"Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird" is an Amazon No. 1 Bestselling New Release
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Curious Encounters of the Human Kind – Myanmar (Burma)
This is the first book in a five-book series of unusual (and true) personal travel tales. Within the first three days of the book’s publication it has become an Amazon best-seller in its category.
What do jumping cats have to do with Buddhism’s Middle Path? Did Orwell really hate everyone in Burma? How did Myanmar’s ruling junta use white elephants to consolidate their power? Will a synagogue caretaker’s improbable dream ever come true? What arrogance drives western travelers to seek the “unknown” in Myanmar’s Nagaland? And why should you never disrespect the nat spirits who guard a sacred forest?
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Negativity Land
NEGATIVITY LAND Why do we take such delight in golf’s screw-ups instead of the great moments of success? EVERY COURSE, Everywhere A golfer faces more Dark Side moments than Luke Skywalker. We take a morbid delight when golf legends screw up. And we wallow in our own masochistic moments of crash and burn. Why […]
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Enhancing the Narrative
A historian quickly learns there is little absolute truth. The authors of personal memoirs and observer narratives enhance, misremember (sometimes deliberately), censor, and leave out chunks of information.
Rarely, though, do historians try to go beyond the facts and speculate on the emotions, intentions, and psychological motivations of their research subjects.
As a fun exercise, I’ve created several “imagined conversations” between Alfred Russel Wallace and his assistant Ali, based on tidbits of information and provocative clues found in Wallace’s narratives.
What’s His Name?
Why should we care about an illiterate 19th-century teenager from Borneo named Ali? More to the point, why should we spend time trying to learn his full name?
A lad simply named Ali, spent six years travelling with Alfred Russel Wallace throughout Southeast Asia.
The primary source for information about Ali comes from Wallace, who mentions Ali 42 times in his classic book The Malay Archipelago and again in his autobiography My Life. In addition, there are three elements of (convincing) second-hand evidence that add context to Ali’s life, but none of them mention Ali’s family name. Spenser St. John, a close friend of James Brooke, the first White Rajah of Borneo, employed a competent young cook named Ali, and it appears that Ali left St. John’s service to work with Wallace. Brothers Frederick and Arthur Boyle, young English adventurers who explored Sarawak, hired Ali as guide and camp manager. They called him Ali Kasut, Ali of the Shoes, in recognition of the black leather shoes he always wore. And in 1907, Thomas Barbour, a respected American naturalist, met a “wizened od Malay man” on Ternate island who called himself Ali Wallace. The idea that Ali described himself as son-of-Wallace is poignant, but doesn’t help with genealogical research.
What I learned by writing an “enhanced biography” of a little-known 19th-century teenager from Borneo
“Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird” What I learned by writing an “enhanced biography” of a little-known 19th-century teenager from Borneo Consider the lives of great men and women who explored the curious corners of the world, who made momentous discoveries in science and technology, who created important works of art. We can safely […]