Let me ponder these things in the UK this September. I should know in August or so whether I can be there.

Thanks again, A

Really loved your book. I tweeted that it’s the best book I’ve read this year. It’s a pity it hasn’t got more momentum in the UK so far.

It’s a long shot but maybe you’d like to enter this competition if you’re in the UK in September http://www.ukbusinessspeakers.co.uk

If not it would be a pleasure to have you as a speaker at the UK Speechwriters’ Guild to talk to us about storytelling. See here: http://www.ukspeechwritersguild.co.uk

Kind regards, Brian Jenner

“In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the every-day affairs of life it is more useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected.”

The irony is that with the current expansion of the Federal Government and belief that the Feds can solve all of our problems with money and endless legislation, we are experiencing social, political and economic devolution across the country. Leave us alone please! I guess it is poetic that we might feel a bit like the Native Americans have felt for years.

The most recent example of the all-knowing and all-fixing Federal Government, is the announcement that the Secret Service will now send chaperones to watch over the agents and make sure they don’t get in trouble. Give me a break.

Best wishes for continued success! (with Hannibal rolling, not deciphering bad Latin).

Et Hannibal permansit ad volvuntur!

Thanks for the interest, Akshat!!!

You made me google the etymology: via Norman French to the old Germanic ‘thorpe’ (as in modern German “Dorf”, Danish ‘dorp’), apparently. (Looking at your name, you might recognize that root?) In any case, very interesting.

Thanks, Lasse!

A trooper is a cavalryman, and talk of “the troopers” has probably been bastardized with “the soldiers” into “the troops” (a usage of which I, as a non native english speaker, has no strong opinion of; I’m kinda used to it by now)

But it is indeed both proper and fitting to speak of “the troops” as a number of cavalry units.

Thanks for smearing Libertarianism….. not.

In any case, what i said is not true. There are just good stories and less good stories, good storytellers and less good storytellers. Fiction/non-fiction is not the important thing.

I used to work for a part-Apache (also half Navajo and a quarter Zuni) who scrawled the words “treaty paper” on the wall over the toilet roll in the shop’s bathroom. I thought of her when I got to the description of Chairman Lupe flipping the bird.

That said, this find is indeed fascinating. I’d like to get my hands on those stories. 19th century Grimm-ness with 21st century gender neutrality….

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/04/fairy-tales

Oh, SNAP, Andreas! What’s “is” and what’s “ought” now?

You make a fine Apache warrior.

But that’s the first time I hear that May had been to American. His whole mythology is sort of based on NOT ever having been there.

That said, I believe Karl May did, in fact, travel to the Middle East (where he reportedly suffered two nervous breakdowns), and he also spent six weeks the New York and MA, the latter experience of which he worked into his lesser known later novel Winnetou IV.

If I were a journalist doing a story on native Americans, I’d focus on the Apaches as well. No doubt about it.

Here’s a Winnetou shot of myself, puffing on my little peace pipe in the living room. (Somewhat uncharacteristically for an Apache warrior, I couldn’t get up because had my right leg in a cast following a skiing accident.)

the questions in your two stories seem to be posed by fools, but the answers serve to expose the “foolishness of those who think themselves wiser.”

here is a plethora of such stories from different cultures: http://www.eldrbarry.net/roos/books/nood.htm

There’s no people like show people!

The title song, “Don’t Cry For Me Carthaginians”, would include lyrics like:

I had to make it happen,
I had to change,
Couldn’t stay all my life doing nil,
Looking out at the mountains,
Staying out of the Alps,
So I chose warfare,
Riding around killing everyone there,
On elephants horses and all,
My soldiers and me had a ball.

Yeah……….

Re the first point: How so? What do Adam and Eve have to do with this?