Eric Timar's Blog, page 6
February 25, 2012
Railroad fraud in 19th-Century Central America
In case anyone reads the story of Briggs in Pearl Lagoon and thinks it preposterous:
From "An early global crisis: the financial and commercial collapse of 1873 and its impact on Latin America," by Carlos Marichal (El Colegio de Mexico):
"For Honduras, the loan deals of 1867, 1869 and 1870 were so outrageous that by contrast the Costa Rican transactions appeared positively judicious. Like their neighbors, the Honduras authorities were intent upon stimulating economic progress through the construction of railways." . . .
"By 1870 the large volume of unsold bonds from the 1867 and 1869 transactions led the European bankers concerned to propose a new loan for £ 2,700,000. Once again Bischoffsheim [Bischoffsheim, Goldsmith Bankers] assumed responsibility for the issue. This house worked with a singularly mischievous speculator named Charles Lefevre who, it was later found, had a criminal record in France for fraudulent business dealings. Lefevre hired between fifty and one hundred agents to create an artificial market at London for the Honduras bonds and soon managed to sell off a large proportion of both the old and new loan paper at relatively high prices. According to an embittered former clerk in his financial house, Lefevre bought the cooperation of the Honduras minister in England with a gift of £ 4,000 in diamonds for his wife; simultaneously, the financier remitted a gratuity of £ 10,000 to Medina, the president of the Central American republic."
"The net proceeds on the bond issues of 1867, 1869 and 1870 totalled L 2,695,000. About one quarter of this sum went for constructing 57 miles of the projected railway, another 20% to the bondholders to pay interest charges in advance, and some 15% to the Honduras treasury for sundry expenses. Yet almost 1,000,000 pounds sterling still remained unaccounted for. According to the [British] parliamentary enquiry of 1875, three quarters of this huge sum constituted the booty of Lefevre (who apparently spent a great deal of it on racehorses), while the remainder went into the pockets of Dreyfus [the firm of Dreyfus Fréres of Paris] and Bischoffsheim."
February 10, 2012
White Cedar Press editor certified by Fédération Internationale de Imprimerie
We are proud to announce that Paulo d'Avignon Bruschet, Chief Production Editor of White Cedar Press, has been inscribed into the Fédération Internationale de Imprimerie, the publishing industry's most prestigious professional association.
Paulo joined us in 2000 (in our Miami office) after moving from Toronto, Ontario, where he had edited Football North America, Canada's leading soccer magazine. Paulo was born in Chile of Brazilian parents and brings to White Cedar Press an unsurpassed familiarity with printing and Romance languages thanks to his education in Havana, the then-USSR, and Antwerp, Belgium. Paulo worked closely with Alexander Solzhenitsyn while a student and now cultivates excellence among our many writers.
Paulo enjoys the unequivocal support of his colleagues at White Cedar Press who have stood by his side through these past 12 years of sometimes difficult work. During sabbaticals in 2003-2004 and 2006-2011 Paulo researched a number of experimental residential psychological discernment centers; his impressive, 1,600-page account of those many months, White Walls and Burlap Mattresses, is under consideration by several publishing houses.
Paulo is also a certified PADI scuba instructor and was equipment manager of the Miami Fusion of Major League Soccer from 1998 to 2001. Please join us in our congratulations.
January 2, 2012
Bluefields, Nicaragua
If you'll join me in 1926:
While it obviously was not Chicago, someone who wanted to go out in Bluefields had choices. The central neighborhood of the city had six or eight small restaurants; the mestizo places served rice and beans with their fish, and the Creole ones served rice and fried plantains with theirs. Both had the same beer and rum. The Chinese families who had come to the coast ten and twenty years before to start hardware stores and groceries had opened a few restaurants as well, and it was now possible to buy sopa wonton here on the east coast of Central America.
The city had a single gas station with an absentee U.S. owner and a garrulous Creole manager who stayed open late on weekend nights for no reason.
Also in the central neighborhood was a bar serving the mestizo population around the corner from the Catholic church which did the same.
Anyone friendly with the British consulate staff in the city might get invited up onto the porch of the consulate for gin. A man wandering the streets might run into some New Orleans sailors, or the Belgians who owned a shop on the main street, or the doctor we had from Italy who spoke Spanish to all the foreigners but Italian to the Nicaraguans. Bluefields was an international city with diversions for a man suffocating in a hotel room.
-from Pearl Lagoon: A Novel.
For Kindle:
November 23, 2011
Five-star review for Tooth Man
Free Book Reviews has just given Tooth Man a five-star review!
http://freebookreviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/book-review-tooth-man-stories-from.html
You have to click through to the Amazon version of the review to see the stars . . . trust me, they're there.
(Check out that "live traffic feed" widget on the bottom right that tells where people visiting the blog are coming from . . . nifty.)
October 29, 2011
A tap on the shoulder from a long-dead nurse
The National Museum of Civil War Medicine is publicizing, on its web site, its plan to turn the original Missing Soldiers Office of Clara Barton into a museum.
Clara Barton was a Civil War nurse and founder of the American Red Cross; she established the Missing Soldiers Office—technically the "Office of Correspondence with the Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army"—in 1865. Its building still stands, at 437½ Seventh St. NW, Washington D.C. Once scheduled for demolition, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine plans to preserve it.
http://www.civilwarmed.org/clara-barton-missing-soldiers-office/
The museum credits Richard Lyons, a General Services Administration construction contractor in Washington, for discovering the long-abandoned office in 1996, but – as other similar reports have done – it omits a key detail about the find.
The Museum's site states that Lyons "made a fluke discovery" when "he noticed an envelope dangling between the ceiling slats on the third floor." But there is more to the story than that . . .
(A description of Lyons's discovery on the Civil War Librarian blog blurs the event even more:
" The suite of rooms was discovered in 1997 as GSA workers were preparing the building for demolition."
http://civilwarlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/news-bartons-dc-office-of-missing.html )
Lyons himself described the find better, as reported by Linda Wheeler in The Washington Post on August 10, 2006:
"I remember it was the night before Thanksgiving, and I came here to check the roof," [Lyons] said as he stood in the soft light of the seven-foot windows that once lighted Barton's office. "I was by myself. I heard something in the back, but when I checked, I didn't find anything. There weren't any lights here, and I was using my flashlight.
"Then someone tapped me on my shoulder. I thought it was one of my co-workers come by to help me, but there was no one there. It was then that I saw the envelope stuck up by the ceiling."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
Who tapped him on the shoulder?
Clara Barton, by the way, resided for a time on that third floor of 437½ Seventh St. NW. She was a strong woman who lived to be 90 and, among other things, identified 22,000 men while working in that office. It would not be like her to allow the office to be forgotten and demolished.
September 29, 2011
White Cedar Press – Update re. Auckland office
We would like to thank all of you who have sent messages of concern regarding the recent fire in the Auckland office of White Cedar Press. As we have written back to each of you individually, we want to emphasize that NO ONE in the unit was harmed, and indeed the fire started and was extinguished within a space of ten minutes; furthermore only one person was in the office at the time, Mandy Bates-Leedston, who escaped any injury and has not been charged with any criminal infractions.
Rebecca Hampsworth, the acquisitions director and acting manager of the Auckland office, would also like to take this opportunity to assure the many fans of our beloved children's author, Beverly Quan Gianelli, that the delay in the printing of Ms. Quan Gianelli's new title, Werewolves and Wombats: Quest for the Southern Cross, is completely due to mechanical difficulties outside the control of White Cedar Press. The novel is scheduled for release November 1 in Auckland and Christchurch.
"Werewolves and Wombats will surely continue the tradition of quality writing from Ms. Quan Gianelli," enthused Mandy Bates-Leedston, Director of Children's Publishing – Southern Hemisphere, from his vacation cottage near Invercargill.
September 21, 2011
Ghost story humor
Autumn starts Friday, so it's time . . .
A ghost story with a sense of humor is in my collection Tales from the Boiler Room.
Excerpt: Eunice Rigby is about to toast the memory of her alcoholic uncle:
She shook her head. "It's a little . . . a little perverse, you know, honoring Uncle Cornelius with liquor. It's like having a bonfire to mark the Hindenburg crash."
http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Boiler-Room-ebook/dp/B004YR0X3Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1316655717&sr=8-2
http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Boiler-Room-ebook/dp/B004YR0X3Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1317741167&sr=8-2
For Kindle and in paperback.
Check out the nice review!
May 9, 2011
Runestruck, Calvin Trillin
"If you liked Runestruck by Calvin Trillin, you'll probably like my new book, Tales from the Boiler Room, a collection of short stories."
This is what I told myself. I am trying to think of how to find bloggers, and/or book reviewers, who might like my new collection of stories. So I asked myself: What other existing books are sort of like this book? Humorous, with – among other things – a bit of historical trivia which would appeal to a certain type of nerdy reader like myself?
Well, Runestruck is something like that. So, I thought, it's simple: I'll look up Runestruck on Amazon, and I'll look through the customer reviews. Many reviewers use their own names, and they are proud to be in the "Top 500" reviewers or whatever, and I'll bet some of them blog about what they've read. If they've given Runestruck five stars, and I can track them down, I'll send them my book. Clever, right?
I quickly learned:
-Runestruck has only one customer review on Amazon. It is indeed a good review, but . . .
-The review is anonymous
-The review is from 2000
-The Amazon listing for Runestruck uses the wrong cover!! The Country Lass ?? Maybe Calvin Trillin himself is not a huge fan of Runestruck if he hasn't corrected that!
-In sum, Runestruck does not seem to have a huge crowd of fans out there to whom I can appeal. And if no huge crowd of fans likes Runestruck, then, regarding my book, I can forecast that . . .
Come on now, think positive.
Well, if nothing else, let me say: I enjoyed Runestruck. I agree with the assessment of that brilliant Amazon reviewer, A Customer.
(The link to my own book is further down this page, all you Runestruck fans.)
May 8, 2011
New humor for kindle
Next to the mayor's office, as promised, we encountered the office of the registrar. A sign above the door identified it. We walked inside and talked to a young, Spanish-speaking woman about the titles. She told us we had the wrong room.
"But the sign above the door—" the secretary objected.
The three of us stepped back into the hall and again inspected the sign, which now proclaimed the office of public utilities.
"It must have moved," the young woman told us. "Try the first floor."
The secretary and I descended the flights of stairs and prowled around the first floor, checking signs. Presently the Turkish clerk stepped out of his office and addressed us.
"You just missed it," he said. "It was here a moment ago but it moved upstairs again."
"A moment ago?"
"Just a moment." He smiled. He was really a helpful man; he was just stuck in a trying situation. I realized this was the case with many Nicaraguans.
-From Tales from the Boiler Room; link below.
May 1, 2011
Tales from the Boiler Room – excerpt
The crystal ball had been taken to Granada, Nicaragua in 1590 by gypsies who had sailed from the south of Spain. For nearly three centuries it remained in that handsome, tile-roofed city, but on a sultry night in 1857 a worried caretaker had cast it into Lake Nicaragua soon before Granada, "The Hapless Troy of Nicaragua," was torched by William Walker, the American filibusterer. Over the next forty months the ball drifted south in the lake and then slipped into the Rio San Juan, eventually popping out in the Caribbean Sea. There it was found by a Miskitu fisherman who put it in his dory beside an overturned tortoise and carried it to Bluefields. The ball had stayed there one hundred and fifty years with successive generations of a prominent Creole family. Henry David had obtained its use for a few hours by trading it for an electric circle-saw.
