Dr Seuss’ books
California dreaming
San Diego is distilled California—palm trees and storeyed Spanish mission architecture. It’s so leisured it doesn’t even feel the need to compete. To get home each night we drive slowly along the sunset length of Del Mar beach where even in the spring chill there are always a few surfers riding the Pacific roll.
San Diego is also a military depot. As you make the first right turn out of the American Eagle plane, a sign tells it straight: ‘The Free, The Proud, THE MARINES.’ This is the town from which President George W. Bush launched his triumphant trip from shore to deck of the troop-laden aircraft carrier moored in San Diego Bay. ‘Boy, did that cost some,’ say our bemused American hosts. Many of the yachts in San Diego Bay fly a yellow ribbon from their masts. In a good wind they flutter like acid sunbeams.
On the campus of the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), one of the long chain of state-funded and, to Australian eyes, wealthy West Coast universities, the handbill signs are what you might expect. ‘Civil Rights in America: USA PATRIOT ACT. Guest speaker: Salam al-Marayati, Muslim Public Affairs Council.’ ‘ONE WORLD ONE FUTURE WITHOUT WAR. Keynote speaker, Chalmers Johnson, on US Foreign Policy.’ But another tattered yellow handbill asks, rather desperately, ‘Can you afford an attorney?’ And in the eucalyptus grove (there are gums everywhere—very disorienting for an Australian) between the student centre and the faculty buildings, there are two miniature American flags tied on to a gum sapling above a sign, ‘Fallen American Heroes’, with a forlorn typed list of names like tear-off labels.
San Diego has one of the world’s most famous zoos—every creature imaginable and a few you hadn’t thought of. When UCSD went looking for a mascot some decades back they almost settled on the koala. California is bear country but the koala is still seriously weird here. It’s so small. It’s so cute. It doesn’t eat people. In the zoo it just sits on a low branch right opposite the entrance turnstiles and munches—leaves. Can’t you see it denatured into duffle bags, furry slippers and bear mouse pads? Fortunately, the campus had a sun god festival one year—Mexico is just a trolley ride from downtown San Diego—and the fiery Aztec deity caught on instead of our modest marsupial. So now there is a 14-foot fibreglass bird-god, with