Larry Klein

Alms Park - my house was a stone's throw and a half on the other side of Stanley Ave.  I played a lot of Knothole baseball at Lunken, and would often ride (or push) my bike up to Alms after the games for a breather and enjoy the views.  Later years, I used the sandboxes at Alms to practice my sand wedge shots.  The blackberry pickin' on the riverside hill just below the observatory wall was pretty good, too.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Anne - It was a different play and I will eventually remember the name of it. I think it was just that one actor.  

Larry Klein

Newsflash!

If you haven't already read it, check out last week's (03/03) edition of our '64 Chatterbox, p.1.  All of our Popularity Poll winners and runners-up are featured.  Phil Spiess and Laura Reid (who else) were Wittiest, and may still be.  Many others in the poll seem to have fullfilled their "destinies", and there are some surprises as well.  Yours truly, of course, was unceremoniously omitted.

David Buchholz

For Bruce Fette who has asked for some ballet photographs...this was taken when I was still teaching English and trying on the side to learn photography.  I've just found it, scanned it, and I like it.  Besides, we were all talking about dance, and Ann Lowe, a high school ballet student, displays the grace just in standing that I never learned from Mme Fedarova.

Dexter Roger Dixon

Playhouse in the Park sparked my interest in what it turned out to be a lifetime in theatre.  Great times.  Great shows (The Fantasticks, Arms and the Man, The Devil's Disciple, The Zoo Story, and my favorite -- Rhinoceros) and meeting good actors/directors (Tony Musante, Joseph Daly, Ty McConnell, Richard Roat, Alix Elias, Brooks Jones) I was  addicted to the Shelterhouse andlater  became fond of the larger venue -- but the intimacy of the Shelterhouse wasn't to be beaten.  Ann Shepard you are bringing back good memories.

Philip Spiess

Oh, Dexter!  You say your favorite play is Ionesco's Rhinoceros!  Many of you may remember my stage performances in our 8th-Grade Latin class project Useless; the Junior Class play Arsenic and Old Lace; the Senior Class play Mary of Scotland; as well as in Peanuts and Walnuts performances -- to say nothing of invariable impromptu performances in whatever class I happened to be in at the moment, or even "performances" in the lunchroom -- but in my sophomore year at Hanover College, I met my match in Rhinoceros!  I had the lead role -- Berenger, the nonconformist (perhaps the director cast me because he recognized my inherent nonconformist attributes, something which drove my fraternity brothers crazy, much to my glee!) -- but it was a torture to me:  because Ionesco's lines often repeat from one character to another in a given scene, I had the devil of a time memorizing my lines; in short, I nearly couldn't!  As I'm sure Johnny Marks will tell you, it is hell for an actor or actress who cannot remember his or her lines!  I had two nights of performances, and I was sweating bullets the entire time!  (It did not help that, in the decanter that, in the script's terms near the end of the play, supposedly held real booze, but at my college, which was supposedly dry -- completely different personal stories later about this -- was to hold iced tea, the stage crew had put real whiskey, which, per script, I was downing, due to the script, in massive quantities.)  Perhaps I shall post photos of this performance; perhaps not.

The long and the short of it is that Rhinoceros was such a total ghastly dramatic experience for me, that I gave up formal acting forever, and have since followed the precept set both by Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw, namely, to forever only act out my personal "Phil Spiess" persona, most of which you know, remember, see, or read in these pages.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Happy Birthday, Roger!  I forgot about Arms and the Man and The Zoo Story.  That actor, Richard Roat, was starring in a soap opera at the time.  I thought,"Wow! I've met a REAL star!".

Steven Levinson

Dexter, Phil, and Ann:  Do you recall the Playhouse in the Park's production of Eh!, starring the new kid on the block -- Sam Waterston?  What a theatre!  And, Phil, speaking of Oscar Wilde, I recently read Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, by Moises Kaufman, as a member of the Play Reading Committee of The Actors Group (TAG), a Honolulu community theatre; Cathy and I joined its board of directors this past September.  Lynn and I saw the 100th anniversary London production of An Ideal Husband in1998.  Wilde was arrested early in the original run --The Importance of Being Earnest was premiering in London at the same time -- and the shows were immediately closed.  Wilde spent the next three (?) years in prison for "indecency," and that experience destroyed his health, and he died.  I think that the UK wishes it had that decision-point returned; it would respond very differently now.  Some past injustices can't be undone.

David Buchholz

Steve, it appears that it was a very slow learning process.  You could ask Alan Turing. 

Bruce Fette

Dexter,

Since you brought up Fantastics, I enjoyed watching the Fantastics at UC, probably my senior year. It is one of many musicals where I could sing along with each and every song (even though I "cant carry a tune in a bucket" according to my 6th grade music teacher.)  But of course, Camelot was the first one I could sing end to end, and Phantom of the Opera is probably the last one I will ever be able to do end to end, or even most of.

Dave,

I love the ballerina. Thank you. She will grace my screen for at least the next 3 months.

Philip Spiess

Steve:  I am an Oscar Wilde fan bar none; we saw An Ideal Husband performed two years ago here by the Shakespeare Theater (they did The Importance of Being Earnest last year).  A good number of years ago now we saw Vincent Price do a one-man show portraying Oscar Wilde at Ford's Theater; it was wonderful:  I can now never read Wilde's poem, "The Harlot's House," without hearing it in Price's voice.  My honors undergraduate thesis (as an English major) was on the visits of three British writers to Cincinnati -- Mrs. Frances Trollope, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde.  While in Cincinnati, Oscar, as an aesthete, visited Maria Longworth Storer, founder of Rookwood Pottery (and sister of the Nicholas Longworth mentioned above), at her home in Hyde Park, and, surprising her dusting off the bric-a-brac, begged, "Do not disturb the dust, madame!  It is the bloom of time!"  Later, visiting the Cincinnati Art Academy in Eden Park (attached still to the Cincinnati Art Museum), he was horrified to find signs in the stairwells forbidding smoking:  "You might as well ask the students not to murder one another," was his rejoinder.

I have just finished reading David M. Friedman's Wilde in America:  Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity -- a good read.  And one so often hears about what a spectacular conversationalist Oscar was, but one assumes his oral presentations are now lost.  But editor Thomas Wright has recaptured and reconstructed Wilde's conversation in Table Talk Oscar Wilde, another fascinating book (you can still recapture the atmosphere of many of these conversations by dining in the Grill Room of London's Cafe Royal, just off of Piccadilly Circus, where Oscar often held forth, something my wife Kathy and I did in 1987).  And I have often been intrigued by the cultural connections that started with Wilde's play Salome, written originally in French for the actress Sarah Bernhardt, then translated into English by Wilde's male lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, and when that translation was published, it was illustrated by the quintessential Art Nouveau illustrator, Aubrey Beardsley. The whole of these works was recaptured in music in 1905 by Richard Strauss in his opera, Salome (notorious for its concluding "Dance of the Seven Veils").

Needless to say, Wilde's end was tragic, though in true Greek tragedy fashion his ego conspired to bring his fate crashing down on him.  His poem, "The Ballad of Reading Jail," says it all.  And Dave, you really hit the nail on the head when you connected his fate to that of Alan Turing's, though Turing's ego had no role in his tragedy -- but the extensions and extortions of British law certainly did.

But don't get me started on Oscar Wilde (oh, jeez, you did!).

Laura Reid (Pease)

Margery, you are correct about Mrs. Stoess, although I didn't know all the Peases then, but she was the mother of Betty Pease who was married to Burton Pease......there were five Peases in that branch of the family:  Jim (my father-in-law), Burton (son-in-law of Mrs. Stoess), Fanny (mother of Mary Jo), Jo and Mary.  They and their families all lived off of old Winton Road.....many of them later moved to Wyoming.  Mrs. Stoess was quite an accomplished pianist and good teacher.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Phil, I must remember to quote Oscar Wilde the next time someone notices the "bloom of time" in my home. 

Steven Levinson

Dave, no kidding!

Steven Levinson

Phil: Cathy and I will be in London in late October.  We'll check out the Grill Room at the Hotel Cafe Royal for sure.  Thanks for the tip.  I try to get to London every year for theater.  We've missed the last two years (Copenhagen instead in 2013, where Cathy lived in 1958-60 as an Army brat; United Airlines diddled us out of 2014 with their duplicitous newish Mileage Plus strategy), but it won't happen again.

Margery Erhardt (Schrader)

Laura - Thank you. Mrs. Stoess was a gifted teacher. I can't understand how she tolerated me but I did get to the point that she recommended me to Dorothy Payne. I remember the "Pease cul-de-sac" off of Winton Road.  I can still visualize it and Mary Jo's house. I thought it was very cool for the family to have their individual homes together in a kind of lovely family compound! Anyway, the musical talent in Cincinnati is unsurpassed!

Philip Spiess

My wife and I will be dining with Becky Payne Shockley and her husband here in Virginia (suburban Washington) on Saturday, so we'll say "Hi" for everyone.

Jeff Daum

Thought I would post a teaser from our India adventures.   We spent the day exploring and learning about the Taj Mahal.  Pictures (at least mine) can't do justice to the sheer magnitude of the Taj nor it's beauty.  Here is what greets you as you approach:

Took 22 years and 20,000 workers to complete out of marble!  The interior is considerably smaller than the outside but just as stunning (there are very thick walls, air space and then the interior walls).  It was built in the early 1600s.  Much of the Taj is of large marble pieces that were carved then put in place on the structure.

Here is a closer look at one single marble piece that was about 10 feet by 4 feet.  The area around the flowers of the primary design (white on white) is carved away leaving them having incredible detail and depth.  The colored boarder is actually semi-precious gem stones, each hand cut, shaped and then cemented into the marble which has been cut out in the exact shape of the flower.  What you can't see it that each flower is actually made up of many smaller pieces of the respective gem stone.  We actually went and watched them doing the same process using the same tools and techniques after visiting the Taj.

And by the way the Taj was built by Shah Jahan in honor of the love he had for his wife who died following childbirth.  He survived her for about another 30 years without remarrying!  True love.

Margery Erhardt (Schrader)

Phil, Yes please say hi from us to Becky and her husband - what fun you all will have!

Mary Vore (Iwamoto)

Phil - please also hello to Becky from me.  Mrs. Payne introduced me to Chopin, and I practiced those pieces constantly, and still enjoy playing them.  Sadly, I could not get the hang of Bach in high school - and would not practice those pieces.  Mrs. Payne was very kind - she gave up giving me Bach pieces to learn and stayed with Chopin, which is why I still love piano and Mrs. Payne so much!  She knew I would never be a serious pianist...

The painting below is one of my all-time favorites - entitled "Irreconcilable Differences" - from an exhibit at the 21C in Cincinnati.  The bicycle itself was also a part of the exhibit.  The 21C is the restored Metropole Hotel; there is also a 21C in Louisville - and a former bank here in Lexington is now being rennovated to house another 21C. 

Mary Vore (Iwamoto)

Post Script:  the picture above is by leonardogillesfleur #2 2005. - an Argintenian and French couple. 

Thanks also Dave for the graceful picture of the ballerina - beautiful.  And I have enjoyed your pictures of the Taj Mahal and temple Jeff.

Philip Spiess

Steve and Dave:  Vindication?  Retribution?  No, not the correct words.  Ah, recognition, acceptance, honor, belated as it may be, both to Oscar Wilde, and, by extension, to Alan Turing.  Having noted that Steve planned to dine at the Cafe Royal, Regent Street, Piccadilly, London, at my recommendation, and not having been there since 1987 but having read somewhere very recently that it had undergone a massive reorganization, changing many of its dining rooms, I thought I'd better check it out.  So I went on line to its Website and discovered . . . its self-styled "iconic" Grill Room (the one I'd mentioned, which even included Whistler among its regulars) is now called the "Oscar Wilde Bar" ("O. W. B."), and apparently only has light dining, cabaret, and God-knows-what-all!  (It also serves an elegant high tea in the afternoon.)  But the room itself has been restored to its mid-Victorian splendor, and other restaurants in the hotel apparently serve classic "Grill Room" food (roast beef, lamb and pork chops, Pimm's No. 1 Cup, etc.).  (This seems to be the fate of Victorian Grill Rooms:  the three Grill Room restaurants in the South Kensington Museum in London, now known as the Victoria and Albert Museum, famous for their decorations in tile, stained glass, ironwork, and other media by noted Victorian artists -- mostly Pre-Raphaelites -- no longer serve food, but are now part of the exhibit rooms; the public cafeteria is downstairs. To recapture the atmosphere of the Victorian Grill Room, there is no better story than the American journalist Richard Harding Davis's novella In the Fog (1901) -- and a gripping mystery story it is -- collected in his book Ransom's Folly.)

All of which brings us to the most noted riposte of the whole Oscar Wilde sodomy scandal and trial:  When an associate commented to the Dowager Duchess of Something-or-Other that, "Isn't it scandalous what the young men are doing with each other these days?", the Duchess supposedly (probably apocryphally, but regally -- almost a la Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest) replied, "Frankly, my dear, I don't care what they do, as long as they don't do it in the streets and scare the horses!"

Stephen Collett

Oh, Phil. To think of the Grill Room of London's Cafe Royal, just off of Piccadilly Circus, where Oscar often held forth, as Kathy and you did in 1987. What dish inspired you to declaim? Or which scoundrel's claim led you to dish? Fish so fresh, sole moving? The mixed grill, offally good? The clientele, family spats?

Steven Levinson

Man, when Steve Collett dives in, he really dives it!  Phil, I noticed on line that the Grill Room had become the O.W. Bar, but hoped that the fare might not have changed too much.  Oh well, we'll check it out (unfortunately, I'm out of the alcohol business for the duration), admire the surroundings, and probably eat at the nearby Brasserie Zedel (right off Picadilly Circus), which is an underground, immense, restored Victorian dance hall) and has become maybe our favorite restaurant in London.

Philip Spiess

Stephen and Steven:  Our visit to the Cafe Royal was some years after my M.A. in English defense at Indiana University, where I had been grilled offally by the faculty for all of ten minutes, after which they awarded me my degree.  I was offended by this casual approach to my studious studies, and much more so by the insouciance with which they apparently treated the vast sums of money I (excuse me, my family) had spent on my education -- and in Indiana, of all places!  Nevertheless, Kathy and I went off to celebrate in a celebrated room in a celebrated restaurant where celebrated artistes and equally celebrated scoundrels had celebrated in days gone by in a celebrated regal reign in a celebrated capital town, famed in song ("London Bridge is Falling Down") and story ("Dick Whittington's Cat").  It was all very cerebral.  Having imbibed a gin and tonic by way of cocktail, in honor of the social engravings of William Hogarth, I stuck to my perch on the fish course, and, never floundering, by way of trial ordered the roast in memory of the roasting Sir Edward Carson (the infernal Orange man of Ulster) had given poor Oscar on the witness stand.  The rest was gravy, though many still think Oscar got his just desserts at last (at any rate, it was a Wilde evening!).

But I demur:  Even though Wilde was not really an ideal husband, and his wife was a woman of no importance (though Lady Windermere was a fan), Oscar was shown the importance of being earnest by no less than the Marquis of Queensbury -- a real piece of work -- he who promulgated the "Queensbury Rules" of Boxing (still in use in the sport -- but not on Boxing Day) and, unfortunately for Oscar, the furious father of Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde's lover, who told his dad, "What a funny little man you are!" -- thereby encouraging Wilde to sue Queensbury for defamation of character.  (Challenge of the Week:  All Wilma Hutchison fans, try to diagram the preceding sentence.)  The result for Oscar was no lover's ballad, but Reading Gaol; thereafter his life, hitherto a sursum ad summum, was not de profundis, but in profundis.

So maybe you should all just avoid the Cafe Royal (see also late Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman's poem, "The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel" [1937]) and eat down in Fleet Street at the "Olde Cheshire Cheese."