Corfu to Wuhan

-



Such a tangled web we weave in the bizarre game of consequences that is human history. Pictured is the former home of Lawrence Durrell at Kalami on Corfu: known as 'The White House' - "...set like a dice on a rock already venerable with scars of wind and water." Today it's a renowned restaurant and small hotel, and where we've lunched on a number of occasions when over there. The Durrell's story is well-trodden, documented by TV dramas and books alike, the original source of their story being Lawrence's younger brother Gerald's book "My Family & Other Animals" which documented the family's brief four-year stay on the island and Gerald's burgeoning interest and nascent career in naturalism.

In 1963, he formed The Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, later founding The Wildlife Preservation Trust International in 1971, which itself became The Wildlife Trust in 1999 (Durrell himself died in 1995). By 2010, the trust had reformed and remodelled itself as The EcoHealth Alliance, an American-based not-for-profit with one of its stated aims being research into emerging zoonotic pandemic diseases. The Alliance is mostly US defence and government-funded and has associations with the Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment, suspected to be the source of the current global pandemic.

It's horribly ironic that the child with a deep love for and intense interest in nature and the environment should inadvertently, ultimately leave a legacy resulting in the opening of the Pandora's box that has led to the crisis we now face -  and getting the lid back on this one may yet prove impossible - but that seems to be the way of all things: get the suits and governments involved, and they will always manage to pervert anything and everything otherwise virtuous and useful to the rest of humanity to their own nefarious ends.








 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des...
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [...
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more