Chautauqua: The liberal interfaith bubble on the lake.

A lot of my friends had heard of Chautauqua Institution, but I never had.  That's fairly unusual. Unless it has to do with Game of Thrones, I'm typically well informed.  Maybe it's because outside my Jewish bubble in the outer boroughs and northern Jersey, at least until recent years, most of my friends have been Catholic, and none have been musicians, opera singers or dancers.

Chautauqua Institution is a cultural, spiritual, intellectual, recreational and politically liberal utopia way out in the southwestern part of New York State, where Route 17 turns into 86 and falls off the edge of the earth. It occupies one and a half miles along the western shore of Lake Chautauqua, and typically numbers about 8,000 residents during its season.

Chautauqua lakeside, with bell tower.

It's been there since 1874, when John Heyl Vincent, a high-minded Methodist deacon, started it as a summer retreat and training ground for Sunday school teachers.  It comes out of this humanist mainstream Protestant tradition,  and started at the same time as other Methodist camp meeting grounds I'm more familiar with, like Mt. Tabor in Parsippany, NJ, and Ocean Grove down the shore.  It has since accumulated "demoninational (guest) houses" and interfaith programs with most other flavors of mainstream Protestants, as well as Catholics and, eventually, Jews. Today, even the odd Muslim or two.  Still, at least on week six, overwhelmingly white. Yes, they're aware. Yes, they're a little embarrassed. 

It's a place and a collection of nine separate week-long programs, organized around themes of current societal concerns. Week Five's theme was The Supreme Court: At a Tipping Point? Week Six's was Comedy and the Human Condition. Lewis Black, David Steinberg and W. Kamau Bell spoke on three separate mornings. Capital Steps performed one night.  

Susan Sparks, a former lawyer/Baptist minister/stand-up comedian, and Bob Alper, a rabbi/stand-up comedian, spoke to a packed Parthenon (the "Hall of Philosophy") in the afternoon and performed on two evenings in the parlor of the grand old hotel. Dean Obeidallah, an Italian/Palestinian/American lawyer with his own show on SiriusXM radio, packed another session.

At the same time, Chautauqua offers a whole college campus worth of classes  in anything you might put a good dent into within six days; pottery and robotics, for example.

To picture Chautauqua Institution, think of  narrow streets of closely spaced Victorian guest houses , studios, churches, a lakeside bell tower, a Parthenon-shaped meeting space and many denominational houses where you can also rent a room or attend a discussion. Add a day camp, sports center, sailing center, Victorian hotel, steamboat landing, and countless profusions of hydrangeas, cornflowers and black-eyed Susans. Also a 5,000-seat, roofed amphitheater, where mostly older Christian folks come in the morning to sing interdenominational hymns and hear the huge organ and the visiting preacher. (On Week Six, this was the stand-up Baptist preacher comedian Susan Sparks. We came, too, fitting the age demographic and sort of faking the rest.)  

It's also where you go to see ballet, or the resident symphony orchestra, or the headlining speakers, speaking on that week's scheduled theme. For those you scan in your weekly program pass; they sell for around $475.

All the hotels and guest houses, and private homes too, have porches and/or balconies, with wicker furniture and hanging flower baskets. Brick walks thread between the denominational houses and around the town green. 

Everyone is so pleasant and friendly, you'd think you were a little further north. In fact, many Chautauquans are Canadian; Canada must have had its Methodists and Toronto is much closer than NYC. Maple leaf flags fly from many of the porches and balconies, alongside the stars and stripes. The denominational houses all prominently post their schedules of services, talks and teas, and many front gardens feature these primitive statues of singers, lined together with outstretched arms and varied skin tones.

There's very little vehicular traffic, except for the shuttle buses that take you around and out to the off-campus parking lots.  People bicycle everywhere and not only don't they lock their bikes, they leave helmets hanging on the handlebars. The signature figure of a Chautauquan (we are all Chautauquans for the week, some for generations) is a sixty-something walking to his next thought-provoking lecture, seat cushion in hand.

Many years ago the heart of Chautauqua activity was moved uphill from the lakeshore to a town green a few blocks away. That's where you'll find the administrative offices, the interior visitors' center (the other one is on the road, before you scan in), the bookstore, convenience, tchotchke, and clothing stores, beauty salon,  cafe, ice cream parlor, and library.  There's a four-sided stele in the middle of a fountain in the middle of the green. Each side, with its own bas-relief figure, represents one of Chautauqua's four original purposes: Science, Art, Recreation, and Religion.  Art looks Roman or Greek. Religion must be Moses, carved in an ecumenical gesture holding the Ten Commandments, in Hebrew letters.  It's just that he looks less Moses-like than Charlton Heston; his face and hairstyle say Jesus.

There is something Disneyesque about Chautauqua; the architecture can bring Main Street, Magic Kingdom to mind. But it's a two-way street.  There is no visible merchandising; it's all tastefully soft-pedalled in the bookstore/gift shop. Chautauquans create their bubble as they experience it. They contribute to the ambiance with the way their children play there, they set up easels and paint, they enter a Harry Potter costume contest, they sit and chat on benches, or walk their bikes through. 

You can also pretend you're in the River City, Iowa time and place of The Music Man. The large brick library has the donor's name on it, right on the square. There's an annual parade of the current and past graduates of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- started over 100 years ago as a book club, a remote course of study with a summer residence and a way to spread Chautauqua's mission of lifelong learning. They carry the beautiful old fringed banners from every graduating class, going back to the twenties, and they're accompanied by a brass band.  

This can indeed remind you of the social betterment intended by the River City's ladies' auxiliary, forming living tableaux of Grecian urns.

But ... we don't want to make fun or burst the bubble. We only want to climb in.  And then because the ethos of the place is so world-embracing -- we want other peoples to want to climb in, too.  And be careful not to pop it.

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