Dear LGBTQ and Friends at Chautauqua:

Hello to everyone and we are so looking forward to seeing you soon at Chautauqua! This e-mail is going to everyone who signed up to be on our e-mail list for LGBTQ and Friends at Chautauqua. It details LGBTQ and Friends activities and events planned for the 2021 season.

Tuesday Brown Bag Lunches

The LGBTQ and Friends Brown Bag Lunches will be held each Tuesday at Noon on the porch of the Literary Arts Center. Catie Miller, Robert Selke and Bruce Johnson will co-facilitate. Please bring a chair. Many of the buildings at Chautauqua will not be open this summer, so we will be on the porch. The themes for 2021 are as follows:

Week 1: Circling Up Humanity for the Greater Good: The roles of conscience, compassion and cooperation
Week 2: Our Evolving Relationship with Uncertainty
Week 3: Embracing the "Other" as a Means to Fully Embrace Our Own Self
Week 4: How the LGBTQ Community Can Open Doors to a Greater Acceptance of Others
Week 5: "If You Don't Have a Sense of Humor, it's Just Not Funny!"
Week 6: "An Eye Opening Experience": Looking through the eyes of another
Week 7: Imbuing our Economy with Humanistic Qualities and Goals
Week 8: Heart, Brain and Soul: our Human Trinity
Week 9: Cultivating Flexibility to Thrive in Uncertainty

Sunday Night Meet and Greet Social Hour

We will be having our weekly Meet and Greet Social hour each Sunday at 6:30 pm on the porch of the Athenaeum Hotel. It will be on the north end of the porch this year. We are looking for hosts for all weeks this year. As host you will sponsor the cheese board that the hotel puts out (if New York State Covid rules allow that this year). It is usually $75-100 dollars depending on the size of the crowd. As host you will welcome people to the porch, assist with name tags, help those who look a little lost find a connection and direct people to our website to sign up to be on our e-mail list if they are not already on it. Please contact Karen James at karenjames@me.com if you would like to host a Meet and Greet.

Our New Status as a Stand-Alone Chautauqua Community Group

We also want to update you on some exciting news for LGBTQ and Friends at Chautauqua. As you all know, the Chautauqua Institution continues to execute on their commitment to "Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility" (IDEA). Toward that goal, Chautauqua Institution has defined our group as a volunteer community group that supports the mission of the Institution and adds to the furtherance of promoting diversity on the grounds.

Because of this, we are now considered a stand-alone "Community Group". The implications of this change are:

1.We no longer need to be sponsored by a Denominational House, but exist in Chautauqua in our own right.

2.We are now listed on the main page of the Chautauqua website under "Community." The "Community" section is towards the bottom of the main page and lists such organizations as the AAHH, the Bird, Tree and Garden Club, the Women's Club, etc. When people click on our link, they will go to a Chautauqua Institution landing page, and from there, there will be a link to our website lgbtq-chq.com

3.People can now sign up for our e-mail list directly from our website: lgbtq-chq.com

4.We will now be listed in the annual Chautauqua Community and Business Directory.

5.We will be able to interact with the Chautauquan Daily directly in terms of getting our activities and events into the daily schedule.

Even though we will no longer be "sponsored" by the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, we plan to continue to work closely with the UUF. Roger Doebke and the entire UUF have been very supportive over the last few years and we are very grateful for all they have done for us as a group. Our relationship with the UUF has truly been mutually beneficial and we see that relationship continuing.

It is such good news we will be on the main page of Chautauqua's website. We feel the visibility of an LGBTQ and Friends community on the grounds and on the website is important in reflecting the diversity of Chautauqua. Also, when members of our larger community are considering whether or not to visit Chautauqua, our presence on the website will show them that Chautauqua is an LGBTQ friendly place.

Nothing will change in terms of how we operate at Chautauqua, our activities and events, etc. The main thing is we will now be visible on the website!

We want to give a special shout-out to Shannon Rozner, (Senior VP of Community Relations and General Counsel), for helping us through the process of becoming a stand-alone Community Group at Chautauqua. So helpful!

Welcoming Amit Taneja

We want to give a special welcome to Amit Taneja, Senior VP and Chief Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) Officer. We are so delighted he is here at Chautauqua!

Informal House Parties, Pride, Sponsorship of Speakers:

We are probably not going to have informal house parties this year. We will have to wait and see how the Covid situation progresses over the course of the season.

In a similar vein, at this point we are not planning to have a large Pride potluck/celebration this year. Again Covid.

Finally, with Chautauqua on-site programming being slimmed down this year (again Covid) we did not attempt to sponsor a speaker.

All that said, we think it is going to be a very special season this year. And we so hope you will be able to join us!

Thank you and see you all soon!

LGBTQ and Friends at Chautauqua