by Thomas Clark
2011 marks the centenary of the death of British explorer Edward Whymper
Matterhorn (photo, E Wallace)
The famed mountaineer climbed many of the world’s most treacherous summits. He was the first to ascend several of the highest peaks in the Alps, the Canadian Rockies and the Andes.
But it was his Matterhorn triumph and the subsequent tragedy that befell his party for which he is best known.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Edward Whymper was born the son of an artist in London, April 1840. He trained to become a wood engraver to follow in the steps of his older brother the noted illustrator and explorer, Frederic Whymper.
Edward received a commission at age 20 to make a series of sketches of Alpine scenery, and he undertook an extensive journey in the Central and Western Alps.
“I had only a literary acquaintance with mountaineering, and had not even seen, much less set foot upon, a mountain,” he wrote.
Edward Whymper
The objective of his commission was to illustrate the mountaineering efforts for a Professor Bonney who was attempting to scale Mont Pelvoux. The mountain at that time was believed to be the highest peak in the Daughin Alps. Unfortunately the trip ended in failure for the Bonney contingent.
Inspired by failure
But the failure inspired Edward to make his own attempt at Pelvoux, despite his lack of climbing experience.
“As if by mere chance I fell in with a very agreeable Frenchman who accompanied this party, and was pressed by him to return the assault. In 1861 we did so with my friend Macdonald and we conquered.”
The conquest of Pelvoux now convinced him to become an explorer first and an illustrator second. Flushed with his recent achievement he developed plans to add more Alpine peaks to his mountaineering resume.
Between 1860 and 1864 he lead dozens of expeditions within the Alps, which vastly contributed to the understanding of the local topography. He completed the first assents of Barre des Ecrins, Aiguille d’Argentiere and Mont Dolent in 1864, and in 1865 Aiguille Verte, Grand Cornier and Pointe Whymper, the latter named in his honour.
Matterhorn looms large
He became obsessed with the Matterhorn during this period, at that time a peak considered to be unclimbable.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Indian President Pratibha Devisingh Patil’s two-day visit to Switzerland that began Monday has already resulted in a number of initiatives, including a request by India for Switzerland’s support for an Indian seat on the UN Security Council as well as a fiscal agreement, and 11 new joint scientific research programmes.
Switzerland is the seventh most important importer of Indian goods and services, and trade between the two countries is CHF3.6 billion, with a 180 percent increase in the past decade. The trade surplus is CHF1.6b in Switzerland’s favour. Swiss exports to India rose by 21 percent in the first six months of 2011 while Indian exports to Switzerland rose by 31 percent.
Swiss direct investment in India in 2009, says the Swiss National Bank, was CHF3.3b.
The number of Indian tourists in Switzerland in 2009 rose by 21 percent.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – New Year’s resolutions aside, some people are getting off to a positive start in 2011 and to help you do the same, here is a roundup of some bright spots from the news scene, from GenevaLunch editor Ellen Wallace:
Zurich marathon first to host burn fundraiser and racer Hinett’s
Karl Hinett, 23, former British soldier and marathon runner, 1 January in Zurich began the daunting self-assigned task of running one official marathon a week for a year, to raise money for Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital burns unit. Hinett “suffered 37 percent burns to his hands, legs, arms and face and had to learn to walk again and had multiple operations and skin grafts when he was injured in September 2005,” reports Express and Star. (Hinett’s sponsorship page)
There’s still room for change in business battledress
“Since the early 20th century the battledress of the executive has changed little, at least on the outside,” writes The Economist, in writing a brief history of the 150-year-old “lounge suit”. For those who fear that this represents unswerving conformity on a frightening scale, relax: the modern world, the author adds, “has transformed the suit’s interior” with tailors prepared to add such useful options as iPad pockets that might resemble the old “inside of field coats worn by country gents that will hold birds and rabbits felled with a shotgun”. A world of stuffy business types takes on new meaning.
Human babies and joeys: scientists finding that evolution plays a role in breast milk
Asmara All Stars, band behind "Eritrea's Got Soul"
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Eritrea’s new album, “Eritrea’s Got Soul”, is one of the world’s best holiday gifts, for the power of the unlikely recordings to tell a story from a small African nation.
Three international albums in 50 years for a population of five million people with nine languages who have their own musical heritage but who have known little besides war led to French musician Bruno Blum working with Eritrean authorities to create a band called Asmara All Stars and to convince German company Out Here to produce the 13 tracks.
Government authorities, particularly authoritarian ones, are not often part of a popular new music album. Many of the musicians in the band are civil servants, regularly called on to play for the army, according to Radio France International’s (RFI) David Brown.
Blum insisted that he be given free rein, including bringing in a few musicians who are not civil servants.
Eritrea (photo: Out Here, Germany)
Brown writes that “French blues guitarist, songwriter, producer, music author, painter and cartoonist Bruno Blum was invited in 2006 by the official Eritrean Cultural Affairs Office to create a modern yet traditional sound from a country that has faced a cultural and economic blockade for the past decade.”
Five thousand European-based Eritreans in February 2010 gathered in front of the United Nations in Geneva, with other protesters marching in the US and Australia against what the groups labelled US-led UN sanctions against Eritrea.
The UN Security Council in December 2009 had voted an arms embargo and other sanctions, including a ban on travel by senior Eritrean officials, for destabilizing neighbouring Somalia.
World attention was drawn to Eritrea in June 2010 when a group of boat people from the country were dramatically rescued, with Geneva-based refugee organization UNHCR highly critical “of rescue operations in the region, where Italy, Malta and Libya have disputed who is responsible for picking up boat people in distress,” GenevaLunch reported.
RFI’s Brown recounts the tale of how the 14-member band put together the music and recorded it, despite many odds, from bureaucratic fights to marrying quarreling music styles.
Blum will be known to many English-speaking music fans for his version of Bob Marley’s “War”, featuring Haile Selassie’s original speech and the Wailers.
Eritrea’s history is a long and rich saga linked to its mineral resources, closeness to Egypt during the time of the pharoahs and its 1,600km of Red Sea coastline. It became an Italian colony in 1890, 21 years after the opening of the Suez Canal, then part of Italian East Africa in 1936, along with Ethiopia and Sudan.
It was ruled by the British under a UN mandate from 1941 to 1951, and, shortly after independence as a federation with its larger neighbour Ethiopia, was annexed as a province of the latter in 1952. “Lack of regard for the Eritrean population led to the formation of an independence movement in the early 1960s (1961), which erupted into a 30-year war against successive Ethiopian governments that ended in 1991,” according to Wikipedia. “Following a UN-supervised referendum in Eritrea in which the Eritrean people overwhelmingly voted for independence, Eritrea declared its independence and gained international recognition in 1993.”
The two nations fought again in 1998, a two-year border dispute that remains unresolved since UN forces pulled out, and Eritrea also went to war with Yemen. It has spent much of the past decade trying to feed its population and rebuild the economy, but with an unusually high proportion of workers in the civil service.
The country’s reputation internationally has suffered from a lack of information, with Reporters without Borders saying there is not a single foreign correspondent, and giving it a lower media rating even than North Korea. Travellers, including diplomats, have trouble obtaining permission to travel outside the capital of Asmara.
Eritrea’s single-party government continues in power despite a constitution that calls for a multi-party government.
Links to reviews of “Eritrea’s Got Soul”:
Deanne Sole / Pop Matters, Richie Troughton / The Quietus
Album (sample tracks, for-pay downloads)
Read full review of Eritrea’s Got Soul – Asmara All Stars on Boomkat.com ©
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The streets are quiet, school crosswalks are empty, shops closed and the only offices open are in some international organizations that ignore local and national holidays: Thursday 9 September is Jeûne genevois, a cantonal holiday. If you’re looking for Genevans, keep in mind that many people who take this Thursday holiday also take off work on Friday. Living in Geneva gives you the story behind this popular local holiday.
Title: Lecture (Fre): birthplace of Chasselas
Location: Mont-sur-Rolle wine museum
Link out: Click here
Description: José Vouillamoz of the Uni. of Neuchatel\’s national research centre for plant survival on where Chasselas, the grape for which Switzerland is widely known, comes from, based on genetic studies of over 100 plants in Europe and Middle East. CHF15
Start Time: 20:00
Date: 2010-03-10
Berlin Monday 9 November is recalling the fall of the wall that divided East from West, politically if not necessarily geographically. Thousands of tourists are in the city for celebrations and commemorative events on the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. Key figures at the time, including Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and Polish union leader Lech Walesa, are taking part in ceremonies.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, Telegraph, UK and Deutsche Welle home page 9 November featuring special section on the Berlin Wall, in English
Background: Wikipedia on the Berlin Wall, Media coverage of the wall from 1961-1989 from Newseum
(GenevaLunch) – Impossible to avoid George W Bush in the news worldwide, including in Switzerland, this week, as the US president gives his final press conference, takes his last flight on Airforce One, the presidential airplane, and starts to give interviews about his eight years in the White House. Patrick Chappatte, offers his view of those years (see GL interview, in two parts, with Chappatte).
George Bush’s legacy
