Chautauqua, Year 2

It's a different world. Last year, when I described my first trip to Chautauqua, I talked about Brigadoon. There is still some magic associated with the experience, but this year, it is easier to define. There are things that happen at Chautauqua that CAN happen elsewhere...but it is far easier to let them slide in my daily life. At Chautauqua, you stop long enough to get in touch with yourself and with the world.

At Chautauqua, I look. I look at houses, at gardens, at the lake, at people. I actually see--and speak to--people I see on the street, and they respond with a smile, a pleasantry, sometimes even a conversation. I complimented one lady on her garden (it had to be her own, as she was dead-heading the flowers and sweeping the curb..) and we had a pleasant conversation about her daughter's wedding, the 'flower-towers' that she had planted this year, the mysterious ailment that had plagued impatiens recently, and her assertion that the gardens didn't look quite as good this year as last.

The gardens and the houses are enough to look at, in themselves. Victorian gingerbread and vibrant paint, gardens that subscribe to the Victorian ideal of excess, old-fashioned flowers from your grandmother's garden: hydrangeas and daisies and Queen Anne's lace, begonias and bee balm, coleus and gladioli. Wicker furniture on generous porches with vases of flowers connecting them to their surroundings. And people on those porches, with lemonade or iced tea or something a little stronger, watching the passing parade.

If you are a people-watcher, Chautauqua is heaven. There are people bicycling, jogging, riding scooters, strolling, bench-sitting..There are people with dogs, people in the amphitheater, the Hall of Philosophy, people on their way to class, or enjoying a cup of coffee or an ice cream cone on Bestor Plaza. I saw a man pushing his dog in an umbrella stroller one morning; I took his picture, but didn't ask  him why. Though I'm sure he'd have told me. In the middle of the plaza, there was a girl playing the violin--beautifully, I might add. Maybe she had an open violin case inviting tips--I don't know. I was too far away to do anything but hear the music.

Listening is part of the experience too. There's the singsong chanting of the newsboys selling the Chautauquan Daily. "Chautauquan Daily, full of knowledge! Chautauquan Daily, send me to college!"--or whatever rhyme they've devised for the day. Some even wear the knickers and vest and caps of Victorian newsboys. And the carillon marks the hours down by the shore--hymns and popular songs at specific hours, bells for the hours and the half-hours. Early in the morning, the most notable thing is the ABSENCE of sounds. It's quiet. No cars, no airplanes, no hubbub...but birds, and the sound of fountains..

This would be quite enough to make a vacation, but one of the most Chautauquan of experiences is thinking. There is food for thought around every corner: lectures and classes and religious services, an orchestra, a choir, an opera, a dramatic group, art galleries, a library, a bookstore, a Literary Arts Center with brown-bag lunches with resident poets and prose writers. There are authors and diplomats, teachers and musicians, children and adults, ballerinas and artists...whoever and whatever you'd want to see, they are there. And they are there to join the conversation with anyone and everyone who makes Chautauqua their home, whether for a week or for the summer.

I brought home pictures, I brought home ideas, I brought home memories. I stopped, I looked, I listened, I learned. I am far richer for the experience.