My Excellent European Adventure 60th Anniversary - Chapter 4: Oxford, Stratford, and . . . Birmingham!

 

After Stonehenge, we traveled up to Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon – two towns with obvious attractions for visitors from the Colonies.  My family had a friend who had been a Rhodes Scholar at Lincoln College in Oxford, which also has a connection to early Methodism, so naturally, being Methodist kids on a Methodist-sponsored trip, we had to stop in there.

Lincoln College, Turl Street, Oxford

The college was founded in 1427 by Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, to nurture “true students of theology who would defend the mysteries of Scripture against those ignorant laymen who profaned with swinish snouts its most holy pearls.”  Those “ignorant laymen” were the Lollards, non-academic followers of John Wycliffe (1328-1384), an Oxford professor who was dismissed from his post in 1381 for heresy and is now considered a precursor to the English Reformation a hundred years later.

Like all the Oxford colleges, Lincoln has some distinguished alumni (besides our Rhodes Scholar friend) including Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss), and David Cornwell (aka John le Carré).  Three hundred years after its founding, Lincoln became the cradle of Methodism when John Wesley, a fellow there from 1726, held religious meetings of his “Holy Club” with his brother Charles.  The rest of the university fellows called them “Bible moths.”  A portrait of Wesley hangs in the Hall, and a bust overlooks the front quad.

L to R: Kay, Hank, Susan, Bill in Lincoln College Front Quad

Lincoln College Front Quad today

Up the road from Oxford, we made our pilgrimage to Stratford-upon-Avon to visit Shakespeare’s birthplace.  It's part of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, an independent charity that cares for Shakespeare heritage sites in and around Stratford.

1966

The house was built in 1530; Shakespeare was born there in 1564.  Over the centuries, however, the house fell into disrepair, and in 1846 was put up for sale.  Not surprisingly, in classic American huckster tradition, P.T. Barnum proposed to buy the structure and ship it “brick by brick” to the United States.  In response, the locals (including celebrities like Charles Dickens) formed a committee and raised the money to purchase the building and restore it to its 16th century state.

Shakespeare's birthplace today

We also peeked into the nearby Royal Shakespeare Theatre (it was "dark"), and walked around the Shakespeare Monument, a bronze and stone installation featuring a seated statue of Shakespeare in the center, flanked on four corners with smaller statues of iconic characters from Shakespeare's plays (Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Prince Hal, and Falstaff).

Falstaff cast a bemused eye on Tom, the husband of our chaperone couple.

The Monument was designed and constructed by Lord Ronald Gower, who, as a gay nobleman in Victorian England, led a checkered life.  Of course, in 1966 we were not aware of his existence or history.  At the monument’s unveiling in 1888, Oscar Wilde read a poem dedicated to the monument written by the wife of the headmaster of the local grammar school.  What a hoot that must have been!  You can read more about Lord Gower here.

From Stratford we motored on to Birmingham.  Birmingham??  Why Birmingham?

Most nights on our trip we stayed in youth hostels, but in Birmingham we stayed overnight as guests in the home of Ivor and Bobs Whitehead.  This visit was on the "must see" list of our chaperones, Tom and Kay, because Ivor and Tom were both dentists and had become friends when they met in oral surgery residency in Birmingham, Alabama (who knew?!).

Now at the Birmingham (U.K.) Dental Hospital -- a teaching hospital of the University of Birmingham’s School of Dentistry -- there’s an Ivor Whitehead Prize awarded annually to an outstanding oral and maxillofacial surgery student.

Not to be outdone, Ivor’s wife, Bobs, was a top-ranked squash player, competing at the British Open (considered the premier world championship of squash) for nearly two decades, including being the sixth seed in the 1963 Open.

Ivor and Bobs Whitehead with their son, Mark.

Three significant things happened to our group in Birmingham. 

    1.  At dinner at the Whiteheads’ that evening, Bobs served Baked Alaska for dessert – a culinary first for me; it was delicious!

    2.  Overnight our minivan, parked in the Whiteheads' driveway, was broken into, and various items were stolen, including my sport coat.  Fortunately, our valuables were safe in the house.  (We had another mishap with the minivan later in the trip, which I will recount in a future post.)

    3.  Since we were in England during the Swinging Sixties, one of  the girls in our group, Judy, worked up the courage to buy a miniskirt, hemmed about an inch above the knee.  She was quite self-conscious about it, but she wore it well.

My Excellent European Adventure 60th Anniversary - Chapter 3: Stonehenge

 

View from SSE looking NNW

                                                     " . . . old stones that cannot be deciphered."

                                                                                   -- T.S. Eliot, "East Coker," Four Quartets

After a few days in London, our Morris mini-van was delivered to the German YMCA.  We loaded up and set out for other iconic destinations in England.  Tom (the husband of our chaperone couple) was our driver, an American in a right-hand drive van driving on the left-hand side of the road.  There's no need to keep you in suspense:  Tom did a terrific job; we did not have any accidents . . . although we did have a few mishaps with the vehicle that I'll describe in future posts.

First stop was Stonehenge, one of the most famous landmarks in the UK and a place on everyone's "must see" list.  The structure is prehistoric, constructed in several phases over 1,500 years beginning about 3100 BCE and continuing until about 1600 BCE.  For reference, the great pyramids in Egypt were constructed between 2700 and 1500 BCE.

The earliest portion of the site consisted of a circular embankment and ditch with a ring of 56 chalk pits, called Aubrey holes, named after the late 17th century antiquarian John Aubrey, who noticed some of the depressions on a visit in 1666.  The Aubrey holes are the white dots in the diagram below.

Drawing by Adamsan, after Cleary et al.

Here's what they look like from ground level:

Despite decades of argument and analysis, their purpose is still unknown.  However, 25 of the holes contain cremated human remains dating from about 3000 BCE, which makes Stonehenge the earliest known cremation cemetery in the British Isles.  And there is some evidence that the holes originally held small pillars (called bluestones, quarried 140 miles away) as markers for the cremated remains.

Image from NOVA "Ghosts of Stonehenge" (Season 44, Episode 14)

At some point, the bluestone grave markers were removed and the holes were filled in.  Beginning around 2600 BCE, and for the next 200 years, the huge vertical megaliths (called sarcens) and capstone lintels familiar to us were brought to the site -- some weighing as much as 50 tons -- and were rearranged multiple times during that period.  

There is also evidence that between 2600 BCE and 2400 BCE as many as 4,000 people may have gathered at the site for mid-winter and mid-summer celebrations, as the megaliths of the stone circle are clearly oriented for the summer solstice sunrise and winter solstice sunset.

Northeast side, looking southwest (direction of winter solstice sunset)

As I recall our visit (though my memory may be faulty), in 1966 there was no visitor center, no entrance fee, no explanatory display panels . . . just a small parking area near the site, from which we could walk anywhere we wanted.

These days, there's a very modern visitor center about a mile from the site, with a shuttle running between them.  Entry fee now for a family of five (2 adults, 3 kids) is roughly $90.  And except for special occasions (like the summer solstice) and private parties, you can't go into the stone circle.  (See walkways in the image below.)

Stonehenge today

However, as you can see from my photos above and below, when we were there, you could walk within the stone circle.  There were probably 50 - 60 people (including a group of schoolboys), and we were free to touch and climb on the fallen stones.

Four years later, when my wife (before we were married) visited Stonehenge with a group from her college, people were still walking in the stone ring and climbing on the fallen sarcens.

In 1978 UNESCO began designating World Heritage sites; Stonehenge was named a World Heritage site in 1986. (What took so long?)  

If you are interested in learning more about Stonehenge, there are thousands of articles, scientific papers, television documentaries, and more for your consideration.  Here's a link to a NOVA program on YouTube about Stonehenge and the evidence for clues about the people who built it.

Needless to say, for us Stonehenge -- far, far older than any of the monuments and buildings in London -- was an awe-inspiring place.

Lightning !

 

I got some great lightning pictures last night from about 10:15p to 10:30p.  Enjoy the beauty of this world!

My Excellent European Adventure 60th Anniversary - Chapter 2: A Brief Idiosyncratic Tour of London

 

L to R: Bill, Tom, Judy, Chris, Kay, Hank, Susan

We were in London for two or three days.  I could show you pictures of me or our group in front of all the obligatory tourist attractions we visited – Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard; Westminster Abbey; Regents and Hyde Parks; St. Paul’s Cathedral; Big Ben; Trafalgar Square; the Tower of London; the British Museum; the National Gallery; etc. – but you’ve seen those places a hundred times or more.

OK, just one of those photos for the record:

L to R: me, Kay, Hank, Bill, Judy, Susan, Annie

Now with that out of the way, I want to take you to three places on a less typical tour of London.  It includes one famous London address that was surprisingly accessible, plus a couple of places you've probably never seen or heard of, but with unique histories and more interest to me on a personal level.

First up on this tour is the famous place:  10 Downing Street.

I include this place because we were able to walk right off Whitehall into the narrow, dead-end street and stand maybe 20 feet away from the front door.  As you can see, there were no barricades, no metal detectors, no iron fences, no police in tactical gear . . . just one Bobby off to the side chatting with a civilian on a bicycle.  Things were different sixty years ago.

The next stop on this unconventional tour is John Wesley’s Chapel.  Being Methodists, we thought it would be appropriate to see an early location where our denomination began.  The building’s foundation stone was laid in April, 1777, and the chapel formally opened on November 1, 1778.  

When the chapel was built, Wesley was 74 years old and Methodism, which by most accounts originated in 1739, was becoming an established denomination.  The building is a classic example of Georgian architecture, but modest in size and decoration – it’s not a cathedral, it’s a simple and elegant space for worship and community.  It was a solemn moment for all of us.

Finally, the least famous place on this tour is one that only I had on my “must see” list and only I visited:  Hawkes & Co. at No. 1 Savile Row – a venerable bespoke men’s tailor firm founded in 1771 catering to numerous explorers, the British Army, the Royal Navy, and the British royal family.

Hawkes & Co. had already been in business for over 140 years when it purchased this building in 1912.  The building was originally built in 1732 as a townhouse for the Fairfax family.   Ownership eventually passed to the Royal Geographic Society in 1871, from which Hawkes purchased the building 41 years later.  

To give you a sense of how embedded Hawkes & Co. was in the British culture, the firm was David Livingstone’s outfitter when Stanley "found" him in Africa in 1871.  When Livingstone died in what is now Zambia in 1873, his remains (minus his heart which was buried in the village where he died) were returned from Africa to London in 1874, and he laid in state at the Geographic Society building (at No. 1) before burial at Westminster Abbey.  

You’re probably wondering why Hawkes & Co. was on my list.  Perhaps it was due to Sean Connery’s patronage of the firm in the early 60s when, as James Bond, he was the epitome of British ruling class style.  Savile Row was the epicenter of bespoke men’s wear in the early 20th century, and Hawkes was the preeminent firm in that universe, both in terms of location (at No. 1) and reputation.  So a visit to Hawkes was, for me, an opportunity to step into and experience the rarified air of a world far above my station in life, even if only for a few minutes.  

In 8th and 9th grade I had worked after school as an errand boy for a men’s store in Lawton, but Hawkes occupied a much higher place in the celestial hierarchy of men's clothing shops, so it was scary and exhilarating to walk through that door.  Nevertheless, as unusual a customer as I was, I was treated courteously by the staff.  I told them where I was from, and why I was there.  As evidence of my visit, I bought a necktie – a souvenir, yes, and the only item I could afford to buy to justify my presence there, but a souvenir with an impeccable pedigree.

BTW, two years after my visit, the Beatles’ Apple Corps music company moved into No. 3 Savile Row, the building next door to Hawkes & Co.  And on January 30, 1969, the Beatles played their last public concert on the roof of No. 3.  (I’ll share more about the off-stage presence of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Mamas & Papas on this trip in later chapters.)

My Excellent European Adventure 60th Anniversary - Chapter 1: Welcome to London

 

                            All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

                                                                                           -- Martin Buber

 

Groggy from our redeye flight across the Atlantic, we collected our luggage and found our hired transport – four classic London cabs (for 17 people).  Our gregarious driver introduced himself as Sir Roger DeCoverley, clad in a morning suit complete with top hat, tails, and striped pants.  It seemed weird for a cab driver, but, hey, we were in merry old England now, so . . . whatever!

Five years later in graduate school I learned that Sir Roger de Coverley was a fictional character in early 18th century British literature (in Addison and Steele’s The Spectator, 1711).  So our driver was actually in character.  How naïve we were – rubes from the Colonies! – but it was all in good fun, and he was delightful, with running commentary all the way into town.

We arrived at our first lodgings, the German YMCA Youth Hostel near Paddington Station -- now called the Kensington Gardens Hostel and still owned by the German YMCA organization. The exterior hasn't changed much in 60 years.

1966

2026

As we disembarked from our cabs, we heard a commotion a few yards down the narrow street and saw a Porsche engulfed in flames.  Yikes!  We never learned what caused the fire, but it was quickly extinguished somehow.  Welcome to London.

We ate lunch somewhere nearby, and everyone agreed we should all take a nap and reassemble later in the afternoon.  I don’t know about others, but I was running on adrenaline and too excited to sleep.  I don’t remember where or what we ate for dinner, but we took the Tube from Paddington in to Picadilly Circus and gawked at the lights.

A Word (or more) About Our Group

The total number of travelers from Oklahoma on this trip was 17, but once in Europe we traveled as two separate groups:  one group of 9 (ours), one group of 8 (the other), including a husband-and-wife couple leading each group and chaperoning hormone-infused teenagers.

Our group leaders – Tom and Kay – were from Oklahoma City.  Tom was an oral surgeon, Kay a housewife.  They had three children.  (I don’t know who took care of the kids while we were on this trip.)

Our group had three girls and four boys.  I think we were all rising high school seniors.  The girls were Judy (from McAlester), Susan (from Ada), and Annie (from . . . I don’t remember; maybe Ponca City or Enid).  The boys were me and my friend Bill (from Lawton) and Hank and Chris (from Chickasha).  In the photo below, from left to right . . .

Front Row: Chris, Judy, Annie, Susan, Hank

Back Row: Tom, me, Bill

 A Word (or more) About Trip Logistics

It’s worth noting that our trip was not part of a tour with a commercial tour operator.  The trip was organized under the auspices of the Oklahoma Methodist Campers Association – a department of the United Methodist Church in Oklahoma that managed all of the Church’s overnight camps in the state — and the Association took care of all the travel, lodging, and transportation arrangements for our trip.  (Perhaps it’s obvious from the foregoing, but all of us – students and chaperones/sponsors – were Methodists.)

Beyond the logistics, however, we travelers met as a group twice before the trip, beginning in February, to plan out every day of the trip between arriving and departing from London.  Arthur Frommer’s Europe on $5 a Day was our bible, but in the months before our trip we each did our own research and developed our own “must see” or “must do” lists, which we then presented and discussed in our group meetings.  Out of those discussions came a consensus itinerary that we submitted to the Campers Association, which then arranged the logistics.

In London we moved around the city on foot via the Tube, and for the rest of the trip in England and on the Continent we traveled in a Morris mini-van with right-hand drive – challenging for the driver (Tom) in both territories!

L to R: Chris, Judy, Hank, Annie, Susan, Tom

My Excellent European Adventure 60th Anniversary - Preface

Sixty years ago, on the morning of July 4, 1966, I woke up after a restless (and mostly sleepless) night in a coach seat on the Santa Fe Chief enroute to Chicago from Oklahoma City, the first leg of one of the greatest adventures of my life.

I was on that train with a dozen other Oklahoma high school students heading to Europe for a six-week itinerary that we had planned ourselves, accompanied by two adult couples who served as group leaders and chaperones.  From Chicago we took a Canadian National Railway train to Montreal, then flew to London on a BOAC VC-10 -- my first flight on a jet, and my first trip off the North American continent.  I was 16.

After arriving in London, we split into two groups and followed slightly different itineraries until returning to London, then flew back together to Montreal and returned by train to Oklahoma City.

Over the next six weeks, I’ll post some photos and stories from the trip.  For today, here’s our group of seven kids and the husband of the adult couple who shepherded us on the trip.  (His wife took this photo.)  I’m the tall guy with glasses in the back.  And for comparison, I'm including a photo of me 58 years later at the same OKC railroad station from which we departed.

All aboard!

A Tale of Two Aidas

In the 12 years I have been photographing dress rehearsals for Opera Southwest (29 of them so far), there's never been a repeat production . . . until last February, when OSW presented a new production of Verdi's Aida.

The first Aida I photographed for OSW was in October 2015.  You can read my blog post about it (with images) here.  This time, however, I thought it might be fun/interesting to compare some aspects of the two productions.  A lot of things changed in the intervening years -- many obvious (like the set, the costumes, and the cast), some not so obvious (e.g., the stage direction and lighting choices).

Let's start with the set.  Both productions used a combination of 3-dimensional elements in front of a rear-screen projection of background elements.  But clearly the technology and graphics capabilities have progressed significantly in the ensuing decade:

2015

2026

Here's what the actual physical elements of the 2026 set look like without the lighting and rear-screen projection:

The topography of the sets differs significantly, too, which makes the use of the stage, lighting, and the spatial relationships of the characters different.

2015

2026

2015

2026

Then, of course, the casts are different.

Aida 2015

Shana Blake Hill

Aida 2026

Michelle Johnson

Amneris 2015

Kirstin Chávez

Amneris 2026

Olivia Vote

Radames 2015

Clay Hilley

Radames 2026

Dane Suarez

Amonasro 2015

Tim Mix

Amonasro 2026

Matthew Hanscom

A side note:  Amonasro is an Ethiopian prisoner of war that Radames has brought back to Egypt.  He's also the king of the Ethiopians, and the father of Aida, but at this point in the opera, his identity is not known to any of the Egyptians (except Aida).  So, to me, his costume in 2015 seems entirely wrong for an incognito king/prisoner, whereas his costume in 2026 makes sense.

Although the story, relationships, and libretto are the same, different directors will inevitably make different decisions about actions, gestures, movements of the singers, lighting, and other elements that bring the story to life.  Here are two examples.

In Act IV, Ramades is put on trial for treason.  The trial takes place offstage, but the priests who will judge him file past Amneris as they enter and return from the court.  In both productions, Amneris watches them file in, but from different vantage points and with different lighting:

2015

2026

After the trial, where Radames offers no defense and is convicted, the priests file out, again past Amneris.

In the 2015 production, Amneris physically confronts the priests, begging them for mercy . . .

In the 2026 production, Amneris confronts the High Priest, at first from a distance . . .

. . . then she comes closer, grabs the High Priest's knife . . .

. . . and threatens him with it . . .

. . . but to no avail:

Another example:  at the end of the opera, Radames and Aida are entombed and left to die; Amneris, above the tomb, mourns her loss.  Notice not only the difference in poses, but also difference in the lighting.

2015

2026

At the same time, of course, many actions of the singers are motivated (if not actually dictated) by the words of the libretto, and look very similar in the two productions.  Here are a couple of examples.

Amneris arguing with Aida:

2015

2026

Amonasro throws Aida to the ground while arguing (I didn't get a good shot either time, because it happened so fast):

2015

2016

Overall, the 2026 production's staging and lighting were more photography-friendly.  Here are some additional images from that production.

If you would like to see these images (and many more) in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!