2011 Week Two

The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson will be the chaplain for Week Two at Chautauqua. He will preach today through Friday at the 9:15 a.m. worship service in the Amphitheater. Today, his theme is “God Bless America: Be Careful What You Pray for!”; Tuesday is “Religion and Politics: A Controversial Brew”; Wednesday is “Give me your tired, your poor: ‘Who is My Neighbor?’”; Thursday is “From ‘More’ to ‘Enough’: Moral Economics in the Me-First World”; Friday is “Putting the ‘Common’ Back into the “Common Good”: Critiquing the American Dream.”

There are two Jerusalems, according to James Carroll’s book Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World. At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Carroll will begin the second week of the Interfaith Lecture Series with a lecture called “City on a Hill: Jerusalem in the American Imagination.”

Government decision-making can be difficult, especially in an age characterized by perpetual change. For Jim Leach, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, American society faces many challenges, few more pressing than the need for constants.

The writers-in-residence for Week Two will help writers channel the dead in their poetry and push their fiction characters into danger. Poet-in-residence Andrew Mulvania and prose writer-in-residence Toni Jensen will lead workshops throughout the week, and both will give readings of their work at 3:30 p.m. Sunday on the front porch of Alumni Hall.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church in the United States, will preach at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday worship service. Jefferts Schori will also speak on her faith journey at the 5 p.m. Sunday Vespers Service at the Hall of Philosophy. Her sermon title is “Applied Ethics: Government and the Search for the Common Good.” Her text is Deuteronomy 10:17–21.

Brian Mertes, well-known theater and television director, looks at things differently than traditional directors. This might be evident to audience members who come to see the Chautauqua Theater Company’s 2011 Season production of “Three Sisters” that Mertes is directing. The play, which takes place in a provincial town in Russia, follows the search for meaning and happiness in life by three sisters — Irina, Olga and Masha — as they long to go back to their hometown of Moscow.

When pianist John Milbauer first came to the School of Music in 1989, he was on the verge of giving up music forever. Playing the piano was a physical struggle. He was frustrated with the technical aspect of the piano, and he just didn’t have the right teacher — until Chautauqua changed all that.