Paul Spencer Sochaczewski's Blog

Ah, yet another international gathering to discuss progress in addressing the problem of climate change. This year it will be held in Belém, Brazil, and the participants will also focus on nature conservation in the country, including the vast Amazon region. I’ve been following Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace for some 50 years, including a […]

  The Two Mice That Have Influenced the World Recognizing the Rodents That Helped Create an Entertainment Empire and Enhanced the Power of a Much-Loved God   Birthday of Mickey and Musika — November 18 HOLLYWOOD and GUJARAT     On November 18, 1928, a lovable cartoon rodent named Mickey Mouse was introduced to the […]

  SHADOWS OF THE RING OF FIRE Foreword to New Book by Lawrence Blair   I was honored to write the foreword for my friend Lawrence Blair’s new book, Shadows of the Ring of Fire: Fading Dreams of a Vanishing World on a Warming Earth, details at the end of this article. This short piece […]

  Happy Birthday Thomas Barbour     When writing about historical characters, scholars search letters, journals, media accounts, and personal memories for the holy grail that “proves” a speculation about events and motivations. From these sources, historians then evaluate and triangulate until, like Miss Marple, they reach a satisfactory solution to the puzzle. (Or as […]

  Happy World Rainforest Day – June 22   Rema and Olivia were like pit bulls that refused to let go of the prey in their mouths. Few things are as hard to dislodge as a belief that you have repeated to yourself over and over.  The psychologists call this embedment.  When we invest energy […]

  Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird Intro to a speculative biography of Ali, Alfred Russel Wallace’s assistant in the Malay Archipelago       Consider Alfred Russel Wallace’s iconic hero’s journeys, exceptional even by the standards of other intrepid 19th-century British explorers. In 1848, Wallace and his friend Herbert Walter Bates said, in […]

  Lightning Teeth Help Win a Lover’s Heart and Guarantee an Election Victory An isolated Philippines island has cornered the market on love potions and magical healing.   SAN ANTONIO, Siquijor Island, The Philippines What a wonderful world we live in, I thought. For just ten dollars I could buy a small bottle crammed with […]

Alfred Russel Wallace is best known for his scientific achievements — collecting and documenting hundreds of new species of “natural productions,” major insights into biogeography, island endemism, and cultural anthropology, and notably, his development of a theory of evolution by natural selection independently of and prior to that of Charles Darwin.  But Wallace was also […]

  THE ALMOST LAST SHAMAN It’s been a good ride, but Borneo healer doesn’t expect many others to follow his path.    SERUBAH ULU, Sarawak, Malaysia  To the untrained eye he seems an unlikely magician.  Frail, but with a hundred-watt smile. He has two wispy whiskers, short grey hair, and he walks a bit slowly.  […]

There are worse travel strategies than to visit places with evocative names.

There’s Timbuktu, Congo, and Okavango in Africa; and Salvador de Bahia, Darien, and Patagonia in Latin America, names which purr with history and poetry. 

But Asia’s resonant place names beckon to me above all others.  There’s Sumatra, Java, and Borneo; Malacca, Vientiane, and Makassar; Kelantan, Kathmandu, and Ayudhya.  Not to mention the rivers: Ganges and Yangtze, Mahakam and Mekong. And the one I was headed towards: Ayeyarwady.

My destination was Katha, a small town on the  Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River, which has achieved a modicum of recognition.  It was here, between 1926 and 1927, that a British policeman named Eric Blair spent six months as one of 90 British police officers in Burma.  Eric Blair, who subsequently took the pen name George Orwell, based his 1934 novel Burmese Days on a fictionalized version of Katha that he dubbed Kyauktada (which is derived from the name of a district in Rangoon).