By SANDRA BECKWITH Special to the Palisadian-Post This fall, a new concert/storytelling series will be launched in the Chautauqua tradition at the first church in the Palisades’Community United Methodist Church’and outdoors at Aldersgate Retreat Center on Haverford. Honoring the roots of its founding, the Palisades will once again be experiencing a variety of cultural and educational programs for all ages starting September 29. Aldersgate, the jewel nestled on Haverford next to the Woman’s Club, has a history that runs parallel to the founding of the Palisades. Even so, many Palisadians are unaware of this charming, Mission Revival-style house. Both Aldersgate and the adjacent Buerge Chapel speak of a bygone era of summer picnics and Sunday family dinners under a spreading tree. This lovely house wasn’t always called Aldersgate. Fifty years ago, a sign on its roof read “We Boys and J.O.C. Lodge,” a name that harks back to the legacy of two Sunday school classes with a lifelong relationship. These devoted members created a meeting place for summer reunions, weekend retreats, religious meetings and special events. Their bond stemmed from a common devotion to their Sunday school teacher and mentor, Eva Todd Burch. Beginning in 1893, with a class of six boys, Burch mentored kids with an uncanny understanding of the challenges of growing up. Her students referred to themselves as “We Boys,” although Eva lovingly called them “My Boys.” Over 2,000 boys attended her classes during the 18 years she taught. “Graduates” formed the “We Boys Society” in 1895, reputed to be the first organized Sunday school class with elected officials, a constitution and by-laws. The society expanded their fellowship to include social activities, debates and musical events. And the men retained their heartfelt regard for Eva, crediting her with molding their lives and giving them a deep sense of belonging. The female counterpart was a Sunday school class called J.O.C. (Jesus Our Companion). The two classes socialized together and a number of marriages came out of these relationships. Annual banquets were held, and Fourth of July picnics, watermelon cuts and reunions continued for years. By 1927, a fervent desire developed for a permanent center to meet, and a committee began to look for sites in the Palisades. They incorporated to prepare for purchase. In November 1927, members Jack and Ruth Elrath went to a downtown auction intending to buy a grandfather clock, but instead bid and won a large house built in 1892 on Harvard Street near Western in Los Angeles. The Elraths then suggested that the “We Boys-J.O.C.s” buy it from them and move it to newly purchased land in the Palisades. Undaunted by the monumental task of moving a building, the “We Boys-J.O.C’s” purchased for $3,000 and paid $5,000 to have it moved. In January, 1928, the house was split in two in preparation for the move, which succeeded after three arduous nights. Many members came forward to remodel and decorate. Donations of furniture (some of which remain) and household items came pouring in and the building was transformed into a home. Through the years, many dinners, monthly parties, weekend retreats, family gatherings and fundraising events were enjoyed at the lodge. In 1943, a goal was set to pay the mortgage by the annual Fourth of July picnic, and on that day, amid cheers for full ownership, the mortgage was burned. By 1958, an aging membership unanimously decided against sale and instead decided to donate the property to a nonprofit, and in 1960 the Lodge passed to the Southern California-Arizona Conference of the Methodist Church, becoming Aldersgate Retreat House. Adjacent to the house is the Buerge Chapel, another property that grew out of goodwill and community effort. Bill Buerge, whose parents moved to Haverford in 1938, designed the chapel. The restoration of Aldersgate and the building of the chapel spanned a seven-year period, with Buerge contributing on almost every level. The 50-seat chapel, completed in 1992, has stained-glass windows and landscaping based on plants referred to in the Bible. Buerge found the antique pews in Pasadena and they were recrafted to fit the chapel. Noted Palisadians Chuck Norris and Art Tarnutzer worked tirelessly to craft this local jewel and restore the main facility. The fireplace was built with creek rocks from Topanga and a piece of rose quartz that weighs a ton. What began with community fellowship will continue in the fall, when the “Planting Seeds to Build Community” concert series commences on September 29. Other programs will be held on October 6, 13, 19 and 27 and November 3. For more information or to get involved in this Chautauqua outreach project, call Sandra at 410-1861.

Sarah Beamish, the daughter of longtime Palisadians Doug and Betsey Beamish, married Tod Puckett on October 23 in an outdoor ceremony at the Bel-Air Bay Club. The bride’s father is the former principal of Palisades High School, and her mother is a retired medical library consultant. Sarah and Tod first met in the Sierra Nevada at the Lair of the Bear UC Berkeley alumni family camp, where Sarah was the nature director and Tod was the music director. The ceremony was conducted by Jack Knebel, a longtime friend of the Puckett family. The maids of honor were Laura and Charlotte Neff, daughters of Sarah’s late half-sister Sally Beamish Neff. The bridesmaids were Emily Stern, Maile Clark Kaiser, Gail Clevenger, Alex Galbraith Frumovitz, Drucilla Lawrence and Regan Phillips. Tod’s brother Glenn Puckett was the best man. Groomsmen were Steve Hobson, Colin Carpenter, Sean Buran, Paul Baldwin, Marc Roth and Chris Boehme. Sarah attended St. Matthew’s School, received her high school diploma from Marlborough School, a bachelor’s degree in environmental economics and policy and geography from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in environmental management from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. She works as a restoration ecologist for the Natural Heritage Institute in San Francisco. Tod, who received a bachelor’s degree in political economy of industrial societies from UC Berkeley, is an executive producer at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. He is the son of Allen Puckett of Seattle, Washington, and Joan Adrienne Roth of Guilford, Connecticut. Following a honeymoon in Kenya the couple will live in San Francisco.

Theatre Palisades is hosting The Page to Stage summer theater workshop for high school students, taking place at Pierson Playhouse for two weeks, with a final show, produced by Diane Grant, planned for Sunday, July 10. Nine students, many of whom live in the Palisades, will participate in the workshop. The course, taught by Amy Friedman and Jim Pentecost, is designed to teach students how to write and revise a personal essay and learn the techniques required to deliver it most powerfully and provocatively on stage. Premiering this summer, the course begins on June 28 and runs on the following dates: June 28, 29 and 30 July 5, 6 and 7, 7 to 10 p.m. at Pierson Playhouse. The Final Performance will be July 10, at Pierson Playhouse, 941 Temescal Canyon Rd. at 8 p.m. Amy Friedman, writing coach, teaches Personal Essay and Creative Nonfiction at UCLA Extension and has performed in several spoken word venues, including Sit, Spin and Melt in Your Mouth. She has taught writing for 25 years (in NYC, Ontario, Canada and Los Angeles) and is currently a writer-in-residence for the online personal essay magazine, Fresh Yarn (www.freshyarn.com), where her advice to writers is featured on blog’s Fresh Daily. For eight years Amy wrote a weekly newspaper column “personal essays” and she has published several books, among them the memoir “Kick the Dog and Shoot the Cat” and two books for children based on her internationally syndicated newspaper column, Tell Me A Story (Universal Press Syndicate). She works as editor and coach with many of the writers and performers working in this genre in L.A., including Hillary Carlip, Alan Olifson, and Lauren Tom. Her husband Dennis Danzinger teaches English at Palisades Charter High School. Jim Pentecost, performance coach, made his motion picture debut with the Disney animated feature “Pocahontas,” and co-produced the live-action “Homeward Bound II.” He was the Executive Producer for the Stephen Schwartz musical “Geppetto” on the Wonderful World of Disney. As a producer at Disney for over 10 years, Jim developed and created stories for live action, animation and TV. Most recently he was associate artistic director at the Manhattan Theatre Club and Vice President for Clear Channel Theatrical. Jim’s involvement in films follows a distinguished career as a producer, director and stage manager for theater. His credits include the smash Broadway productions “Crimes of the Heart,” “La Cage Aux Folles,” “Romance, Romance,” “Gypsy” with Tyne Daly, and the musical “Nick & Nora.” Jim also teaches theater courses and has taught at UCSD. In addition, he has produced and directed summer programs for high school and college students. Those interested are encouraged to go out and see some of these performances, and to contact Amy Friedman at kellsmom@adelphia.net. Please provide your contact info. The course is limited to 10 students.

Compiled by ALYSON SENA, Staff Writer MARTIN SHEINBEIN, son of Robert Sheinbein and Connie Colvin, has been selected to attend LeadAmerica’s 2005 Congressional Student Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., from July 1 to July 10. Martin, who attended Village School, just finished his freshman year at Beverly Hills High School. The CSLC is a college-accredited invitational leadership program for high school students who have a record of academic achievement and extracurricular or community involvement. Students choose from several academic areas, including government and politics, engineering, science and robotics, global business and entrepreneurship, intelligence, diplomacy and national security, junior war college, crime scene investigation, law and trial advocacy, and medicine and health care. Through briefings and discussions with national and international leaders in the fields of study, and through realistic, hands-on simulations, they have the opportunity to experience leadership in action and to learn firsthand about the complexities of decision-making in a chosen field or profession. By engaging in special interactive workshops and activities, students will learn and develop leadership skills, including effective communication, conflict resolution, team building and time management. “Leadership is not just for those in our government and businesses,” says Chris M. Salamone, Esq., founder and executive director of the CSLC. Leadership begins with our young people’in their homes, their schools, and their communities’as they seek knowledge and understanding and work to improve the world around them.” o o o Navy Reserve Seaman Apprentice DAVID MOSES III, a 2001 graduate of Palisades Charter High School, recently completed U.S. Navy basic training and was meritoriously promoted to his current rank at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Ill. During the eight-week program, Moses completed a variety of training which included classroom study and practical instruction on naval customs, first aid, firefighting, water safety and survival, and shipboard and aircraft safety. An emphasis was also placed on physical fitness. The capstone event of boot camp is “Battle Stations.” This exercise gives recruits the skills and confidence they need to succeed in the fleet. “Battle Stations” is designed to galvanize the basic warrior attributes of sacrifice, dedication, teamwork and endurance in each recruit through the practical application of basic Navy skills and the core values of honor, courage and commitment. Its distinctly “Navy” flavor was designed to take into account what it means to be a sailor in today’s U.S. Navy. o o o CATHERINE M. GOLDBERG was named to the dean’s list, high honors, at Connecticut College for the 2005 spring semester. Dean’s high honors recognize students who have achieved a grade point average of 3.7 to 4.0. o o o MELISSA HUNTER, daughter of Craig and Martha Hunter, will be performing in “True Genius,” an original piece written by a recent Northwestern graduate, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer. Melissa, a senior at Northwestern University, will travel to Scotland on July 25 with 10 other Northwestern students to perform 25 shows between August 4 and August 29. Melissa will also be appearing in the upcoming Dreamworks film “Eyeball Eddie.”

Where do you go to find television and film production that is incisive, illuminating and affirming? If you said PBS, you’d be right, but a less controversial destination might be Paulist Productions. For curious Palisadians, Paulist Productions creates films and television programs in that enigmatic Mediterranean-style building on PCH known as the Thelma Todd Caf’. And as if to secure its place in the sun, the company, which moved into the building in 1964, decided to stay put and resuscitate the landmark three years ago. ‘There’s no point in moving,’ reasons Fr. Frank Desiderio, CSP, president of Paulist Productions. ‘It’s beautiful and I love it here.’ Paulist Productions was started in 1960 by the late Fr. Elwood (Bud) Kieser, who realized 40 years ago the power of television through his weekly ‘Insight’ series, which consisted of 30-minute comedies or dramas focusing on social or religious themes. The series aired for 23 years and won six Emmys. A Paulist priest of great faith, Kieser practiced his skills as a producer to promote social activism, nonviolence and the human spirit. He cultivated actors, who often became friends, to appear on his dramatic anthology series, including Carol Burnett, Ed Asner and Walter Matthau. He also produced films, such as ‘Romero’ (1989) starring Raul Julia, about the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador 25 years ago, and ‘Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story’ (1995) starring Moira Kelly, about the Roman Catholic activist. Kieser set the vision for Paulist Productions, believing that movies and television were ideal vehicles for conveying spiritual values. ‘Jesus was a storyteller,’ he once said. ‘He told stories in order to challenge people and illumine the meaning of their lives and motivate them to love.’ Although Kieser’s unexpected death at 71 in 2000 was a significant loss, Desiderio, who had joined Paulist Productions in 1998, and was to take over after Fr. Kieser’s planned retirement in 2001, became president and has continued the momentum. ‘When Bud died we were already in preproduction on ‘Judas,’ an ABC Movie of the Week, and ‘The Jesus Experience,’ an eight-part documentary series for The Hallmark Channel in 2003,’ Desiderio recalls. In preparing to take over the business, Desiderio was a likely candidate, having already directed his own ministry towards communications. ‘I was attracted to media and I knew I wanted to work with radio or in publishing after graduating from the University of Maryland,’ says Desiderio, 52, who grew up in Washington, D.C. He first worked as an editor at a children’s press, but after he was called to the priesthood, he was drawn to the Paulists for their involvement in communications. Theirs is the oldest Catholic press, established within the first decade after the order was founded in 1858. In 1988, Desiderio began his radio work in Los Angeles, producing two weekly religious and public affairs programs for Paulist Communications, another branch of the Paulist mission. At the same time he earned a master’s degree in communications management from the USC Annenberg School of Communications. He also holds a master’s degree in theology from Catholic University of America. Every year since 1998, Paulist Productions has produced documentaries, ranging in length from one to three hours, for the History Channel. Released around the holidays, Easter or Christmas, these include documentaries on the apostles Peter, Paul and Judas, as well as other studies, such as ‘Beyond the Da Vinci Code,’ which explored the truths behind Dan Brown’s controversial book, and this spring’s, ‘Visions of Mary,’ the history of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Responding to changing times, Desiderio has veered from the dramas of the ‘Insight’ model, and focuses instead on feature documentaries and TV movies. ‘The TV audience has changed in the last 40 years,’ Desiderio says. ‘Bud produced a different little play with different characters every week, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a drama. Nowadays, the networks are not buying anthology series; it’s harder to sustain an audience. People get attached to a character, like in ‘Desperate Housewives.’ There is a certain loyalty to this relationship. Most people can maintain only a limited number of TV relationships.’ The challenge for Desiderio is to produce thoughtful religious programming for audiences, whose appetite, for the most part, is for escapism. ‘We strive to make programs entertaining, and enlightening. Ideally, our stories should probe the human condition.’ Paulist Productions is alone in the kind of work it does. ‘We are the only ones who are explicit in our religious identity producing for mainstream television,’ Desiderio says. ‘Our ratings are consistent, around one million viewers on the History Channel programs.’ As a nonprofit corporation, all its money goes into an endowment, leaving five percent for new development and operations. While the History Channel demographic skews to an older audience’35 to 50-year-old men’Desiderio resists characterizing Paulist productions as philosophically one-sided. ‘We try to interview a range of people, scholars on any particular subject. For example, with the ‘Da Vinci Code’ piece, we talked to skeptics as well as people from the American Institute of Religion. ‘We try and reach a broad audience, so a person without much religious background can be entertained.’ But, having said that, Desiderio has not forgotten the need to entertain, and often combines the ‘talking heads’ format with biblical reenactments. ‘All we have are art masterpieces from the ages, and we need to use reenactments to have something visual.’ A writer and poet, Desiderio has come up with a number of the story ideas, including a documentary on St. Joseph (aired in March), which he had been thinking about long before he joined Paulist Productions. ‘It had always been a personal goal of mine to tell the story of Joseph, who, as the documentary says, ‘shaped the very foundation of Christianity and yet not one word of his is reported in the bible,” Another of his ideas, ‘Judas,’ was released in March 2004, at the same time as Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ Desiderio says, and got notoriety on ABC. ‘It’s a well-done TV movie that follows a story fictionalization of who Judas might have been. There is a large body of literature on Judas; some say he was evil, and others say he betrayed Jesus because Jesus asked him to do it. He’s a very interesting character; why would somebody betray the Son of God? Especially because he was his follower and friend. We’ve all either been betrayed or betrayed someone.’ Betrayal plays a prominent role in Desiderio’s current project, ‘Forgiveness,’ which will be a feature documentary focusing on the dramatic physical and spiritual healing effects of forgiveness. ‘This one is going to be about how to resolve conflict and anger, both physically and mentally,’ Desiderio says. ‘We’re taking a scientific perspective and researching the topic of forgiveness. We will be interviewing real people with recognizable challenges: A spouse forgiving adultery, a murder victim’s parents, a National Guardsman who finds out his wife has left him. These themes are dramatic and universal. We’ll examine different approaches to forgiveness, and even consider that there may be cases when there cannot be forgiveness.’ The film begins shooting in October. The company often partners with Weller Grossman, a large production company in North Hollywood which offers post-production and editing suites, and hires the producer who goes out to do the field shooting. Paulist Productions uses its Palisades facility for office space and conference areas, and is home to the Humanitas Prize, founded by Fr. Kieser in 1974 to honor film and television writers for work that promotes human values. As president, Desiderio oversees all aspects of the company with the assistance of a 25-member board of directors and a small staff. ‘How I allot my time depends a lot of what we’re involved in at the time,’ he says. ‘Sometimes it’s raising money to produce a movie, sometimes it’s story development and consulting with other people who are working on shows that have a religious element and they want to run it by me.’ In addition to all of this, Desidero helps out at Corpus Christi Church by saying Mass and delivering the homily on weekends. Although he does not typically preach about his work from the pulpit, he finds his creative, lyrical side helpful in developing his homilies. ‘I write poetry every week,’ he says. ‘It’s part of my morning homily preparation. The priest is supposed to be a poet of the word of God. The language and imagery in my poetry help to leaven the homily.’