Fer-De-Lance Sighting

Or at least we think it was!

Driving up the main access road just south of us, ready to turn the corner on to our access road, Mary, who was driving, said, “What’s that ahead?”

“Ahead” was something on the road that leads to the woods we walk in every day.  to me, it looked like a huge tree leaf and I said so.  Mary replied that whatever it was, it was moving and she thought it was a snake.

So, naturally–we drove over to within 10 ft of it, maybe less.

She was right–it was a HUGE snake, and it quite clearly had just eaten.  It was moving very, very slowly, as snakes do after just having dined out.  It was headed to the property across from ours, which is densely overgrown and perfect snake cover (which is why we are fanatical about keeping our grounds cleared and trimmed, except for the swath of jungle in back of us).  The head was exactly as I had read–lance-like and very small given the diameter of the body, which was distorted, of course, by whatever it had just eaten.  We guessed it to be between 5 and 6 ft long.

We moved closer to see it as it crossed over into the drainage ditch on its way to cover.  Side sort of rectangular patterns in a blue, top graying brown.  Not that that makes too much difference–everything you read about the fer-de-lance talks about the highly variable color and pattern.  We’re fairly sure that’s what it was, though, because there are just so many of them in the area.

Normally, they hunt at night and seek cover during the day.  But they can be seen during the day in the open if they had a late breakfast.  While they are most likely to strike at this time–having just eaten–they are the least venomous, having just used it all up!  However, I have no desire to test this out.

What made it a little creepy for us is that on the way up the carretera, not 5 minutes below our turnoff, Mary saw another huge snake on the other side of the road.  She couldn’t tell whether it was live or dead just that it was coiled at least somewhat.

I was delighted to get into our carport finally and then into the house!

The Bridge Of San Luis Rey

DVD cover

Thornton Wilder, an American, won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey.  Yet the book is not American in style or outlook.  That was deliberate on Wilder’s part.  A fan of 17th and 18th century classic French literature, the book has an odd detachment that somehow or another greatly enhances the tragedy that he is describing: “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.”  Through the device of a Franciscan monk who tries to determine if it was divine intervention rather than random chance that led to those deaths, the stories of those five lives emerge.  Every single one, just shortly before their deaths from the fall, was starting a radical change in their lives, one of great hope and opportunity.

Ended by the fall.

It is a very powerful book, one that still lingers in my mind even though I read it about 6 weeks or so ago.  I decided to get the DVD of the movie made in 2005 from an adaptation of the novel.

Wilder himself believed that the book would not lend itself to what he called theatrical presentation, including a movie, saying that the book’s subtleties could not be caught on film.

However he might have viewed this film, I for one thought it one of the best and most powerful films I have seen for some time, capturing perfectly, for me, the real tragedies of lives ended so abruptly.  The reason for that is in no small measure to the script, written by the director, a woman from Northern Ireland.  The rest is due to incredibly moving, powerful performances by the actors.  Kathy Bates as the Marquesa de Montemayor gives an utterly superlative performance, filled with nuance (giving the lie, in my opinion, to Wilder’s belief that it couldn’t be done); Robert De Niro is perfect as the Archbishop; F. Murray Abraham makes the role of the Viceroy three-dimensional; and Harvey Keitel is simply outstanding as Uncle Pio, in a performance I never would have believed he could give.  The other actors are equally as good.

It takes place in Peru, not Panamá, but there is that Latin American feel to it.  The movie was shot in Madrid and another Spanish city, but cleverly–you believe you’re in Peru.

I don’t know why I’ve decided to take up the role of reviewer these days, but as I was cleaning up the table by my easy chair, where I watch videos, I picked up the DVD case and thought–I’d like to write about this.

The Path Between The Seas

The title of the book says it all–it is a history of the building of the Panama Canal, the greatest engineering feat of all time to that date.

I’m not finished with the book yet.  I’ve read the entire section on the French efforts under De Lesseps, the transition period, and am now rereading the section on the Panamanian revolution/separation from Columbia.  The latter was an eye-opener for me, and blasted all sorts of assumptions I’d made about what happened.  Yes, US intervention was crucial to the Panamanian revolution; without it, the new Republic wouldn’t have lasted a week and the founders of Panamá were well aware of it.

BUT I had always assumed the the Canal Treaty originated with the US.  In fact, it did not.  Panamá got an incredibly raw deal with that treaty–but it was written and signed by a Frenchman who was the official representative of the new Panamanian Republic.  Philippe Bunau-Varilla was a director and stockholder in the second French company that held assets in Panamá that included the work done so far on the canal and a great deal of machinery, buildings, etc.  Panamá, of course, was not the country but the Department of Panamá, of Columbia.  Bunau-Varilla was desperate to sell of the canal assets BUT also to see that the canal was built, in order to rescue, as he put it, French honor and French genius.  As he saw it, the only country who would and could do it was the US.

Bunau-Varilla and an American lawyer who represented the French company, set out on a campaign to convince the US Senate to build the canal in Panamá, not in Nicaragua as was the near-unanimous sentiment at the time.  The campaign was brilliant, aimed at the right people–including Teddy Roosevelt who was President–and who appreciated the technical arguments.

But the final hangup was Colombia, thanks basically to misunderstandings on the part of the US government as to what was really happening in Colombia and what its intentions really were.  What was ready to  hand was a completely home-grown, potential revolution of Panamanians, who were convinced of the necessity of separating from Colombia but were well aware of the dangers.  Bunau-Varilla manipulated these men, especially Dr. Amador, and in the end, lied to the Panamanians in order to get from them his official role as the single person who would represent the new Republic to the US.  That, of course, was to get a treaty that would be to the advantage of the French company and accomplish his goals.  In order to make sure that the treaty would pass the Senate without hassle in the least amount of time, he wrote one that gave away the Canal Zone to the US, excepting outright ownership.  But the US had sovereign rights within the Canal Zone.

The terms of the treaty were nothing short of incredible, far, far more than the US had been prepared to ask.  In fact, when Secretary of State Hay and others saw it, they were flabbergasted–but of course accepted the treaty–who wouldn’t?  So, the treaty was signed–hours before the official Panamanian delegation reached Washington–and were, as Bunau-Varilla knew they would be, totally outraged; he was fired from his position on the spot.  But it was too late.

As the final piece in the drama, Roosevelt violated a 50 year old US treaty with Colombia by sending warships, landing troops and preventing the movement of Colombian troops in Colón.  The story of the revolution on November 3 is wonderful.  Word had gotten to Panama City that Colombian troops–500 of them–had landed in Colón.  Dr. Amador and the rest of the conspirators panicked, visualizing very realistically firing squads and other unpleasant consequences.  But the hero of the revolution was Señora Amador, Dr. Amador’s wife.  She supposedly told them to get on with the fight, soldiers or no soldiers.  And she was the one who concocted a brilliant scheme that was the reason the revolution was a bloodless one. The only casualty was that of a Chinese shopkeeper who was killed in his bed when a Colombian warship fired 5 or 6 shells on Panama City.  He and a donkey!  It’s just the greatest story.

There’s far more to it that what I’ve just outlined.  This is a greatly simplified summary just of parts; the history of the French effort in itself is utterly absorbing.  The whole story is so wild that it actually wouldn’t make a good novel–people would scorn it–”over the top”–”unrealistic”–yet it’s all true!

I have always loved history and there is no reason on earth why it has to be boring, because the stories usually aren’t.  It takes a good historian who is also both a good story-teller and a good writer.  McCullough is all of these.  He is one of the foremost historians of the present time, having won the Pulitzer Prize twice, both times for biographies.  The only other book of his that I’ve read so far is his biography of John Adams, which is really fascinating and very well written.   I think he’s a better writer in The Path Between the Seas.

As I said, I haven’t finished the book yet, but it is hard for me to believe that the story of the successful US effort to build the canal and all that that meant is going to disappoint.  McCullough is too good a historian, the story is too good, and he writes too well.

This is a must read for all sorts of people–those interested in Panamanian history, those looking for a true-life action-adventure story in the building of the Canal and those who just plain like well-researched history that is beautifully written.