'...the other side of the sphere'

Coming back here via California partially prepares you for a return to Australia. California has a fair smattering of eucalypts and other Australian natives. Bottlebrushes flower there at the same time as they do here. But Australian natives do not form part of the general flow in the US, and though Los Angeles, hot as it is, may have plantings of Tasmanian Blue Gums, nowhere did I see Angophora costatas (Sydney Red Gums, in the background here). Angophorae costatae (if that's the plural) and scalloped sandstone - that is definitely a Sydney look.

We met a children's book editor from New York on the plane. She was coming to Sydney for her fourth visit. We asked her what she would be doing? Visiting an old friend of course, but going to see some shows, and shopping... Shopping? A New Yorker comes to Sydney to shop? Yes, she said and when asked to elaborate said Australia has great magazines. It hadn't occurred to us.

It is nice to find the familiar made newly-familiar, nice to hear anew Australian accents (or should Oi say Austrayan?), even nice to see pests like Indian Mynahs (pests in Australia) on a fence.

Finding plenty there - a return to Oakland

Gertrude Stein, who lived in Oakland in the late 19th century, once famously said 'There is no there there.'
Actually I reckon there is plenty there. And we have enjoyed the past few days wandering from Piedmont Avenue to the Lions Pool in Fruitvale, three gullies over. We have enjoyed learning from plaques along the way about the Chochenyo or Huichiuss Indians who once camped at the corner of Trestle Glen and Lakeshore Avenues, availing themselves of plentiful food at the head of what is now Lake Merritt. We have seen with our own eyes the truism that Oakland has almost equal proportions Hispanic, African-American, Asian and Caucasian in its population (the Oakland-East Bay Symphony recognises this in programs for Persian New Year, Chinese New Year...) We have enjoyed the glimpse of perhaps grander days as we walked past the great old Dream Palace cinemas, which in old black-and-white photographs have trolley cars trundling past them. This:

and this:

and Thomas Pflueger's wonderful old example of Depression-era fancy, The Paramount.

The whole Bay area is exciting though. People talk about San Francisco's 'eclecticism'. I think it engenders a touching whimsy, particularly say, in the Mission District where you see spectacular murals on garage doors, walls and back gates.

Not far from here are beautiful old Victorian homes, built in the 1880s, which were not dynamited, as were the buildings in this area of Valencia, to halt the fires following the 1906 earthquake. Perhaps because 'newer', these buildings have not been kid-gloved as old buildings but treated almost as blank canvasses for wonderful flights of imagination. They're just as much tributes to human artfulness and charm as faithful preservation, as in this side wall of a women's health centre,

painted by

which treats the theme of women's health to a particularly vivid epic sweep.

The whole Bay area is a series of micro-climates we were told yesterday. We had a vivid experience of it as we emerged from overcast fogginess on the east side

to sunny streetscenes not very many minutes later.

The variety and extremes may be something Bay dwellers mention in passing, but they must contribute to San Francisco's excitement greatly.

Continental view

As the one-year anniversary of our time in the US approaches, I thought I'd try visually to sum up what I love most about the United States.

I love the people, their courtesy, their flamboyance and the 'upness' of their behaviour and the scale of American achievement, but I also love the look of the States, from a pond in the northeastern woodlands

to cedar swamps in South Carolina

to the slattern effect of leaves in woods behind Hastings-on-Hudson

to Inwood Hill Park in Manhattan and its glimpse of the New Jersey Palisades

to the sweep of California (this from above San Francisco Bay)

or this from LA, which gladdens my Central Australian heart;

to the Americanness of American street scenes (here, in Raton, New Mexico

or Montrose, Pennsylvania)

and the distinctive architecture. Not just the old historical sites, but the grand 1920s/30s statements, this being the inscription on the side of Berkeley High School

or the Berkeley Public Library

and the beautiful whimsy of 1950s/60s signage. (This from the San Fernando Valley

and this from Savannah.)
 

the beautiful mystery of Savannah

the beautiful civic-minded detail of design, say this from base of a street light on Vanowen Ave, Reseda

or a tree box in Pasadena

the entire grand variety, from sea (from Fort Clinch in Florida)

to shining sea.

(San Clemente from the train) - 'all over this broad land.'

'Down Mexico way'

Of course, one advantage to being in San Diego is the ability to go down to Mexico so easily.

And you get there via a trolley car which, at the beginning of its journey, travels through the city streets of San Diego like a tram. (We went down for lunch.)

I guess as an Australian I'm quite knocked out by the ability to travel so far in so short a time. Victorians can travel across the Murray to Albury, of course, and New South Welshmen (or women) can go across to Wodonga, but 15 minutes after alighting at San Ysidro, California you're in the land of Dia de los muertos, toreadors...

Amerindian traditions...

and requesting 'Dos cafe con la leche' in a McDonald's where the young kids behind the counter do not speak English.

It's bustling and noisy (both in colour and sound) and contrasts with San Diego, which strikes me as a once-beautiful city where an eraser went through and left swaths of carparks

(although definitely once beautiful).

In Mexico, 15 minutes after leaving the States there are the typical shortcuts of poorer countries - unsecured lights and unfinished wiring hanging down over the rough, uneven steps of a pedestrian overpass, for example.

It makes me wonder why it hasn't occurred to anti-regulatory Americans that the absence of regulation can be a pre-condition for Third World standards. But, sigh, people hug their entrenched positions...

I noted also, on the way down to Mexico, the wonderful mountain ranges you see all the way down the Californian coast to Tijuana.

There is a grand beauty in the mountainous spine of this state. Which gives me another chance to extol the beauties of Los Angeles - once you get away from the freeways and culverts. Because this is what you can see in the Santa Monica Mountains between the coast and Thousand Oaks.

Seriously. This is maybe 8 miles from the Ventura Fwy. There are warnings about mountain lions at the beginning of the trail. How come no-one ever talks about the remnant beauty of this city?

Perhaps because this hidden gem is less easy to get to than Mexico?

A dead give-away

We caught the weekly recital of San Diego's Civic Organist, Carol Williams, last Sunday. The organ has sat in Balboa Park since 1915, and the city has had an official organist for nearly a century.

The position was up to be axed until recently. Like many US cities, San Diego needs to tighten the belt. According to a local councilman, Carl DeMaio, quoted in The New York Times on 26 December, 'We've decimated our basic park services, we've cut a third of libraries, and our roads are literally falling apart.' I'm glad for my sake, though, that the city received hundreds of letters in support of the Civic Organist. Her recital reminded me of the sort of lovely music-making that used to be made in Melbourne when I was a kid - concerts by the likes of the Footscray-Yarraville Band, organ recitals at the Town Hall; music played purely for the sake of the audience's enjoyment.

This nostalgic memory is not the only way San Diego reminds me of Australia however. In the Museum of Art, we came upstairs from an exhibition of modern Mexican painting (terrifically strong-figured stuff, such as Alfredo Ramos Martinez's 'Indian', Mancacoyota, staring directly at the viewer) and saw this through the window.

Where are we? Adelaide? Hobart?

I kind of don't mind. One of the great pleasures in living in the US right now is being recognised very quickly as an Australian. A guy on the train to Trenton pointed to my akubra as a, 'dead give-away,' but Americans can generally now pick the accent. Then they ask lots of questions. Those who momentarily mistake me for English quickly apologise (as they should). But I'm sure that 15 years ago when we'd mention Australia, people's eyes would glaze over about five minutes in. Now they're fascinated.

I can't help finding it flattering. And I can't help reflecting that it's the first time that something beyond any effort on my part helps me stand out from the general ruck. Of course, remembering Mancacoyota's stare I wouldn't dare equate myself with a beleagured or disadvantaged minority.

More to love about LA

'...[A] settler pushes west and sings a song, and the song echoes out forever and fills the unknowing air. It is the American sound. It is hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic; daring, decent and fair.'

I've sometimes asked musician friends if they can identify the source of this quote. Aaron Copland, Elmer Bernstein (the creators of 'Big Sky' music)? No, it's from Ronald Reagan's second inaugural address. Whether the speechwriter (Peggy Noonan?) was thinking of 'The Open Prairie' sequence of Copland's Billy the Kid ballet I don't know, but it reminds me that I share Reagan's love of the open spaces of the West.

I was struck by this love when we were at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley earlier this year. It's the reason for the site.

And I caught my breath again recently when we saw the San Fernando Valley from back of the Hollywood Hills.

This landscape doesn't have Central Australia's ribbons of ochre and mauve hills diminishing into vapoury blue peaks, but it still has the heart-swelling invitingness of open space. I love the feeling.

I love also the way you pass through different language areas in LA. Of course there's always Spanish, but you might pass through a Korean precinct

and the other day down Victory Boulevard we saw a script we couldn't identify - Russian, Thai? The woman sitting next to us on the bus filled us in. She was reading Los Angeles' Armenian-language newspaper.

These zones you pass through give the clue to how to see LA. It's not a city in the traditional sense of something derived from the old walled-city concept. It's a conurbation of old ranches (some maps show where they were), farms, orange groves, movie lots...Tarzana was once the ranch of novelist Edgar Rice Burroughs, who named it after his most-famous character. Calabasas Junction, where I went swimming at the lap pool last week, was an old stagecoach stop.

As a city, LA's quite diffuse. You have to get most nearly everywhere by car (though we've walked from Kittredge to Ventura Boulevard and back, and they're restoring the public transport). And it may not have the compressed excitement of a Manhattan. But there's citrus and sunshine and birdsong as compensation. And it's no less active nor vibrant for all of that.

Under God

When I saw stars along Hollywood Boulevard dedicated to people like Joseph Szigeti, I realised that classical music was once American popular culture.

There are stars also to people like Stravinsky, Pierre Monteux, Paderewski, and the great Wagnerians Lauritz Melchior and Lotte Lehmann.

I love LA. I love the look of LA streets. The distant hills stop them from looking totally like Parramatta Road, or any anonymous-ville else.

I love the fact that you can see coyotes up in the hills and that they warn you about rattlesnakes on the trails.

I love that it often looks like 'that great Alice Springs on the other side of the sphere' (to paraphrase Herman Melville's comment about Australia)

Most of all I love that movies are made here.

This mural on the eastern wall of Hollywood High, Kate's father's old school, portrays some of the famous alumni - Lawrence Fishburne, Judy Garland, Carol Burnett...Check the way the guy on the side is pulling aside the curtain. A reference to the famous American painting of a fellow in his athenaeum (whose title I forget), I imagine it means this 'Old School Tie' is a producer, unlike the eastern wall's front-of-camera performers.

Not everyone likes Hollywood though. I saw this on the way down to San Diego earlier in the year.

A big red slash through the Hollywood sign.

And that's got me thinking about America's religiosity. Presidents these days end their speeches with 'God bless you. God bless the United States of America.' It wasn't also so. And wasn't until recently. Even a president as devout as Jimmy Carter ended his farewell address with 'Thank you, fellow citizens, and farewell'. Richard Nixon launched into a bigger arabesque, 'We come from many faiths, we pray perhaps to different gods - but really the same God in a sense - but I want to say for each and every one of you, not only will we always remember you, not only will we always be grateful to you but always you will be in our hearts and you will be in our prayers.' But then ended, merely: 'Thank you very much.' I wonder if any modern president would dare leave out the 'God bless you' mantra.

An Australian prime minister would not dare put it in! Australians give short shrift to public figures wearing religion on their sleeve. Wave the Bible and you are less likely to be elected. And there are advantages to this lower key. Has intense religiosity ever spared America immoral behaviour? Has it prevented shonky behaviour on Wall Street in recent years? Has it weeded out corporate sociopathy?

But here's an upside. Regardless of the work they're doing, Americans act joyfully. An Australian behind the counter will often give you resentful service; grunt when you say thank you rather than say, 'You're welcome'. You don't find that much here. Americans may simply be making lattes day in and day out, ringing up a cash register, driving a bus along the same route, but they behave as if they're part of the performance, the Divine Comedy. My current theory? I think they feel reassured they're doing what God wants them to do. It may not be forging a treaty or building a dam (always), but they feel that they fit into the grand design.

There's enough of the larrikin in me to be amused by the heckler who calls out 'bullshit' at the end of a ringing religious phrase, but it would be nice if Australians had a bit more of a sense of working for a higher power (or ideal). There are advantages to a higher key. I think this is partly how America built Wall Street, Silicon Valley - and Hollywood.