Isn't she beautiful?

Coming to you live from the University of California at San Diego.  We’re in Dr. Seuss country.  Therefore, you shall hear much Dr. Seuss wisdom before you leave this blog.

What, you ask, does Dr. Seuss have to do with the UCSD?  I shall tell you.  Here is the official scoop:  UC San Diego’s Geisel Library is named in honor of the famed author who died in La Jolla in 1991, and his widow, Audrey Geisel. UC San Diego received Geisel’s collection of drawings, notebooks and other memorabilia following his death, and four years later Audrey Geisel made a substantial donation to support the university’s libraries. In 2007, Geisel made a $1 million gift to UCSD Libraries to establish San Diego’s first named university librarianship.

Here is the famed Geisel Library:

Oh the places you'll go!

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go!”

Oh, the places we have gone on this trip!  It has been such a lovely few days visiting Christopher here in his San Diego home.  To think of the places he has gone since he left our little house in the big woods.  Could we have imagined that both of our kids would have become bi-coastal?  One on the West Coast and the other on the East Coast? When the last thing I can remember we were reading “I meant what I said and I said what I meant!”  while strange cat-like creatures jumped around talking in jumbled rhyming sentences.

The Cat in the Hat stands over Dr. Seuss

Most of the outdoor adventure today happened walking between coffee shops and restaurants.  Still, I think we have put in about four miles and the sun has not yet set.  We’re sitting outside on campus right now and I’ve had so much coffee YOU can feel it, can’t you? 

How would you like to walk to class among eucalyptus trees?

My son informed me that some students here at UCSD worship the Sun God.  I said, “Oh really?”  He said, “You’ll see.”  We rounded the corner.  Sure enough, there was the Sun God. We did not see any worshipers nearby.  We did see a couple students sunning on blankets.  Perhaps they were devotees.

The Sun God

“How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”

We had one terrible incident this morning.  Very awful.  Do you want to hear?

Yesterday we bought a persimmon at the Farmer’s Market.  (You remember how much I loved them the first day?)  We admired it this morning and Chris cut it up into beautiful slices.  We would perhaps bring our slices to the coffee shop and savor them between our bites of bagel with cream cheese and lovely espresso.

But first, we decided to sample one.  Just a bite before we left the apartment. 

Innocent-looking persimmon

We sampled. 

We looked at one another in horror.  Our faces screwed into frenetic disgust.   “Arghghghghh!!!” we gurgled and I ran for the bathroom sink with a glass of water.  Sip, spit!  Sip, spit!  Anything to get that horrible taste out of my mouth.  Chris was having his own troubles in the kitchen.  We were beside ourselves attempting to deal with that horrible horrible taste.  Finally, about three minutes later we could function halfway normally.

He later looked it up on the computer and discovered the following facts:  It’s important you know there are two kinds of persimmons: the Fuyu, the kind you can eat right away, and the Hachiya, the kind you can’t. If you bite into an unripe Hachiya persimmon, it is if you just drank six cups of extra strength tea. This astringent flavor is due to the high level of tannin in the fruit, and there is a good chance that you would never try a persimmon again because it tastes so bitter. This would be a shame because ripe persimmons have an exceptional flavor and provide us with important nutrients such as beta-carotene, Vitamin C and potassium.

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

and…

“Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.”