<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.okchautauqua.org/images/scholars-image.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 580px; height: 210px;" src="http://www.okchautauqua.org/images/scholars-image.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"   style="  ;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:14px;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span"  style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span"  style="font-size:medium;">I love history. It was always one of my favorite classes in school - okay, that was partially because the boys were cute and threw paper airplanes at me and I thought it meant they liked me, and partially because I really dug the smell of my new textbook, but mostly, it was because I loved history itself.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"  style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span"  style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"  style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span"  style="font-size:medium;">If I weren't <a href="http://www.stlbrewfest.com/">headed out of town tomorrow</a> with a million things to do to prepare tonight (like forcing myself to eat dinner even though at the idea of flying for the first time since Clinton's second inauguration I want to puke), I would be all over a living history event going down at <a href="http://www.osutulsa.okstate.edu/">OSU-Tulsa</a> this week, starting today. It's the one and only <a href="http://www.okchautauqua.org/">Oklahoma Chautauqua</a>, a series presented each June that offers performances, workshops, school outreach and opportunities to interact with scholars who take on characters of famous people of the past, all in one five-day-long mashup. And guess what? The whole thing is free and open to the public. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"  style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"   style=" ;font-family:georgia;font-size:16px;">To mark the bicentennial of the birth of our 16th president, this year's theme is Lincoln's Legacy of Equality: Voices on the Fringe. The players are Dr. Doug Mishler as Jefferson Davis; Charles Pace as Frederick Douglas; Ilene Evans as Harriet Tubman; Dr. Carroll Peterson as Walt Whitman; and Dr. Michael Hughes as John Ross. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"  style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"  style="font-family:georgia;">Workshops are held today until about 7. At 7:25, the Chautauqua scholars will take the stage. Tonight stars Evans as Tubman, an act not to be missed. <a href="http://www.okchautauqua.org/images/Chautauqua_brochure_09_sm.pdf">See the rest of the Chautauqua schedule here</a>.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"  style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"  style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span"  style="font-size:medium;">Thanks to the <a href="http://www.ahct.org/">Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa</a> and the <a href="http://www.okhumanitiescouncil.org/">Oklahoma Humanities Council</a> for this event that is, as you so aptly put it on <a href="http://www.okchautauqua.org/">the Chautauqua Web site</a>, "historical tourism at its finest."</span></span></div></span>