Michele Smith: Life in Dayton

There was something for all when more than 60 volunteers from the New Old Time Chautauqua came to Columbia County last week.

From the community potluck at the Lewis and Clark Trail State Park on Monday night, to the parade and the workshops in the Dayton city park on Tuesday, and to the vaudeville-style program in the Dayton High School auditorium on Tuesday night, the community was engaged in a way it has not been since the last Chautauqua came to Dayton in 1929.

On Tuesday, during the day, I attended a lecture on one Japanese-American family's experience during World War II, when the family was rounded up and sent to relocation centers for the duration of the war.

NOTC founder Joanne Murayama read to us from her mother, Michi's, journal about the awful conditions experienced by the Murayama family, first at the Santa Anita racetrack in California, where they were temporarily housed in horse stables, and at the permanent center at Jerome, Ark. The center in Arkansas was constructed on swampland, and came with the attendant swamp creatures, like poisonous snakes, and disease, such as tuberculosis, she said.

Next I attended a women's empowerment workshop in the park and learned how to care for myself via Ayurveda medicine, and I also learned the Chakra empowerment stomp, which was not a pretty sight.

I, for one, had the most fun I have had since arriving in Dayton in 2012. I hope we don't have to go another eighty-seven years before experiencing another Chautauqua. It was truly an event to remember!

Oh, be sure to see the display about Dayton's history with Chautauqua at the Dayton Historical Museum at the Depot, which will last until November.

This summer, the New Old Time Chautauqua, in conjunction with the Washington State Park and Recreation Commission, is travelling throughout the state bringing cultural enrichment to state parks and nearby communities.