Vol. 1, No. 24

Perry Ledbetter Fenton
as Chief of Police
The Story of The Little Beggar

Prospect Sierra School production of
1001 Nights - April 18, 2008

Obama for America

“At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce…

“We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama.”

Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic, December 2007


The Marketing Queen - Does the Church have something to learn
from a woman who knows how to market products?

If “Pomegranate Princess,” the title of a piece in the March 31 New Yorker magazine didn’t grab you, the picture of Lynda Resnick in her opulent Beverly Hills house (“It ain’t home, but it’s much,” she likes to say) surely would. At least, it caught my attention.

I always have been interested in marketing, and Lynda Resnick, as it turns out, knows how to do it. She and her husband have made themselves billionaires by purchasing companies and then improving the marketing end of the business. Stewart Resnick handles the business end; Lynda does the marketing.

For example, the couple bought the Fiji Water Company for 150 million dollars. Lynda changed the bottle’s label from a waterfall to a bright-pink tropical flower and the company slogan from “Taste of Paradise” to “Untouched by man. Until you drink it.” The result? Sales have increased 300%.

It seems to me the Church could pay a lot more attention than it does to marketing. How a product or service is presented can make a big difference.

Lynda Resnick says you have to listen to people. “You don’t have to be a genius. You have to read the pop culture. People magazine is my Bible.” That brought me up short. The only time I read People magazine is when I’m waiting to get a haircut and have forgotten to bring a book with me.

Along with listening and paying attention to pop culture, Lynda believes in brevity. “Keep it simple” is her motto. She dislikes long explanations filled with unnecessary details.

All of this has application for clergy and their congregations. Listening to the culture might mean everything from livelier music at worship to serving better coffee after the service. An emphasis on brevity and simplicity could apply to the sermon and to all written communication from the parish.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Walnut Creek, a suburban congregation, recently called the Rev. M. Sylvia O. Vásquez as Rector. She appears to know a thing or two about marketing. Sylvia’s personal motto, which appears after her name in email correspondence, is “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Sylvia has been listening to young adults, maybe even reading People magazine.

Mission Statements are popular. Every parish has one. The problem is they often read as if a committee wrote them. They can be wordy and pious sounding. St. Paul’s “vision statement” is Deep Roots, Growing Community, Living Faith. That communicates. Lest you think “Living Faith” is only words, I can report (from reading our diocesan paper) that Sylvia took a group of parishioners on a mission trip to help the poor in Honduras. She has been making these trips for years.

At each of my last two parishes we paid good money for a professionally designed logo expressive of the parish theme. All parish publications were coordinated in appearance and used the identifying logo. Congregations need baseball caps, T-shirts, and coffee mugs with the parish logo. This is good marketing practice. The mega church you drive by has all these things, and it’s for a purpose. We don’t have to adopt their lowest common denominator theology and approach to borrow some of their good marketing tools.

In 1975, I read Robert Schuler’s Your Church Has Real Possibilities. The founder of the “Hour of Power” TV program and the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove is a marketing genius. He advises churches to give priority to location, parking, and distinguished architecture. I think of that each time I try to find one of our well-hidden churches and discover a poorly maintained building with unkempt grounds and inadequate parking.

I particularly remember what Schuller wrote about preaching. A billboard beside the freeway has a big picture and just one line of text. So the preacher, he advised, should paint a picture with words and then add a short comment. I think Linda Resnick would agree.


Perry in 1001 Nights

Our talented, eleven-year-old granddaughter took to the stage again playing four parts in a school production of 1001 Nights. I wish you could have joined her parents and Billie and me for the evening performance on Friday, April 18. If the proud grandfather is permitted to say so, Perry was great.

She had many lines and delivered them flawlessly in a clear voice that carried to every corner of the theatre in Prospect Sierra School’s new Performing Arts Center. She also sang, danced, and at one point played drums with the band.

As her father said, Perry’s comedic timing is perfect. That is a gift. The rest can be attributed to her enthusiasm for acting and many hours memorizing lines and attending rehearsals.

Amy Sass and Keith Davis, the directors, are a talented team who know how to get the best out of the kids and to persuade their parents to help with the elaborate stage productions. Our David volunteers as a video photographer for these events. The sets, costumes, lighting, and music are all of professional quality. I have seen many Middle School plays in my day. This one was the best.

Billie and I drove to Berkeley in the afternoon, shopping at Crate and Barrel on Fourth Street and having dinner at Saul’s Deli on Shattuck before Perry’s performance. When the play was over, we stayed to give Perry a hug and congratulate her on another milestone in her acting career. Then we headed home to Concord.


Antiques and Collectables Show

The next day we drove 23 miles north to the Salono County Fairgrounds to attend the 42nd annual Antiques and Collectables Show sponsored by the Golden Gate Historical Bottle Society, which Billie and I joined when we moved back to California. We were greeted by Gary and Darla Antone, our club president and his wife, as we arrived with Brandy to visit the hanger-size showroom filled with antique bottle and collectibles displayed on row after row of tables.

It is not just houses and gasoline that are going up in price these days. Antique bottles that were about $35 just a few years ago are now going for 50-75 dollars. I saw some rare beauties selling for as much as $1800 each. Of course there were crates of bottles marked $2 each, something for every pocket.

I love to look at the displays of old postcards. They are a visual form of history. Vintage autos, hotels long gone, national park scenes before the arrival of RV’s, Victorian bathing beauties covered in long, black, bathing outfits, and wooden churches that must have burned or been replaced years ago. Some postcards have messages that sound surprisingly contemporary: “Sorry I haven’t written, Hilda. We’ve been so busy on this trip!”

This trip is a double-header for us, because the Solano County All Breed Dog Show is usually held at the Fairgrounds on the same day. After leaving the bottle show, we took Brandy to see more dogs in a couple of hours than she normally would see in a year. When she is out with us and sees a dog being walked on the street, she becomes very excited and barks. But the dog show was somehow intimidating. She passed by dogs in crates and dogs on leashes, and watched them being shown in the ring, without making a sound.

One thing we’ve noticed about people who have dogs, they are invariably some of the friendliest people you will meet anywhere. We enjoyed complimenting them on their beautifully groomed and well-behaved animals. We saw just about every breed you can think of, but no Tibetan Spaniels like Brandy. It is still a fairly rare breed, but the little dogs are making their way into peoples’ hearts.
The Bishop’s Visitation

Marc and Sheila Andrus, our new bishop and his wife, made their first visit to St. John’s, Clayton on April 20. Billie and I are members there. Parishioners had worked hard to make the grounds attractive, we had a visiting choir, our two Sunday services were combined in one, and there were baptisms and confirmations. We looked like a going concern.

In my experience, most bishops all but ignore the Bible lessons for the day and concentrate on sharing news of what is happening in the Diocese. They give the impression that everything important is happening somewhere else. Not Marc. He gave a fine sermon on the Gospel lesson, and he spoke straight to our hearts.

Both Marc and Sheila are sincere believers. Their faith comes shining through. The Bishop had tears in his eyes when he told us about a funeral he and a Roman bishop had conducted the day before. The funeral was for an Episcopal priest who died of cancer one year after being called as rector of a parish. The Roman bishop was there because the priest who died had once been a Roman priest and they had been friends.

Before the service began, the Roman bishop told Marc that he would not be able to receive Communion in an Episcopal church and would sit during that part of the Liturgy.
When the time came, Marc went to the station he had been assigned, but there was no priest there to administer the chalice. The Roman bishop stepped forward and the two bishops administered Communion together.

When it was time for the baptisms at St. John’s, Marc called the children of the parish forward so they could “see the action.” He invited them to reach into the font and feel the “Living Water” he had just blessed. Half of the children did so. The others demurred. One little girl backed into her mother to get away!


Off-key reception

The San Francisco Chronicle published this letter from me on Monday, April 21:

Editor – How ironic that the Pope,
“Vicar of Christ,” was greeted at the
airport last week by an armed forces
honor guard and at the White House
with the “Battle Hymn of the Repub-
lic,” sung by a military choir. He re-
sponded with a speech that might have
been given by almost any visiting head
of state. Would Christ remain silent
regarding a nation fighting an unpro-
voked war and authorizing the use of
torture against prisoners?

The REV. FRED FENTON
Concord

Vol 1, No. 23

NEPHEW JON FENTON AND FRED
PLAYING DARTS IN JON'S WORKROOM
Eugene, Oregon - May 27, 2007

Lincoln Brigade Honored

After worshiping at Christ The Lord Episcopal Church in Pinole, where Susan Champion, wife of our rector-elect at St. John’s is vicar, we drove into San Francisco on a beautiful Sunday morning, March 30, to attend the Dedication of a Memorial to Americans who served in the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.

That war was fought 1936-1939 when Billie and I were very young children, but it was made personal for us when we got to know a veteran of the conflict, John Lockett. John showed up at St. Augustine by-the-Sea in Santa Monica when I was rector there. He came not as an act of faith but in order to find a community where he could do something useful.

His wife had died some years before, and John lived alone. He was legally blind and walked with an identifying white cane. The man loved babies. He soon gravitated to the church nursery where, as Billie liked to say, “He provided a lap for some of our youngest members.” John was a godsend to the nursery workers, who could give him a fussing baby to hold and comfort.

When John became ill and was admitted to the Veterans Hospital in West Los Angeles, young mothers from the church took their babies to visit him in his hospital bed. That was great for John’s morale and no doubt speeded his recovery.

A few of us took turns picking John up at his apartment and driving him to church. I asked him about his experiences in the Lincoln Brigade. John told me he was motivated by stories of fascist oppression and wanted to do what he could to help. Like most of the Americans who served in Spain, he had no military training or experience. He was given a WWI rifle and rudimentary instruction on the voyage to Spain.

During the McCarthy era following WWII, the FBI visited John regularly. It was feared the Americans who fought with the international Lincoln Brigade were either Communists or Communist sympathizers. John said he was neither. He simply wanted to fight against General Franco and the rebel forces, which were backed by Hitler and Mussolini.

John’s wife owned a corset shop on the Third Street Mall. He told me that when she saw the FBI coming, she would send him off so he didn’t have to answer the same, old questions. “How did she know they were FBI agents?” I asked. “Who else,” he replied, “would wear overcoats and felt hats on the Mall?”

San Francisco’s newest public monument is located on the Embarcadero not far from San Francisco’s Ferry Building. Of the 2,800 Americans who fought against Franco’s forces, and lost, there are 39 survivors. Eleven of them were on hand for the ceremony. When Billie and I drove up, a big crowd had gathered and the flag of Spain was flapping in the breeze. A brass band played anthems of the Spanish Civil War, including the Socialist anthem, “The Internationale.”

Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Spanish Ambassador Carlos Westendorp y Cabeza spoke. The ambassador thanked the veterans for risking their lives for his country. George Shultz and his wife Charlotte Shultz, who is Protocol Chief for the City, were there also. When the Mayor acknowledged George Shultz the old Lefties in the crowd booed the former Secretary of State.

The speaker who “stole the show” was ninety-two-year-old Abe Osheroff of Seattle. His voice breaking, tears rolling down his cheeks, he recalled a battle in which 80 of 250 crewmembers died when the ship they were on was torpedoed off the coast of Spain. He thanked San Francisco for erecting the country’s first Lincoln Brigade monument and “for making us immortal.” The applause went on and on while he stood erect, a living monument to a noble cause.

The memorial is 40 feet long and 8 feet high. It is made of 45 onyx panels held together in a steel structure. The translucent stone squares show scenes from the war and faces of soldiers, as well as words about the period from writers like Ernest Hemingway. Designed by Ann Chamberlain and Walter Hood, it cost $400,000. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives and Veterans and friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade donated the money.

Left out of the speeches that day, and the newspaper articles that followed, was any mention of our government’s treatment of the Lincoln Brigade heroes after they returned to America. I wrote a letter to The San Francisco Chronicle, which was published the following Tuesday.

Editor – At Sunday’s well attended
dedication of the nation’s first me-
morial to Americans who fought in the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade against
fascism in Spain, no mention was
made of our government’s harass-
ment of those heroes when they
returned home.
My wife and I attended the San
Francisco event on behalf of our dear
friend John Lockett, who did not
live to see this long-overdue honor
paid to him and his buddies. This
friend told us the FBI made regular
visits during the 50’s to be sure he
was not engaged in “subversive
activities.”

Rev. FRED FENTON
Concord


Fred’s Birthday
April 5, 2008

Billie and I started the day with a trip to the Pleasant Hill “Y” for our workout. After that, I took one of the cars to the local do-it-yourself car wash. Then we were off to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco to attend A Kimono Fashion Show in Samsung Hall. The 1:30 p.m. event was sold out because the speaker, Tomita Nobuaki, made a big hit at his first fashion show at the Asian last year. I attended that show (Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 8) and was anxious to hear him again and for Billie to experience the artist in person.

Mr. Nobuaki is a leading kimono stylist and textile designer known for his high-profile work costuming Japanese movie stars and actors in period dramas. In spite of his need to use an English translator, his personality and showmanship make him an engaging figure. We both enjoyed the gorgeous kimonos he has created, the question and answer periods, and lion dancers he brought with him from the city of Himi in Toyama prefecture, Japan.

Following the show we went to ZUNI café on Market Street for dinner. We had wonderful mushroom soup and the ZUNI’s signature dish, roast chicken. We also indulged in fabulous shoestring fries and a lemon tart for dessert. We made the acquaintance of a lovely family sitting at the next table, a young couple with two sweet little girls.

There were cards and presents waiting for me at home. Granddaughter Sophie sang “Happy Birthday to PawPaw” over the phone. It made my day. Billie wrote on her card, “You are my number ONE favorite person in all the world. I love you so much. Thank you for loving me.” At the bottom of the card, our doggie added “and me too!”--Brandy
Who could ask for anything more?

Billie gave me some books I wanted: The Arden Shakespeare edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Robert Fagles new translation of The Aeneid, Adrian Goldsworthy’s monumental biography CAESAR: Life of a Colossus, Deepak Chopra’s The third Jesus, and Alexandra Stoddard’s helpful little book, You Are Your Choices.

I asked Billie to send a check equal to the price of those books to Partners In Health, the Boston charity that supports the work of Dr. Paul Farmer. One of the most inspiring books I have ever read is Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, a New York Times bestseller about Dr. Farmer’s life and work bringing health to desperately poor people in places like Haiti.

Alameda Point Antique Faire

The next morning, we were up early to meet David and Perry in El Cerrito at 8 a.m. David drove us in his Toyota Prius (what a fun car!) to Alameda to visit the “Alameda Point Antique Faire.”

Alameda, located on an island, is a unique and interesting town with a large stock of Victorian, California bungalow, and Craftsman houses. Billie’s sister Marian once lived in Alameda. Long a military community because of a large Naval base that was located there, it is becoming “gentrified” as people move in to enjoy the mild weather and easy access to San Francisco across the Bay.

This trip was David’s treat in celebration of my birthday. He took us first to Ole’s Waffle Shop for breakfast. It is an Alameda institution, having opened for business in 1927. The place was packed and the food—Yes, I had a waffle—was outrageously good.

The “Antique Faire” is more like a huge swap meet. Acres of parking, a long, winding line of people waiting to pay admission ($5) to get in, and hundreds of vendors who started arriving at 4:30 a.m. to display their goods at row after row of tables. Located on part of the former Naval base, it is one huge open market experience. David and Perry told us that on a hot day walking around can be a miserable experience. We lucked out. The weather was cool. A cloudy sky looked threatening, but it never rained.

Billie and I viewed several displays of old glass. Perry, who has seen our collection of antique bottles, bought us a beautiful, green, hand-blown bottle Billie intends to use to hold oil or vinegar. David found an Art Deco-style floor lamp at a bargain price and brought that home with him. Billie discovered the sheet music for “Bewitched” from Pal Joey, one of our favorite musicals.

A Special Dinner Party

After a few hours rest, we were guests of our friends Rob and Sylvia McCann at a dinner party to honor Rob’s 51st anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. A musician, teacher, and pastor, Rob has offered his gifts in service to others for over half a century. Most recently, he served as interim priest at St. Matthew’s, San Mateo. An acquaintance from that parish assures me he was hugely popular. Sylvia has enriched the man and his ministry in many ways. They make a great team.

The dinner was held in their home at the top of a winding road in Lafayette, a foothill community between Walnut Creek and Orinda. They have just finished some additions to their property, including a handsome, curving brick wall and path around the entrance court. Other guests were Lois Hoy, a retired priest, and her friend Alfred Truesdell. Lois obtained permission for St. Giles’ Episcopal Church, Moraga to meet in the Chapel of St. Mary’s (RC) College and served as the congregation’s first rector.

The six of us enjoyed wine and a delicious dinner prepared by Rob, and shared stories of our experiences in the Church. We also had a lively discussion of politics, with both Clinton and Obama fans offering their views of the Democratic Primary season. This dinner party was the perfect end to a long, eventful day.