3 minute read
GROUP TRIP to WALTHAM AEBEY
To view the above stereo-pair thro cupped hands for 3d v1s1on. no viewer required,if you can invoke "CR:>SS-EYE'S.From distance of about 24inches. CRiqht e,;J sees LEFT view & vi-sa-versa.
·and the Group adjourned to the Epping Forest District Council museum which has recently been extended and contains local exhibits and a good selection of literature.
Photograph by George Taylor,
There was a display of prints of the ruined Copt Hall by two members of the RPS. which reminded us of the splendid photographs of Waltham Abbey by Sydney Newberry FRPS in the Pictoirial History series of publications, Although Waltham Abbey was founded as a day's journey from London ( 15 miles) its historical importance tends to be over-looked which was certainly confirmed by this successful Group visit, I lived and worked in Waltham Abbey C then under the Waltham Holy Cross Urban District Council) for over 20 years and still find it a pleasure to visit and photog-raph Incidentally Waltham Cross is quite a different place being named after the Queen Eleanor Cross and not the Holy one of Tovi. a small group listening "to the Major the resident expert at the Abbey,to whom we ewe'A a debt of gratitude for the permission which was readily granted, L to R, Vic~or,& emerging fro; under all that Bert Crawshawe photo gear is then Reg Mason •next the Major to whom we owe our thanks and just to make matters a little more confusi the OTHER George TAYLOR. . •.
George Taylor.
• Witch doctor wisdom meets the computer
A PLEASANT · LOOKING, middle-aged man of imletenninate nationality left Heathrow I his week on a fhght to Papua \t>w Guinea and a mission to save the world.
The man is Dr Conrad Gorinsky, the Polish-Amencanlndian expert on tropical rain forests and their occupants. He 1s a director of Bioresourc-es. a subsidiary company of Earthlife. the charity. whose raison d'etre is expressed in a line from one of their advertisements: " If we continue to waste the earth's resources as if there were no tomorrow. there could well be no tomorrow."
Gorinsky is a conservationist dedicated not just to conserving endangered species but to conserving endangered information.
He argues that as well as teeming with life. the tropical rain forests-which on rurrent form we will destroy within 30 ur 40 years-are teeming with knowledge. He backs up the ,1rgument with two different lines of reasoning.
In general, the peoples of the ram forests would not have ~urvived for so long in such difficult conditions if they didn't · have a thorough understa.nding of natural medicine: "they are hving proof of the validity of their knowledge."
And in particular there are plenty of examples of important medicines that were discovered in this way-aspirin came from the willow tree, vincristine ::i treatment for leukaemia) from a species of periwinkle in Madag~scar.
The torest where the periwinkle was found has pretty well di~ppeared, Gorinsky says. And the medical know-bow he is after is threatened not just by the lumberjacks and bulldozers: it is threatened by the march of literacy. In a-culture that is rapidly ceasing to be oral, an old witch doctor will die without taking on an apprentice, and what be knows will die with him.
Unless, that is, he is button• holed in time by Gorinsky and his little solar-powered computer.
Gorinsky will be away for six weeks, two in Papua New Guinea followed by two in the Solomon Islands and two more again in PNG. He is going alone, but two field direytors who WQrk under him are already there. and so is his enormous staff-the young men and women of Operation Raleigh. "Very special people." Gorinsky says, "very gogd -at getting the trust of the locals. They don't go in like Hooray Henries."
The other indispensable parts of the team are the four Osborne computers-" my butterfly nets." They are "essentially shop-available," but Gorinsky wants to enhance them, "use them as the chassis for a complete field data capture kit." and teach the natives to use them. "You don't have to be a computer buff, anyone can learn ifin a week." ·
Once gathered, the information will be sent back to Earthlife's database in London, and made available to botanists, biologists, chemists, agronomists, perfumiers.. there is ample room for frivolity," Gorinsky says-and businesses in general. for Bioresources is about commercialism as well as conscrvati,rn. "Conservation means nothin~:· Gorinsky has said, " unless '· ou can provide a guy with a livelihood."
