John Har­wood was an inter­est­ing choice to have kick off the Chau­tauqua sea­son, and the week one series of dis­cus­sions on ethics and the media. His focus, in a sort of round-about way, was that polit­i­cal party polar­iza­tion both feeds, and is fed by, the drive for view­er­ship of a sensationalism-hungry media.Harwood refers to par­ties as “brands”, and says that in the polit­i­cal sphere, these brands have done noth­ing but solid­ify, cement­ing pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in a binary sys­tem. This sim­pli­fi­ca­tion is dri­ven by the notion that peo­ple, by-in-large, want to know what they’re get­ting in a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date or party.Historically, Har­wood con­tends that this cal­ci­fi­ca­tion in the party sys­tems stems from Barry Goldwater’s oppo­si­tion to the Vot­ing Rights act in 1964. The dems became the pro-civil rights party and the repub­li­cans the anti-civil rights party. From then on out, you knew what you were get­ting. If you wanted smaller gov­erne­ment, fewer ser­vices, larger civil defense, and focus on wan­ing dete­ri­o­ra­tion of social val­ues, you were a repub­li­can. If you favored increased fed­eral ser­vices and gun con­trol, eniron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, and abor­tion rights, you’re a democrat.

Does Har­wood have his real hair? Yes, he says, demon­strat­ing his answer to what may be the most impor­tant polit­i­cal ques­tion of the morning.Decline of the polit­i­cal party sys­tem? Hardly, he says. We’re just on the cusp of a new party sys­tem. “The new one hasn’t ended the par­ties; it’s changed the way peo­ple think and under­stand them, and I think they’ve actu­ally emerged stronger, because peo­ple know what they’re vot­ing for.“Do they really? There’s some data to sup­port it, at least to sup­port the asser­tion that when it counts, the pub­lic steps up to the plate. In 2000, only 105 mil­lion peo­ple voted. In 2004, that num­ber went up to 122 mil­lion, largely attrib­uted to strong sen­ti­ment one way or the other toward the Iraq war.And yet, in spite of this solid­i­fi­ca­tion in the party sys­tem as Har­wood pro­ports, the Amer­i­can pub­lic is becom­ing less and less easy to pin down on some more tra­di­tion­ally divi­sive social issues. Accord­ing to a recent study by the Pew Foun­da­tion, we the peo­ple skew right on gay mar­riage and gay adop­tion, left on embry­onic stem cell research, and straight down the mid­dle on abor­tion. We’re not mov­ing fur­ther apart, we’re mov­ing closer to cen­ter, accord­ing to the study.Har­wood is on the com­mu­nity line in this speech. I’m hard-pressed to find a scholar of media that doesn’t sup­port the asser­tion that the search for view­ers and increased cir­cu­la­tion dri­ves des­per­a­tion reportage across news out­lets; a drive to cover sen­sa­tional and sala­cious that trumps — inten­tion­ally or oth­er­wise — report­ing sto­ries to their con­clu­sion. Dare we bring up Duke LaCrosse?On the other side of the fence, polit­i­cal pun­dits are bet­ter now than ever at tak­ing con­trol of the con­ver­sa­tion, them­selves trump­ing news­gath­er­ing with talk­ing points and spin.But I’m not con­vinced Har­wood made a clear and com­pelling con­nec­tion that the media is com­plicit in the on-going bifur­ca­tion in the party sys­tem. Instead, I’d sub­mit that media is report­ing less adeptly on social issues, tak­ing the easy — and cheap — out on hard report­ing deci­sions, and the result is the appear­ance of a media role in goos­ing out­rage and sala­cious­ness for fun and profit. That the par­ties are bet­ter at this game than the media doesn’t make it news.

A bit off topic, he brought up one of the best points of his speech in the Q&A.

Q: Let’s focus on news­pa­pers for a sec­ond. One ques­tion has to do with what is the con­se­quence of the red­u­ca­tion of news­pa­pers, the reduc­tion of staff, on jour­nal­ism, and is there a rip­ple affect of reduc­ing com­mit­ment in jour­nal­ism in news­pa­pers that will then have a con­se­quence in the over­all deliv­ery in news beyond newspapers?Harwood: That’s a very smart ques­tion, and it’s absolutely true for this rea­son. The most impor­tant piece in tele­vi­sion news every­day is what’s in news­pa­pers. One of the inter­est­ing things that I’ve noti­cied going from, you know, peo­ple you keep their foot in both camps: Tele­vi­sion peo­ple don’t have a lot of self con­fi­dence about their own judgement.

This is the paper of record con­nun­drum. I fully con­tend that much of the mar­ket for broad­cast doesn’t con­sider their medium as impor­tant as tra­di­tional print news. This fuels the more sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship between print and broad­cast: news begins in the papers, is sup­ple­mented the next day in pic­tures, and is inves­ti­gated to con­clu­sion in print. The rise in cable out­lets and their 24-hour cov­er­age has had some affect on the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of this rela­tion­ship, but it’s cer­tainly there. Fewer reporters trained in print news­gath­er­ing will most cer­tainly have a neg­a­tive affect on qual­ity and quan­tity of reportage.I had the oppor­tu­nity to meet Har­wood after his talk. Turns out, he’s join­ing the online dis­cus­sion and start­ing a blog this week through his role as a polit­i­cal reporter with CNBC. He stopped short of sup­port­ing the asser­tion that the rise of cit­i­zen media fueled by David Gilmor and his ilk was lead­ing to a new middle-media. I told him I thought it was great, his jour­ney into the blo­gos­phere, and wel­comed him. Where could we find him online?He couldn’t remem­ber the URL.Tomorrow, David Westin, Pres­i­dent of ABC News.

If you’ve never heard of Chau­tauqua, join the club. It’s one of the best kept intel­lec­tual des­ti­na­tions out there. Nes­tled against Lake Chau­tauqua in west­ern NY, the annual Chau­tauqua insti­t­u­a­tion ranks as my A#1 spot for rest­ing the spirit and engag­ing the mind.

The Insti­tu­tion is bro­ken into a nine week series, each week focus­ing on a dif­fernt sub­ject area for explo­ration. I’ll be here for the first two weeks of the series. The first enti­tled “The Media & News: Applied Ethics; the sec­ond, “The Fam­ily: All of a Kind? All Dif­fer­ent?” You can read more about the pro­gram for 2007 here.

I’ve been doing my usual searches through the blo­gos­phere look­ing for oth­ers who might be blog­ging Chau­tauqua, and I’m sur­prised at the lack of traf­fic this place gen­er­ates. I’ll try and pull some of the load here myself.

It’s 4:30 here now, how­ever. There’s a light breeze gust­ing across our Vic­to­rian porch, and that screams “Wine:O’Clock”. Check back later for more!

Sophie has the croupe. Damned docs don’t know squat: not con­ta­gious my ass. I spent much of last night, mid­night to about 4:00AM try­ing to get ahold of the advice nurse in Port­land (tak­ing advan­tage of the time dif­fer­ence). The prob­lem is, I have no cell ser­vice. Kira had told me that I could find the num­ber of the house where we’re stay­ing on a slip of paper on the end table in the liv­ing room. I’m sure she was right, but there were about six num­bers on slips of paper on the end table in the liv­ing room. I started by call­ing them to see if I got a busy sig­nal, hang­ing up if not. Appar­ently, one of them was Bob and Bev’s place down the street. It rang, I didn’t wait for an answer, and hung up. 10 min­utes later, Bob shows up at the door in the pour­ing rain, think­ing some­thing ter­ri­ble was hap­pen­ing. He didn’t have our num­ber either, so he just came over at about 3:00 in the morn­ing. Kristin is a nightowl, she was up, and so was Richard (hus­band of Meg’s half sis­ter). So there we are, star­ing at the phone, wait­ing for a callback.

The doc was great when we finally talked to her. Gave us some ideas of how to take care of this. We’re doing steam­baths and Motrin to break up the con­ges­tion and help the fever, but mostly we just have to wait it out. I think it’s far worse for Kira and me than it is for Sophie. She sounds like a tractor.

Lec­ture today is Colleen Rowly, FBI whistle­blower. More sym­phony tonight. Start pack­ing tomorrow.

It stopped rain­ing for the sym­phony last night. What a refresh­ing breather that was. Now? Rain­ing again. Emma was up all night, feel­ing ter­ri­ble. This morn­ing, she’s doing a bit bet­ter, though I’m sure she’d be feel­ing bet­ter if she wasn’t cooped up in this dark, damp house all day long, pray­ing for sun.

The music last night was great. Jack­son is young and spas­tic at the cello, but her sound is strong in a com­pli­cated piece. The bats are still here, hun­dreds came out of the roof vent just as pre­dicted and flew off into the night sky on the hunt.

Today is by far the busiest day of the week for me. This morn­ing, John Bar­rett took the stage for the morn­ing lec­ture at the amphithe­ater. This is the same fel­low who spoke after “Judge­ment at Nurem­burg” on Sun­day, the world’s lead­ing spe­cial­ist on Jus­tice Robert H. Jack­son, the pre­sid­ing judge in Nurem­burg dur­ing the tri­als. Appar­ently, Jack­son is from this area, has spo­ken sev­eral times at Chau­tauqua (shar­ing the stage with FDR), and writ­ing some of the most pow­er­ful legal opin­ion in the his­tory of the bench. The talk itself was fas­ci­nat­ing, par­tic­u­larly in how Bar­rett addresses Jackson’s demo­c­ra­tic, civil rights-based legal work with inci­dences of more hard­lined author­i­tar­ian prac­tices dur­ing his work as Attor­ney Gen­eral. Jack­son was part and patial to the alien reg­is­tra­tion act, among other acts which revoke the civil lib­er­ties of cit­i­zens. How is he so dif­fer­ent from Gen­eral Rums­feld today? He’s a con­sti­tion­al­ist first, police­man sec­ond. Today, we’ve got it backward.

I attended a ses­sion at noon today with the hon­or­able ambas­sador John Doli­bois, Ambas­sador to Lux­em­bourg, retired. He’s writ­ten a book on his work as chief inquisi­tor of the 119 Nazi mil­i­tary lead­ers, judges, and politi­cians post WWII. He worked for Jus­tice Jack­son with a team of five other inves­ti­ga­tors deter­min­ing who should go to trial and who could wait. He’s the last of the five alive today, and it was quite an honor to hear him speak.

This after­noon, I walked out of a lec­ture by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf enti­tled “What’s right with Islam?” I have to admit, I was really look­ing for­ward to this one. But, seri­ously, after a morn­ing on civil lib­er­ties, a mid-day of Nazi war crimes, there had to be some­thing pretty damned engag­ing to keep me awake. This guys voice, well, it might as well have been Barry White singing lul­la­bies to us. Had I not left, I would have been asleep long before the end. That, and by half way through the ses­sion, we still had no idea what, exactly, was right with Islam. I know there are some things that are right with it, but I think this guy would have needed more time to lay it all out than I could give.

Tonight: Goldfin­ger. Another in the Chau­tauqua film series. There’s a lec­ture by David Zin­man before, screen­ing, then Q&A after. I’m really look­ing for­ward to see­ing this on the big screen with a full house audi­ence. “No, Mr. Bond. I want you to DIE!”

Still rain­ing. Still rain­ing hard. Emma is still sick. Her fever was up, the cough still heavy and hoarsy. Meg, Ted, and Det­tie raced her off to the hos­pi­tal in Mayville this morn­ing. As of the last call, she’s come down with the croupe: an infla­ma­tion of the vocal folds and con­ges­tion which sounds some­thing like the end of the world. Turns out, it’s not the end of the world, she’s still get­ting plenty of air, but she’s really, really uncom­fort­able. Accord­ing to the docs, it’s not ter­ri­bly contagious.

David Cole, pro­fes­sor, George­town Law Cen­ter, is fan­tas­tic. His talk today was on “Enemy Aliens and Amer­i­can Free­doms: Lib­erty and Secu­rity after Sep­tem­ber 11.”

After Tom Ridge, this guy is a breath of fresh air. He’s not a politi­cian, he’s a down-in-the-trenches con­sti­tu­tion­al­ist and civil lib­er­tar­ian. Where Ridge says things like “some ille­gal aliens have been held,” Cole has sta­tis­tics and litigation.

I’ve done a bunch of read­ing today. I finally fin­ished “Down and Out in the Magic King­dom.” Way to goCory Doc­torow. It was too short, but packed with some of the most orig­i­nal think­ing I’ve seen in Sci­ence Fic­tion since Hein­lin. From there, I moved into “Decep­tion Point” by Dan Brown. I’m about 500 pages into it (read­ing it on my Palm — it’s 2089 pages). So far, so pretty good.

Sym­phony tonight. This is another one of those par­tic­u­larly Chau­tauqua expe­ri­ences. Out­door, cov­ered amphithe­ater, dusk, 6,000 peo­ple lis­ten­ing to clas­si­cal music and read­ing, knit­ting, doz­ing, what­ever. But the best part is, the peo­ple they bring in are world reknown. Tonight, the pre­em­i­nent con­duc­tor Man­hem Neben­haus from Isreal is lead­ing the Chau­tauqua Sym­phony to The Mar­riage of Figaro, Hayden’s Con­certo for Vio­lin­cello and Orche­stro in D major (with guest teenage cel­list Patrice Jack­son), and Beethoven’s Sym­phony No. 2 in D major. We like to sit up in the back as the sun drops. About halfway through the con­cert, this army of bats come fly­ing out of the hol­low roof of the amphithe­ater: spectacular.

The Chau­tauqua Expe­ri­ence is a touch hob­bled by gobs of other-people’s-family. Really, we’re stay­ing in a place that’s too crowded with peo­ple we don’t really know and the rain is start­ing to make us crazy. Note to self: next time travel light.

It’s the first full day at the Insti­tu­tion and, being a Sun­day, it’s start­ing out pretty lazy. Sophie slept in with me until about 9:00 mak­ing us both miss break­fast. We thought about hit­ting the ser­mon, but we were late for that too. Yes­ter­day, I removed my watch in protest to any­thing sched­uled and I’m pay­ing the price a lit­tle bit today. Still, being a Sun­day, it’s all OK.

I signed on to see a screen­ing of “Judge­ment at Nurem­berg” this after­noon over at the Chau­tauqua Uni­plex. This is the only the­ater I can think of that still has a bal­cony — much class, indeed. I chose a seat near the back.

Two rows in front of me is a guy with a red shirt. It’s a bright, sun-shiney red shirt that screams Happy Day. He just fin­ished a con­ver­sa­tion with the Insti­tute film critic, David Zin­man, about why the reg­u­larly sched­uled ses­sions are on Wednes­day evenings; appar­ently, there are many Week­end War­riors (Red Shirt being one) who are at home on the week­days and miss the great screen­ings through­out the sea­son and would they please con­sider chang­ing the nights for this group. The film critic is tak­ing it under advise­ment. Red shirt grabbed a soda, took a sip, and smacked his lips together a few times, try­ing to taste it real, real good, then stormed out of the the­ater to the con­ces­sion stand. He returned a few min­utes later, drinkless.

So, seat near the back. I chose a seat near the back for two rea­sons. First, I like to see the whole screen with­out turn­ing my head one bit. Sec­ond, the seats are a lit­tle smaller than in most the­aters and I felt like I’d be more com­fort­able with a seat on either side of me. Now, we’re in “Judge­ment at Nurem­berg” once again. That, thrust into the Chau­tauqua crowd, and you’ve got a pow­er­ful mix of blue hairs who last saw this film the day it was released, back in 1961. There are two char­ac­ter­is­tics of this par­tic­u­lar demo­graphic: They, too, pre­fer sit­ting alone, and they are all attro­ciously far-sighted. Within about three min­utes to the start of the film, the back half of the the­ater was sardine-full of fid­get­ing and frus­trated elderly people.

And me.

I started up a con­ver­sa­tion with the fel­low next to me. I love sit­ting next to older folks in this type of set­ting because I feel like the plan­ets are allign­ing just right for me to really learn some­thing from some­one who has been there. Some­one with a story to tell. I don’t know where I turned south in this case, but this guy and his wife got into some tirade about how all the peo­ple in this movie are today, in fact, dead. Spencer Tracy: Dead. Judy Gar­land: Dead. Burt Lan­caster (whom I had mis­tak­enly said was still around, think­ing of Kirk Dou­glas – what a row): Dead. I think, based on our sci­en­tific sur­vey of the four older peo­ple around us, that of all the peo­ple in the movie, only two are still with us: William Shat­ner and Max­imil­lian Schell. Though, as the dis­cus­sion went on, Schell’s Broad­way run as Ernst Jan­nig (Lancaster’s film role) was a com­plete bomb in 2001 so he might as well be dead.

And here’s a tes­ta­ment to the pull of Chau­tauqua: the film arrived early Sat­ur­day after­noon for a 1:30 Sun­day screen­ing. As the critic was going through the order, he noticed that two reels were miss­ing. Frus­trated, he called the the­ater man­ager with whom he hunted fran­ti­cally for a replace­ment, start­ing with MGM in Cal­i­for­nia and work­ing all the way down to Block­buster Video. In the end, noth­ing could be found. They called MGM back again.

Accord­ing to the film archive rep­re­sen­ta­tive, they had noth­ing avail­able to rush them for this screen­ing — all the other reels were in use for the week­end. The only thing left in the vault for this film is the archival print, straight off the orig­i­nal, left in Hol­ly­wood only to mas­ter pro­duc­tion reprints, not a loaner. The critic came back with our story, that some peo­ple, some vet­er­ans, had planned their sum­mer around this screen­ing and the dis­cus­sion to fol­low, and what were they to say to them? That the show was to be can­celled? Surely not. This is, after all, Chau­tauqua.

MGM archives pack­aged up the archival copy and sent it via pri­vate plane and cour­rier from Los Ange­les to Buf­falo, then by car to the Insti­tute. The courier had the print in the the­ater by 1:30, super­vised the spool­ing onto the pro­jec­tor, and waited in the booth dur­ing the screen­ing, then hand car­ried the reels back to Cal­i­for­nia this after­noon. It’s 11:00 or so as I write this. I imag­ine he’s just get­ting home.

The upshot of all this, other than being a cool story, is that this after­noon, the sin­gle best copy of this spec­tac­u­lar film was screened in this lit­tle town in New York, on a big screen, with great sound, and a fanat­i­cally appre­cia­tive audi­ence. And that just doesn’t hap­pen every day. The crit­ics in the audi­ence said dur­ing the panel inter­view after­ward that in their lives of being fans and stu­dents of this film, they’d never seen it on the big screen. A real treat.

I would imag­ine one of the rea­sons the Broad­way adap­ta­tion was such a bomb was the inap­pro­pri­ate­ness of the con­tent to the times. Pre-9/11, who was think­ing about race as a polit­i­cal issue day-to-day? Now, how­ever, in this polit­i­cal cli­mate, in this day and age, I don’t think there’s a more stir­ring com­men­tary on life as a polit­i­cal being.

I learned a les­son from this film that I can hon­estly say I’d never thought about before in quite this level of clair­ity and here it is: Geno­cide starts with one act by one indi­vid­ual, one time. It doesn’t start with a peo­ple, a race, a nation, but one rogue thought that, in retropect, is noth­ing more than pro­tec­tivist. That’s the les­son of the slip­pery slope. That’s the les­son of healthy respect for national momentum.

Lancaster’s Jan­nig was writ­ten so elo­quently, so pow­er­fully. In not so grace­ful a sum­mary, he talks of his coun­try prior to the national social­ist upris­ing, prior to the Nazis. He talks of the hunger, the strug­gle for every­day Ger­mans. He says that Hitler, this funny lit­tle man, gave them for the first time a rea­son to hold their heads high and proud. He taught them of the ills of soci­ety and sold them the ideal that the loss of a few civil lib­er­ties around the fringes could save the nation as a whole. From there, it was the ideals of a peo­ple that threat­ened the nation. From there, it was noth­ing to arrive at the soul of the pure bread third reich. That by that time, by the time the edu­cated and right-thinking had turned their heads on one atroc­ity too many, it was far too late to turn back. The soul of their nation had changed, and they were in the mid­dle of it.

At one point in the film, Mar­lene Diet­rich laments to Tracey’s char­ac­ter that there was no way for her to have known what was going on in the camps, the mass exi­cu­tions, the show­ers. There was just no way she could have known. Tracey responds: “The way I gather it, no one in this coun­try knew what was going on in those camps.”

Tomor­row at 10:45, Tom Ridge is speak­ing the Chau­tauqua audi­ence. I expect fire­works, and I admit I’m in more of a space to hear it after this film. As the lead pros­e­cu­tor says of his coun­try: “You know some­thing about us Amer­i­cans: We’re not cut out to be occu­piers. We’re new at it and we’re not good at it.” In the dis­cus­sion fol­low­ing the film, an audi­ence mem­ber brought up the point that fol­low­ing WWII, the US arguably occu­pied Ger­many and then Japan, all but rebuild­ing fallen empires. Again, arguably for good results. Was it our busi­ness? Was it our busi­ness to be there in the first place, as a show of Amer­i­can might? Have we learned any­thing from that his­tory that will teach us new lessons for Afgan­istan and Iraq? Prob­a­bly not. The end and the means to reach it are far to hand­some of bed-fellows.

Back at the house, Emma’s cut­ting a molar. Her lit­tle head is smok­ing hot to the touch and her poor chest is con­gested. Cut­ting teeth. What mis­er­able tor­ture for the lit­tle peo­ple. The house is now full. There are ten of us under one roof, includ­ing two babies and a nine-year-old. The quar­ters are get­ting very, very cramped.

I’m sit­ting on the plane now. We’re on the first leg of our dualie through Min­neapo­lis (Small City, I don’t think I like it much) and finally into Buf­falo, New York. Appar­ently, the in-laws have arranged for a lim­ou­sine to pick us up at the air­port there and haul us and our dog-and-pony show of children’s gear into our ter­mi­nal des­ti­na­tion of Chau­tauqua, New York and the Chau­tauqua Insti­tu­tion.

I am far more stressed about fly­ing than either Kira or Sophie. Mostly, both of them really need to be fed and rested and they’re fine. They strap on the lug­gage and smile all the way through secu­rity. They sleep on the flights. They are just gen­er­ally well-tempered people.

For the record, that makes me nuts.

I’m very much not a well-tempered pas­sen­ger. You should see what we’re fly­ing with this time around: Sophie has by far the largest suit­case, packed to the gills with her high­chair, a full bag of dia­pers and, I kid you not, all the clothes in her wardrobe; Kira has the mid­dle bag, her roller that’s packed almost as full; I have the small­est, my new Swiss Army duf­fle that forces me to pack light. Trav­el­ing alone, I could go for at least 10 days with noth­ing but that bag and my iPod, Palm, and Palm Key­board. But no, now I have to fac­tor in all the carry-ons. We’ve got Sophie’s dia­per bag, now so full of extra dia­pers, clothes, toys, and my stow-away elec­tron­ics that it weighs almost as much as her suit­case; we’ve got a cooler, a great, big shoul­der cooler full of chopped broc­coli, yogurt, bananas, cereal, water, you name it; and the full on back­pack for Sophie, which comes in it’s own handy car­ry­ing case which makes for another thing to shoul­der through secu­rity. Too it’s credit, it makes mov­ing through the air­port a breeze: Sophie loves rid­ing high.

Planes, Trains, Automobiles

As happy as they are, the trip has started out on the rougher side of fine. Sophie was a full on grump when I woke her at 6:00 this morn­ing. As was I, so it was some­thing of a show­down. We got our six bags and car seat unloaded at the air­port, then I got back in the car to drop it at the long-term lot. There I am, stand­ing in bus vestibule “H,” when my cell rings. It’s Kira.

“So, did you PUT and dia­per on her this morning?”

“Did I put… of COURSE I put a dia­per on her this morning!”

“Well, she exploded. Pee. Poop. All of it. Pour­ing all over my sweat­shirt, right here in line.”

Still not sure what hap­pened there. When I caught up with them back in the ter­mi­nal, she had it all cleaned up, less a day’s change of clothes for Sophie and a sweat­shirt for her, but clean nonethe­less. Just lucky, I guess.

We sat next to the evil Min­erva Mayflower on the first flight. Old Mean Woman With Grudge. This is the first time I’ve flown with Soph and sat next to some­one who was gen­uinely, actively dis­in­ter­ested in the baby. Turns out, from the 30-scant sec­onds of talk­ing we did, that she’s a base­ball freak, head­ing to Wrigley Field to kick off a tour for the next 10 days. Crazy old base­ball lady. “Bas-e-ball has been berry, berry, good to me.”

The sec­ond flight is so far much less daunt­ing than the first. Sophie’s sleep­ing on Kira now. We met up with the Strands in Min­neapo­lis (Small City), and they’re sit­ting right behind us. A word to the wise: never sit in front of Ted Strand on a plane. He won’t stop touch­ing me.

And then, Chau­tauqua. I’ve had the hard­est time over the last few days try­ing to explain to peo­ple exactly what we’re doing in Chau­tauqua. At first, I would go into the whole spiel about the lec­tures and the music and the art and the archi­tec­ture, but that tends to go over folks’ heads. I’ve nar­rowed it down to this: Chau­tauqua, dur­ing the sum­mer, is the ulti­mate gated com­mu­nity. ‘Nuf said.

So, I’m here for the next eight days. I’ve got my Palm and key­board and will do my best to keep up entries as I move through the week. The theme this week is Secu­rity and Jus­tice, head­lined by Sec­re­tary Tom Ridge Mon­day morn­ing, fol­lowed by a hand­ful of fas­ci­nat­ing experts through­out the rest of the week. In the mean­time, we’ll get set­tled, and I’ll check in a bit later.