Chautauqua

“Chautauqua is the most American thing in America.” Theodore Roosevelt

Riis photo

For more than a half century beginning in the 1870s Chautauqua summer programs brought culture, information, and entertainment to millions. Founded on the shore of Lake Chautauqua in southwestern New York, Chautauqua began as a Methodist camp dedicated to training Sunday School teachers, yet almost from the beginning prided itself on being nondenominational. A successor to the Lyceum Movement that stressed adult education as essential to democracy, Chautauqua lectures were not only religious but reformist, motivational, informational, and instructive.  In July of 1891, for example, urban progressive Jacob A. Riis, author of the 1890 expose of New York City tenement house conditions, “How the Other Half Lives,” spoke on “The Children of the Poor.”  Other celebrities at Chautauqua that summer were Social Darwinist philosopher John Fiske, the Reverend Edward Everett Hale, and the feminist Julia Ward Howe.  Riis returned to Chautauqua often, as did other distinguished personages at the turn of the century.  Other communities emulated the Chautauqua example.

brochures from 1906 and 1920

In 1904 the movement expanded with the beginnings of “Tent Chautauqua.”  Enterprising booking agents put together a Chautauqua Circuit, providing local communities with an impressive lineup of speakers.  Within a decade over 10,000 communities hosted programs ranging from a few days to weeks. In addition to Jacob Riis, the financial rewards attracted such popular speakers as Mark Twain, William Jennings Bryan, Robert La Follette, and Frances Willard.  Free thinker Robert Ingersoll could speak knowledgeably about topics as varied as William Shakespeare, Postwar Reconstruction, and Agnosticism. Baptist preacher Russell Conwell was in such demand for his “Acres of Diamonds” oration that the founder of Temple University ultimately gave the speech over 6,000 times, all over the world.

left, Russell Conwell; below, Robert Ingersoll

By the 1920s lecturers began to share equal billing with entertainers, as singers, magicians, yodelers, and theatrical groups joined the traveling caravans.  In 1925, for instance, a cast performing Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado” began an extended tour in Abbeville, Louisiana, that concluded in Sidney, Montana. By this time, vaudeville tours were the rage, held in movie emporiums sprouting up all over the country.  The days of the Chautauqua Circuit were numbered; summer programs near Lake Chautauqua, however, still attract tens of thousands of registrants each year.

 

Kevin Nevers found this nugget for Chesterton Tribune’s “Echoes of the Past” column:

    100 Years Ago, the Red Grenadiers Bank band and male chorus, great lectures on timely topics: these are the notable attractions which will appear here on the 1920 Redpath Chautauqua.  The entire program is replete with features of compelling interest and timeliness.  Featured guests will include Dr. George Park, who will lecture on “The Man of the New Age;” Earl H. Hipple, “Wizard of the Xylophone<” and Judge Manford Schoonover, who will give his great lecture, “Unseen Forces.”

 

IU Northwest’s summer adult education series, Senior College, was cancelled due to the pandemic.  I was scheduled to speak on the state of Rock and Roll music in 1960.  I’d given the talk to Munster seniors and was looking forward to interacting with students, including jazz pianist Billy Foster.  I’m on the Munster Center for the Arts schedule for next year that may or may not go forward, given the current uncertainty. Topic: the underrated early 1960s in popular music: from Chubby Checker to the Beatles: surf sounds, soul music, and the girl groups.  And more.

This month Ron Cohen was to have spoken to the Merrillville History Book Club on Glenn Frankel’s “High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic.” On the surface a traditional western starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, shot on a shoestring budget in less than five weeks, “High Noon” won four Oscars in 1953 and achieved box office success.  Debuting at the height of the Red Scare, the film celebrated moral courage and loyalty. Screenwriter Carl Foreman had increasingly regarded the script as an allegory for the Hollywood witch hunt taking place as he wrote.  Hauled before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in the midst of the production, Foreman, a Communist Party member in the 1930s, refused to name names of fellow members and was blacklisted as a result.  He subsequently co-authored “The Bridge on the River Kwai” screenplay, uncredited.

 

After sending federal troops in marked uniforms to Portland, allegedly to protect federal property in defiance of the Mayor and Oregon’s governor, which escalated the confrontation (moms and the Mayor himself have been tear-gassed, Now Trump is sending others (purportedly from ICE, Homeland Security, AFT, Border Petrol, and other agencies) wants to send other units to Chicago and Albuquerque, again not invited and over threats of legal action, in order to fight combat gun violence.  Ray Smock wrote:

    12,000 Chicago Police Officers do not need help from 3 or 4 hundred members of Trump's Goon Squad, assembled to cause disruptions in major cities with Democratic mayors. This is what fascism looks like. Don't pretend this is normal. State and local officials have not asked for federal help. If Trump wants the pandemic to be run by the states, why does he feel it takes federal officers in battle gear to handle mostly peaceful protests?

    Trump has enablers in some cities that will help him make this seem legitimate. It's ironic that the state's rights Republicans are willing to tolerate federal incursions into state authority. They will only argue it is unconstitutional when Democrats do the same to Republican strongholds.

Chesterton High School was all set to have an outdoor graduation when one of Becca’s classmates who’d been with several others recently tested positive for Covid-19.  School officials cancelled the ceremony and substituted a parade of cars procession for the immediate family only.