News

PRESIDENT'S CORNER - July 1, 2016

Notes from Chautauqua:

  • Our week here will come to a close on Sunday, July 3 when we’ll head across the hill to Lily Dale for our short retreat [and to celebrate our 47th wedding anniversary on the 4th].
  • This week (so far) we have seen Roger Rosenblatt with Jane Pauley and her hubby Garry Trudeau, and then today with Alan Bergman with Jane singing some of his songs…very sweetly, I might add. We’ve listened to Bishop John Shelby Spong daily and heard a terrific sermon by Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries in LA—you may have seen the feature on him on the PBS “Religion & Ethics” program.
  • Tomorrow Roger will have Ann Patchett (“Bel Canto”) and on Friday, Alan Alda and his wife. And we’ll get to see a talk by Geraldine Brooks, whose recent novel on King David and his prophet Nathan is out (“The Golden Chord”)…I’m just finishing that.
  • One of the great things about this place is that you can sit down next to someone in the Amp or Hall of Philosophy to await a lecture or entertainment and strike up a heart-to-heart conversation like you have known them forever. Waiting on Spong one day, I chatted with a Jewish lady, a Quaker pastor and a free-thinker and we all shared stuff as if we had always done so! Amazing.
  • We had a delightful dinner with Carolyn Zinn, who is here with Margot Racinet and have reacquainted with all our friends at our church house. So all is right with the world.
  • I’ll be doing “research” for my class and taking more pictures and am stealing all kinds of literature so the whole class will get a packet. If you want to check out this place for yourself, their website is: CIWEB.ORG
  • Here is what historian David McCullough had to say about this place:

There is no place like it. No resort. No Spa. Not anywhere else in the country, or anywhere in the world—it is at once a summer encampment and a small town, a college campus, an arts colony, a music festival, a religious retreat and the village square—and there’s no place—no place--with anything like its history.

  • Oh, and don’t forget, as Sonja has reminded you, to get registered for summer classes, renew your membership and look over the new Summer Film Forum that will happen every week for 8 weeks starting July 13.
  • Addendum: Just returned from hearing Geraldine Brooks talk…who knew she was an Aussie? And this morning’s talk with Ann Patchett is one of the best I have heard here. For Jim’s Bookclub this week, look at her works: Bel Canto, Essays, or, in Spetember, her new book, Commonwealth, will be out—she read from it and it sounds great. Geraldine Brooks’ latest, The Golden Chord, is about King David and his life and times that I just finished a few minutes before hearing her talk! Slow start but good. 

Jim Held, President