Some people equate the word “radio” with FDR’s fireside chats, helter-skelter antennae and news broadcasts. Younger people may conjure up images of stereos and Sirius FM. Ken Hardley wants to bring back the former.
In 2006, Chautauqua Institution’s Department of Religion founded the Abrahamic Program for Young Adults, an initiative that aims to engage the community with interfaith dialogue and cooperation. The coordinators for the 2013 Season were Moshe Givental (Judaism), Sydney Maltese (Christianity), Jawad Bayat (Islam) and Farrah Walji (Islam).
Chautauquans John Chubb and Tom Logan have water skied their entire lives. John skied at Ohio University for three years and then coached for four. Tom began taking skiing more seriously seven years ago. They both came to Chautauqua as kids and have known each other since. [SLIDESHOW]
Finally answering the elusive question in the title of Week Eight’s theme, Kemal Kirişci said at Friday’s morning lecture in the Amphitheater that Turkey’s status as a model for the Middle East should not be overstated. He warned against praising the country’s government as something to be emulated.
Kirişci, a senior fellow and director of the Center on the United States and Europe’s Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution, explored the question of whether the protests in Istanbul’s Taksim Square had damaged Turkey’s position as a role model for the region. His lecture was the last in this week’s theme of “Turkey: A Model for the Middle East?”
One Friday morning earlier this season, the board of the Hebrew Congregation received a distressing phone call. The rabbi who was supposed to lead that night’s Kabbalat Shabbat service was dealing with a rabbinical emergency and was not going to be able to make it.
Pianist Roberto Plano looks for something beyond perfection when he plays music.
He believes that every musician must strive to balance technical mastery with musical expression. A musician who is technically perfect but doesn’t have an artistic message is less musical than a musician who can play with emotion and vitality despite his or her mistakes, he said.
Nedim Şener is looking forward to seeing his wife and 10-year-old daughter when he returns to Turkey. However, his time with his family will be brief; Şener goes to trial in one month and faces seven to 15 years in prison. Held without bail, he will be allowed to see his family for 45 minutes per week.
His crime? Publicly criticizing the Turkish government.
For decades, fashion designer Sandy D’Andrade has been weaving a wintry tree of life into her opera-inspired garments. Although her signature design, the “Winter Tree,” bears no leaves, it is a living, breathing “symbol of life,” the designer said. “It’s one of those images that crosses through every age and every culture, every religion. We draw it reaching down into the roots, into the earth to symbolize potential and growth, healing and renewal.”
In 2008, Dennis Ross was asked by Vanity Fair if he thought the map presented by T.E. Lawrence to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 could be applied to the Middle East today. Ross said the notion was inconceivable. But five years later, Ross said he believes the map — which separates countries of the Middle East by their individual tribes, sects and clans — may have “a lot of possibility.”
“This is not the Middle East that you knew before,” he said. “It is a Middle East that is changing.”
In Aaron David Miller’s view, there is no subject that suffers from more confusion or more controversy than the relationship between the domestic politics of the United States and its policies on Israel.
“Some of it, I would argue to you, is willful misunderstanding and advocacy,” he said. “Much of it is simply a lack of exposure and experience.”
The Chautauquan Daily 