familiar world anew — and poems are good places to let my mind chew on the issues I’m grappling with as a parent.”

Busy with teaching obligations, freelance deadlines and her two kids, Smith’s writing process is as structured as wrangling for a piece of paper “as soon as (an idea) arrives.” When writing prose, she composes on a computer, hunting for the correct language that will give shape to an already-held idea. When writing poetry, the process is usually the opposite.

“My process with poetry is pretty piecemeal — I jot bits down longhand and eventually type it up once a poem begins to take shape,” Smith said. “The language comes first, and I follow it to see where it might lead idea-wise.”

Listing Ada Limón, Victoria Chang and Charles Simic as a few of her favorites, Smith is “inspired by poets daily.” It’s not just the poet’s literary oeuvre, “but also … their warmth and generosity, their friendship and the work so many poets do inside of and outside of the literary community.”

If “Good Bones” was the poem that provided glimmers of light in 2016, what poem does Smith turn to in 2019?

“I couldn’t possibly name one, but two that are getting me through are ‘The Sun Got All Over Everything’ by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, and a new poem by David Baker, just published in New England Review, ‘Hold Hands,’ ” Smith said. “The current moment is a difficult one — and therefore we need poems more than ever.”

One in eight bird species is threatened with extinction, according to BirdLife International’s 2018 report, “The State of the World’s Birds.”

The situation is dire. Conservation resources are limited, and the debate among biologists has turned to which species should be prioritized, said Bridget Stutchbury, a professor of biology at York University in Toronto.

Some have focused on deciding which species to save, while Stutchbury and others argue that all bird species could be saved if there was enough funding for the effort.

“A group of biologists said we shouldn’t be doing emergency room triage, we should be doing battlefield triage,” she said. “This had triggered a huge controversy in conservation. Some people, like myself, say we could save those species if we wanted to.”

Stutchbury will give a talk at 12:15 p.m. today in Smith Wilkes Hall, titled “Birds in Decline: Is It Time for Conservation Triage?” as part of the Bird, Tree & Garden Club Brown Bag lecture series.

Stutchbury is writing a book on this topic and has already authored Silence of the Songbirds, The Private Lives of Birds and Bird Detective: Investigating The Secret Lives of Birds.

In addition to working as a professor at York University, Stutchbury is on the board of Wildlife Preservation Canada.

Since the 1980s, Stutchbury has studied the behavior, migration and conservation of migratory songbirds.

“Now most of my work is on bird conservation,” she said. “Over the years, the environmental problem has become worse and worse. It became hard for me to spend money answering fun questions when the birds I’m studying are disappearing.”

Biologists and conservationists have the techniques and tools to save most bird species, but they do not have sufficient funding to do so, she said.

To decide which species to save, biologists consider their ecological roles, as well as how unique the species is.

“If you want to save biodiversity, those species that are very unique and don’t have very many close relatives should be saved because there’s nothing else like them on the planet,” she said.

Biologists also consider how much a species will be helped by money spent toward its conservation. Stutchbury said plants and insects are easier and cheaper to save.

Many bird species are threatened by habitat loss and invasive species that compete for food, nests and other resources.

Stutchbury said climate change has not had as much of an effect on birds as it has on some other animals. Since birds are mobile, they can move around to different areas that suit their habitat preferences as climates shift.

“Most of the declines we’ve seen so far are driven by habitat loss,” she said. “We are destroying the forests and grasslands and converting things to cities and agricultural fields.”

But, she said, there is hope. Stutchbury pointed to examples where conservation has worked, such as with the whooping crane and the California condor.

“Against all odds, we saved them from extinction,” she said. “And as long as we keep up our efforts, those birds are going to be OK.”

Hrag Vartanian knows when many people think about art critics, their frame of reference doesn’t stretch far beyond Pixar’s “Ratatouille.”

“You know the food critic in it, Anton Ego?” he said. “People still think that’s what critics are; that we are sitting here pontificating from on high in these absolutist kind of ways, and that’s what I have to combat with what I do.”

Vartanian will be speaking at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 9 in the Hultquist Center, as part of the Visual Arts Lecture Series. Born in Syria and raised in Toronto, he is a critic, curator, artist and photographer as well as the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic, an online arts magazine based in Brooklyn. This summer Vartanian is the critic-in-residence at the School of Art, where he is teaching an arts writing program for the students and emerging artists.

In his lecture, Vartanian hopes to clear up some misconceptions surrounding the field of arts criticism.

“I think people are often surprised (by) what an art critic does,” he said. “Are we journalists? Are we not journalists? How do we function? What’s our role?”

He said that he and critics like him are “trying to expand the conversation so that people feel more engaged.”

“We’re trying to make the art world and art more important and central and bigger, not smaller and more specialized,” he said.

He will also talk about the current realities and challenges of writing about art, such as internet memes, social media and online harassment.

“It’s a different environment from what it may have been 30 years ago, in terms of the way we engage, who our publics are and how we interact with them,” Vartanian said.

In his arts writing program, he works with students and emerging artists to help them develop the language to describe their artistic practices. He said writing is just another tool that can help them navigate the art world.

“I try to impress on them the fact that there are limitations for artists who cannot talk about their own work,” he said, “because no one is ever going to be an advocate for your work quite like you are.”

He said that writing about art in a clear and accessible way helps remove a barrier to entry for many audiences.

“If you’re going to do public artwork, you’re going to have to be able to communicate with the public,” Vartanian said. “Putting a work in the middle of a field with no explanation is not going to do much. … The public needs to understand and engage.”

Since she arrived at Chautauqua Institution in 2015, Supervisor of Gardens and Landscapes Betsy Burgeson has been leading a green revolution of the gardens on the grounds, encouraging a diversity of plants that will provide a home for a variety of wildlife.

“Sustainable doesn’t even do it justice,” she said. “They’re protective in a way. Are we focusing on habitat for birds, butterflies, for the insects from the lake so they could maybe eat the mosquitoes?”

For this green revolution, Burgeson said she considers whether plants are native and whether they have deep root structures that will help hold soil in place. She also considers plant diversity, in order to provide habitat for a wide range of wildlife.

“You shouldn’t only see flowers,” she said. “That’s not a healthy garden to me. …  You should be able to see all sorts of life around it.”

Burgeson, along with Institution Archivist and Historian Jon Schmitz, will discuss the gardens of Chautauqua at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 9 in the Hall of Christ, as part of the Oliver Archives Heritage Lecture Series.

Schmitz will present a history of the gardens on the grounds since Chautauqua’s inception. He said Chautauqua has always been deeply tied to nature, serving as a haven for people who wanted a break from the city.

As supervisor of gardens and landscapes, Burgeson maintains 325 garden beds on the grounds. In each of those 325 beds, she has attempted to introduce more native plants, and plants like milkweed, which are a food source for monarch caterpillars and provide habitat for Monarch butterflies.

She has also implemented a number of rain gardens, which are designed to capture and filter rainwater, slowing it down and cleaning it before it reaches Chautauqua Lake. Water that has had a chance to filter typically has lower phosphorus and nitrogen levels, which are two nutrients that have caused problems with algal blooms and an overabundance of aquatic plant growth.

“Chautauqua Institution is trying to really expand and become more internationally known and intertwined with everything that’s going on around it nationally and internationally,” she said. “And it’s the same concept with the gardens. If we do our part here, we can make a huge impact.”

Burgeson said she hopes Chautauquans who observe the gardens and attend the Bird, Tree & Garden Club talks will be inspired to grow more environmentally conscious gardens outside their homes.

The talk will also discuss the reinstallation of the gardens around the Miller Edison Cottage.

Tom Hagen purchased the Miller Edison Cottage from the Arnn family and donated the cottage to the Institution in 2016. Schmitz dug up plans, dated 1922, for the gardens around the cottage, which were drawn up by groundbreaking female landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman. The plans were commissioned by Mina Edison, who was living in the cottage at the time.

With the help of a Connecticut-based Heritage Landscape architecture firm, Burgeson adapted the plans to recreate the gardens as much as she could, while making them practical for the current day.

The original plans were incredibly ambitious, Burgeson said, including three to four thousand plants in the design. The number of plants was halved for the reboot of the garden in order to prevent overcrowding.

“In 1922, they didn’t really know about invasives at that point,” Burgeson said.

Last fall, the gardens crew dug out about 400 plants from the garden and fostered them in a greenhouse throughout the winter. Three hundred survived the winter and were replanted in the garden.

Round one of planting is almost complete, Burgeson said. In the fall, the crew will continue to plant ferns, bulbs and some woodland plants such as woodland orchids.

While the planting of the garden is nearing completion, Burgeson said she is excited to see how the garden will fill in next year.

“Just like with any garden, it’s the excitement of the next year,” she said. “I’ve seen how much a garden fills in. It gives you hope for the next year. It gives you something to look forward to.”

John Dominic Crossan believes the only radical difference between the East and Western Christianity’s portrayal of Jesus Christ’s life comes from the historical imagery of his resurrection.

“People don’t realize there’s actually no direct description or depiction of the resurrection in the New Testament, only its effects,” said Crossan, a historian and New Testament scholar. “That left a vacuum that forced artists to ask, ‘How do we depict this thing if there’s no description?’ ”

Crossan’s new book, Resurrecting Easter, deals with the historical differences in how the East and the West attempted to fill this literary gap with imagery and tradition.

At 2 p.m. Tuesday, July 9 in the Hall of Philosophy, Crossan will discuss tracing “Jesus: From Archaeology to Text,” and the significance of Easter imagery in collective historical consciousness.

Crossan’s lecture continues an exploration of the Week Three interfaith theme, “What Archaeology Tells Us About Biblical Times.”

“Eastern Christianity has an absolutely different image of Easter than the West,” Crossan said. “Otherwise, the East and West’s (Biblical imagery) is pretty much the same. There’s usually a crucifixion. But when it comes to the resurrection, because there is no direct description of it in the New Testament, the East and the West come up with radically different imagery.”

Crossan and his wife, Sarah, spent about 15 years on 20 expeditions traveling all over Eastern Christendom as part of the writing process for Resurrecting Easter.

In the West, according to Crossan, it’s more typical to see the resurrection depicted as Jesus rising from his tomb into heaven by himself.

But in the East, Jesus is often portrayed as grasping the hands of people around him.

Crossan said the significance of the differences in Easter imagery go back to Paul the Apostle.

“Imagine someone saying to Paul, after he describes the resurrection in 1 Corinthians, ‘OK, Paul, we’ve all seen this crucifixion you keep talking about,’ ” he said. “ ‘We know what that’s like. Draw us a picture of the resurrection.’ Would he have drawn the Western image or the Eastern image? I think the Eastern depiction is in closer continuity to the New Testament.”

In 1985, Crossan joined the newly formed Jesus Seminar, a controversial collection of critical Biblical scholars that measured the historicity of the stories surrounding Jesus Christ.

“The idea behind the Jesus Seminar was that scholars could discuss pretty much anything they wanted, no matter how radical it sounded,” he said. “Scholars could ask, ‘Did Jesus say this? Did Jesus do that? Did Mark make it up?’ We wanted to do (the Seminar) out in public.”

The Jesus Seminar wanted to use a public platform to show people how historians determined whether or not something in the life of Jesus Christ was historically accurate, or if it was a liturgical parable.

“For example, it’s said that Jesus was crucified, and crucified alone,” Crossan said. “And from that, we draw huge historical implications. The very fact that we can tell he was crucified and the rest of the 12 or 11 other disciples weren’t crucified in a row with him, tells me immediately that Roman judgement was that he was a nonviolent revolutionary. Not just a nonviolent nuisance. A nonviolent revolutionary.”

The story of Jesus’ crucifixion has led Crossan to believe that “the salvation of our species is nonviolent resistance.”

“Otherwise, violence tends to spiral,” he said. “And it has been spiralling out for about 10,000 years. The only way to stop this spiral of violence is nonviolent resistance to violence. That’s the message and meaning I’m getting from this.”

Mountain lions and tigers and cougars, oh my.

National Geographic wildlife photographer Steve Winter will discuss his work in the field with big cats and small communities during his lecture at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, July 9 in the Amphitheater, as part of Week Three, “A Planet in Balance: A Week in Partnership with National Geographic Society.”

Much of Winter’s work for National Geographic has revolved around endangered species of big cats like tigers, jaguars and cougars. One of his most iconic images, the Hollywood Cougar, sparked the creation of the largest wildlife overpass in the world, located in Los Angeles.

“It’s a singular animal, but it has become a spokesperson for cougars and mountain lions, primarily in the LA area, but (also) animals all over that area,” he said. “So photography has immense power.”

Winter has photographed big cats all over the world, and has seen firsthand how people often misunderstand the importance of their relationship with these predators.

For example, when Winter was photographing jaguars in Argentina, he witnessed how local ranchers were killing the jaguars because they believed the cats were responsible for the deaths of their cattle. However, Winter said, when local scientists researched the issue, they found that only 1% of cattle deaths were due to the jaguars. Armed with this knowledge, the ranchers changed their attitudes and actions toward the predators.

“With proper information, they could change that behavior by their cowboys, but they would need to know the facts,” Winter said. “And it turned out, the facts were vitally important.”

This is one of many experiences Winter has had concerning changing attitudes toward predators, especially in parts of the world where poaching for medicinal purposes, or wealth and status, occurs because of cultural and economic norms.

“There has to be a different way to look at this and a different way to approach the problem,” Winter said.

Working so much with big cats has made Winter an advocate for the protection of wildlife and the natural world. Putting political and religious differences aside, Winter said, humans are animals like any other, and the only ones intelligent enough to both cause and prevent their own destruction.

“We are creatures that exist only because we live in a perfect world naturally,” Winter said. “Without the forces that give us oxygen, and the oceans — without the grasslands, mountains and forests that provide 75% of fresh water, we would not exist. We exist because of the planet in which we live, so that means we’re all in this together.”

Winter’s stories of big cats are the perfect example of how humans can find balance with wildlife, since big cats often live in populated areas as well as forested ones. Winter will talk about Siberian tigers, North American cougars, South American jaguars and other big cats.

Environmental issues often seem too big for any one person to face head-on, so Winter said his lecture will focus on the ability of the individual to connect with nature on a smaller level every day.

“Because I work with big cats, I say if we can help save big cats, we can help save ourselves,” Winter said. “But you need to understand the importance of the natural world to our everyday lives.”

Winter would like his Chautauqua audience to consider the first time they went to a national park, or a time they took a walk through the woods on a day off, and the way being in nature made them feel and how it affected them on the most personal level. Protecting nature, he said, starts on a local scale.

“If I show a small village that can find an answer … then we can find that on a larger scale,” Winter said.

Despite the doom and gloom of much environmental news, Winter remains optimistic about humanity’s ability to fix environmental problems and said his talk “has plenty of laughs.”

“The change is there already,” Winter said. “We have the technology, but there are roadblocks in the way, which are economies based on an old-fashioned way of powering the industries, our homes, and things like that. … We do have to realize that there is hope — and move towards that hope — and stay positive, because negativity does nothing but tear us apart. It does nothing.”

After a chamber music concert Monday afternoon, the JCT Trio — pronounced “Junction” Trio — will unite with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra to perform Ludwig van Beethoven’s Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano in C major, Op. 56.

The concert will take place at 8:15 p.m. Tuesday, July 9 in the Amphitheater. Alongside the Beethoven piece, which is often known simply as Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, the orchestra will perform classical Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s “Cantus Arcticus”: Concerto for Birds and Orchestra, Op. 61; and classical Czech composer Bedřich Smetana’s From Bohemia’s Forests and Meadows from “Má vlast” (My Fatherland).

Rossen Milanov, conductor and CSO music director, said the concert’s pieces are inspired by nature and fit Week Three’s theme: “A Planet in Balance: A Week in Partnership with National Geographic Society.”

Milanov said the opening piece, Rautavaara’s “Cantus Arcticus,” meshes orchestral music with recorded birdsong.

“It’s in three movements, and each of the movements features a tape of recorded birdsong that simultaneously play with the orchestra,” Milanov said. “There are infinite possibilities as the orchestral instruments mix with those actual birdcalls. … It’s a very beautiful, very evocative piece.”

Milanov said the piece presents a unique challenge for the orchestra.

“It’s interesting, combining the recording of something that happens naturally, such as the birdcalls, with an orchestra,” Milanov said. “The challenge is for the musical instruments to fit into the tape and have those dialogues with the birds.”

The next piece is Smetana’s From Bohemia’s Forests and Meadows. Milanov said the piece is inspired by a moment of cultural establishment, and Smetana drew from central European folklore and identity to capture his country’s natural beauty.

“Smetana was a composer from the second half of the 19th century, when each of the small European nations were establishing their own culture, their own folklore, their own identity,” Milanov said. “He creates … moments of grandeur, leading you into the forest where all sorts of fantastic creatures could exist. It’s a very poetic, very romantic piece.”

Milanov said the JCT Trio will join the orchestra for the concert’s final piece, the Triple Concerto, “which in itself is quite an original idea because Beethoven combines a string trio — normally an ensemble that performs chamber music — with a full orchestra.”

JCT Trio pianist Conrad Tao said the group’s name, which contains all three members’ last initials, is pronounced “Junction” because of the members’ different backgrounds and shared joy in music.

“Each of us do our own thing, and there’s a lot of overlap between the three of us, but there’s also quite a lot of distinctness between us — what our careers look like, what we’re interested in,” Tao said. “So when we play together, it’s just about wanting to play together.”

Tao said the members chose a simple name to reflect their paths meeting in a series of performances.

“It’s actually very simple — for me, it feels like a place where I can just dive into the pure joy and pleasure of making music with friends and playing pieces that we really love,” Tao said. “So in naming it, nothing excruciatingly poetic would do; ‘junction’ feels right — it’s just us playing together in a dynamic meeting of sorts.”

Tonight, that meeting will include the CSO and the Triple Concerto.

Concertos are a type of composition that feature a solo part backed by a large orchestra. Tao said the Triple Concerto is somewhat unique in that it includes three solo parts — making it the natural choice for the trio, who each have extensive backgrounds as soloists.

“This is an anomaly of a concerto; I don’t think there’s very many concertos for three soloists and an orchestra,” Tao said.

Tonight’s concert, Tao said, will be the first time the three musicians play the Triple Concerto together for an audience. He said the piece provides a unique opportunity for pianists.

“In a piano trio repertoire, I think pianists are usually given music that is guiding the overall structure, because the instrument has a large range of sound,” Tao said. “In the Triple Concerto, the orchestra provides all of that context and all of that sense of a larger musical environment, where I, as a pianist, am much more like Stefan (Jackiw) or Jay (Campbell) where the music I’m making is just lyrical and melodic.”

Campbell, cellist of the JCT Trio, said the Triple Concerto is also unique in its light tone.

“It’s a very joyful piece; it feels sort of carefree compared to some of Beethoven’s other work — I don’t think he’s trying to grapple with the problems of the universe in this piece,” Campbell said.

Today, Chautauquans can swarm into Smith Wilkes Hall for an un-bee-lievable Bird, Tree & Garden Club talk on beekeeping.

Three beekeepers will present “The Zen of Beekeeping: Backyard Hives for Flowers, Honey and the Environment” at 12:15 p.m. Moday, July 8 in Smith Wilkes Hall, as part of the BTG’s Monarch Moments and More program.

Local beekeeper Bob Ratterman and Maryland-based beekeepers Sharon Metcalf and Stefan LoBuglio will give an overview of bees, how they function within their hives and how Chautauquans can become beekeepers. They will also bring samples of their own honey for Chautauquans to taste.

Ratterman is the sciences coordinator and a professor of biology at SUNY Jamestown Community College. He also serves as vice president of the Chautauqua County Beekeepers Association. He said Chautauqua County is the perfect place for bees.

“In Chautauqua County, the foliage, the flowers, for the bees are really conducive to getting a good honey crop,” he said. “We have forests, we have fields, we have pastures, we have trees.”

Ratterman first delved into beekeeping six years ago when he watched one of his colleagues capture a swarm of bees — a large group of docile worker bees who have been cast off from the original hive — for one of her hives.

He now has five hives and harvests honey from them twice each year — once in early summer and once in October.

Ratterman said his fall harvest is typically larger, fueled by pollen from goldenrod that blooms in late summer. 

Metcalf and LoBuglio are visiting Chautauqua from Maryland. Metcalf works as senior director of strategic partnerships and programs in the American University School of Communication, and previously worked at NBC and ABC in Washington, D.C., along with a stint working for President Jimmy Carter’s administration.

LoBuglio works as a justice reform consultant and previously worked in management at prisons in Boston and, more recently, in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The pair met through mutual friends and grew closer through a beekeeping certification course. They both have hives and contribute hive data to research projects conducted by The Best Bees Company in Boston.

Both Metcalf and LoBuglio have visited Chautauqua in the past. Metcalf has given a BTG talk on monarch butterfly migrations, and LoBuglio took interest in the gardens on the grounds when he first visited two years ago.

“Immediately when I got onto the grounds, you see these gorgeous landscapes — the flowers, the gardens, the trees,” LoBuglio said. “It’s such a perfect environment for bees to do their wonderful work.”

Bees do best in environments where there is a diversity of plant life for them to forage, Metcalf said. 

“One thing we have found through our research with The Best Bees Company is that  bees seem to be thriving in urban and suburban areas because of diversity of plants and gardens,” Metcalf said.

Bees struggle more in the Midwest, where large swaths of land are planted with a limited variety of crops, and fields are sprayed with pesticides that are harmful to bees, Metcalf said.

In Maryland, LoBuglio just combined two of his hives, reducing his total number of hives from four to three. He put one box hive on top of the other, with just a sheet of newspaper with slits in between. Over a few days, the bees will eat through the newspaper and the two hives will get acquainted with one another.

“I had a hive that was relatively weak and a hive that was really strong,” he said. “Rather than have the hive that was weak die out, I was able to put that hive on top of the stronger hive.”

LoBuglio said beekeepers may split or combine hives in order to help them survive.

“Part of the allure of beekeeping is to be very attentive to their cycles and how to work with them.”

Bees are a crucial part of the ecosystem, since they are able to pollinate plants by carrying pollen from one plant to the next as they collect nectar from flowers.

“Pollination is key,” Metcalf said. “One out of every three bites we eat has been pollinated somewhere along the lines by bees.”

At the talk today, the beekeepers will discuss ways Chautauquans can create more pollinator-friendly environments both on the grounds and at their year-round homes.

“The good news is that there is a lot of great research being done and this is something that individuals can choose to engage in to promote and support bees,” LoBuglio said. “You can do this either through planting and not spraying your own property with mosquito repellents, hosting beehives or plunging in whole hog like I did.”

Chautauqua Institution administrators led the second Strategic Plan Information and IDEA Listening Session and the first Master Plan Information Session last week, engaging community members with 150 Forward and potential physical upgrades to the grounds.

The master plan is a sampling of options to optimize space and opportunities for development in underused areas of the Institution. Despite the name, the master plan is not concrete: “This is a menu of ideas,” President Michael E. Hill said Wednesday.

Areas of opportunity for development include: North Campus around Turner Community Center and the School of Music; the parking lots on West Campus; and the “interfaith area” around Massey Avenue.

Potential updates would increase housing and parking, and make New York State Route 394 more pedestrian-friendly by building mixed-use retail space, sidewalks and bike lanes. The next master plan meeting will be at 3:30 p.m. Friday, July 19, in the Hall of Christ.

The master plan is an arm of 150 Forward. The strategic plan is a series of objectives — optimize the summer season, expand Chautauqua’s convening authority year-round, drive a science-based approach to the lake’s sustainaility and diversify revenue — and cross-cutting imperatives — strategic partnerships; mobilization of technology; labor and talent solutions; and inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility — synthesized by a 13-member strategic planning working group, which pinpointed the Institution’s strengths and challenges.

The overarching goal of the plan is to “convene diverse perspectives and voices to discover and advance the most important, relevant conversations and experiences … during the summer assembly season and year-round, on the grounds and beyond,” according to Laura Currie, chair of the strategic planning working group.   

To achieve this, the Institution has several goals. It will expand philanthropic efforts into strategic partnerships with larger organizations, reimagine arts programming, increase brand awareness, invest greatly in technology, enhance the customer experience, work toward science-based solutions to the declining health of Chautauqua Lake, and diversify.

“(Diversity) is so much a part of who we need to be in our DNA, that it cuts across all the goals of the strategic plan; this underrides all of that,” Chief of Staff and Vice President of Strategic Initiatives Shannon Rozner said at last Monday’s IDEA Listening Session. “We hope that gives a sense of the importance of inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility.”

At the IDEA Listening Session, a Chautuaquan questioned the need to diversify. Rozner responded by highlighting how important diversity is to the Institution’s mission.

“Our mission calls us to explore the best in human values; if we don’t have a representation of all of humanity here, that’s not (possible) to do,” she said.

The next IDEA Listening Session is at 3:30 p.m. Monday, July 8 in the Hall of Christ; the Strategic Plan Information Session will be at 3:30 p.m. Thursday in the Hall of Christ. Additionally, Chautauquans can voice concerns, leave comments or ask questions about the strategic plan through the online forum at 150FWDFeedback.chq.org.

It always seems to be a dream come true when a passion becomes a full-time career.

Nancy Vigliotti, a personal trainer and exercise enthusiast, has recently started her first summer working at Turner Community Center, running group and individual fitness classes. After years of exercise and fitness training, she has been offered a full-time position.

Vigliotti said fitness and exercise have always been passions in her life, and working out at Chautauqua has put her in an interesting position to help the people she would constantly see in her time at Turner.

Since she was a child, Vigliotti has had a love for outdoor fitness as well as Chautauqua; her summers on the lake at her grandfather’s cabin jumpstarted her love for different sports in the area.

“I’m a runner, I’m a biker; I water ski and enjoy doing a lot of outdoor, physical fitness activities, so it’s a natural fit for me,” Vigliotti said. “I enjoy Chautauqua. I enjoy everything there is to do about this area — winter and summer. So, it’s been a good transition around the area.”

After earning her American Council on Exercise personal training certification over 15 years ago, Vigliotti has been offering personal training for a number of years.

Once hired by Chautauqua, she earned her Aerobics and Fitness Association of America group fitness instructor certification. Vigliotti said her customer base is varying constantly with people looking for different methods of exercise and fitness.

“I have a lot of new customers; (they’re) generally people looking for strength, flexibility, balance; the older population,” Vigliotti said. “A lot of them have had various surgeries, artificial knees and shoulder issues, and they’re looking to gain strength with that. I have some younger people; I just picked up a new girl this week who is actually doing the Ironman (Triathlon) in October. So, I’m looking forward to working with other people, too.”

In her first year, Vigliotti is already starting with a wide variety of class choices — from one-on-one appointments to group yoga classes — and wants to continue to grow to offer other programs at Turner.

To help those who are recovering from back surgery and other surgeries, Vigliotti said she is starting to include core and balance equipment like Bosu balls and exercise balls.

“A lot of individuals who have had various surgeries are instructed by their physical therapists to work on strengthening and balance,” Vigliotti said.

As the 2019 season progresses, Vigliotti said she would like to continue to add to her catalog of fitness classes, possibly including ballet classes or a type of dance fitness course.