Sunday, July 7th Program
See the 2024 program below (subject to change). Join our mailing list for updates.
Programs will unfold under three tents and in the street. The Martin Tent will feature historical performances and music, The Deaconess Tent will present informative lectures, and the Kid-Tauqua Tent will be home to programs and all-day activities for children.
Between tent performances is Vaudeville In The Street. See live music and unusual acts in the round.
12:00 Martin Tent
General George Marshall [1880-1959]
Portrayed by Bill Grant
George Catlett Marshall Jr., GCB, was an American army officer and statesman. He rose through the United States Army to become Chief of Staff under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, then served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under Truman. Bill Grant will offer a remarkable portrayal of the General in his fourth Victorian Chautauqua appearance.
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Outside of his interests in history, theater, and music, Bill has spent his professional life in banking, serving the shareholders of First United Corporation and the diversified Board of Directors of First United Bank & Trust. During that time, he worked with over four hundred associates at the Bank to serve the communities and community-oriented businesses in Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. He helped manage $1.3 billion in assets while building close ties to the communities he served.
Bill is a graduate of Southern Garrett High School. Following graduation, he pursued a collection of degrees, including a B.A. in History from West Virginia Wesleyan College and a Juris Doctorate in Law from Duquesne University School of Law. He became a certified financial planner and earned a degree from the American Bankers Association Northwestern Graduate Trust School and the ABA Stonier Graduate School of Banking. He is presently a Member Relations Consultant for the American Bankers Association.
12:00 Deaconess Tent
Cricket: America’s Most Popular Sport
Presented by Tom Melville
Few know that cricket was more popular with Americans than baseball or any other team sport up to the mid-19th century, and it continued to be played for decades after that. The game has a long history in Maryland, dating back to 1754 and as late as the 1890s. Over that time, nearly a dozen state towns and colleges had cricket clubs, the Baltimore Cricket Club being one of the country’s leading cricket organizations. After the lecture, Tom will play some short, informal cricket games as Americans did 100-250 years ago.
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Tom Melville is an American cricket player, author, reenactor, and leading authority on the history of American cricket living in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, area. For over twenty years, he has successfully recreated 19th-century American cricket games at many living history events, festivals, and reenactments in over twenty-five states and Canada.
1:30 Martin Tent
Zora Neale Hurston
Portrayed by Diane Macklin
Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on hoodoo. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote over 50 short stories, plays, and essays. Addressing contemporary issues in the black community defined her as a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Her short satires, drawing from the African-American experience and racial division, were published in anthologies such as The New Negro and Fire!! Diane Macklin will bring this dynamic woman to the Victorian Chautauqua stage for a memorable performance.
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Diane Macklin is an acclaimed storyteller who captivates audiences with her dancing hands, lyrical voice, and high energy. Her engaging style is charming and delightful. She is also a certified educator, actor, historian, and lecturer trained in conflict resolution and as a multicultural mediator. She has performed, led workshops, and conducted residencies nationally. As an American storyteller in the African “griotic” tradition, Diane inspires hope, peace, and justice through world folktales and creative personal narratives.
1:30 Deaconess Tent
Playing Card History
Presented by Lee Asher
All the way from Canada, Lee Asher will share his passion for playing cards. Through a lifetime of research and performing as a magician, Lee will reveal the unique art that adorns playing cards, how they infiltrated average households, why specific designs were popular, and how games and sleight of hand evolved with printing technologies. Once prohibited in Mountain Lake Park, playing cards were perceived as the Devil's work, leading to games of chance or used for conjuring. Lee will dispel those fears and leave his audience wanting to learn more.
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Canadian resident Lee Asher is a highly regarded close-up magician noted for originating new card tricks and hypnotic sleight-of-hand moves. He is considered an expert in playing cards and is a magic consultant for film and stage performers. As a collector, he is primarily known for his work with 52 Plus Joker, the American Playing Card Collectors Club, of which he serves as the youngest-ever President. Lee is also actively involved in publishing the club's magazine, Card Culture.
Mark Horowitz, was a semi-professional magician who learned magic as a boy from Al Flosso and Lou Tannen in New York City in the 1960s. He led to Lee's fascination with magic and inspired him to pursue a degree in hospitality and casino administration. During his years as a student at the University of Nevada/Las Vegas, Lee would often sneak into casinos like the Golden Nugget and watch magician Michael Skinner, who would later influence his magic. He had a job doing magic demonstrations at the Magic Mansion, and he later worked at Caesars Magical Empire in Caesars Palace to perform card magic under the character title "Cardius Sharkus," working with world-famous magicians, including Earl Nelson, Jeff McBride, Chappy Brazil, Joey Burton, Daryl, Michael Ammar, Jonathan Pendragon.
Lee is widely known for his passion for Jerry's Nugget playing cards and is considered instrumental in popularizing the original decks. In 2019 he spearheaded a very successful project to recreate them, with a Kickstarter project raising almost half a million dollars with the help of over 4,000 backers. In collaboration with several other magicians, he was also involved in the successful project for crowdfunding the Conjuror Community deck of playing cards, which raised $142,543 with 1694 backers.
3:00 Martin Tent
Halley’s Hot Gumbo Swingtet
Presented by Halley Shoenburg & Ensemble
HALLEY'S HOT GUMBO SWINGTET performs traditional New Orleans jazz and Swing styles from Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and Benny Goodman. This group has performed at Moulin Rouge and Great Gatsby parties, dances at Glen Echo Spanish Ballroom, and for the Potomac River Jazz Club. The band has six musicians, including vocalists, horn, and rhythm sections. Their Victorian Chautauqua performances will highlight tunes from the 1910s and 1920s which are now public domain, such as “Royal Garden Blues” and “Clarinet Marmalade,” and will showcase Halley’s original Caribbean rhythm tune, “Melting Pot Gumbo.”
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For decades, jazz artist Halley Shoenberg has been a dynamic presence in the greater Washington, DC, area. In addition to leading her exciting ensembles, she is hotly in demand performing and recording on saxophone and clarinet with other top-shelf groups in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Halley has led concerts at the African American Civil War Memorial, Black Rock Center for the Arts, Blues Alley, Jazz at Wesley, Martin Luther King Library, National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, Potomac River Jazz Club, and Strathmore. She has performed with other groups at Carlyle Club, Embassy of France, Jazz at Westminster, Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, and many Smithsonian museums, and for huge crowds of swing dancers at Glen Echo, Kennedy Center, Mobtown Ballroom, and for Potomac River Jazz Club events.
3:00 Deaconess Tent
Hemp In Garrett County
Presented by Darryl Glotfelty
Underwater cash crops, genetically licensed seeds, climate change, biodiversity, and soil erosion barely scratch the surface of the challenges facing 21st-century farmers. Owner of Meadow Mountain Hemp, Darry Glotfelty explores the future of agriculture and how family farms can navigate these challenges. Learn about high-value crops and the emerging popularity of organically grown foods that can bring value back to owning farmland.
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Besides launching a business with his wife, Haeli, Darryl invests much of his time toward social change. As a college student, Darryl spent nearly three years in Honduras, helping orphaned children and fundraising for various social programs. He spent three years serving the Peace Corps in Tanzania, where he met his wife and business partner, Haeli Gustafson. A Brief introduction into food manufacturing was as a cheesemonger for FireFly Farms, a Garrett County goat cheese manufacturer.
Darryl quickly shifted his interest toward farm management at Fresh Impact Farms in Arlington, Virginia. While there, he developed and oversaw hydroponic growth, crop management technologies, propagation, research and development for high-value crops, and building partnerships with restaurants and retailers to bring their products to market. Bringing his experience to a Washington, D.C. farm, Darryl continued to use his expertise in modern farming technologies.
By 2019, Darryl and Haeli planted Meadow Mountain Hemp's first test crop. The rigors of meeting state standards for a controlled crop encouraged the pair, who were committed to raising awareness about the benefits of hemp while dispelling fears of its relation to the plant's psychotropic sister, marijuana. Since their first harvest, Meadow Mountain Hemp has released various CBD oil products, including tinctures, topicals, edibles, pet formulas, and whole flowers.
4:30 Martin Tent
Teen Life In Mountain Lake Park
Presented by Erin Risley
Erin Risley hales from Chicago, a city that was once connected to the Mountain Chautauqua via the B&O Railroad. Through a theatrical reenactment, Erin will provide a glimpse into what life was like at the turn of the last century for young visitors to the rural resort of Mountain Lake Park.
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Description here
4:30 Deaconess Tent
The Impact of Reconstruction in the Border States and Above the Mason Dixon Line
Presented by Dr. Stephen A. Goldman
Psychiatrist Stephen A. Goldman offers a pioneering look into how Union veterans’ obligation to their country did not end when they returned home but had only begun. Instrumental to saving the Union and destroying slavery, they were bound together by a shared ideological commitment to what the Civil War had set in motion. Irrevocably changed by all they had seen, done, endured, and accomplished, Northern servicemen knew that the nation’s “unfinished work” promised to be as bitter, divisive, and perilous as its armed struggle had been.
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Stephen A. Goldman, M.D. is a psychiatrist with decades of experience in academic and clinical medicine and public health. Having treated and worked with combat veterans, he has deeply studied the Civil War, Reconstruction, race, and the impact of war itself. The only physician to serve on the Abraham Lincoln Institute Board of Directors, his thought-provoking findings have been welcomed on television, radio, podcasts, and other venues.
6:00 Martin Tent
Henry Stimson, Secretary of War for Roosevelt [1867-1950]
Portrayed by Bowie Grant
Henry Lewis Stimson was an American statesman, lawyer, and Republican Party politician. Over his long career, he emerged as a leading figure in U.S. foreign policy by serving in Republican and Democratic administrations. He served as Secretary of War (1911–1913) under President William Howard Taft, Secretary of State (1929–1933) under President Herbert Hoover, and again as Secretary of War (1940–1945) under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, overseeing American military efforts during World War II.
As Secretary of War for President Roosevelt and Truman, Stimson addressed thorny issues such as the development and use of the atomic bomb, the internment of Japanese American citizens on the US West Coast, and the integration of the US Army. All this while being the principal architect of the US Army’s fight to victory in World War II, along with General George Marshall. Because of his considered policies and discipline, Henry Stimson became known as the archetypal “Wise Man” and progenitor of a generation of proteges who influenced American foreign policy for decades after his death in 1950.
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Bowie Grant is a history enthusiast rather than a scholar, meaning he views history in broad sweeps of related events. He feels that history is a tapestry best viewed from a distance at first and only then in detail so that people, places, and events are always seen in the context of the larger panorama of coterminous events.
Many chapters ago, Bowie embarked on a journey that led him to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in chemistry, followed by an MBA. His career has been a testament to his versatility, spanning marketing and sales management, as well as product development. Currently, he enjoys a semi-retired life, managing international sales for his company remotely and teaching business courses online for Bethel University. Originally from Oakland, MD, Bowie now resides in Indianapolis, close to one of his daughters and her family, including his grandchildren. His other daughter in New Orleans and son in Los Angeles, both history enthusiasts, keep his perspective on history fresh.
Although Grant has been in stage dramas in high school, college, and community theater in events ranging from musicals to Shakespeare, this is his first time performing in a Chautauqua presentation. He’s looking forward to sharing his character, Henry Stimson, with the guests and fellow participants in this year’s Victorian Chautauqua.