Ka-Boom!

My greatest fear about spending the entire 9 week season at Chautauqua was that around about week 6 my head would explode.

It has already happened.

Here's how it went down. . . .in true Chautauqua fashion.

I have a dear friend, Nancy Mower from my school teaching days.  She has a friend, Liz Dahl Merchant who was going to go to Chautauqua for the first time on week 1 this year.   Liz chose week 1 because it was the only week that had a vacancy in the house where she wanted to stay.

Yesterday, through Facebook, I invited Liz to come to my condo so we could meet.  And she did.  To say we hit it off immediately would be an understatement.  More like "separated at birth."  Now this is always a treat.  I always know I'm going to meet new friends here.  But it keeps going.  Liz mentions that even though she ended up here on week one sort of by accident, she realized that today's speaker was going to be one of her heroes, Paul Farmer.  Had I heard of him?   Hmmmmmm. . . .no. 

So as I said yesterday, I got the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder and read as much as I could.  This morning after church I went to where the podcast for the NPR station takes place every day, and there was Paul Farmer being interviewed. He had just flown in from Rwanda.  He now divides his time between teaching at Harvard, being a doctor in Boston, serving his hospital in Haiti, and working at his new hospital in Rwanda.  Right now he considers Rwanda the place where he "lives." What a phenominal story.  One of the impressive remarks he made in this morning's lecture happened during the question and answer phase.  Someone asked him who or what had inspired him to adopt such a completely selfless lifestyle in the service of the world's poorest people.  His response was:  No one should exceptionalize nor pathologize someone's commitment to social justice.  My head exploded.

So here we have the longtime friendship from my teaching past connecting to her friend, who by "accident" decided to come here during week 1, who looked me up, who mentioned Paul Farmer's name, which got me to buy the book and then to attend a lecture I wasn't planning on attending, and my world has opened up yet again to something I did not know or understand before.   And it's only the first day of week 1!!

Weather is gorgeous after cold and rain for several days.  I took my first bike ride yesterday.  Haven't been in my car since my trip to Wegman's on Friday.   I'm loving cooking in my condo, reading on the porch, singing in choir, and just in general, being ready for whatever comes along.  If yesterday and today are precursors of the summer, it should be quite a ride.