THE ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER OF THE CALIFORNIA MISSION STUDIES ASSOCIATION
November
2003
Vol. 1, No. 3
Edited by Robert M. Senkewicz
(Please submit any items for inclusion to rsenkewicz@scu.edu )
UPCOMING CMSA ANNUAL CONFERENCE
The 2004 CMSA conference will be held at Mission San Luis Obispo on
February 13-15, 2004. The planning committee, headed by Bill Fairbanks
of Cuesta College, is putting together what promises to be one of the
best conferences yet. The registration form is available at
http://www.ca-missions.org/confreg.html
The conference web site (http://www.ca-missions.org/conf.html ) has
hotel information as well. Please register and make your lodging
arrangements early!
MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL
Members will be receiving information via US mail about renewing their
membership. Expect to receive your membership renewal form after
Thanksgiving. REMEMBER: Conference registration is separate from
membership dues. CMSA membership runs for the calendar year. RENEWALS
ARE DUE IN JANUARY! When you do receive your membership renewal form,
please take a second to renew your membership promptly. Thanks very
much!
WEBSITE REPORT
The links listed on the CMSA Website are there for the convenience of
site visitors but the CMSA Website editor and designer can take NO
responsibility for alterations that may be made on those links by their
own webmasters or owners. If some link is changed which leads to
offensive material, e.g. pornography, we want to know about it as soon
as possible so we can deal with it. This has led us to add the
following notice to both the Annotated Links and Unannotated Links
pages. We take CMSA's good name very seriously. Since many school
children, parents, and teachers use CMSA's links pages, every effort is
made to ensure that the links are child-safe. Sometimes, however,
unknown to CMSA, website owners make changes that may lead to
objectionable material; please INFORM THE EDITOR if this should occur.
Appropriate action will be taken. We also would appreciate being
informed of any dead links or other problems you might find on the CMSA
site. (Sasha Honig)
THEFT FROM MISSION SAN ANTONIO
CMSA member Bob Hoover has penned the following
account of the theft of an important violin from Mission San Antonio.
The celebrated Carabajal violin has been
stolen over the last summer from its home in the Mission San Antonio de
Padua museum. This beautiful treasure of our California mission
history is no longer available for study, performance, or
enjoyment. The violin was made of Bay Laurel and other native
California woods by Jose Carabajal in 1798. As a boy in his
teens, Jose wished for a violin like the one the mission padre had so
that he could play in the Mission San Antonio orchestra. Over a
period of time, with simple tools and the labor of his hands, he was
able to copy the padre's instrument, piece by piece, and create a
wonderful finished product. The result looks and plays like a
standard violin, but some of the details of construction are
unique. This youth, from a culture previously unacquainted with
any Western stringed instruments, figured out how to make a violin that
plays beautifully.
Carabajal's great, great grandson, Leonard Lane,
donated the violin to the Mission San Antonio museum collection in
1973, where it has been on display ever since. John Warren's New
World Baroque Orchestra sought permission in 2000 to restore the
instrument and play it at special mission events, including
performances of the rediscovered "Mass in G" of Fr. Juan Bautista
Sancho, the world class composer and musician stationed at Mission San
Antonio between 1804 and 1830. This effort was endorsed by
the current pastor, Fr. John Gini, who realized the historic value of
the violin and music in bringing together diverse groups of people in
harmony. The violin was again playing some of the first music
that it had played for Jose Carabajal.
Sometime between May and September, most likely in
August, the violin was removed from its display case by persons
unknown and was replaced by a smaller scale child's violin of modern
manufacture. The case was not damaged. Since the violin is
well-documented, it is unlikely to be sold successfully on the
open market. Please circulate this information as widely as
possible. If you hear or learn about any leads concerning the
violin, please contact Detective Jim Miller of the Monterey County
Sheriff's Department at (831) 385-8313.
HARRY CROSBY BAJA CALIFORNIA PHOTO COLLECTION AVAILABLE ONLINE
A wonderful sampling of CMSA member Harry Crosby's photographs of Baja
California is on display at the web site of the Mandeville Special
Collections Library at the University of California at San Diego. It is
entitled "Images of Baja California: Baja California, 1967-1992:
Photographs by Harry Crosby" and may be accessed at
http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/baja/crosby/index.html
GRANT FOR THE TEACHING OF CALIFORNIA HISTORY
Ed Castillo, keynote speaker at the CMSA 1996 conference in San
Francisco and currently Chair of the Native American Studies Department
at California State University Sonoma, and two colleagues have
received a $100,000 from the California State Library Research Bureau
to produce a teacher's guide to assist teachers with their classroom
discussions about California Indian history. The full story from the
Sonoma State News Bureau is at
http://www.sonoma.edu/pubs/release/2003/93740400.html
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE'S 2004 ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROSPECTION WORKSHOP
Bob Hoover has forwarded the following announcement.
The National Park Service's 2004 workshop on archaeological prospection
techniques entitled Current Archeological Prospection Advances for
Non-Destructive Investigations in the 21st Century will be held May
17-21,2004, at the Spiro Mounds Archeological State Park in Spiro,
Oklahoma.Lodging will be in Fort Smith, Arkansas at the Holiday
Inn. This will be the fourteenth year of the workshop dedicated
to the use of geophysical, aerial photography, and other remote sensing
methods as they apply to the identification, evaluation, conservation,
and protection of archaeological resources across this Nation.
The workshop this year will focus on data processing and interpretation
in addition to the more basic topics involving the theory of operation,
methodology, and on-hands use of the equipment in the field.
There is a tuition charge of $475.00. Application forms are
available on the Midwest Archeological Center's web page
at<http://www.cr.nps.gov/mwac/>. For further information,
please contact Steven L. DeVore, Archeologist, National Park Service,
Midwest Archeological Center, Federal Building, Room 474, 100
Centennial Mall North, Lincoln, Nebraska 68508-3873: tel: (402)
437-5392, ext. 141; fax:(402) 437-5098; email:
<steve_de_vore@nps.gov >
"A BRITTLE HISTORY"
An article with the above title was published in the Monterey Herald on
October 26, 2003. It features an interview with CMSA member
Rubén Mendoza, who speaks of the decaying condition of many of
the state's missions and of the efforts of the California Missions
Foundation to raise funds to assist in the preservation efforts. The
article is at
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/mcherald/news/7109140.htm
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
These recently published books may be of interest to our members:
Thomas E. Chávez, Spain and the Independence of the United
States: An Intrinsic Gift, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 2002. 330 pages, 22 color photos, 22 halftones, 14 maps.
ISBN: Hardcover ($29.95) : 0-8263-2793-1. ISBN Paperback ($21.95)
: 0-8263-2794-X . (http://www.unmpress.com/unmpress.html )
Marc Simmons, Hispanic Albuquerque, 1706-1846.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2003. 176 pages, 13
halftones ISBN: 0-8263-3160-2 $19.95 (Paperback)
(http://www.unmpress.com/unmpress.html )
Magali M. Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain, Race, Lineage
and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2003. 216 pages, 60 b&w
photos ISBN 0-292-71245-6. $34.95, hardcover
(http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/index.html