Imperial outposts, architecture schools, death camps & tourist traps: A grown man finally does his Fourth Grade California Missions report

This new novel I'm writing takes place, sort of, in the old Spanish missions of Southern California. For research purposes, I went to three missions and one sub-mission, all by train and trolley.

And because I'm now doing this "re-imagining spaces" column for FourStory.org, I wrote about the missions going from Imperial conversion churches/fortresses to stop the Russian/British territorial advances on Alta California to political handouts to unloved abandoned ruins to nostalgic cultural centers in a land that is terribly insecure about its lack of castles and monuments. The column is here.