Southwestern Collection

Running now throughJune 14, 200g, at the Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park is the spring exhibit "No Hand Idle: Domestic Arts in the igth Century." The Dallas Heritage Village will be holding special events and programming centering on the exhibit's theme throughout the season . No Hand Idle" is part of Quilt Mania II, a Dallas-wide event in which Dallas Heritage Village is one of eighteen partners, featuring twenty-five quilts from Dallas Heritage Village's collection representing the quilt's function as not only a way to stay warm, but also an art form. Included in the exhibit are patchwork quilts created by Dallas's pioneer women as well as the more luxurious quilts of the Victorian era. Other forms of domestic arts like gardening and woodworking from the nineteenth century will also be displayed and demonstrated. The Dallas Heritage Village is located at 1515 S. Harwood in Dallas, and more information may be found on the village and the exhibit by visiting www.DallasHeritageVillage.org or calling 2 14-42 1-5141. Southwestern Collection 430Southwestern Historical QuarterlyApril Mark Odintz Mark Odintz came to work at the Texas State Historical Association shordy after earning a Ph.D. in history at the University of Michigan. Having recendy completed a dissertation on the British Officer Corps, the full-time research associate position with The Handbook ofTexas probably did not strike him as a pivotal career move. Over the course of the ensuing two decades, however, he found a professional home at the Association and in the process made profound contributions to the scholarly rigor of both the Handbook and the Association at large. In retrospect, the research involved in preparing a collective biographical study of almost four-hundred British army officers well prepared Mark for his initial task—joining the small cadre of Handbook staffwriters charged with preparing literally thousands of articles on a vast array of topics related to the history of Texas. His disciplined ability to organize and sustain a research program scattered across multiple topics while crafting concise, informative articles that balanced scholarly rigor with readability, quickly established him as one of the Handbook project's most productive writers. From there it was a natural progression for him to join the project's editorial staff, where his training and experience were tremendous assets in managing the expansive research program of article writing and fact checking required to produce a multi-volume encyclopedia . With publication of The New Handbook of Texas in 1996, Mark turned his attention to new dimensions of the Handbook selecting and augmenting portions of the Handbook for use in new publications such as The Portable Handbook of Texas and The Handbook of Texas Music, and organizing an editorial process for responding to the massive success of the Internet-based Handbook ofTexas Online, launched in iggg. The multiple outcomes of the Handbook revision project—the massive 1996 revised edition, the runaway success of the online Handbook, and the evolving line of supplemental products—have been enormously important to the fortunes of the Texas State Historical Association and have heighted the Association's reputation and visibility worldwide. Mark's dedicated, patient commitment to history, to scholarship, and to excellence has been instrumental in every phase of this work from the time he joined the Association. Throughout his various roles at the Association—from writing articles, to training research assistants, to guiding staff writers, to working with colleagues, contributors, board members, and the public—he has brought a consistently thoughtful, considerate, and collégial demeanor to our work which has endeared him to all as colleague and friend. 20ogSouthwestern Collection431 Meetings The 200g Community History Workshop Series sponsored by the Center for Texas Studies at TCU and the Fort Worth Public Library will feature "It May Not Be a Goner: Conserving Your Treasures," a lecture by Renee Tucker of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History on May 2. The workshops are held at the Fort Worth Central Library at 500 West Third Street from 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Call 817-871-READ or TDD 8i7-87i-8g2Ô for sign-language interpretation. Exhibits The Texas State Library & Archives Commission...