Chautauqua

I got a chance to get out of New Jersey and head 300 miles east back to Chautauqua Institution for the Fourth of July weekend. Over the past year, I have often been asked to explain Chautauqua to people. This seemingly easy task is actually quite difficult. It started as a training school for Sunday School teachers but has now become what Wikipedia calls “a non-profit adult education center and summer resort.” As I try to explain the place, people wonder is it an educational instituation, a gated community, a art and music school, a religious institution, an entertainment provider, a vacation spot? The easy answer is yes.

Yet, Chautauqua is much more than that. Each person will experience and define Chautauqua differently based on their reasons for being there. For me, Chautauqua is as much about the people and the community as it is about the place and all that it offer like:

*Deep feeling of welcome and homecoming as you drive through the gates

*Having a lane and lane partner who shares her paddles at Turner community pool

*Random conversations on beautiful porches

* Laughing children chasing rocket balloons on the Plaza

* Seeing a ballet on Thursday, Steve Martin on Friday and a symphony on Saturday

*Joining your voice with a congregation of thousand in the open air amp to sing “Holy, Holy, Holy”

*Using paper bags as cannons during the 1812 Overture during the 4^th of July Symphony Pops concert

*Lazy afternoons at University Beach reading, writing and sleeping

*Sitting on a porch listening to a lecture

*Ice cream with dear friends

*Making a big world smaller, and a small world bigger

*Children getting their faces painted on the porch

*Feeling connect to something that stretches back into the past and forward into the future

*”Street Musicians” made up of students from the symphony orchestra

*Feeling of peace while listening to Handel’s Largo on the organ on Sunday Night

*Unplanned conversations while wandering the brick walk

*Sunrises and Sunsets over Chautauqua Lake

*Music of the Miller Bell Tower

*Having a new place to call home and new people to call family

While all of these things are simply the experiences I can give voice to, Chautauqua is more that these things. It is a feeling, a sense and an experience. I wish my words could tell the whole story but they simply cannot, so I leave you with a few picture to attempt it.

For more pictures check out these albums:

From Summer 2010:

From this Fourth of July.