A pre-rear summer retirement for depression for bird observation, chamber music and expanding conferences of the mind become strong in the heart of Pennsylvania
It takes a 54-page brochure to list all the courses, concerts, outdoor leisure and other improvements and entertainment of self-improvement at Pennsylvania Chautauqua in Mount Gretna this summer.
The region comes to life every June, July and August, when a population all year round by around 1,000 more in doubles and thousands more compete for major events. The picturesque front porches that define the city are in excitement with energetic chalets that punctuate their days with cooking lessons, walks in nature, yoga, teacher conferences, music and plays.
In short, it is a kind of summer camp for the kind of people who want to integrate into a conference on the Marquis de Lafayette between a bird observation march and a performance of the Bluegrass duo on a random July day.
“Some people do not last, but most of the people who understand it, love it,” said Bonnie Harvey, who has lived full -time in Mount Gretna since she and her husband, Dave, sold a bed inn and breaking in a neighboring town. “If you are bored, it’s your fault.”
As many quirks as people
Summer meetings known as chautauquas were practically a craze over a century ago. A program for Sunday teachers on Sundays along the Chautauqua Lake in New York quickly became a movement, energized by early alcohol prohibitionists, the reading circles of the reading club and a demand for scientific and literary conscience. Finally, they brought education, entertainment and a dose of religion to the communities of the Northeast and the Great Lakes, in Canada and beyond.
What they all had in common, said Jon Schmitz, an archivist and historian of the original institution of Chautauqua in Chautauqua, New York, was “the good use of leisure time”.
The Chautauquas “Tent” traveling quickly developed and, according to an account, the programs reached millions of people before the filing of the movement in 1907 and were largely extinguished as the priorities changed during the Great Depression.
Although the vast majority of chautauquas have long been over, Mont Gretna had a second wind in the 1970s with the creation of a successful art program and a series of very popular chamber music and jazz concerts. Now listed in the national register of historic places, it has been flourishing since.
Nowadays, Mount Gretna may seem to have as many quirks as people. Described as “culture Gulch” by a newspaper decades ago, the mountainous and wooded ground at around 84 miles (135 kilometers) west of Philadelphia includes some 200 private chalets, most of them maintained to look at as they did in the early 1900s. But it is not a private club – while certain cottages have been kept in families, others are bought and sold, A small percentage is available for rental under restrictive local regulations.
“When most people call and say,” I’m interested in buying a house “, one of the first things I say is,” How are you patient? ” Sometimes it can take a week, sometimes it can take years to find the right one, “said real estate agent Michelle Shay, who lives in Mount Gretna. “Some of them are old chalets built on strains of trees. You must be really aware of what you buy.”
Engaged in lifelong learning
The imposing Hall of Philosophy Building of 1909 is the place where many conferences and classes take place – and where the old Mount Gretna prison is on the second floor, with wooden bars. The chalets have picturesque names such as lazy, as you like, Uneda Rest, The Vicarage and Whole New World. The benches are dispersed, inviting conversations. There is no mail delivery in certain parts of the city, so the post office is used for double service as a kind of community center. The ice cream store, in operation since the 1890s, has lived all summer in the summer.
“The community is really brilliant, there is always something happening,” said Reed Fretz, a student who grew up in Mount Gretna and rented canoes on his Conewago lake. “What you want, you can get out of it.”
The feeling of a summer retirement is favored by restrictions on lawn mowers and other electrical equipment, and strict regulations on the cutting of trees. But with chalets of cheeks, moving away from all this does not necessarily mean moving away from each other. Parking can be an elusive challenge and intimacy. Volunteering is endemic.
There is a “concentration of pure talents” in Mount Gretna, said John Weaver, president of the Pennsylvania Chautaqua Foundation. “You have a really, really intelligent group of people who are determined to learn for life that drag in the same place.”
Just some of the events of this summer: a reconstruction of Rachel Carson during nature week. The playwrights discussing their work. Dancers giving flamenco lessons. The annual artistic show which is so popular, outside the owners, go up shuttle buses from a field at miles away. And for two hours to the end of August, the international makes music on the day of your porch.
Imbued with American history
Mount Gretna was founded along a rail line built in the 1880s by Robert Coleman, the great-grandson of an Irish immigrant who provided ammunition to the continental army during the American revolution and became an iron magnate, known as the first millionaire in Pennsylvania.
Coleman directed the construction of a picnic field along his new train line and distributed plots. One went to a group inspired by the chauta “mother” in New York. In 1892, lots were set up and the work began on the buildings and public chalets of Pennsylvania Chaattaqua.
It was an immediate success, according to the complete history of Jack Bitner in 2012 by Mount Gretna. The courses that followed during the inaugural season included biblical studies, botany, zoology and music. A department of pedagogy organized conferences on history, art, languages, literature, psychology and mathematics.
About 8,800 people attended. They would be at home in Mount Gretna today.
