On Thursday, April 22, 1999, we will celebrate William Shakespeare's 435th birthday with a program dedicated to a reading of the Bard. We are calling the evening, "Under the Greenwood Tree." Sam King and Shad Willingham & Co., young actors in New York from California, will recreate a Shakespearean first rehearsal.

This program will be held at The English Speaking Union, 16 East 69th Street, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Refreshments will be served. The admission charge for members and their guests is $15, payable at the door. Reservations must be made in advance to Diane C. Dunne.

A distinguished panel will recall the life and work of James Laughlin. Speakers will include the poet Robert Creeley; literary agent Julian Bach who was a classmate of Laughlin at Choate and Harvard; book editor Robert Giroux of Farrar, Strauss & Giroux; Griselda Ohannessian, President and Publisher of New Directions; and George Plimpton, writer and Paris Review editor. Brief film footage of James Laughlin will be shown as well as selections from his correspondence, which is currently archived at the Houghton Library at Harvard. Daniel Tosteson, Dean Emeritus of the Harvard Medical School and currently President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, will preside.

James Laughlin founded New Directions while still an undergraduate at Harvard. He almost single-handedly introduced literary modernism in the U.S., publishing early works of Bertolt Brecht, Jean Cocteau, Vladimir Nabokov, Delmore Schwartz and Dylan Thomas, among others. Laughlin helped contribute to the revival of interest in E.M. Forster and Franz Kafka. He reprinted important works by Herman Hesse, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein.

Laughlin also wrote many books of poetry, and his correspondence with William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, Ezra Pound, Delmore Schwartz, Henry Miller, and Thomas Merton, to name a few, has been published.

There will be no charge for the program. Gentlemen's attire is jacket and tie. The program will be held in Harvard Hall on the first floor of The Harvard Club at 27 West 44th Street. A cash bar will be available at 6:00 p.m. The program will begin at 7:00 p.m. Reservations must be made in advance by calling Diane C. Dunne.

H. Lee Scott, Jr., Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. will discuss the changing face of American retailing. This event is sponsored by the Harvard Business School Club of Greater New York, which has invited OAANY members to attend.

Wal-Mart, which has 780,000 associates in the United States, 115,000 associates internationally, 2,399 Wal-Mart Stores and 451 SAM'S Clubs, has $117.9 billion in sales. Wal-Mart has revolutionized shopping for the 90 million customers who visit its stores each week. Mr. Scott has played an integral role in the operations and merchandising that made this revolution possible.

When he joined Wal-Mart in 1979, Mr. Scott assumed responsibility for the company's transportation and distribution activities. In 1993 he was promoted to Executive Vice President for Logistics and became a member of Wal-Mart's executive committee. Mr. Scott was instrumental in developing Wal-Mart's distribution network, one of the most technologically advanced and efficient in the world. Earlier this year, Mr. Scott was named Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer.

This event will be held at the Harvard Club, 27 West 44th Street. A reception will begin at 6:00 p.m. The program will start at 7:00 p.m. The cost for this event is $20 for OAANY members. Reservations must be made in advance with a credit card by calling the Harvard Business School Club.

James Thurber is considered by many to be the greatest American humorist since Mark Twain. He was the creator of the classic work The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and was long associated with The New Yorker.

At this event we will show "James Thurber: the Life and Hard Times," an hour-long film made by Adam Van Doren. The film is narrated by George Plimpton and includes interviews with Edward Albee, Roger Angell, Alistair Cooke, John Updike and Rosemary Thurber. It features rare footage of Thurber from his appearances on the television program Omnibus and from the 1960 Tony Awards.

There is no charge for the program. Attire for gentlemen is jacket and tie. This event will be held in Harvard Hall on the first floor of the Harvard Club at 27 West 44th Street beginning at 6:30 p.m. Reservations must be made in advance to Diane C. Dunne.

Celebrate HM Queen Elizabeth II's birthday with a delightful evening filled with entertainment, good company and a festive ambiance! A tantalizing buffet, champagne, wine and an open bar add to the enjoyment. You will experience all of this for only $50 per person.

This party will be held at The English-Speaking Union, 16 East 69th Street, from 5:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. Gentlemen's attire is jacket and tie. Reservations must be made no later than June 4th to Diane C. Dunne.

The Oxford Alumni Association of New York has plans to improve our ability to communicate with members electronically. Specifically, we will soon launch a Web site. This Web site will feature recent issues of our newsletter, highlights from past events, information about how to contact members of the Association's Executive Committee by E-mail and, eventually, links to other Web sites of interest to Oxford University Alumni. Look for more information in our Michaelmas Term 1999 newsletter.

In addition, the Association would like to create an e-mailing list of our membership. This would permit us to send you timely reminders about upcoming events. An obstacle to this effort is the fact that relatively few of our members gave us their e-mail address when they completed our membership form. Currently, we have e-mail addresses from fewer than 10 percent of our 1999 members. We suspect that many more of you are "wired."

To remedy this situation, we would like to begin collecting members' e-mail addresses. If you would be willing to have your name added to an e-mail list for the Oxford alumni association of New York, please send an e-mail message to webmaster. Of course, this information will not be shared with any other organization. Thank you.

The OAANY is always looking for volunteers. We are already starting to plan our fall program of events. If you are interested in helping with this process and/or are willing to act as a greeter or photographer at an event, we welcome your participation.

In addition, if you are able to offer use of a centrally located space in which we may hold an event, please let us know. Our event-planning budget is limited and renting space in Manhattan is expensive, so any donations of physical space would be gratefully received.

To donate your time and/or a facility, please contact Diane C. Dunne.