History, heritage and tourism

Last week, Natacha phoned to suggest that I might watch a TV evening on Corsica. Although she has always lived in her native Provence, Natacha is linked to this unique island through her maternal ancestors, and she has often looked for superlatives to tell me about the magnificent landscape and the spirit of Corsica.

"All they're ever asking of visitors, " explained Natacha, "is to respect scrupulously the Corsican people and their culture."

That sounded fair enough to me. In any case, although I've never set foot in Corsica, and have no current plans to go there as a tourist, I decided to drop in on the TV evening about the place that is often designated as "the island of beauty". Well, I ended up watching in amazement a splendid documentary (I said already, in my previous post, that French TV can be incredibly good) that obliged me to reflect upon the bundle of themes summed up in my title: history, heritage and tourism. And the outcome of my reflections was both novel (for me, that is) and positive.

To my mind, these three concepts are different but closely linked:

— In general, history should interest and concern anybody who agrees with the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana in The Life of Reason: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I realize, of course, that many people are totally uninterested in history. They would never go out of their way to visit a place solely because of its links with the past, nor would they lift a little finger to contribute to the conservation of historical edifices, artifacts and archives. They do not seek to understand, let alone appreciate, the past. In fact, they want to have nothing to do with it.

— What we refer to as heritage might be thought of as the particular subset of history that has unfolded, as it were, in your back yard. Not necessarily your geographical backyard (so-called local history), nor even your biological backyard (genealogy), but at least a backyard that you've personally "adopted", in the spirit of a foster parent who has decided to take care of, and bring up, a child.

— Finally, as far as tourism is concerned, most often it lies outside the domains of history and heritage. People don't visit Disneyland or Las Vegas, nor even the French Riviera, for reasons linked to history or heritage. But countless serious tourists (I prefer to refer to them by means of a lovely old-fashioned term: pilgrims) visit various precious spots on the planet in a quest for vestiges of past events, past constructions, past societies, past individuals...

The TV documentary that Natacha advised me to watch was entitled Gardiens des trésors de Corse (Guardians of the treasures of Corsica), and it concerned the guardianship of three different kinds of Corsican treasures: exotic specimens in the marine sanctuary of the Lavezzi Isles, ecclesiastic architecture and, last but not least, Corsican haute cuisine.

In the first domain, the guardian is, to a large extent, a maritime policeman, constantly on the lookout for tourists whose incursions into the protected site might harm the precious fauna and flora. In the third domain, cooking, I was struck above all by a variety of Corsican beef cattle with striped tiger-hued hides, which devour the foliage of wild olive trees. Apparently, the meat is pure nectar, but the proud grazier refuses to sell his beasts to mainland butchers unless they drop in personally at his property. Then there's a variety of fat little black pigs, who run around freely on the slopes. Transformed into smoked hams, their creamy fat is said to be even more succulent than the red meat. As I write, my mouth waters...

The part of the documentary that most impressed me concerned the restoration of ancient churches in the Castagniccia (chestnut) region, south-west of Bastia. This work is supervised and financed to a large extent by the republican authorities in charge of old buildings. But the profound sense of the word "heritage" is made manifest by the involvement of the local people, whose attitudes towards the restoration projects are expressed superbly in the documentary.

Many of these rural Corsicans are religious in an old-fashioned Mediterranean fashion, which involves the adoration of statues, the kissing of painted icons, and colorful processions through village streets. Needless to say, this kind of fervor leaves me cold personally, because I wasn't brought up in that kind of atmosphere and, even if I had been, I would have surely abandoned such practices as soon as I grew up. But the marvelous aspect of this relationship between the Corsican folk, their religious traditions and their ecclesiastic heritage is the fact that, in their minds, all this is strictly "for real". They're not putting on a show for tourists. They probably don't give a damn about outsiders, leaving that for hotel-keepers and restaurant-owners. And we hear constantly about the ways in which the local folk often react to new settlers from the mainland. To my mind, that's the right of these native Corsicans: their birthright. To a lesser extent, I've encountered the same kind of reactions since settling down here at Choranche.

Corsicans look upon the history and the heritage of their island and their culture as if they were taking care of a dearly-loved child, protecting him from harm and teaching him to grow up in the best imaginable circumstances. Admittedly, it's easier to appreciate history and heritage when your native cocoon happens to be a green island in the Mediterranean, rather than a sad wasteland. The TV documentary made it clear that there is much natural beauty in Corsica, but countless generations of Corsicans have no doubt enhanced that beauty through their works. Today, they are justly proud of their past. They have nothing to prove to anybody, no excuses to make, no lessons to receive. In a nutshell, they're authentic.

Speechless

I've often expressed the opinion that French TV can, at times, be incredibly good: a powerful medium in the hands of exceptionally talented creators with humanistic ideals. Admittedly, it's not like that all the time. You can find shit on French TV... but the ratio of good stuff to bad stuff is vastly superior in France to what I've seen elsewhere.

Last Friday evening, I watched a documentary by a French journalist, Daniel Grandclément, on the plight of children in Koranic "schools" in a village of Senegal named M'bour.

The documentary was so powerful, and some of the images were so terrifying, that I was left speechless... and I remain literally in that state. I simply don't know how to react in the face of those ugly images of young undernourished kids wincing in pain when they were whipped on the bare back and frail shoulders by a cruel adult guardian who uses this pedagogical method to inform the victim that he has made a mistake in his recitation of the Koran.

The children's misery is accentuated by the fact that they are poorly fed, dirty and dressed in rags, and they clearly don't get enough sleep.

The documentary certainly presented clearly the frightening conditions in which these poor kids are surviving. Maybe powerful TV messages of this kind can give rise to miracles. In any case, nothing short of a miracle could righten the terrible wrongs of M'bour, and attenuate the children's suffering.

Fabulous legends

There are countless reasons for visiting Paris, which include the possibility of climbing to the top of the cathedral of Notre-Dame, taking a boat trip along the Seine, or spending an evening at the Crazy Horse. [Personally, during my thirty or so years in Paris, I never did any of those three things.] As far as I'm concerned, one might decide to spend time in Paris solely in order to visit the medieval museum of the Hôtel de Cluny in the Latin Quarter.

Here, in the curious vault-like setting of a circular room with dimmed lighting, you can gaze upon the six magnificent tapestries of The Lady and the Unicorn.

Now one comes upon them by chance, among chance corners, and is almost frightened to be here uninvited. But there are others passing by, though they are never many. The young people scarcely even halt before them, unless somehow their studies oblige them to have seen these things once, because of some particular characteristic they possess. Young girls one does occasionally find before them. For in the museums there are many young girls who have left the houses that can no longer keep anything. They find themselves before these tapestries and forget themselves a little.

— Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke

The tapestries were commissioned by a wealthy judge in Lyon named Jean Le Viste, and woven in Flanders towards the end of the 15th century. These masterpieces are extraordinarily beautiful. They exploit a narrow palette of colors—mainly reddish orange, greenish blue and pale gold—but the hues are blended exquisitely to produce enchanting visual poetry. The themes are strangely sensual, although we cannot readily decipher the coded language of the scenes. One wonders, obviously, why the fair lady is accompanied constantly by that exotic white beast with a huge horn jutting out from its forehead.

The most mysterious of the six tapestries is the one shown above, in which the elegantly-attired lady stands in the opening of a luxurious tent labeled with an enigmatic inscription: A mon seul désir (To my desire only). She has removed her necklace, and is placing it in a jewel box held by her maid. Is she simply starting to undress, or does this ritual removal of the necklace have a deeper signification?

Not surprisingly, the beauty and the mysterious nature of these amazing medieval creations gave rise to legends about their origins. I'm particularly fond of the most ancient and tenacious legend, because it places the origin of the tapestries of The Lady and the Unicorn in the immediate vicinity of my home alongside Pont-en-Royans. Funnily enough, although the story I'm about to relate culminates in a fictitious explanation concerning the reason why the tapestries were created, almost everything else in the tale is perfectly authentic. Like all good stories, this one will take a little time to be told... particularly when it's me, the story-teller.

One of my earliest blog articles, appearing on 23 December 2006, was entitled When is a castle not a castle? [display]. I pointed out that there's an ancient watchtower on the slopes of a nearby mountain, just above Pont-en-Royans, at a place designated as Three Castles. It has that name because, once upon a time, from that observation point, you could in fact see three great castles down in the valley, in the territory known as the Royans. In my article of 20 June 2008 entitled Old times, forgotten places [display], I evoked the greatest of these three castles, called La Bâtie, which was the home of the Sassenage lords. Today, it has totally disappeared. But the ruins of one of the three ancient castles still stand, at Rochechinard, seen here:


In the 15th century, this fairy-tale castle received an unexpected and exotic guest, and modern authors are still writing books about him. Everybody has heard that the great Byzantine city of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, whereupon its name was changed to Istanbul. In fact, many scholars consider this event and this date as marking the end of the Middle Ages. The conqueror of Constantinople was named Mehmed II. He had made it clear that he wished to be succeeded by his second son, Djem Sultan, also known affectionately as Zizim. Understandably, the elder son, Bajazet, didn't like this idea one little bit. So, after Mehmed's death, Bajazet chased his brother away. Zizim sought refuge in Rhodes with the knights of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem.

The grand master of that order was Pierre d'Aubusson, from the Château de Monteil (known today as Le Monteil-au-Vicomte, to the south of Guéret, and to the west of the great tapestry town of Aubusson). Acting no doubt with the approval of the pope, Pierre d'Aubusson actually kidnapped Zizim, in the vague hope of using him as a hostage capable of playing a role in the recovery of Constantinople. So, poor Zizim, who had dreamed of becoming the prince of Istanbul, found himself transported to France.

A senior member of the knights of the Order of Saint John was a certain Charles Alleman, whose family owned the castle at Rochechinard, not far from Saint-Nazaire-en-Royans, at the delightful spot where the Bourne runs into the Isère. One thing led to another, and our Zizim soon ended up as a permanent castle guest at Rochechinard.

At this point in my story, the plot thickens through the inclusion of a delicate dose of sexy spices, or spicy sex (depending on your tastes, if I may be excused for using that soupy metaphor)... To appreciate this new dimension of the tale, you need to know that, just down the road from my place, at the time of Zizim's extended holiday in our charming countryside alongside the Bourne and the Isère, the village of Pont-en-Royans happened to be the home of one of the most beautiful noble females who had ever appeared on the surface of the planet Earth. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the lady in question, but I can tell you that her name was Philippine de Sassenage, and that she was the fourth child and second daughter of Jacques de Sassenage, the lord of the Royans. She was such a stunning female that people had given her the Grecian nickname Helen, evoking Helen of Troy. But I hasten to add that her three sisters—named Françoise, Huguette and Isabeau—were said to be equally attractive. Here's a contemporary description of Philippine:

"Her face was oval. Her mouth was small. Her eyes were profound, black and full of spirit. Her physionomy was happy, and her character was surprising. She was only sixteen years old when she emerged from the convent at Saint-Just where she had been educated. Upon her return to the family castle of La Bâtie in the Royans, she was pursued by a crowd of admirers, including Saint-Quentin, Baron de Bressieu, Philibert de Clermont, the young man of Hostun, the lord of Claveyson, the lord of Murinais, and several others." We are told that Prince Zizim "soon joined in, increasing the number [of admirers] by placing his Ottoman pride at the feet of lovely Philippine".

Now, we've almost got back to the tapestries. There are just a few final phases in our complicated story. At about the time that Zizim started to fall madly in love with Philippine, his crusader keepers decided that he should be moved to another region: the Creuse department in the center of France. [I drive through there, with immense pleasure, every time I visit Christine in Brittany.]

The crusader folk arranged for the construction of a tower to house Zizim in the village of Bourganeuf, not far from the family castle of the individual who had betrayed Zizim in Rhodes: the knight Pierre d'Aubusson. Zizim remained imprisoned in his tower at Bourganeuf for about four years, giving him ample time to forget about Philippine before being bundled off to Rome, where he was imprisoned and finally poisoned.

I return, at last, to the tapestries, which became the focal point of a lovely legend. Maybe this legend was fueled by the fact that the patronymic of Pierre d'Aubusson evokes a great tapestry town in the Creuse. Maybe the legend reached a climax when the famous tapestries of The Lady and the Unicorn, inherited by descendants of the judge Jean Le Viste, were hung for a century or so (before being purchased in 1882 by the museum in Paris) in the Château de Boussac, not far from Aubusson, Bourganeuf and the region associated with Zizim.

According to this legend, the tapestries are so splendid, so ethereal and so mysterious, that they were surely a gift that the Turkish hostage Zizim had commissioned for the most beautiful creature on Earth: his future bride Philippine de Sassenage.

One final word. It is said that, if he had been liberated and given the opportunity of marrying Philippine, Zizim would have gladly abandoned his Islamic faith to become, like his wife, a Christian. In such circumstances, the crusader armies would have surely helped him defeat his evil brother Bajazet and obtain the throne that his father Mehmed had bequeathed to Zizim at Constantinople. Lady Philippine and her exotic Turkish unicorn Zizim would have surely changed the entire future course of world history. And today, we would have hordes of tourists from the Bosphorus and the eastern Mediterranean flocking to Rochechinard to take photos of the place where it all began...

DNA test

To celebrate the birthday of Charles Darwin, I finally decided to order a DNA test. As everybody knows, the results will reveal the particular species of monkey from which I descend, and the jungle in which my ancestors lived, maybe even the kind of trees in which they built their homes. Besides that, this DNA test will no doubt confirm that I have an exceptionally high level of extremely healthy and active intelligence genes, and that I was genetically endowed to be a really superior guy from every point of view. Based upon hard facts, the test will no doubt also explain scientifically (for those who were not already aware of this particular aspect of my being) why I've always had a terrific sensual effect upon beautiful women, a little like Julio Iglesias (but without the singing) or George Clooney (without the Nescafé ads). And I'll be getting all this great information sent to my doorstep, direct from Arizona, for no more than 120 euros.

Well, the results of the test might not be quite like that. So maybe I should set aside my wishful thinking and describe the DNA test in a more modest down-to-earth way.

[Click the logo to visit the Family Tree DNA website.]

I lost no time in choosing a company to carry out my test because, in the genealogical domain, there aren't really very many companies around. The laboratories that you hear of in the news—when scientists talk, say, about cracking the genome of Neanderthals or the possibility of cloning furry mammoths—are not concerned with the DNA of ordinary mortals such as you and me. Most of the high-profile companies that advertise their high-priced services in DNA analysis are medically-oriented, which means that they're capable of obtaining personal data about your genetic makeup that might just prevent your descendants, one of these days, from purchasing life insurance, finding a partner and procreating, or even getting certain jobs. Apart from that, though, it's great to know yourself better from a health viewpoint. As far as genealogy is concerned, most people seem to agree that the Arizona-based company called Family Tree DNA is the ideal door to knock on, because they propose an infrastructure enabling you to meet up with other individuals with comparable DNA profiles.

One of the first sobering things you learn, when you step into the domain of genealogical DNA tests, is that specialists refer to the precious molecular fragments used in their analyses as junk DNA. Now, this doesn't mean that they think your ancestors are trash. Even if a living prince were to use DNA testing to confirm that he descended from a long-dead king, this would be done by means of junk DNA. The adjective "junk" simply draws attention to the curious fact (well, it's curious for newcomers) that the fragments of the DNA double helix yielding the most information as far as family links are concerned lie outside the all-important sequences of genetic coding that determine what kind of hereditary makeup we have. Between the genes, in our lengthy strand of DNA, there's a vast quantity of chemical "noise" (to borrow the term used by communications engineers), which doesn't play any role in determining our inherited nature. Well, this junk part of our DNA reveals certain patterns that remain constant from a father to his sons. These patterns get copied in the Y-chromosome, found only in males. Consequently, if the DNA of two males happens to contain identical patterns of this kind, that means that their paternal ancestral lines reach back to a unique male individual.

What does this mean at a practical level? Let me give you an example. In an article written in August 2007 entitled Dorset ancestral anecdotes [display], I mentioned an old pump organ that I discovered (and actually played) in the village of Blandford.

The label on the instrument mentioned a William Skivington, proprietor of a local music shop.

The UK census of 1861 mentions this fellow and his family, and refers to him as a piano tuner. I'm surely a relative of this individual, who lived from 1827 to 1912, but I've not yet been able to determine our exact links. Now, let's imagine an unlikely discovery. Let's suppose that, inside the organ in the Blandford folk museum, we happened to find a trace of blood that had been left there long ago when William Skivington hit his thumb with a hammer while repairing the instrument. Normally, if this fellow were indeed a distant cousin of mine, we should find that junk DNA recovered from the spot of blood in the organ has the same markers as in my own DNA test.

OK? Well, that fictitious scenario does not in fact describe the usual way in which genealogical researchers go about using the results of DNA tests. Although this approach would be theoretically sound, we don't generally go around searching in pump organs or cemeteries for specimens of the blood of our supposed ancestors. I would be more interested in coming upon a fellow who's living today, let's say a certain Fred Skivington settled over in Canada, who is convinced—through sound documentary evidence—that he is a descendant of the Dorset piano-tuner William Skivington. In such a situation, if Fred's DNA markers coincided with mine, then this would reveal that I, too, am related to the William of Blandford.

I'm obliged to admit, though, that it would be very tempting to have an opportunity of fossicking around in some of the ancient tombs over in the village of Skeffington in Leicestershire. You never know what kind of junk you might dig up there...

Portrait of Queen Victoria

From time to time, I continue to investigate (just for fun) the mysterious portrait of a young Queen Victoria, inherited by my friend Sheridan. When I last visited England, a year and a half ago, I dropped in at an arts school in the London suburb of Hampstead, known today as the Institute, which I mistook for the Hampstead Garden Suburb School of Arts and Crafts, whose former principal was Ernest Heath [1867-1945]. The director of the Institute told me that the two schools had nothing in common, and he suggested that I contact the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington concerning Sheridan's plaque. Before I could do so, I needed to set down clearly, in the form of a website, my speculations concerning the plaque. And that's what I've been doing over the last few days.

[Click the image to visit my new website.]

Before building this website and contacting the museum (which I intend to do immediately), I had to get over an amusing obstacle, in the form of a legend that arose in Sheridan's family context in Australia. According to this legend, one of Sheridan's female ancestors was an adolescent friend of Victoria, and the ceramic plaque was a personal gift to her from the queen, maybe at the time of the marriage of Victoria and Albert. To evaluate this legend, which is surely false, I was helped greatly (in a negative sense) by an excellent study of Victoria's adolescence written recently by a US professor of English from Texas, Lynne Vallone.

It's a fascinating detective exercise to examine a certain situation, constructed around a legend, in order to separate the factual wheat from the mythical chaff. In the case of Sheridan's legend about a friendship between two adolescent girls, one of whom was a commoner and the other a princess, the emerging truth would appear to be far more gratifying. My conclusions are outlined in the new website. I'm convinced that Sheridan's ancestors in London were related to a celebrated line of creators who were appointed engravers and painters to British monarchs, including Victoria. That's more interesting than having an ancestor who was merely a teenage friend or bridesmaid of the queen...

Leafies

Aussies like to refer to tradesmen as tradies, firemen as firies, etc. To designate individuals who desire to lead an existence surrounded by trees, leaves, bark, etc... I've invented the word leafies. In a typical leafie home, leaves are literally part of the decor.

In polite Aussie terms, leafies might be designated as environmentalist militants, greenies, who've created lobbies against protective burning. Leafies are romantic citizens who like to sit on the balconies of their homes in the wilderness, guzzling beer and admiring the sunset, while the bushfires advance.

Today, we must designate these naive ideological leafies as murderers. Leaves or lives? That is the question...

A lord and his lady

The name Shaftesbury might not ring a bell with many people. It's a small town on a hill in the southern English county of Dorset.

In 1973, Shaftesbury's steep street was made famous by a TV ad for a brand of bread named Hovis:

Curiously, the commentator speaks with a North Country rather than a Dorset accent. This publicity was followed by several funny spoofs. Here's one of them:

In my articles written in August 2007 entitled End of English excursion [display] and Dorset ancestral anecdotes [display], I described my genealogical pilgrimage to Blandford, which is not far away from Shaftesbury.

I've often been intrigued by the fact that the names Skeffington and Shaftesbury have almost identical etymologies. Let me explain. The remote ancestors from whom I acquired my Skyvington surname were Normans who sailed across the English Channel with William and usurped a Saxon settlement (tun) in Leicestershire whose patriarch was called Sceaft, meaning shaft. Maybe this Saxon elder had earned this name through his skills in spear-throwing. In any case, this fellow was not an ancestor of the Norman invaders who chased the Saxons away. The Anglicized name of the place where my Norman ancestors settled down, Skeffington, was simply a reminder of the original Saxon name. I have no reason to imagine that any of the original Saxons mated with the Normans invaders, giving rise to offspring with genuine Sceaft genes... because I'm a lousy spear-thrower. In the case of Shaftesbury, too, the Norman invaders appear to have usurped a Saxon stronghold (burg) created by a patriarch called Sceaft.

Apart from that, whenever Shaftesbury and Dorset are mentioned, I think immediately of the beautiful face of Nastassja Kinski in the film Tess [1979] by Roman Polanski. In fact, although the novelist Thomas Hardy [1840-1928] located Tess of the d'Urbervilles in Dorset, Polanski's movie was actually shot in the north of France. Now, I'm letting myself get led astray...







In the 17th century, a Dorset fellow named Anthony Cooper, with no outstanding qualities or world-shaking talents, nevertheless persuaded the king to name him the Earl of Shaftesbury. Later, his descendants left the town with the steep hill and moved to a tiny place in Dorset named Wimborne St Giles, where they erected a red-brick mansion, and transformed themselves into posh aristocrats.


The Shaftesbury earldom still exists. As in all old families, some peers were fine men, whereas others were nincompoops. [Young readers might need to look that word up in an old English dictionary.]

In France today, we're hearing a lot about the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, Lord Anthony Ashley-Cooper, whose decomposed body was found in April 2005 at the bottom of a rubbish-strewn ravine on the French Riviera. He had been strangled in November 2004 by his brother-in-law, Mohamed M'Barek, now serving a 25-year jail sentence.



Last night, at the end of an appeals trial in the splendid Provençal city of Aix, the late lord's third wife, Jamila [shown in the above photo with her barrister, at her first court appearance, in May 2007], was sentenced to 20 years for complicity in this crime.

Getting back to etymology, we might say that the outcome of the appeals process in Aix-en-Provence confirms that Shaftesbury—as they say in the classics—got shafted. The ingredients of this sordid affair [wealth, sex, cupidity, stupidity, crime... themes that you can look up on the web] form a more dramatic cocktail than anything the Dorset novelist Hardy would have ever imagined. Polanski, on the other hand, would surely be capable of tackling such powerful stuff.

LOOKING BACK UPON THIS BLOG POST [notes written in January 2016] : Back at the time I wrote this post, some seven years ago, I was interested primarily in the name of the village, Shaftesbury, because I had heard that this word had a similar etymology to my own surname, Skyvington. Both names evoke settlements of tribes of ancient people designated by a term that stands for the shaft of a spear or arrow. I used to be intrigued by the fact that Shaftesbury is close to the territory of my Dorset ancestors named Skivington, but I now believe that any Shaftesbury/Skivington similarity is purely a coincidence. While writing the blog post, I became intrigued by the character of the celebrated politician Anthony Ashley Cooper [1801-1885], 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. Then, of course, I was intrigued by the unhappy ending of a recent head of the family, murdered by a brother and sister who are now in prison... no doubt for years to come. But I had no reason to suspect that my humble blog post would lead to so many enthusiastic reactions from individuals, apparently Americans, who seem to look upon themselves as members of the same noble family as Lord Shaftesbury.

Microsoft decides to open stores

Microsoft has just announced plans to set up a chain of stores to sell their products directly to consumers, in the same way as their competitors Apple and Sony. It goes without saying that Microsoft will strive to imagine a unique style for its future stores, reflecting the specific character of the company and its products. It would be, not only a pity, but a marketing error, if a Microsoft store were to resemble any old Apple boutique or Sony shop.

So, the guessing game is now on, to imagine what a future Microsoft store will look like...

Death of Gavroche

My dear billy-goat Gavroche has finally met his death... maybe yesterday, on Darwin Day, but probably a few days earlier. I've just discovered the remainder of his carcass on the snow-covered grass under the walnut trees. Last night, I became aware that something was wrong when my flashlight revealed that Sophia was racing around madly and barking in the vicinity of the donkey hut, on the edge of my property. I'll never know what killed my little friend, but chances are he got kicked in the head or crushed by the donkey Moshé.

Over the years, I had become extremely fond of that smelly little beast, who was truly part of the Gamone landscape. Often, I felt bad about not finding him a female goat, but I didn't want to bring about a situation in which the property would be transformed into the home of a herd of goats. Meanwhile, Gavroche had developed the habit of visiting the feral sheep whenever he was moved by a sexual urge. All in all, I think that Gavroche lived well here at Gamone, where he roamed in liberty across the slopes. But I was aware that, in wandering around constantly with his temperamental and massive mate Moshé, and often jostling the donkey as if they were equals, Gavroche was living dangerously.

Je suis tombé par terre,
C'est la faute à Voltaire,
Le nez dans le ruisseau,
C'est la faute à...

Announcements in genetics

Over the last 24 hours, the Creator seems to have joined in the Darwin Day celebrations by performing a neat little act of synchronicity, in the form of two interesting announcements in the genetics domain.

First, an official French report states that, according to recent research, genetically-modified corn can be consumed with no risks by humans.

Second, scientists in Germany reveal that they have fully reconstructed the genome of Neanderthals.

This good news suggests that if—as I hope—we end up cloning a new community of Neanderthal citizens, we should have no trouble in feeding them.

Darwin Day

A few evenings ago, I saw an extraordinary 50-minute French-language TV documentary entitled Espèces d'espèces (Kinds of species), explaining how humans are cousins of countless creatures, organisms, plants, bacteria, etc. We have in common the undeniable fact (unknown, of course, to Charles Darwin) that we're all built out of strands of stuff called DNA.

An ingenious underlying element of the movie, which exploits superb graphics, was a novel representation of the "tree" of species in the form of a kind of big spherical cauliflower, which could have been mistaken for the fat brain of some mysterious giant creature. In fact, this "tree" might indeed be imagined, metaphorically, as the brain of a primordial virtual species that we can call DNA. The root of the tree has a lovely name: LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor of the myriad DNA-based species that have existed on the planet Earth.

Although this has nothing to do with Darwin Day, that name reminds me, of course, of one of my favorite songs. So let me use that association as a pretext to celebrate Darwin Day by including in this post the famous song of Suzanne Vega... who is certainly one of the loveliest specimens of Homo sapiens I've ever admired.



Getting back to the "tree", we're obliged to admit that Homo sapiens is nothing more than a tiny blob on the outer surface of the cauliflower "cortex". We are neither more nor less important (whatever that might mean) than countless other blobs representing everything from whales, elephants and giant oak trees down to tiny insects and unicellular organisms such as bacteria.

Today, we can't evoke Darwin without thinking of one of his most brilliant offspring (metaphorically speaking): Richard Dawkins.

The TV documentary described an excursion that consisted of moving back from our Homo sapiens blob, down into the heart of the cauliflower, in pursuit of encounters with the ancestors of our various cousins. This is the same fabulous journey imagined by Dawkins in his book The Ancestor's Tale, mentioned in my article of August 13, 2008 entitled Exotic pilgrimage [display].

If you click on the portrait of Dawkins, you can see a delightful talk on atheism... which is so closely associated with Darwinism and the DNA species "tree" that I tend to think of them as part and parcel of a unique philosophy of enlightenment. And here's another nice Dawkins video:



To end this birthday post, here are links to an imaginary interview with Darwin [access] and a Scientific American article on the legacy of Darwin [access].

Hillbilly

I've always been aware that, here at Gamone, I'm basically a lawless hillbilly. And if I don't respect many laws, it's often because I ignore whether the laws really exist, and how they're formulated and enforced. If there were an old-fashioned sheriff in charge, he would surely arrest me and hang me from a tree.

Take the case of my former flock of sheep, for example. When I arrived at Gamone, there was an unwritten law (which I learned from local folk, including the veterinarian) according to which a neo-rural resident such as me, who wasn't a professional grazier, could maintain a flock of up to a dozen or so sheep, to keep the weeds down, and to provide him with lamb meat. But this tolerance ended in the aftermath of a European outbreak, in 2001, of foot and mouth disease. So, before I left for a short vacation in Australia in 2006, I called upon a butcher friend to slaughter most of my sheep. However we left a young ewe and three tiny lambs. Well, to cut a long story short, these animals were frightened by a dog, and they escaped from my place and finally set up a new home on the slopes of a neighbor's mountain property, where they have proliferated in a feral state. Recently, the veterinarian confirmed that, if I were intent upon eliminating these sheep (which is not exactly the case), the only plausible solution would consist of organizing a posse of friends armed with rifles. Unfortunately, I don't have enough armed friends to carry out such an operation.

Meanwhile, there's another subtly different approach. At the annual luncheon of the senior citizens of Choranche and Chatelus, I found myself seated alongside a neighbor who, with his sons, is one of the last surviving hunters. (My children and I have always referred to his property, strewn with decrepit vehicles and rusty machinery, as Tortilla Flat.) He seemed to suggest that, if I felt that these sheep were capable of provoking accidents by wandering onto the road (which has always appeared most unlikely), then I should simply write a letter to the president of the local hunting association informing him that I would refrain from reacting in any way whatsoever if ever stray bullets happened to hit the sheep. The general idea is that such a letter would normally have no visible existence, and the president wouldn't even reply in any way whatsoever. But I could expect the sheep to start to disappear quietly and mysteriously. In these circumstances, my letter would only reappear publicly if ever I decided to take the hunters to court (a theoretical possibility) because I had the impression that they were shooting my sheep. As you can see, it's a murky approach to problem-solving.

Another example of my hillbilly behavior concerns the burning-off of dead grass and weeds in spring. At Gamone, I decide personally to perform these operations at appropriate moments of the year, and I operate section by section, in such a way that there's never a wide wall of flames. By "appropriate", I mean that I judge that there's not enough wind to cause the flames to escape, and there's still enough dampness in the vegetation to prevent it from reacting like explosive tinder.

The reason I'm talking about rural laws in France, written and unwritten, is that I've been learning a lot, over the last few days, about astonishing rural laws in Australia. More precisely, in the wake of the sickening fire tragedies that are still unfolding in my native land, I've been trying to comprehend what went so terribly wrong, and why. Obviously, for countless reasons, there's little in common between my tiny property on the slopes at Gamone and the vast bushlands of Australia. But I've been making an effort to grasp the nature of the situation in Australia.

If I understand correctly, hillbilly behavior such as mine would be unthinkable in modern Australia, where rural laws of all kinds are abundant and rigorously enforced. On the other hand, I've discovered that not everybody in Australia considers that all these laws are "good".

In rural Australia, the vegetation that could be consumed by fire in a particular zone is referred to technically as fuel. And the process of eliminating excess fuel is referred to as prescribed burning, shown in this photo:

One of Australia's leading specialists in the domain of bushfires is David Packham, of Monash University. In one of his websites, he shows an Australian country property in which excess trees and other fuel have been removed in such a way that the house would be almost 100% survivable, as he puts it, in the case of a bushfire.

In the following photo, on the other hand, there's a house, hidden behind the vegetation, which would have a survivability near zero in the case of a bushfire:

In my eyes, the first photo looks like any old property that could be found in France, whereas the second photo is that of a strictly Australian situation, unthinkable here in France.

Packham is particularly outspoken concerning the bushfire tragedies that have just hit Victoria: "Absolute irresponsible mismanagement has been the environment in which a lot of Australia has been operating for the last thirty or forty years, and we just cannot go along like this unless we're happy to accept the sorts of disasters we've had." He has accused environmentalists of behaving like "eco-terrorists waging a jihad" against prescribed burning. It's a fact that future legislation will stigmatize controlled burning as a key national threat to biodiversity. If this draconian legislation were to go into action, as planned for 2010, then controlled burning would be considered henceforth, from an ecological and environmental viewpoint, as a "key threatening process" whose nasty effects are to be likened to those of global warming, land clearing and feral cats, pigs and foxes.

In fuel-filled landscapes where Australia's indigenous flora and fauna are encouraged to thrive in luxurious liberty, we have seen that homes and their human occupants can be wiped out by flames in less time than it takes to race outside and get into the family automobile. It will take me some time to acquire an informed opinion on this weird situation in Australia. Meanwhile, even if I were capable of uprooting myself and moving to the Antipodes, I must admit that I'm quite happy to remain a Gamone hillbilly.

Light and darkness

I'm employing this pair of words metaphorically to designate clarity and obscurity. And the theme of my post is a petition that has just been launched in favor of the German theologian Joseph Ratzinger, now known to Christendom as Pope Benedict XVI.

Readers of my Antipodes blog are probably aware that one of the only things in common between Joe/Benny and me (please call me Billy) is the fact that we have both recently acquired dual nationalities. Joe was German, while Benny now has a Vatican passport. Similarly, Billy was Australian, while William now has a French passport. I've looked hard for other links and common features between us, but this domain remains murky. The Holy Ghost has refrained from inspiring me and enlightening my quest. [Notice the subtle way in which I've started to insert the light and darkness metaphors into my discourse.]

You've realized, no doubt, that my profound sense of Christian charity has prompted me to publicize the above-mentioned petition by papal defenders. But there was method in my madness. At the bottom of the petition website, there's a fabulous set of web banners: a colorful collection of links to everything that's Byzantine and medieval in the way of today's distinguished Catholic sheep... or should I say goats, in honor of my genetically-engineered friend Jeanie [display]?

Those interested in holy rocket science could spend an entire afternoon browsing through all those lovely links. With a bit of chance, you might even learn how to make fire by rubbing sacred wafers together... but I advise you to keep a flagon or two of the blood of Jesus on hand to quench the flames if ever they attained Aussie bushfire proportions.

Seriously, what some of these folk would appear to crave for is obscurity. The neat thing about Latin, particularly if you're not a Latinist, is that you have no idea whatsoever about the sense of what's being said. This is a truly great solution for those who consider that the ways of God must necessarily remain mysterious. And lots of fuddled old-timers think that way. Ignorance has always been bliss. And there's no better way of installing a shroud of profound ignorance than to chant about existence in a mysterious language.

Meanwhile, there are those who would like to see the light... for example, concerning the exact way in which the Nazis exterminated Jews. Years ago, a Californian literary agent pleaded with me to sit in on the trials of Robert Faurisson in the law courts of Paris. I did so, for professional reasons (you might say), and soon became most confused, because vain attempts to cast light upon Nazi darkness gave rise rapidly to more murkiness than ever. The Nazi barbarians concluded their exterminations by putting out the lights, as it were, so that no meaningul traces would remain of their unspeakable acts. Blinded by ignorance and confusion, we would-be observers have no other choice than to accept the shroud of obscurity. And society condemns those—like Faurisson and his ecclesiastic adept Richard Williamson—who would dare to lift theoretically a corner of this terrible shroud by vain and painful promises of dubious assertions of facts, and false enlightenment. This is neither more nor less than the law of civilized society, designed justly to attenuate the pain of victims.

Fortunately, in ancient history, the light is falling at last upon scenes and situations that were once obscure. We now know, for example, that Jesus was essentially a Jew, and that Christianity was preceded by a lengthy and rich epoch of Judeo-Christianism, of which the Apocalypse of John is the purest expression. The apostle Paul then stepped into the picture to develop early Christianity as we commonly imagine it, incorporating Gentiles. Retrospectively, it goes without saying that the idea that Jews might have perpetrated deicide, through the Crucifixion, is mindless bullshit. So, many naive Catholic traditionalists whose web banners are displayed in the context of the above-mentioned petition concerning our quaint but curious German pope might take a more serious look at their Christian culture.

Seriously, I've always considered that all Christians who can do so should spend at least a few weeks in Israel, which is truly a land of light, capable of dispelling archaic Christian darkness. Many things, in the Holy Land, become clear. Other things, alas, are doomed to remain forever in darkness. But, since time immemorial, this pilgrimage to where it all happened has been obligatory. It teaches you to open your eyes and see. To discard darkness, and place yourself in the light.

Admittedly, it's not yet, exactly, the light of Science. But the Holy Land is an excellent beginning. Judaism is an ancient system, and we all know that Jews didn't drop down in the last shower of rain. Modern Israel, too, is an exceptionally smart nation, accustomed to facing and solving life-and-death problems. I can't think of a better place to start one's quest (as I once did) for enlightenment.

Vision of a city

This extraordinary but frightening photo (which I've modified slightly) of the great Victorian city of Melbourne, taken from burnt-out Kinglake by David Geraghty and published today in The Australian, is truly apocalyptic. We reasonable human citizens, residing in nice suburban sites or resolutely rural places (such as me at Gamone), would appear to be moving into a terrible era (global warming?) in which Hollywood horrors will be enacted, de facto, before our unbelieving eyes.

In what words would you describe this apocalyptic vision to a child? Maybe your own offspring...

Marvelous creatures

There's a popular saying in French: "Tell me what you read, and I'll tell you who you are." In fact, it's an entire family of sayings, generated by replacing "read" by any other verb that enters your imagination. For example, a widespread variant: "Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you who you are." The general idea is that such-and-such an aspect of your behavior is immensely revealing in a global sense.

I would be happy if the following subtle variation on this saying were to be applied, by friends, to me: "William, tell me what you admire in such-and-such a creature, and I'll tell you who you are." If friends were to address me in this manner, and they were to listen to what I had to say, their analyses of my trivial statements would have the sanctity of a prayer. They would be spot on. Take this splendid American goat, for example:

This female animal—whom I shall name Jeanie (with a single "n", please; see my PS), evoking genes—was created by means of genetic engineering. In other words, she's a kind of visitor from outer space. She looks like a goat, and she probably behaves like a goat. Humans who are so hungry that they're prepared to eat goat meat might even decide to kill this animal, cut up her carcass, cook the fragments and eat them... and they would surely conclude that the dear departed creature actually tasted like a goat. But Jeanie is no ordinary goat, for her DNA incorporates a human gene! And it wouldn't be wise to serve Jeanie up on a plate and eat her. Because your delicately-engineered asshole (not to mention more distinguished elements of your anatomy) might suddenly start to glow in a phosphorescent green, or send out Technicolor sparks, or anything whatsoever... because we simply do not know how genetically-engineered creatures such as Jeanie might fit into our archaic world. Consequently, it would be wise, at least for the moment, to prevent Jeanie from going out on the town of a Saturday evening, and screwing around with any old billy-goat at all.

Meanwhile, Jeanie provides us with huge quantities of a precious protein called antithrombin, capable of preventing fatal blood clots in certain sick humans. Jeanie might be obliged to remain forever cloistered in a convent, like a saint with genetic stigmata, but the benefits of her existence impinge upon countless humans.

So, there you are. I've told you what I admire about the marvelous goat Jeanie. But frankly, even though you might have certain ideas on the subject, I don't think it's all that important to talk, now, about who I might be. Because everybody knows...

POST SCRIPTUM: Why have I christened this fine goat Jeanie? In 1952, a Hollywood musical incorporated a catching soft song with the refrain: "I dream of Jeanie with her light brown hair."

The tender female in question was a pale-skinned romantic Old World lass, initially portrayed by an ethereal Andrea Leeds in Swanee. Well, by chance, at that time (when I was starting high school in Grafton), my paternal grandparents, Pop and Ma, happened to employ an Aboriginal girl named Jeanie in their house at 12 Robinson Avenue. Now, lovely Jeanie (whom I remember so well) was uniformly ebony from top to bottom, including her thick black hair. In a dimly-lit bedroom, you would catch no more than the glimmer in her eyes and a flash of her pearl-white teeth. The refined sense of humor of my grandfather (whose manners remained forever strictly Victorian) extended often to mentioning with a grin, but ever so politely, their dear "Jeanie with her light brown hair".

Wrong equation

It's understandable that Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd should be disgusted, like any ordinary observer, to think that bushfires might have been lit deliberately by arsonists. But it's too early to accuse potential culprits, if indeed they exist, and it's unfortunate that Rudd's use of the expression "mass murder" has been quoted everywhere in the international press.

In evoking the notion of evil Australians in a desperate attempt to explain this tragedy, Rudd is trying to solve the wrong equation.

He's also tackling the wrong equation when he talks about rebuilding homes and towns by means of financial resources allocated towards the planetary economic crisis. Instead of reacting to the bushfire tragedy in the style of a clear-thinking statesman, the prime minister has let himself be carried away by his emotions... in a style reminiscent of that of his predecessor, John Howard, who once suggested that Steve Irwin should be given a state funeral. Clearly, our Aussie leaders are most emotional chaps, swayed by the force of chance happenings.

The true equation is well known. Its main variables concern the Australian habit of residing in the vicinity of trees and shrubs that are transformed into tinder by stretches of dry weather. Visitors to Australia are struck by the way in which suburban and rural houses are often integrated into magnificent landscapes of native vegetation. Personally, I've always envisaged such splendid environments as a wonderful reaction to the stupid behavior of agricultural pioneers, once upon a time, for whom trees were enemies, to be destroyed, because they consumed the nourishment in the soil that might be used to grow grass to feed sheep and cattle. It would be sad, of course, to see Australian houses located in bare fields, like outback bungalows on the stark slopes of dusty hills. But maybe there's a midway solution to the landscape equation that would consist of being surrounded by just enough low vegetation to avoid the rugby field effect, but not enough to create a suicidal Joan of Arc setting whenever the weather happens to be exceptionally dry. Meanwhile, the naive idea of attempting to find and neutralize arsonists, branded as home-grown terrorists, reminds me of the regrettable Dubya and his alleged "axis of evil".

BREAKING NEWS: Queen Elizabeth has just donated an unspecified sum of money to the Victorian Bushfire Fund, and French president Nicolas Sarkozy has offered material assistance that could be flown into Australia from New Caledonia. Meanwhile, various observers (including BBC journalists and a Queensland university expert) persist in evoking the existence of arsonists, and even rambling on about their psychology and motivations... although little evidence has been made public yet to support this hypothesis. There's an obvious danger that all this talk about the "enemy within" could end up generating a national psychosis, causing people to become suspicious of certain neighbors... particularly if the neighbors' property happened to escape destruction by the flames. I simply cannot understand the logic (?) of spreading rumors about arson prior to the actual capture of a significant number of suspects.

RELEVANT ARTICLE: Concerning the obvious fire danger of houses surrounded by trees, an informative article by Asa Wahlquist in today's The Australian is entitled Council ignored warning over trees before Victoria bushfires [display].

NOT ARSON: The Sydney Morning Herald has just revealed that the deadly Kinglake fire was not caused by arsonists [access].

Squirrel's-eye view of Gamone

Back in the days when electricity was brought to outlying farms such as Gamone, nobody worried much about environmental and aesthetic issues. Consequently, I've got an ugly medium-voltage line running a few dozen meters in front of the house.

I've noticed—from my bathroom window—that this lovely little squirrel has the dangerous habit of climbing up to the summit of the wooden poles to get a good global view of the Gamone countryside. Does he imagine he's in a tree with strange branches and high-voltage fruit? Is he trying to determine where there might be vegetation in the vicinity, with tasty stuff to eat? Or is he simply taking time off from his regular walnut-gathering in order to do a little sightseeing?

Bushfires in Australia

In the south-eastern state of Victoria, bushfires have just taken the lives of 65 people and destroyed hundreds of houses and countless thousands of hectares of vegetation.

I've just listened to an amazing radio report from an on-the-spot journalist. He describes the plight of members of a rural family who were awoken in the early hours of the morning by a phone call from a neighbor, informing them that a fire was approaching their property. They immediately darted down to a creek, accompanied by their dogs, and jumped in. Their heads, above water, were protected by wet blankets, while the fire charged over them.

On Saturday, the temperature in Melbourne had risen to over 46 degrees Celsius. In Sydney, it's a few degrees less. In that kind of heat, without air conditioning (which wasn't widespread in Australia when I was a young man), it becomes almost impossible to lead a normal working existence. [In my university office in Perth, in 1986, I remember aiming an electric fan at my Macintosh computer, to cool it down.] The other ingredients in a recipe for disaster are oil-saturated eucalyptus trees in residential yards, high winds and crazy arsonists.

Yesterday, a mindless Sydney newspaper (which shall go unnamed in my blog, as they've been operating on a shoestring budget since the boss kicked out their top journalists) dared to print a nice beach photo alongside a silly story about people flocking to the ocean to combat the heat, as if this were a solution. Sadly, the sunny outdoor Australian lifestyle is no guarantee against the devastation of heat and fire.

BREAKING NEWS: The murderous fires in Australia are the top item on TV news in France. The death count could be higher than 100. This extraordinary photo of a retreating firetruck was taken near Pakenham, east of Melbourne:

There's an obvious question in the minds of everybody: Is it thinkable that the extreme climatic conditions being experienced at present in Australia (drought, heat and bushfires, with floods in Queensland) might be advance signs of the consequences of global warming?