The Usual Suspects

The topic came up in a blog comment section of California students learning in school about the state's set of Franciscan missions, one of the most prominent activities, and one which has left a few intact artifacts till today, of the Spanish who first colonized this area.

Various Catholic religious orders founded missions in various far-flung corners of the Spanish new world empire - I know of ones in Arizona and Texas in the present U.S. (the Alamo was originally one) - with the purpose of converting the natives. Anyway, the Franciscans got Alta California, and started their project in 1769, eventually building 21 of them at regular intervals along a pathway dubbed El Camino Real (now mostly congruent with US 101) between San Diego and Sonoma. The missions were secularized in the 1830s, many of the buildings decayed, some were rebuilt as parish churches, but some of the originals are intact, and some that are not still being used as churches are now state parks. The best known are San Juan Bautista, near Hollister in northern California, setting for a memorable scene in Hitchcock's Vertigo, and San Juan Capistrano, near San Clemente, Nixon's one-time retreat, known for the swallows that nest there every summer.

With the modern concentration on the fact - never hidden, but not previously emphasized - that the natives were mostly used for forced labor, and that many died, especially of diseases carried by the Spanish, the mission reputation has been blackened. Junipero Serra, the priest who began the establishment here, previously considered a hero of California history - and who still stands as one of California's representatives in the National Statuary Hall in the Capitol - is no longer viewed so favorably. A statue of him on a hill overlooking the freeway south of San Francisco (and with his hand pointing in the wrong direction) was recently removed. I'm sorry it's gone; it was a weird and grotesque little thing.

So I'm not at all sure if, or if so how, California students are still being taught about the missions. But we were in my day. In one class we were instructed to choose one of the missions and write a report on it. In the process, though not specifically instructed to do so, I found that I'd memorized the names and locations of all 21 of them, and I just checked and found I still have them memorized.

I think I've been to all of them at one time or another. And I've been to classical concerts in six of them. I've also been to a wedding in one (not one of the six).

The great modern dramatist has passed on.

I've seen a number of his plays, but mostly when I was in college: I have this vague memory of signing on as an usher for a whole series of Stoppard plays in San Francisco. I don't remember them very well. The only ones I've seen more recently are Arcadia, The Invention of Love (which I saw in its first production in London, with John Wood in it), and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (most recently as a student production).

Besides the film of Rosencrantz, which I didn't think worked very well, I've seen two movies he contributed to the scripts of: Shakespeare in Love, which I cherish despite its playing with history in a way I normally find annoying - Stoppard is so clever with this I forgive him anything; and Brazil, a film I find fundamentally incoherent, though I doubt anyone would agree with me on this.

I started my play-reading group so that we could read Rosencrantz aloud, something I'd wanted to do for a long time. Four people: Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, The Player, and one for everything else, since everything else is just segments from Hamlet, plus stage directions.