Down through the centuries, persons "handicapped" by physical or neurological afflictions or social status have -- out of their struggles and their suffering -- created bypasses of their handicaps.

And, sometimes, these creations have endowed us with devices or processes or palliatives for bypassing our own onerous or dangerous labor. Endowed us with discoveries providing information and control over a mysterious Nature. Endowed us with artistic celebrations bypassing the dreary contingencies of daily existence.

WE GIVE THANKS!

THE HUMAN IS THE MOST "HANDICAPPED" OF ALL ANIMALS! SO OUR ANCESTORS CREATED A PROSTHETIC FOR THIS HANDICAP: CIVILIZATION. THE DOLPHIN HAS A BRAIN EQUAL IN SIZE TO THE HUMAN BRAIN AND IS WELL ADAPTED TO ITS ENVIRONMENT -- SO IT DID NOT CREATE A PROSTHETIC ENVIRONMENT.

Here are some of our ENDOWERS:

• The Greek, Alexander the Great, who conquered more than any other in history and founded Alexandria, the great capitol of learning in ancient times, was epilectic, as was Julius Caesar and the Russian novelist, Feodor Dostoievsky.
• The great Greek orator, Demosthenes, overcame his stuttering, as did Thomas Jefferson and Winston Churchill (also dyslexic).
• When he was a boy, a chunk of marble cut out of a mountain by his father, sheared off the pinis of Michelangelo, so that he could never perform "normal intercourse".
• The great English poet, John Keats, was tuburcular, as was the American humorist, Charles Farrar Browne ("Artemus Browne"),
• The Greek poet, Homer, as blind, as became the English poet, John Milton,
• The French painter, Henri de Toulouse-Loutrec (1864-1901), was a "dwarf", as was Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923), who endowed us with many advances in elecromagnetic technology; the great German composer, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), was 5 feet tall
• The great inventor. Thomas Edison, was dyslexic and forced out of school at age 12 as "ineducable". I CHALLENGE you to EXTEND THIS LIST OF OUR "HANDICAPPED"ENDOWERS.

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