CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION

We recommend the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York. We spent a week there with friends in early July. It is a community where visitors come to find intellectual and spiritual growth and renewal. It runs for nine weeks every summer and encompasses the arts, education, religion and recreation. It is a place, removed from the day-to-day world, where some of the leading thinkers of our time come to speak to the concerns and issues of today. There is also music, dance, opera, theater and the visual arts.

Chautauqua is perhaps best known for its morning lecture series when the Amphitheater stage becomes the platform for distinguished speakers across a broad range of disciplines.

The theme for the week we attended was National Geographic. Donald Johanson was one of the speakers. His claim to fame is that he found the skeleton of "Lucy" who lived 3.2 million years ago.

Susan B. Anthony argued for women’s suffrage in 1892, and Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his "I Hate War" speech in 1936. Margaret Mead, Amelia Earhart, Thurgood Marshall, Freeman Dyson, Jane Goodall, Sandra Day O’Connor and Kurt Vonnegut have all spoken at Chautauqua.