One of America’s Forgotten Wars

Most Americans have little or no knowledge about the Spanish American War, which is understandable since the conflict could easily have been avoided and it was largely fought for the wrong reasons.  It was also a brief war, lasting only four months, during which only 379 died in battle.  Unfortunately, since the majority of the battles occurred in tropical locations, fourteen times that number perished from malaria, typhoid, dysentery, or yellow fever.

Strangely, a larger and far more deadly war was the result of the peace negotiations.  That war, the Philippine Insurrection, has been almost completely forgotten by most Americans—if they ever heard of it.

The peace negotiations ending the Spanish American War specified that Spain would give up Cuba, the United States would annex Puerto Rico and the US would continue to occupy Manila pending the final disposition of the Philippines Islands.  While we knew we wanted Spain out of the Philippines, did America really want to keep the islands as a territory?

The problem of what to do with the Philippines touched off a huge debate, with even President McKinley being unsure of what to do.  (Privately, the president admitted that he couldn't find the Philippines on the map the first time he looked.)  While some Americans railed against America's growing Imperialism, others saw Asia as a fertile market of millions (note that is millions with an ‘m’, not a ‘b’) waiting to buy American goods.

Some Americans were worried about how such an alien culture could be blended into the American way of life.  As one senator said, "Bananas and self-government cannot grow on the same piece of land."  Still others saw keeping the islands as a chance to "save the heathens" of Asia by extending missionary activities.  

McKinley finally reached a conclusion.  As he later explained to a gathering of missionaries:

And one night late it came to me this way--I don't know how it was, but it came:  (1) that we could not give them back to Spain--that would be cowardly and dishonorable;  (2)  that we could not turn them over to France or Germany--our commercial rivals in the Orient--that would be bad business and discreditable;  (3) that we could not leave them to themselves--they were unfit for self government--and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and (4)  that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellowmen for whom Christ also died.  And then I went to bed, and went to sleep and slept soundly.

That's quite a statement.  It neatly summarizes all of American Imperialism.  It encompasses national honor, business commerce, a feeling of racial superiority, and even a little altruism—it might even have been real.

When Spain pointed out that, technically, America had no claim by right of conquest because the United States had not actually occupied Manila until the day after the armistice, we settled the point by giving Spain $20 million in compensation:   Kind of “shut up and leave us alone” money.

The final treaty, the Treaty of Paris, signed December 10, 1898, added Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to American territory.  

Note.  If you are ever on a quiz show and they ask you the name of the treaty that ended a war, and you have no idea of the correct answer—just say Treaty of Paris.  Since 1299, there have been more than a dozen of that name.

The Treaty of Paris did not make everyone in the United States happy.  Most Democrats, and some Republicans were against it.  The occupation of a foreign country was counter to the ideas of democracy, countered American traditional isolationism, and could easily involve us in foreign entanglements.  Some military experts even pointed out the impossibility of defending a possession so far from home…a prediction that would prove true 40 years later.

The same month the treaty was signed, Rudyard Kipling published the poem, The White Man’s Burden.  He calls the American people to a new duty:

Take up the White Man's burden--

Send for the best ye breed--

Go, bind your sons to exile

To serve your captive's need;

to wait in heavy harness

On fluttered fold and wild--

Your new-caught sullen peoples, 

Half devil and half child.

I wish I could say that Kipling wrote this in irony.  He did not.

President William McKinley issued a proclamation on December 21, 1898, declaring the United States policy to be one of "benevolent assimilation" in which "the mild sway of justice and right" would be substituted for "arbitrary rule."  Unfortunately, by this time, our helping our "little brown brothers" had taken a strange turn.  Very shortly, we were to be at war with them.  We had forgotten to ask if the people of the Philippines wanted our help and they really, really didn't.

It is ironic that before we could impose colonial rule to help the Filipinos, we had to fight a violent war in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902 to crush a Philippine nationalist insurgency.  Filipino insurgents had already been fighting the Spanish for independence long before American forces arrived.  Indeed, part of the reason for the American Navy’s success in driving out the Spanish had been because the Spanish forces had been also fighting a Filipino revolutionary force led by Aguinaldo.

Although it was later disputed by the Americans, many Filipino patriots, including Emilio Aguinaldo, believed they had been promised independence for their efforts and they felt betrayed by the terms of the Paris treaty.  

Aguinaldo declared the Philippines to be an independent republic in January, 1899 and in response to McKinley's proclamation issued his own.  In it, he said that "violent and aggressive seizure" by the United States was wrong and threatened war.  Hostilities between the two groups began almost immediately.  

As the fighting escalated, the United States began shelling the Filipino forces from naval ships in Manila Harbor.  For months, the Filipinos tried to fight back the best they could using conventional warfare but this was suicide, because the Filipinos lacked the arms, the artillery, and the training to stand up to the American military.

The Filipino troops, armed with old rifles and bolos—and carrying anting-anting (magical charms)—were no match for American troops in open conventional combat, but when they finally switched tactics to guerrilla warfare, they proved to be highly effective fighters.

Suddenly, the United States was facing a problem that was totally new to American warfare.  How do you fight an enemy and win the people over at the same time?  It is, of course, a thorny problem for which we are still attempting to find a solution.

Aguinaldo fought back as he ordered the establishment of decentralized guerrilla commands in each of several military zones.  More than ever, American soldiers learned the miseries of fighting an enemy that was able to move at will within the civilian population in the villages.  "Pacified" ground only extended as far as a soldier's Krag rifle could shoot.

The guerrillas would not attack unless they were sure they could win.  If chased, they hid their weapons, went home and pretended they were the friendliest natives on the island.  But if they captured an American soldier, he would be horribly tortured.  And, inevitably, the American soldiers began committing horrible atrocities of their own.  

In September, 1901, guerrillas in Samar, which was one of the last remaining uncontrolled provinces, massacred a company of US infantry.  The troops that were ordered in to “pacify” the area were told to take no prisoners.  In fact, their orders included the following:  “I want you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn, the better it will please me.  I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.”  

When the officer in charge of the unit asked for clarification about what “capable of bearing arms” meant, he was told that it meant, ‘anyone over ten years old’.

Eventually, American forces came under the command of General James MacArthur (the father of the World War II hero), who had extensive experience fighting Native Americans in the American Southwest.  MacArthur, working with American civilian leaders like Judge William Howard Taft, began building a new civilian government.  The American army began building a new infrastructure for the Philippines:  New roads, schools, hospitals, bridges, railroads, telegraph lines, and telephone lines.  Disease, especially smallpox, cholera, and plague practically disappeared.  Slowly, an increasing number of Filipino people became  tolerant of, if not quite accepting, American occupation.

Eventually, most organized resistance to the American military simply dwindled away.  Aguinaldo—convinced of the futility of further resistance—finally surrendered, swore allegiance to the United States and issued a proclamation calling on his compatriots to lay down their arms.  

On the 4th of July, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the war was over and that the United States had won.  No one argued the point with him.

The war the Americans called, “the Philippine Insurrection”, lasted nearly three years and claimed the lives of 4,234 US troops and 16,000 Filipino soldiers.  Another 220,000 civilian Filipinos died, largely of famine and disease, by the end of the war.  The cost to the US was $400 million—twenty times what the United States had paid to Spain for the islands in 1898.

The United States promised independence for the people of the Philippines as soon as the preparations for self-government were completed.  Those preparations were still underway when World War II started and the islands were seized by the Japanese in 1942.

How this war ended—with Roosevelt’s simply declaring that America had won—has been in my mind all week.  Is this the way that the Covid Pandemic will finally end?  Will the President just declare one day that it is over and that we have won?   We don’t seem to have a real exit play for this war and there seem to be no realistic achievable goals…

Already, many of the things done in reaction to the pandemic seem to be done more for show than for any real need.  We all know that cloth masks are useless, that there is no science behind “six-foot social distancing”, and that walking into a restaurant wearing a mask, only to take it off while you eat is ridiculous.  Or, in other words, anting-anting.

I believe in the effectiveness of vaccines and boosters.  But, I also believe that some of the measures we are taking to fight the pandemic may be causing more problems than the virus.  Drug use, suicides, child abuse, crime in general, business failures, and a host of other problems have been rising for two years now.   Maybe it is time to declare the war over.  It may be a little early for us in the United States, but perhaps the time is coming.

Simply declaring the pandemic over seems to be what Denmark has done.  According to Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, the pandemic will officially end on February 1, 2022, and the people of Denmark will be free to live their lives as they see fit.

Lincoln’s Last Day

Today, spring in our nation’s capital is inevitably linked with the blooming of the cherry trees that were a gift to our nation from the people of Japan during the Taft Administration.  During the Civil War, the coming of spring was heralded by the flowering of the dogwood trees.  On April 14, 1865, the trees’ white flowers were attracting butterflies.  The city, so long accustomed to war, was still celebrating the new-found peace that followed Lee’s surrender only a week earlier.

As was his custom, Abraham Lincoln, 56, woke at seven, and walked down the second-floor hall to his office, turning up the gas lighting so he could work at his high-backed mahogany desk.  Today, the large rectangular room is known as the Lincoln Bedroom, though in reality, the president never spent the night in the southeast corner room that he used as both an office and a meeting room for his cabinet.

Though the president received hundreds of letters a day, it was his practice to read about half a dozen a day, sometimes answering a few of them with a brief letter or writing instructions on the margin for a secretary to follow up.  Lincoln wrote two brief notes, then reached behind him to pull a velvet bell cord to summon a secretary to deliver the notes.  The first note was to Assistant Secretary of State Frederick Seward to call a Cabinet meeting for 11:00.  William Seward, the Secretary of State was recovering from a carriage accident.  The second note invited General Grant to attend the cabinet meeting.

At 8:00, the president sat down with his family for breakfast.  Sitting across from Mary, his wife, and with his two sons Tad, 12, and Robert, 21, at his sides, Lincoln had his usual breakfast of an egg and a cup of coffee.  Robert, a Captain in the Union Army and an aide to General Grant, had just returned from duty and had been present in the McLean House in Appomattox when General Lee surrendered.  Robert, in answer to his father’s questions, remarked about the difference in appearance between the Confederate general’s immaculate uniform and the shabby mud-spattered coat of General Grant.

Mary Todd Lincoln, 46, told her husband that she had tickets to Grover’s Theatre to see Aladdin, but having learned that tonight was to be the last performance of Our American Cousin, she had sent an invitation to General Grant for he and his wife to accompany them to Ford’s Theatre.  Tad Lincoln would use the tickets to Grover’s Theatre that night, accompanied by Tom Pendel, a member of the White House staff.

Returning to his office by 9:00, Lincoln sat at his desk reading the morning newspapers.  Within a day’s ride from the White House, there were more than 30 daily and weekly newspapers, this in addition to the important papers from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.  Lincoln was in the habit of using his pearl-handled pocket knife to cut clippings from the papers, storing them in his brown leather wallet.  Besides newspaper clippings, the only other item in the wallet was a $5 Confederate note, a souvenir of the President’s tour of the captured Confederate capital. 

The first of many visitors that morning was the Speaker of the House, Schuyler Colfax, with whom he discussed the nation’s future policy toward the Southern states.  Colfax made no secret of the fact that he desired to join Lincoln’s cabinet as Secretary of War, to replace Edwin Stanton.  Lincoln was waiting for a vacancy to appoint Stanton to the Supreme Court, thus fulfilling a promise he had made to Stanton when he had compelled the man to serve in the cabinet for the ‘good of the country’.

For the next two hours, Lincoln saw visitors, most for only a few minutes each.  Of particular note was the former senator from New Hampshire, John P. Hale, who Lincoln had just appointed to be the new minister to Spain.  Hale was eager to take his family to Spain, as his daughter had just become engaged to the actor John Wilkes Booth, and the senator disapproved of the match.

In between meetings, Lincoln wrote a message to Ford’s Theatre, requesting the State Box for the evening.  When the message arrived, John Ford, the manager, was delighted, since the presence of both Lincoln and Grant guaranteed that the theatre would sell all of its tickets to a crowd eager to see the two men.  Ford quickly wrote out a handbill announcing that that the president and the general would be present, sending the bill out to be quickly printed so that it could be distributed across the town.  While he was drafting the handbill, John Wilkes Booth dropped by the theatre to pick up his mail from a ‘pigeon hole’ box he maintained in the office.

The cabinet meeting started at 11:00, with the president sitting sideways at the head of the long table so that he could stretch out his long legs.  Everyone was eager to hear General Grant relate the details of Lee’s surrender.  There was also a brief discussion of what to do with the leaders of the Confederacy, along with a general discussion regarding the future reconstruction of the Southern states, during which Lincoln was open to suggestions.  

During the meeting, Vice-President Andrew Johnson, who had not been invited to the cabinet meeting, arrived, expecting to meet with the President.  Hearing that the meeting was running longer than expected, the vice-president elected to go for a walk, leaving word that he would return later.

At 2:00, as the cabinet meeting broke up, General Grant told Lincoln that he and his wife would be unable to attend the play that night, as they had planned to travel to New Jersey to visit their children.  Though the trip north was real, the reason was a fiction:  Julia Grant disliked Mary Lincoln intensely, and was still angry about a recent confrontation with the First Lady at City Point, Virginia.  Mary Lincoln, who preferred to be referred to as “Madame President”, was not popular in Washington social circles.

Alone in his office for the last time, the President signed a document authorizing a new government agency.  Though he would write a few more notes and brief letters, this was his last official act.

After the President met with his Vice-President for about twenty minutes, he walked over to the War Department to have a brief conversation with Stanton.  Invited to take the place of the Grants, Stanton, too, declined an invitation to the theatre.  Lincoln then asked if Major Eckert, the Chief of Telegraphy, would be free that evening for the theatre.  Eckert, a large and powerful man, would be an excellent bodyguard, as Lincoln had personally observed the Major breaking iron fireplace pokers across his arm.  Stanton, regretfully, told Lincoln that he needed Eckert to supervise the telegraphs being sent to the army that evening.

Though the President met several more people that day, his work day was officially over and he had promised to take his wife, Mary for a coach ride.  As the couple came out onto the White House porch, a one-armed soldier yelled, “I would give my other hand if I could shake that of Abraham Lincoln.”  Lincoln walked to the soldier, grasping his hand.  “You shall do that and it shall cost you nothing.”

The couple entered their barouche, driven by Francis P. Burke, and the carriage made its way down the gravel driveway, accompanied by two cavalrymen.  According to Mary Lincoln, the president was happy, discussing future travel plans once the president left office.

Upon arriving at the Navy Yard, the president left the coach to briefly tour the USS Montauk, a single-turreted ironclad monitor.  Though the ship was used throughout the war, after the war she was decommissioned and left in the harbor, where she was used as safe location for John Wilkes Booth’s autopsy and as a floating prison for his six accomplices.

Returning to the White House, Lincoln briefly chatted with two old friends from Illinois before he ate dinner with his family.  Though truly indifferent to what he ate—his favorite foods were coffee and apples—the family sat down to an elaborate formal dinner to honor Captain Robert Lincoln’s safe return.  Dinner courses included mock turtle soup, roast Virginia fowl with chestnut stuffing, baked yams, and cauliflower with cheese.

During the meal, Mary informed her husband that a young couple, Clara Harris, 20, and Major Henry Rathbone, 28, would accompany the Lincolns to the theater and they were to pick up the couple on their way to the theatre.  (Though the couple later married, the traumatic events of the evening, during which Major Rathbone was seriously injured when Booth stabbed him, would torment the man for years.  Blaming himself for having not prevented the attack on Lincoln, he finally succumbed to madness in 1883, shooting and fatally stabbing his wife, before stabbing himself five times—using both a gun and a knife just like Booth.  Though badly wounded, he recovered physically, but spent the rest of his life in an asylum, dying in 1911.)  

At 7:00 P.M., Lincoln’s personal bodyguard, William H. Crook, was relieved by John F. Parker and was immediately sent to Ford’s Theatre so that he would be present when the president’s party arrived.  Parker, who was three hours late reporting to work, was hardly a model policeman.  He had been repeatedly in trouble for drinking on the job, once being found unconscious and riding a city streetcar.  He was nearly fired after it was discovered that he had lived for three months in a whorehouse, and eventually he was fired from the Metropolitan Police in 1868 after he was discovered sleeping on the job while intoxicated.

The president (dressed in a tailored wool suit from Brooks Brothers) arrived with his party  at the theater late, at 8:30.  They made their way to the State Box (actually just boxes 7 and 8 with the partition removed), and as the party entered the box, the play stopped and the orchestra struck up Hail to the Chief.  Over a thousand patrons stood and clapped until the president took off his trademark hat and bowed.  Lincoln sat at the rear of the box in a mahogany chair with red upholstery that had been brought from the Fords’ private residence.  The two ladies each had a private sofa and the major sat in a gold chair between them.  Lincoln’s chair was positioned behind a curtain, affording him some privacy from the stares of the audience.

During the play’s intermission, John Parker left his post (which was a chair outside the State Box’s only entrance) and exited the theatre to go for a drink at the Star Saloon next door.  Whether or not he ever returned to the theater has never been determined.  Though he was charged later with dereliction of duty, the transcript of his hearing is lost and Parker remained one of the four Metropolitan Police officers charged with guarding the president for three more years.

There is little need to retell the rest of the evening’s tragic events since few Americans are not thoroughly familiar with them.  Some of the items mentioned above are still available for inspection at Ford’s theater:  Lincoln’s clothing, his pocket knife, and the wallet containing newspaper clippings can be seen in the museum there.  The Lincoln barouche is on display at the Studebaker Museum in South Bend, Indiana.  One of Lincoln’s desks—he seems to have had several—is now in the Lincoln Bedroom.

One last point:  That piece of legislation that Lincoln signed on his last day in the White House authorized the creation of a new branch of the United States Treasury—the Secret Service.

Nixon and The Great Library of Alexandria

The other day, I walked the two blocks down the street to a very large retirement center.  As neighbors, I really like these people—they never shoot off fireworks, never hold loud parties, and always mow their lawn regularly.  Other than a few residents whose driving skills have deteriorated in the six decades since they were first licensed, these people make great neighbors.

The retirement home features a library for residents and I was taking them a bag of novels that I no longer needed.  All of the books were new hardbacks, in excellent condition, and written by prominent authors that most readers would instantly recognize.  Since the retirement center also serves as my neighborhood’s polling center, I knew the library to be fairly large, but with less than full shelves and with ample room to expand.

When I walked into the library, the librarian was seated at her desk reading a copy of Death of an Expert Witness by P. D. James.  I thought that was a good omen, for if she liked that mystery, she’d likely approve of several of the books in my bag.

“Hello,” I said.  “Does your library accept donations?”

Carefully putting a bookmark in her book and placing the book on the desk in front of her before answering me, the librarian said, “Yes, but only if they have published in the last four years.  We don’t have the room to handle books older than that.”

“Really?  The book you are reading is almost 50 years old and the author has been dead for eight years.”  Frankly, I was a little irritated.  The retail price of the books I was bringing was a couple of hundred dollars, and the librarian was acting like I was imposing on her.

“We don’t have the room for old books,” she repeated.  “What do you have there?”

As I turned to leave, I answered, “Oh, you wouldn’t like them…they’re old.  It’s a Shakespeare First Folio and a Gutenberg Bible.”  

A week later, I donated the books to a post library on a nearby military base where the books were accepted without question.  The fact that I just dropped them through a book return slot on their door might have something to do with their not commenting.

Naturally, I have been thinking of libraries all week.  I hope to share a little of that obsession with you.

Most librarians probably disagree with me, but I’ve always thought there are several absolute necessities for a great library.  It should be abundantly stuffed with overflowing bookshelves, with plenty of stuffed chairs and with wooden tables for patrons.  And, if it is to be a truly great library, there should be at least one cat.   A good corner alcove with windows and leather reading chairs would be nice, but I would trade that for a single, totally necessary cat.  Why is it that so many good bookstores and so few libraries have cats?

The greatest library historically was the Great Library at Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great, though not finished in his lifetime.  Alexander was tutored by Aristotle, who instilled in the young general a great love of books (these were then growing increasingly popular owing to the recent invention of papyrus.  Books, in the form of papyrus scrolls, were readily available to most educated Greeks, prompting the start of libraries.  When Alexander decided to transplant Greek culture to Egypt, his plan to build a great city included plans for the greatest library of the ancient world.

Historians are unsure exactly how many scrolls the library contained, with estimates ranging from 40,000 up to a million.    What is known is that the collection was organized by genre and alphabetized, so that paid librarians could locate the necessary works for researchers…And the library very aggressively expanded the collection.  Agents scoured the countryside to buy or arrange for the copying of books.  According to legend, library agents searched every ship coming into the port of Alexandria for unknown books, either seizing them for the collection or holding the books until they could be copied.  Since the process of copying a book took more time than most ships could spend idling in a port, most such ‘borrowing’ was likely to become permanent.

We know that the library remained a center of learning for centuries, with some salaried scholars provided with room and board to stay, study, and write.  Among these ‘tenured’ scholars were Euclid, Strabo, and Archimedes.  The first professional librarians kept the library running and expanding, however, the library eventually came to a tragic end.  While most of the facts surrounding the library’s demise are simply lost, there are countless legends and wild stories about the library’s end.  One of the wilder stories recounts how the Romans burned the scrolls to heat their baths.

It’s much more likely that some of the scrolls were actually taken to Rome after a fire destroyed the largest Roman library.  Some warehouses that may have stored library property were lost to fire that engulfed the harbor at Alexandria during fighting while Julius Caesar captured the city.  The most likely reason for the destruction of the library however, was simple neglect.  While papyrus was far superior to the clay tablets used before its invention, papyrus was highly vulnerable to dampness and had to periodically be replaced with new papyrus.  The collection of irreplaceable books at Great Library of Alexandria most likely just rotted away from neglect, only to be resurrected by the most unlikeliest hero.

Centuries passed and then, in 1974, just months before his resignation, President Richard Nixon toured the Middle East, flying into Cairo and taking the train to Alexandria.  When the president innocently asked to be shown the site of the former library, his hosts were embarrassed:  Even the site of the greatest library had been lost to history.

A few city leaders saw this as an opportunity.  Even since the presidency of Nasser, whose anti-colonialism had resulted in the city of Alexandria being officially slighted, local politicians had looked for a way to return the city to a position of world prominence.  Rebuilding the long-lost library looked like a perfect opportunity.  And who would not want to donate to rebuilding the lost great library?

Well, one of the people who couldn’t refuse was Saddam Hussein, who became the largest private donor.  Donations of books and funds came from countries around the world and the project received large donations from UNESCO.  Finished in 2002, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina has space for eight million volumes and is the National Library of Egypt.  After more than 1700 years, the library is once again open for business.  

I checked:  Unfortunately, the library’s only cat is a statue of Bastet in one of the four attached museums. 

“Trickle down” Economics

About half a lifetime ago, I went to Honduras to research a peculiar military revolution that had toppled the government back in 1913.  Finding the documents necessary for my history thesis meant traveling to almost every corner of the Central American country, searching through libraries and government records. 

Happily, while traveling around the country, I got to take in some of the sights—I toured a banana plantation, saw what little was left of a tropical jungle, and visited a coffee plantation that had been gifted to my alma mater, Enema U.   The foreman graciously gave me a tour before we returned to his office to try some fresh coffee from beans that had just been roasted.

I can vividly remember the three best cups of coffee in my life.  The first has to be when I was about nine years old.  A freezer case stopped working in my father’s grocery store, and early Sunday morning, the two of us moved all the contents to other freezer cases or one of the walk-in freezers in the backroom.  We had to shift a lot of stock around, and by the time we had finished the job, we were tired and cold, and we could barely feel our freezing hands.  As we slowly warmed up, my father brought me my very first cup of coffee.  I didn’t really like the taste, but my father had given it to me and I would have gladly drunk it even if it had been on fire.

The second-best cup of coffee was in the basement of an aging and crumbling building on the campus of Enema U.  Fred Dabney, the swing shift DJ at KRWG, the campus radio station, somehow produced an incredible cup of coffee from a pot that hadn’t been cleaned properly since the fifties.  Whether it was because he ground the beans in an ancient hand-cranked antique or because the water he used came from aging basement pipes, his coffee was always spectacular.  While Fred was busy announcing the next jazz record, I’d guzzle his coffee and read news from around the world off the teletype.

For third place, it has to be that cup of coffee at the Honduran plantation.  Freshly roasted and ground just seconds before being placed in the French press, the coffee was consumed within sight of the coffee plants.  I’ve also eaten trout that were grilled beside the stream where they had been caught, and I have this theory that everything tastes better close to the source.   I’m trying to convince The Doc we need to take a trip to a certain distillery in Islay.

Coffee, of course, is not native to Central America, but was introduced to the New World by the Spanish in the 16th century.  For many years, only small amounts were produced, mainly on the islands of Haiti and Cuba until early in the 19th century, when shortly before independence movements swept the Spanish from power in Central and South America, planting coffee was encouraged to bolster the economy.  Though coffee production was most successful in Costa Rica, the mountain slopes of Honduras also had the right combination of soil and climate to grow exceptionally good coffee.

Costa Rica was so successful in exporting coffee that the country developed economically faster and earlier than the rest of Central America, [[a condition that lasts to this day]].  Following the success of Costa Rica, the other countries soon expanded their coffee production, as well.  Though the amount of coffee produced in Central America has never been a very large part of the world market, the coffee has always been known to be of exceptionally fine quality, lending itself to mixing well with beans grown elsewhere.

Particularly valued are the Arabica coffee varieties that grow in the volcanic soil on the sides of mountains at altitudes above 3000 feet.  While the bulk of Honduran Arabica coffee is actually seven different types of Arabica, I’ll just lump them all together as ‘Arabica’.  Coffee makers around the world purchase this coffee and combine it with other types of beans to produce superior blends.

Like a few wines and some scotch, a lot of ‘name brand’ coffee we consume is blended.  The Arabica beans are a little milder and less acidic, and are relatively low on caffeine.  The other major variety of coffees are the Robusta beans, which—while still very flavorful—are a little bitter and have more caffeine.  Traditionally, Robusta beans are used to make instant coffee.  People who will settle for instant coffee just desire a liquid version of caffeine and are probably the kind of heathens who ruin good coffee with sugar and cream, too.

In a typical year, Arabica makes up 60% of the world’s coffee production, while almost all of the the rest is Robusta.  Unfortunately, this is not going to be a typical year.  We are either all going to have to pay more for coffee this year, or we’re going to have to settle for a noticeably different flavor in our coffee.  There is a worldwide shortage of Arabica beans, and those that do reach the market are likely to cost more than last year’s.  There are two reasons for the shortage.

First, we can blame the La Niña weather pattern:  After a year of severe weather that damaged a lot of the Arabica plants, a once-in-a-century severe frost killed a lot of the coffee bushes in Brazil last year.  If that weren’t enough, La Niña is projected to significantly reduce rainfall to both Central America and Brazil, this year, further decreasing production.  As a result of these difficulties, many planters are taking advantage of the off year to replace damaged, older bushes with fresh seedlings that will take at least a year to produce mature beans.

Second, the problems plaguing the supply chains in every other industry are hitting the coffee industry, too.  Since ports in most coffee producing countries are rarely among the most efficient and coffee is shipped in containers of which there is a worldwide shortage, as I write this, millions of bags of green coffee beans are being stored in dockside warehouses, waiting for containers.  On the London commodities market, Arabica bean futures are currently up 80%.

The prices of Robusta beans, however, will probably not see as much of a rise in prices.  Vietnam, the largest exporter of Robusta beans, has produced a bumper crop this year.  And while the ports in Vietnam are also currently congested, those ports are far more modern and efficient than those found in Central and South America.

For the retailers of either the beans or coffee by the cup, there are only two options:  Either the prices are about to rise significantly or the manufacturers of blended coffee are going to change the flavor palette and use more Robusta bans in your morning cup of joe.  

The Greatest Magician You’ve Never Heard Of

Since I doubt that you keep close track of prestidigitators, illusionists, and escape artists, I’ll prove it.  His name was Sigmund Neuberger, but his stage name was The Great Lafayette.

Neuberger was a contemporary of Harry Houdini, who was a close friend:  the two magicians worked together before Neuberger became famous and toured by himself.  At the height of his fame, Neuberger played before audiences of thousands of people and was earning £1000 a week (the equivalent of $4 million a year in today’s money).

Like his act, most of Neuberger’s early life is a mystery, with only bits and pieces available—and much of that information may be fiction that the performer made up to enhance his reputation.  Born in Munich, he immigrated with his family to the United States in 1889.  Within a few years, Neuberger was touring Western mining camps as part of a vaudeville troupe, performing as a trick shot artist with a bow and arrow, who was occasionally billed as a quick-change artist.  Both skills would later be incorporated into his magic act.

By the turn of the century, Neuberger was traveling across America in private railway cars and touring England, billing himself as The Great Lafayette and performing spectacular tricks in which he would vanish, only to reappear seconds later across the theater in a flash of light while a cloud of smoke rolled off the stage towards the audience.  As time went on, the performance included animals (in particular, a lion and a horse).

Neuberger was particularly devoted to Beauty, a dog given to him by Houdini.  When the dog accidentally escaped his handler and ran off the stage towards the audience, people clapped and cheered, believing that it was part of the act.  From then on, the magician not only made his dog an integral part of the act, but quickly realized that the press was far more likely to write favorable articles if his dog was the center of the act.  Beauty wore a diamond-studded collar, stayed in the finest hotel rooms, slept on silk beds, and ate the most expensive items listed on the menus of the finest restaurants, from a custom golden bowl five times a day.  Predictably, the press loved it.

Now highly successful, Neuberger bought a fine London home to which he affixed a plaque that read: “The more I see of people, the more I love my dog.”  Guests were cautioned that they could drink the performer’s liquor and eat his food, and they were free to issue orders to his servants—but they had to treat his dog with respect.

Beauty died on May 4, 1911 (perhaps as a result of an overly rich diet).  Heartbroken—at least in the press—the magician predicted that without his beloved Beauty, he would soon die, himself.  Neuberger turned out to be eerily correct, and his death would result in his most amazing illusion.

The Great Lafayette’s finale was a reenactment of one of Scheherazade’s tales from the Arabian Nights, the story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou.  The 25-minute act included multiple costume changes, with Neuberger appearing, vanishing, and reappearing at multiple points on the stage.  The elaborate act ended with the magician galloping across the stage to rescue the princess, who had been locked in a cage with a real lion.   As the hero leapt from the horse, whereupon the lion’s head came off, revealing the Great Lafayette inside the costume.

On May 11, one week after the death of Beauty, halfway through the finale, a faulty lamp above the stage set some decorations on fire.  The fire quickly spread through the elaborate decorations on the stage, engulfing the front of the theater.  The heavy fire curtain was lowered, but the mechanism jammed with the curtain still three feet above the stage, causing a chimney effect, sucking in a strong draft of fresh air under the curtain, greatly fanning the flames.    

The audience, believing that the flames and smoke were just another illusion, remained in their seats until the orchestra started playing the national anthem.  While the audience safely exited the theater, those working backstage found it difficult to escape as Neuberger had ordered the stage doors locked to prevent escape of the lion.  (And to prevent his rivals from learning the secrets of his tricks.)

Neuberger briefly escaped, then slipped back under the fire curtain in an effort to save his horse.  (Nobody, but nobody, tries to rescue a real lion from a burning building.)  Whether it was the heat or the smoke that killed him was never discovered, a total of eleven people backstage died in the fire, including the Great Lafayette.  

The body of Neuberger was cremated and a ceremony was planned to inter his ashes between the paws of his beloved dog, Beauty.  Shortly before the ceremony, as workmen were picking through the ashes of the theater stage, the real body of Sigmund Neuberger was found under the stage.  The magician evidently had sought to escape the fire by crawling through one of the many hidden trap doors he used during his act.  Eventually it was determined that the first body was actually that of a double the magician had used in his many vanishing and reappearance stunts.  

When the body of the real Neuberger was finally interred, a quarter of a million people turned out to watch the funeral procession.  The Great Lafayette’s last—and greatest—stunt was dying twice in the same fire.

Because he died in 1911, before the age of mass media, it means that Neuberger is not nearly as famous today as Harry Houdini.  There are a few photos, but the only video even remotely connected with the magician is a grainy black and white film—available on YouTube—of workmen recovering the charred body of the unfortunate lion as they pick through the rubble of what had been the stage.

Today, other than the grave marker, the only reminder of the famous illusionist is the Lafayette Bill.  Familiar to anyone who has attended the theater in London, the Bill requires all British playhouses to briefly lower the heavy fire curtain and then immediately raise it back up before every performance, in order to ensure that the safety device works correctly.