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Scholarship Available We are pleased to announce that two scholarships in the amount of $600 each are available to Nevada residents of Basque descent who plan to be undergraduates at the University of Nevada, Reno during the 1980-81 academic year. Incoming freshmen and continuing undergraduates are eligible. For further information, write to the Basque Studies Program. Donations The Basque Studies Program recently received two significant donations. Mr. & Mrs. John Douglass of Reno gave two acres of real estate located in Elko County, Nevada. The Joseph Yzurdiaga family of Glendale, California donated securities. The gifts come at a most welcome time. In this period of rapid inflation and a taxpayers’ revolt costs continue to climb sharply while both state funding for education and federal research grants become more difficult to obtain. Such support from private individuals therefore becomes instrumental in the continued success of the Program. Eskerrikasko. December Meeting The annual meeting of the Modern Language Association in San Francisco will have a session devoted to “Contemporary Basque Artistic Expression.” The Saturday, December 29 program will convene at 2:45 p.m. in the San Miguel Room of the Hyatt Hotel on Union Square. Participants include Emilia Doyaga speaking on “Basque Influence on Unamuno’s Concept of Women;” José C. Mendizabal on “Oteiza y los artistas vascos;” and Terence Wilbur, “Etxahun, Basque Artistic Expression.” Ignicio Galbis of the University of San Francisco will chair the session. Agur Virginia! Ms. Virginia Jacobsen, Assistant Coordinator of the Basque Studies Program for the past several years, resigned her position recently to move to Amsterdam, Holland. She first joined the Program in 1970 when she attended the Basque Studies Summer Session Abroad. Subsequently, she became a volunteer worker on our staff; and over a two-year period donated thousands of hours of her time. When the activities and administrative needs of the Program warranted a new position, she was hired as Assistant Coordinator. Everyone who has dealt with Virginia in that capacity is aware of her dedicated and efficient manner. Our sense of loss, however, is lessened by the knowledge that she is now realizing one of her personal goals. Before coming to Reno she was a graduate student in Near Eastern languages at the University of California, Berkeley. She plans to complete her work and has affiliated with a team of Near Eastern specialists in Holland. All the best, Virginia! New Documentary Film Ms. Susanne Tedesco of Seattle, Washington recently completed a 30-minute color videotape film entitled “Seasons of the Basque.” It follows a herder through the annual cycle of his activity on a sheep outfit in northwestern Nevada and northeastern California. Through Juan Urreaga’s eyes the viewer experiences a sheepherder’s sense of solitude, as well as his anxieties as he protects his band against adverse weather and predators. There are excellent sequences on lambing, jacketing, and bread making. Scenes from the San Francisco Basque Club picnic and Basque hotels in Reno and Gardnerville are included. Louis Irigaray provides the musical background. This film, which has been shown over many Public Television outlets throughout the American West, is the best documentary of the herder’s life. It was sponsored by the Seattle Folklore Society and funded by a National Endowment of the Arts grant. Staff members of the Basque Studies Program were pleased to serve as consultants to the project. New Basque Colony Discovered! There is a story told about Easterners’ ignorance of western geography. A young woman attends a party given by a Boston society matron. When asked where she is from, she answers, “Idaho.” Her hostess replies, “That’s nice, my dear, but here we pronounce it Ohio!” French mystery writer Sebastien Japrisot may well have the same misconception. In his work The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (English translation, Simon and Schuster, 1967), one of the characters is a Basque. On page 39 we are told “…Manuel, who was Basque, had spent his youth working in America. The longest period had been in Toledo, Ohio. He still had a brother over there, the oldest, his favorite. What he missed most about America was his brother, and also a girl with red hair with whom he had taken a boat ride on the Maumee River at an outing organized by the Basque colony.” |
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