A FĂ©lix Romeo.
L to popular wisdom is often wrong, there's no doubt. Thousands of these, diretes and rumors travel between generations to convey a deep arcane knowledge that no scientist has succeeded in showing ever. One of those great mysterious knowledge are based on the family legacy. Something we have all inherited from our ancestors, but surprisingly we were most interested in has nothing to do with the strict laws of Mendel, but more or less supernatural connections which must be in the genes. For example, those twin brothers who agree tastes, feelings and emotions while living in distant parts of the globe. As if the letters, phone or regular education were of no avail.
So we have tried to defend the heritage of the capacity being a composer in the Bach family, which consists of more than 120 musicians and half a dozen great composers Johann Sebastian being the most famous and prolific of them. Or even some genetic studies carried out by the middling of dangerous eugenic societies of the early twentieth century United States, which clearly showed the legacy of the love of carpentry. As if living in an environment where music, or saw, was present continuously had no influence on anything.
determinism The pendulum away from the thought in the second half of the twentieth century thanks to the ideals of racial purity that led to Hitler's extermination program, returns hand of genomics and molecular genetics to find "the gene" around, as if composing the wonderful cello sonatas were as easy as some pieces of chromosomes inherited from our parents. Housed in the pseudo-wisdom modernilla and we are tired of hearing about the large number of genes that exist in today's families responsible for the largest Memec you can imagine: sweet tooth, the color red or the aversion to rats. No one has fallen into the language? All my family speaks English, will that be proof of the existence of a gene of English in my family tree?
I bring all these reflections today it has recently completed the anniversary of the death of Gerald Durrell, author of over thirty books on animals, or more or less related to them. Durrell was a naturalist from those of earlier, unrelated to the modern environmental awareness movements that have recently been covered with true religion. He spent most of his life to collect animals in danger of extinction (yes, they will not believe) locked up in a zoo. This is a mortal sin for animal advocates today, bent on stupid like trying to claim that great apes are known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the UN. And tell me you'll do a cimpancé the right to work fairly paid ...
Nearly all his books were bestsellers hits that allowed them to finance his expeditions and its zoo, established on the island of Jersey, and create a foundation to keep it. At first it was reticiente to perform this type of work, but her brother Larry (known novelist) and his wife Jacqueline convinced him to convey their experiences around the world in those few volumes plagued by the humor, adventures and vicissitudes that may arise in a trapping expedition. From how to hunt, feed and transport them to England, to the deals and agreements with indigenous and local people to be the most difficult specimens.
"My Family and Other Animals" is perhaps his most famous book, one of those gems that any fan should read the bugs. In this, and its two sequels, describes his childhood on the Greek island of Corfu, where he led an incredible life together with the rest of his family. His mother (who asks Durrell effect that a widow, "you never know what people might think") directs the family as only one English can do: with an enviable indolence and phlegm. This lady is undeterred by the arrival of a gabion (a species of gull has a wingspan of 70 cm) or a host of bugs, vermin and other animals that Gerry not to bring home. But the attitude with his youngest son is not at all especially if we think that the fact that Larry invite some friends ("seven or eight") was the reason they moved to a larger villa. Intellectual friends and bores as well, who insist on talking to his mother as if she understood poetry or letters, and that Gerry left at the level of polish it a bit ruthless.
Larry, despite being a beloved brother Gerald, not too good in their books, and again and again calls him affected, vague, and above all, unbearably snob. If that was her twenties, how we might imagine that would mature and with the laurels of success. This family, as unusual but equally as English, is in fact the inexhaustible source of events and anecdotes tells how a liberal education, rather libertarian, forging a enviable character, as these two brothers. If anything characterizes the English is the ability to settle anywhere in the world without missing their homeland. Possibly because it is not worth it to miss a time of "cats and dogs" and mostly indigestible cuisine, to say the least educated. A particular world view and the home, which has made these two brothers a few road warriors and worthy of universal recognition.
Thus, we might say stupidity gene that literature was both brothers ... but do not know if Larry once had a parakeet, turtle or orangutan, or other siblings spent writing some kind of book. One would have liked to have a childhood like that of the Durrell, a chaotic house and fun, with hundreds of things to do in a wonderful island filled with all sorts of animals. Maybe he had some more to do in shaping his character's famous literary gene.
I hope you guessed the identity of Larry ... and there are too many clues.
