I made the decision that despite having let myself fall behind on the blog, I was not going to start another big trip without finishing the story of the previous one. So here I am, writing this in a hurry at the Montreal Airport lounge, thinking I will proofread it in the plane and post it tomorrow morning in Brussels. Hopefully that works!
While driving in the vast emptiness of South Dakota, I was oddly reminded of Namibia. In some way, the scenery was the same, with red or beige replaced by green.
An impressive site for sure, but I have to admit I have always found this pharaonic monument a little out of place in the United States.
When the main sculptor died, the work stopped, but this is what the monument was intended to look like; full busts rather than just heads.
With people, to give an idea of the size.
Close to Mount Rushmore an even more grandiose project is under construction: the Crazy Horse Memorial. At the request of a Lakota elder, Korczak Ziolkowski, a Polish American sculptor, started working on the monument in 1948. He died decades later, having barely started it, and now 7 of his 10 children work on the epic project. For ideological reasons, they have always rejected public funds and rely only on entrance fees. The white model shows what the whole thing will look like once completed. Continue reading
