By Jo Wilding
May 22nd

The newspaper at Birmingham airport said civilians have been killed in Nasariya. I thought of Maha and Kenaan and got on the plane. The immigration officer at Los Angeles didn’t flick through my passport to notice all the pre-war Iraq visas, being more concerned about the saxophone I was carrying. I promised on my honour that I wouldn’t be playing any professional concerts, confiding reassuringly that I’d only been playing for three days and knew a grand total of seven notes. Apparently looking more like the illegal worker type than a terrorist I was allowed in without further questions.

LA is enormous and the way around is by a mass of six lane highways with an inordinate number of signs, giving directions, radio frequencies for congestion information, religious and moral advice and invitations to Adopt A Highway. Unlike the more common adoptees such as children, dolphins and large mammals, which require either a lifetime of parenthood or a standing order at the bank, highway adoption apparently demands a commitment to litter clearance. Taxes apparently don’t cover removal of roadside rubbish.

The first talk was in a community centre and radical bookshop called Flor y Canto in a Latin American part of town. Run by volunteers, it’s got meeting space, a little kitchen and a row of four computers where Latino kids were surfing the internet. That part of the city had signs in Spanish or dual Spanish and English and murals to “Libertad, pobre, solidaridad”.