Word: californiaisms
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...leave, located somewhere in the future, and when my feet meet the pavement outside, I return to the present with a jarring thud. I make the adjustment in a microsecond. California is billed as a now scene. But the fact is, everyone living here has one foot in now and another in tomorrow. Here, you get the feeling, is the authentic international dateline. Here the future begins. As I walk away from Rand, the prospect seems kind of pleasing after...
Thus a camera view of California. The surfing boys and leggy girls, the hikers and farmers and futurists, the kooks and the activists are all part of the scene?arbitrarily chosen parts, some more valid than others, but all typical and yet unique. The force that binds them together, the soul of California, is the search for a better life carried on by 20 million individuals, a tenth of the U.S. population. The will-o'-the-wisp?Californism?propels the matron to the massage parlor, impels the petitioner or protester to demonstrate against smog or close a campus...
Most of the trends that have recently and radically changed California life are familiar in the other America ?though many first came to prominence in California. They include the hippie movement, the pop-drug culture, widespread sexual permissiveness, campus revolt and, since the Watts explosion in 1965, more virulent ghetto riots. They also include, in reaction to much of this, a political swing to the right. Not to mention pollution of all kinds and the resulting concern for salvaging the threatened environment...
Officially, Paradise opened for business in July, 1769, when Father Junípero Serra, alias Charlton Heston, planted the Cross at San Diego, establishing California's first mission. This year the state is celebrating its bicentennial with dutiful if lackluster civic ceremonies. Fortunately, perhaps, most Californians are too busy having fun to pause for renditions of their state song...
...love you California...