It is August, a unique month for many in the northern hemisphere where it is summer and Basque town's festivals time in the Basque Country. And Basque picnics season in the US. One of those is the one organized by the Mendiko Euskaldun Cluba in Gardnerville, Nevada that this year will be organized together with NABO Euskal Kantari eguna – the festival of bertsos and Basque song in the US. Once again Mattin Etchamendy will emcee the event, with music by Jean Flesher and Panpi and Manuela Etchechury.
Some readers have asked about the periodic gaps in this section From my Corner. It is for sure becoming more and more difficult to continue not just with these entries but with the whole EuskalKultura.com project in general. While we are able, we will be here, but economically things are not working out. Every year is a leap into the void where the expense column is fixed and the income column is always a big question mark. At the current juncture, cut threaten to give us the coup de grace. We are planning on meeting with the new team at Eusko Jaurlaritza in September. We also need to see the response of other institutions and people that have promised us things before, but have failed to follow through, and we are already more than half through 2013.
July ended with the Great Basque-Argentine Festival organized by the Corpus Christi Basque club in the Misiones province in Argentina. They dedicated a day of the program to recording a short film on the situation facing the indigenous people there. The result can be seen here. The making of the film can be seen here. Basque festivities also took place in Trois-Pistoles in Quebec thanks to the Parc de l'Aventure basque en Amerique. In August there will also be festivities in St Pierre et Miquelon, the French islands in Newfoundland that has incorporated the Ikurriña into the local flag.
From Buenos Aires, Norma Rios reported from the Iparraldeko Euskal Etxea that its short stories competition, “Once upon a Basque,” has marked October 15 as the deadline to turn in works. We also heard from Henar Chico’s Blog that Bilbao’s Aste Nagusia festival has created a special website for people who would like to celebrate worldwide the festivities lead by Mari Jaia.
We also heard from our friends in Boise’s Biotzetik Basque Choir about their trip on August 31 to theSan Diego Festival of Sail in California where they will sing Basque maritime songs accompanyingChristine Echeverria Bender’s latest book presentation, Aboard Cabrillo's Galeon. We would like to remind you that this third generation Basque-American has specialized in the historic novel and that this is her fourth successful publication. She will autographs in San Diego, a city like many in California, with a notable Basque history, and more specifically maritime, given the origins and early history of the city are linked to Basques.
And there are still festivals, like the one in San Francisco, with Basque musicians, sportmen and singers from the Basque Country and a theater compamy from Armendaritze (Lower Navarre) that will perform, first in San Francisco and then in Chino, at both local Basque festivals, the last weekend in August (San Francisco) and the first in September-Labor Day (Chino, CA).
Our daily bulletin will return the first week of September. Happy summer or winter depending on where you live. Gero arte.
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