"In the 19th century, virtuoso pianists, including Adolfo Fumagalli, composed left-handed works to wow audiences during encores. (Sometimes, Fumagalli used his right hand to smoke a cigar.)"

"'They were saying, "You think I’m good with two hands? Wait until you see what I can do with only my weaker one,"' McCarthy said. Around the same time, a disabled pianist was also trying to develop a one-handed repertoire: Géza Zichy, a Hungarian who had lost his right arm in a hunting accident as a teenager, transcribed pieces by his friend Franz Liszt, as well as J.S. Bach and others." 

From "Only 5 Fingers Playing Piano, but the Sound of So Many Hands/Nicholas McCarthy overcame rejection to make a professional career playing the surprisingly vast repertoire for left-hand piano" (NYT).

"The most important figure in the repertoire’s development was Paul Wittgenstein, a promising Austrian pianist, who fought with the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I, alongside his brother Ludwig, the future philosopher. Paul Wittgenstein was shot in battle, and woke up in a hospital to learn that doctors had amputated his right arm. Wittgenstein said later in interviews that he had never contemplated giving up music, and recalled drawing a charcoal keyboard on a crate when he was sent to a Siberian prisoner-of-war camp so that he could practice one-handed. In the decades after his release in a prisoner exchange, Wittgenstein used his family’s wealth to commission composers including Ravel, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev and Richard Strauss."

"Biden's physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn't do so until after the election."

Write Jake Tapper and Thompson in a book they call "Original Sin," quoted in "Exclusive: Biden aides discussed wheelchair use if he were re-elected, new book says" (Axios).

The book will be out in a week, so presumably Axios can excerpt anything from the text and call it "exclusive."

Nothing wrong with needing a wheelchair while serving in government. Obviously, Franklin Roosevelt did it, but he also hid it. What's up with the shame? What does it say to people with disabilities to hide your need for a wheelchair? How can it be better to walk in a "halting" style and to risk falling? Was he in pain? Was he on painkillers?

It might be Bad Analogy Day on this blog — see the previous post — so I'll say it: It reminds me of a gay person in the closet. The hiding expresses shame that hurts others in your group and that underestimates the intelligence and empathy of those you're hiding from. Is that a bad analogy?

Speaking of things not done until after the election, here's Chuck Todd, denying responsibility for hiding Biden's fitness. I'm embedding this because Todd's inability to enact sincerity is so funny that I think an aspiring comic actor could use this as a model:

"Since I was born with no legs, it wasn’t long before news crews, national telethons and even the talk show host Maury Povich arrived to capture me in action..."

"... always portraying my simplest activities as inspirational. The short film... 'View From the Floor,' captures my journey navigating tropes, exploitation and the question of whether I’m talented or typecast, superstar or supercrip (a person with a disability who is seen as a superhero for doing everyday things)."

Writes Mindie Lind, about an excellent 5-minute animation, which you can watch at this free-access link to the NYT. 

If you got to that link, the headline is "Applaud My Talent, Not My Disability," but the teaser on the front page is "I’m an Artist, Not 'Inspiration Porn.'" I was interested in the term "Inspiration Porn," but it doesn't even appear on the article page, where the text is by the person who has the disability. Oddly enough, she uses the term "supercrip."

I clicked the link on "supercrip," and, helpfully, I got to an article that used the term "inspiration porn." It's a 2022 article Ben Mattlin, "I Am Not Your Supercrip": "Supercrip stories are a subset of 'inspiration porn.' That term, coined by the late Australian comedian and journalist Stella Young, a wheelchair-user with dwarfism, refers to portrayals of disabled people that treat them as inspirations (rather than as individuals) in ways that effectively say disabled people only exist, or are only worth photographing and writing about, to inspire or motivate nondisabled people."

"[T]he FAA under Trump in 2019 launched a program to hire controllers using the very criteria he decried at his news conference."

"'FAA Provides Aviation Careers to People with Disabilities,' the agency announced on April 11, 2019.... The link under 'targeted disabilities' is now dead, but the Wayback Machine retains links from June 2017 and January 2021 that show the page was unchanged during Trump’s tenure. The list included: Hearing (total deafness in both ears), Vision (Blind), Missing Extremities, Partial Paralysis, Complete Paralysis, Epilepsy, Severe intellectual disability, Psychiatric disability, Dwarfism...."

Writes Glenn Kessler, awarding 4 Pinocchios, in "Trump launched air controller diversity program that he now decries/At news conference, Trump read a list of disabilities he calls disqualifying, but his administration started such hiring in 2019" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"Now, people like Eby control their narrative and can use social media platforms to show the personal, day-to-day minutiae of living with a terminal illness."

"Eby’s first post to hit one million views on TikTok was a series of messages she received from men on a dating app, after telling them she used a cane. (A sampling: '“If I bring my light saber, we can do battles,' 'You’ll fall for me before we even get dinner,' 'Order another cane because girl u got me trippin.') Much like Eby, many successful influencers with terminal illnesses are female and young, or young for their disease. Their relative youth only punctuates the loss when they’re gone. In May, Madison Baloy, who shared her life with Stage IV cancer with almost half a million followers across TikTok and Instagram, died at age 26. In October, Rachel Yaffe, a 27-year-old creator with liver cancer, passed away. Days later, Bella Bradford said goodbye to her followers in a video she had recorded before dying of a rare soft-tissue cancer. 'Remember that you live every day, but you only die once,' she told them. She was 24...."

From "When Your Terminal Illness Makes You a TikTok Star/After being diagnosed with A.L.S. in 2022, Brooke Eby could have turned inward. Instead, she opened up — and found a fan base online" (NYT)(free-access link).

I don't like the use of the word "star" in that headline. The point here should be that there is real human communication on TikTok, and the platform does not deserve to be scoffed as and dismissed as though it's just a lot of kids being silly or striving toward some perverse notion of fame. Why not throw it all away in the name of abstract "national security"? It's just a bunch of dummies and narcissists.

"Singing Simon and Garfunkel’s 'America' to heal my brain 🧠 In 2017, I sustained a brain injury caused by never treated Lyme disease."

"My first symptom was a psychosis that would make me see horrific images nonstop 24 hours a day for 22 months.... About six or seven months into the psychosis I lost all control of the muscles in my body including the muscles in my face. I lost my ability to speak.... By then it was too late to treat the Lyme disease; it was all about strengthening my brain and getting my ability back. Two years ago, after progressing from wheelchair, to walker, to cane, back to my feet I was still struggling with my speech when I intuited that playing the ukulele could help by doing multiple things at the same time as a regular practice...."

Why I don't have any hobbies.

I'm reading "Six Underrated Hobbies to Try Out/Picking up a new pastime is no small feat" (The Atlantic). "What is an underrated hobby that you love?" it asks.

I don't think I've ever used the word "hobby" to refer to anything I do. I don't relate to the idea of a "hobby," even though I like to do what I want, what interests me, and I have almost nothing but free time. I don't think of this blog as a hobby and might be annoyed if someone I knew called it that. But maybe I would be better off if I did something that genuinely deserved the label "hobby." I don't consider walking in the woods a hobby. Or reading. Maybe photographing the sunrise every day is a hobby, but this is the first time I've connected it with that word, which, to my ear, sounds diminishing.

So let's check out these 6 things. 1. Collecting animal figurines, 2. Playing video games (why not count watching TV?!), 3. Paraclimbing (climbing for persons with disabilities (I don't think sports are "hobbies")), 4. Boxing (another sport), 5. Making pizza from scratch (cooking can be a hobby), 6. Walking the dog and paying attention to the plants and animals that interest the dog (I'm intrigued by the idea of paying attention as a hobby).

Well, it's Labor Day, and I like thinking of my own personal freedom from labor. I'm not decrepit enough to deserve the word "retired" — if you want to think about words. That has to do with withdrawing or receding, retreating, or falling back. I'm reading the OED. Maybe paying attention to words and looking them up in the OED is my hobby.

Did you know that the original meaning of "hobby" is "A small or middle-sized horse; an ambling or pacing horse; a pony"? That goes back to the 1400s. The meaning we know — which begins in the early 1800s — comes from the idea of riding a toy horse — a "hobby-horse." It's "A favourite occupation or topic, pursued merely for the amusement or interest that it affords, and which is compared to the riding of a toy horse...; an individual pursuit to which a person is devoted (in the speaker's opinion) out of proportion to its real importance."

When do you look at your own activities and judge your interest in them to be out of proportion to their "real" importance? It seems that if you're going to call something your "hobby," you're embracing the idea that your love of it seems foolish when viewed from the outside. By the same token, if you decline to use the word "hobby" for what you do out of interest and love, you are deprioritizing what other people think.

"One of the joys of my life in the social churn of New York is living with a son whose inability to read the room makes him incapable of telling anything but the truth."

"Once, as my husband, Harry Evans, and I left a pretentious social gathering in the Hamptons, Georgie told the host sunnily: 'Thank you very much. No one spoke to me really, so it was a very boring evening. The food was OK. I doubt I will come again.' 'I have never been prouder of you in my life!' shouted my husband in the car. How many times have all of us wanted to say that as we gushed about the fabulous time we just hadn’t had? Then there was the moment he went up to Anna Wintour at one of my book parties and asked if she was Camilla Parker Bowles. And the time at the intake meeting for a supported work program, when the therapist asked Georgie, 'Has anyone ever molested you?' 'Unfortunately not,' he replied. Georgie teaches me every day how much we depend on social lies to make the world go round...."

Writes Tina Brown, in "My Son and Gus Walz Deserve a Champion Like Tim Walz" (NYT)(free-access link).

Tina Brown, the famous author and editor, is the mother of "Georgie, a 38-year-old on the spectrum who still lives with me." She "recognized" Tim Walz's son Gus as "one of 'ours,' a sweet, unfiltered, slightly bewildered-looking young man who wasn’t quite sure what was expected of him in this epic moment of political adulation."

Imagine going to posh parties filled with celebrities at the Anna Wintour level and bringing along a 38-year-old man who does not — and seemingly cannot — refrain from saying insulting things to people. It's like being inside a Marx Brothers movie and forbidden to laugh. 

"Mr. Harrell’s team sank into his brain’s outer layer four electrode arrays that looked like tiny beds of nails."

"That was double the number that had recently been implanted in the speech areas of someone with A.L.S., or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, in a separate study. Each array’s 64 spikes picked up electric impulses from neurons that fired when Mr. Harrell tried to move his mouth, lips, jaw and tongue to speak.Three weeks after surgery, scientists gathered in Mr. Harrell’s living room in Oakland, Calif., to 'plug him in,' connecting the implant to a bank of computers with cables attached to two metal posts protruding from Mr. Harrell’s skull."

From "A.L.S. Stole His Voice. A.I. Retrieved It. In an experiment that surpassed expectations, implants in a patient’s brain were able to recognize words he tried to speak, and A.I. helped produce sounds that came close to matching his true voice" (NYT)(free access link).

"Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan revealed Friday that a Facebook user claiming to be a 'cousin' of a juror in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial..."

"... suggested he had advanced knowledge of last week’s guilty verdict. 'Today, the Court became aware of a comment that was posted on the Unified Court System’s public Facebook page and which I now bring to your attention,' Merchan wrote in a letter to Trump attorney Todd Blanche and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. 'In the comment, the user, "Michael Anderson," states: "My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted … Thank you folks for all your hard work!!! …."' the judge explained. .... In his Facebook profile, Anderson describes himself as a 'Transabled & a professional sh** poster.'"

I'm reading "Hush money judge alerts Trump lawyer, prosecutors to Facebook post claiming prior knowledge of jury’s verdict" (NY Post).

It's hard to imagine how this can amount to anything... even if it turns out that the person who posted actually is the cousin of one of the jurors.

I've chosen to link to this story at the NY Post, because other news outlets did not include the detail that "Michael Anderson" called himself "transabled." According to Wikipedia, "transabled" is a term used by some persons with body integrity dysphoria, which is "a rare mental disorder characterized by a desire to have a sensory or physical disability or feeling discomfort with being able-bodied, beginning in early adolescence and resulting in harmful consequences."

Why would someone who presented himself as a "shit poster" — I'd write "shitposter" — also want to identify as "transabled"? Actually, it's hard to understand why a shitposter would want to call himself a shitposter. Wouldn't the usual game of shitposting be undercut by telling people that's what you're doing?

"Fetterman’s health has improved more and faster than expected, and in what may not be a coincidence..."

"... the more his brain damage recedes, the less he agrees with lefty activists and the Democratic Party’s functionaries. Speaking at Yeshiva University’s commencement, Fetterman dramatically stripped off his Harvard hood and announced he was 'profoundly disappointed' at his alma mater’s refusal to address the antisemitism rampant on its campus, a discontent he extended to the entire antisemitism-enabling Ivy League. Quoth Fetterman: 'As an alum of Harvard — look, I graduated 25 years ago, and of course, it was always a little pinko. But now, I don’t recognize it....' When pro-Palestinian protesters showed up at the senator’s house (no dogpiling in his defense from lefty activists over this) and told him he had 'nowhere to hide,' Fetterman defiantly got on his roof with an Israeli flag....."

Writes Glenn Reynolds, in "Mea culpa, Fetterman: I was wrong about the senator and his illness" (NY Post).

"I’m seeking out clients that are also neurodivergent, disabled and autistic so I don’t need to mask or hide my disabilities..."

"Especially on your wedding day, when there’s so much pressure on it being just right. Why would they hire me when they could just hire somebody who’s nondisabled?... I’ve marketed myself as a queer, awkward, anxious photographer who hopefully makes others feel more comfortable in front of the lens, so I tend to organically attract those same people.... I wear earplugs to reduce the noise level. I’ve learned to take breaks, to ask for what I need, to not take calls at night and communicate transparently upfront so I don’t have to work with people who are not going to be a good fit. I used to mask or camouflage my disabilities at weddings, but because I work with so many autistic and neurodiverse people, I feel free to be myself, and I feel understood by the people I’m photographing, who in turn feel understood by me. It creates a more authentic relationship and unmasks all of us so that I get photos other photographers wouldn’t be able to get otherwise...."

Said Shannon Collins, quoted in "Capturing Special Moments, While Creating Inclusive Weddings/Shannon Collins, a 'queer, awkward, anxious photographer,' wants to change the way disabled people are viewed, one picture at a time" (NYT).

Here's her Instagram account, and here's an example (where she's discussing the problem of telling photographic subjects to "relax"):

When Obama won the Iowa caucuses in 2008 — "It felt then as if we were embracing modernity and inclusion, moving away from the image of John Wayne’s America."

"How could we have gone from such a hopeful moment to such a discordant one? Of course, every time there’s a movement, there’s a countermovement, where people feel that their place in the world is threatened.... Trump has played on that resentment.... Trump is a master at exploiting voters’ fears. I’m puzzled about why his devoted fans don’t mind his mean streak. He can gleefully, cruelly, brazenly make fun of disabilities in a way that had never been done in politics — President Biden’s stutter, John McCain’s injuries from being tortured, a Times reporter’s disability — and loyal Trump fans laugh. He calls Haley 'Birdbrain.'... Obama’s triumph in Iowa was about having faith in humanity. If Trump wins here, it will be about tearing down faith in humanity...."

Writes Maureen Dowd in her column this week, "Here Comes Trump, the Abominable Snowman" (NYT).

To repeat the question: "How could we have gone from such a hopeful moment to such a discordant one?" Does Dowd really believe it's all Trump's fault? Couldn't Obama himself have used his presidency more effectively and built American optimism? He promised hope, but why didn't he deliver more of it? Why did we end the Obama years with so much division and strife? Dowd puts no responsibility on Obama. It's all about the reactionaries — the countermovement that automatically follows any movement. It happens "every time." Dowd chooses to portray the American people as a machine, behaving mechanically — and perversely. And yet somehow it is Trump who is devoted to "tearing down faith in humanity." 

"The Texas Supreme Court late Friday temporarily halted a lower court order allowing a Dallas woman to obtain an abortion in spite of the state’s strict bans..."

"The [Texas] Supreme Court said that, 'without regard to the merits' of the arguments on either side, it had issued an administrative stay in the case, to give itself more time to issue a final ruling.... [The lower court] judge, a Democrat, found that Ms. Cox, 31... met the criteria for an exception to the state’s abortion bans. Her fetus was diagnosed with trisomy 18, a fatal condition in all but a small number of rare cases; Ms. Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, had been to the emergency room several times for pain and discharge during her pregnancy.... No doctors or providers have been prosecuted for performing an abortion in Texas, and only a very small number of civil lawsuits have been filed under a 2021 state law, Senate Bill 8, that allowed for lawsuits against those who assist with abortions. In a few cases, doctors have gone forward with abortions after determining they were necessary and permitted under the law."

From "Texas Supreme Court Temporarily Halts Court-Approved Abortion/The court, responding to an appeal from Attorney General Ken Paxton, put on hold a lower court order allowing an abortion for a woman whose fetus has a fatal condition" (NYT).

"If Trump manages to escape conviction in Jack Smith’s Washington case, which may be the only criminal trial that ends before the election, that’s going to turbocharge his campaign."

"Of course, if he’s convicted, that could turbocharge his campaign even more. It’s a perfect playing field for the maleficent Trump: He learned in the 2016 race that physical and rhetorical violence could rev up his base. He told me at the time it helped get him to No. 1 and he said he found violence at his rallies exciting. He has no idea why making fun of Paul Pelosi’s injuries at the hands of one of his acolytes is subhuman, any more than he understood how repellent it was in 2015 when he mocked a disabled Times reporter. He gets barbaric laughs somehow, and that’s all he cares about...."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "The Axe Is Sharp" (NYT)

"The Axe" refers to the person Biden calls a "prick," David Axelrod.

Trump mocked a disabled reporter, but he did not, as Dowd may want readers to falsely remember, make fun of his disability.

If we could read Trump's mind, would we find that he has "no idea why making fun of Paul Pelosi’s injuries is subhuman"? But we can't read his mind.

"I felt like I was permanently hung over, drunk, high and in a brain freeze all at once."

Said Emmanuel Aguirre, "a 30-year-old software engineer in the Bay Area [who] had Covid at the end of 2020," quoted in "Can’t Think, Can’t Remember: More Americans Say They’re in a Cognitive Fog/Adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s are driving the trend. Researchers point to long Covid as a major cause" (NYT).

We're told Aguirre "stopped dating, playing video games and reading novels, though he managed to keep his job, working remotely."

And look at this graph:

Assuming this change is real, is it from Covid? Why would Covid damage the brains of the young but not the old?

"The more she researched, the more she thought [chickens] would be good for her son, ideally providing him with a sense of purpose and companionship..."

"... she said, and their 'chicken chatter' could be comforting background noise for her son, who has anophthalmia, and was born without eyes. C-Jay is missing one-third of his brain and half of his right lung, and his heart is on the right side of his body rather than the left. He also has autism, epilepsy and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. C-Jay is a social person, his mother said, and pandemic-induced isolation took a toll on his mental health.... The process to be granted an exception to the law [against backyard chickens] was more challenging and complicated than Amy had anticipated.... [Later, Amy filed a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission] claiming Bangor was discriminating against her son by not giving him an exemption to the no-chicken rule.... 'He deserves to have his chickens,' Amy said. 'They help him to cope and make sense of his world.'"

From "After months-long fight, Maine man can keep emotional support chickens/C-Jay Martin’s neighbors in Bangor rallied to help him keep his backyard chickens, which were not allowed by city ordinance" (WaPo).

"In unguarded moments over a 33-month tenure, he suggested that liberals were un-American and that the popular Beach Boys rock band was unwholesome."

"He likened his critics to Nazis and Bolsheviks, and insulted Black people, women, Jews and handicapped people.... 'I never use the words Democrats and Republicans,' he said in a favorite line. 'It’s liberals and Americans.'... He banned women’s pantsuits in his department, but the edict was flagrantly violated. Heralding divisiveness, he reversed the bison on the department logo from left-facing to right-facing. 'If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or the ballot box,' he quipped, 'perhaps the cartridge box should be used.' He accused his critics of using sham environmental concerns to achieve 'centralized planning and control of the society.' He told Business Week: 'Look what happened to Germany in the 1930s. The dignity of man was subordinated to the powers of Nazism. The dignity of man was subordinated in Russia. Those are the forces that this thing can evolve into.'"

From "James G. Watt, Interior Secretary Under Reagan, Dies at 85/Mr. Watt once declared that Interior Department policies over years had swung too far toward conservation under the influence of 'environmental extremists'" (NYT).

Watt resigned on October 9, 1983, after his attack on The Beach Boys and that remark about "two Jews and a cripple":

"[Gert-Jan] Oskam... said that these stimulation technologies had left him feeling that there was something foreign about the locomotion..."

"... an alien distance between his mind and body. The new interface changed this, he said: 'The stimulation before was controlling me, and now I’m controlling the stimulation.' In the new study, the brain-spine interface, as the researchers called it, took advantage of an artificial intelligence thought decoder to read Mr. Oskam’s intentions — detectable as electrical signals in his brain — and match them to muscle movements. The etiology of natural movement, from thought to intention to action, was preserved. The only addition... was the digital bridge spanning the injured parts of the spine.... 'It raises interesting questions about autonomy, and the source of commands. You’re continuing to blur the philosophical boundary between what’s the brain and what’s the technology.'"

 From "A Paralyzed Man Can Walk Naturally Again With Brain and Spine Implants" (NYT).

"What makes the clock stunt even more impressive, Ms. Lloyd said, is that her grandfather was hanging on with only eight fingers."

"In 1919 he had lost part of his right index finger, his entire right thumb and part of his palm when he attempted to light a cigarette from the fuse of what he thought was a prop bomb for a publicity photo. But the bomb exploded, temporarily blinding him and putting him in the hospital for about two weeks. For years he wore a prosthetic glove to mask the injury in movies, but not in his personal life."

From "A Man Hanging From a Clock. Yes, It’s That Silent Film. 'Safety Last!' the 1923 Harold Lloyd movie best known for the dangerous scene, marks its centennial" (NYT).

You can watch the entire movie on YouTube. I'll start you in the middle of things (and keep going, because it's not just the clock, it's the rat, the gun, the anemometer, etc.):