At the Pennsylvania Chautauqua, the good use of leisure time is an art form

It takes a 54-page pamphlet to list all the classes, concerts, outdoor recreation and other self-improvement and entertainment going on at the Pennsylvania Chautauqua in Mount Gretna this summer.

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The area springs to life every June, July and August, when a year-round population of about 1,000 more than doubles and thousands more crowd in for big events. The picturesque front porches that define the town are abuzz with energetic cottagers who punctuate their days with cooking lessons, nature walks, yoga, professorial lectures, music and plays.

In short, it’s kind of a summer camp for the sort of people who want to fit in a lecture on the Marquis de Lafayette between a bird watching walk and a bluegrass duo performance on a random July day.

"Some people don't 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-and-breakfast inn in a nearby town. "If you're bored, it's your own fault."

Summertime get-togethers known as Chautauquas were practically a craze more than a century ago. A program for Christian Sunday school teachers along Lake Chautauqua in New York soon became a movement, energized by early alcohol prohibitionists, book club reading circles and a demand for scientific and literary awareness. Eventually they brought education, entertainment and a dose of religion to communities across the Northeast and Great Lakes, into Canada and beyond.

What they all had in common, said Jon Schmitz, an archivist and historian at the original Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, was "the good use of leisure time."