DOC House Rating Schemes: From Energy to Comfort Base (Green Energy and Technology) by Maria Kordjamshidi in Arts-Photography

Description

Since early 1989; a gem dealer Ive known for years has been calling me every few weeks to brief me on mounting mayhem in Colombias lucrative emerald market. The troubling gist of these calls is always this: There is a full-fledged turf war going on between that South American countrys bustling drug and gem trades for control of its emerald exshy; port business. According to this dealer and several others; anywhere from two to four thousand emerald industry people; mostly miners and dealshy; ers; have been murdered since 1980. No doubt the gem sector; itself never gun shy; has retaliated in full and in kind. After all; the two groups have banded together in an intermittent alliance against a common enemy-Communist guerillas-with results the CIA would envy. I mention this bloodshed because of something the gem dealer once said to me: "I bet you never think of what a gem has to go through to get to a jewelry store: Hes right. I tend to think of colored stones as things of beauty; not objects of gruesome power struggles between mining kingpins and drug lords. Can you blame me; or anyone with insider knowledge; if a gem sheds any connection with its past once sculpted by a cutter into the glittering marshy; vel we see in a jewelers showcase? Like Odysseus listening to the sirens song; we become victims of an aesthetics-induced amnesia.