4th July. This is going to be one long post! (I'm allowed 300 posts with my Blogger account) so each post from now on will cover 6 months of ramblings from the Pays Basque.
First of all, happy birthday America..
I don't want to pass comment on a great Nation that has never seemed so divided - perhaps since the Viet-Nam war - but I'm hoping that one day a politician and statesman will emerge from somewhere in that vast country who will pick up the torch and lead the American people back to the values that its founding fathers so wisely laid down almost 250 years ago.
A friend in the US kindly sent me a link to the story of Walter Anderson - an American artist whom I suspect very few, myself included, have heard of. Once you see his work, you will be astonished that someone of his creativity is not more widely known. Like all great artists, he had a unique 'eye' through which he viewed the world. His talent - his genius - was, in my view, unlike anything that preceded it or followed it. He possessed the single-minded spirit of a true artist who was determined to express himself above all else.. regardless of what people thought of him (reminiscent of van Gogh).
Here's another documentary on Walter Anderson's life and work: