Hope for the old California Missions



California's 21 Spanish missions, crumbling from age and neglect, would receive $10 million for repairs under a bill approved Wednesday by the U.S. House of Representatives. More from the Times here.

Some of the missions are in very bad shape indeed. Mission San Miguel probably needs help the most. That is San Miguel at the top of this post; the picture shows the cracks in the facade caused by the recent earthquake. Mission San Miguel's website can be found here. It includes information on how to make a donation to the preservation of the mission.

The missions are at the heart of California's history, the pompous twaddle from the militantly anti-Catholic "Americans United" notwithstanding.

The California Missions Foundation, founded to help maintain the fabric of the missions, has a site here. The California Mission Studies Association has a collection of fascinating links. This very complete site containing potted histories of all the missions was probably designed for children. (Hence the links to definitions of the "hard" words, such as "founded".) But it also has links to realaudio sound files presenting the music of the missions as it would have been sung two centuries ago.