Chautauqua 2024
Convergence is a good word to describe what Chautauqua means to me. It’s a place that brings together all of my main interests: Music, Art, Reading, History, and Families & Friends. Last year our family converged on Lake Lure, NC on the week of the Fourth for an early celebration of Steve’s 80th. This year Steve and I traveled to Chautauqua NY to visit good friends Peg Barrett, Jack Connolly, and Marjo van Patten.
READING & HISTORY
Author Jamie Metzl presented the final lecture on the week’s theme, the Artificial Intelligence Revolution, explaining how AI will revolutionize genetics and biotech and change our lives. I have now finished reading his recently published book, Superconvergence, and recommend it highly. It brought me, a neophyte, up to speed on what AI is used for and how it could go wrong. This passage near the end sums it up: “Advances in science and technology have created new, godlike capabilities for our species that need to be managed on every level in ways that optimize benefits and minimize harms. Because these benefits and harms are two sides of the same coin, we can’t focus on one without paying sufficient attention to the other…..We need to start building new norms, processes, and institutions on all levels, local to global, optimizing for the world we want.”
The day before, Andrew Steer, CEO of the $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund, gave an outstanding presentation on AI’s potential to solve climate change dilemmas. I especially liked how he put AI in historical context, showing how progress almost always has a downside. Technological improvements in agriculture during the European Middle Ages were captured by the nobility and used to build grand cathedrals, while peasants remained on the edge of starvation. The first hundred years of industrialization in England delivered stagnant incomes for working people. Now digital technologies and artificial intelligence are undermining jobs and democracy through excessive automation, massive data collection, and intrusive surveillance. Cutting-edge technological advances can become empowering and democratizing tools, but not if all major decisions remain in the hands of a few hubristic tech leaders. Steen promoted a helpful book published in May 2023, Power and Progress.
Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal, started the week off by having her digital twin introduce Artificial Intelligence. Then she came on the stage in person to demonstrate the differences between ChatGPT-generated material and and that created by humans. Tuesday’s lecture about how AI speeds learning by aggregating data was delivered by Conrad S. Tucker, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mello University.
On Wednesday July 3, we heard two Hollywood natives, Joely Fisher (daughter of actor Eddy Fisher) and Kelly Carlin (daughter of comedian George Carlin), discuss the need for guardrails on AI to protect writers, actors and producers. Both had been involved with the Screen Actors Guild’s four-month-long strike during the Pandemic and both urged support of a Bill filed in the US House of Representatives that could place limits and requirements on Artificial Intelligence.
MUSIC, Wonderful Music!
On Monday afternoon, I got to hear Chautauqua’s 20 summer piano students introduce themselves by playing a 2 or 3-minute piece. Most were on breaks from major conservatories; a few had already graduated. All were very good and some played music totally new to me. When Steve returned from golf, he joined me to hear musicians from ChamberFest Cleveland play Bach’s Concerto in D minor for Piano and Strings (1738) and George Enescu’s String Octet in C major, Opus 7 (1900).
The featured piece on Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra’s Tuesday concert was Robert Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra, Op. 86, except they had five French horns and gave them a special place on the stage. (Actually, I think we could have heard them better down front, but the overall effect was wonderful.) More familiar music by Johann Strauss, Georges Bizet, and Jacques Offenbach was ardently conducted by Rossen Milanov. The Can-Can dance in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld made us all clap along.
On Thursday, July 4th, the Chautauqua Community Band gave us a rousing concert of patriotic music at noon. Our host, Jack Connolly, who had played euphonium in the band for many years, was there with his daughter Melissa and his new great-grandson, Jack. Many young children, dressed in red, white and blue, were waving flags to the music.
At 4 pm on the Fourth, while Steve and Peg got in nine holes of golf, Marjo and I heard a splendid piano concert by Alexander Kobrin, who won the the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and now teaches at Eastman School of Music. He started with perfect renditions of Beethoven’s two easiest piano sonatas, Opus 49, which I have both played and taught. Then he turned to the most difficult of all sonatas, the Hammerklavier, Opus 106. Though I had studied this sonata with Jonathan Biss, I had never heard it played live in a concert (few would dare!), Kobrin made it come alive in all its complexity, giving us an hour to dwell on the meaning of life. As Beethoven himself wrote: “He who divines the secret of my music is delivered from the misery that haunts the world.”
That night the Chautauqua Symphony pulled out all its Independence Day stops with patriotic favorites; encouraging us to sing along. Each person was handed 3 paper bags so we could blow them up and smash them on cue in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, to simulate the cannon fire in the Finale.
ART: Weaving and Basketry
With all the other activities, we saved the Chautauqua Visual Art Gallerie for the last day. There, Marjo and I found the weavings of wool and silk by Susan Iverson and the Chill Baskets of Carrie Hill very appealing.
Family and Friends
On Tuesday afternoon, we entertained my niece Patti and her husband Scott, who stopped by on a tour of colleges with 17-year-old daughter Vivian. As you can see in these photos, they seemed to like this gorgeous place.
It was wonderful that Marjo van Patten could drive up from Dayton OH to join us on Wednesday afternoon, ahead of the visit she and Peg had already planned for Week Three. I had introduced Marjo to Peg and Jack in 2018; she’s been invited back every year since. She brought delicious salads that made our dinners delightful and our busy Independence Day easier. Here you can see how Marjo and Steve put together a new walker-chair for Jack.
During the week, we enjoyed brief, cheerful visits with old friends from Arlington, Jan and Michael Yauch, who now host the United Methodist House at Chautauqua. They have now sold their place in Houston and live in Pennsylvania, midway between their daughters Kirsten and Megan. I’m so happy that we could converge with friends and relatives and savor all the wonderful activities Chautauqua offers. It was my tenth visit, Steve’s ninth, and Marjo’s fourth or fifth. Thank you, Peg and Jack, for your warm hospitality and Marjo, for your forever friendship. Love to all, Martha
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