Postcard from Bishkek

As I listened to the Global News podcast from the BBC, I wasn’t sure if I could believe what I was hearing … in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, a Gay Canadian comedian was leading a Ginger Pride Parade as part of the Fringe … it has to be a joke, I thought … but no, even though it might well have been an instrument for promoting his show, Ginger Nation, at the Edinburgh Festival, apparently it also had a serious point.  (You can hear the report here.)

As far as I am aware, there is no such thing as a International Day for Redheads … although I am sure that will come as a lot of Minority Groups are now adopting such a day to celebrate their otherness, to give support to members of their community and raise awareness of the issues that affect them in the wider population.

For the record, however. there Redhead Day: a Dutch summer festival that takes place each first weekend of September in the city of Breda, in the Netherlands, … so maybe I’ll return to this subject then …

In the meantime, today is the international day adopted by another minority group: Left Handers.

The day was established by the Left Handers Club in 1992, (a couple of years after the club was founded), and it has been marked every year since then on 13th August as a celebration of their distinctiveness and an opportunity to raise awareness of the both the advantages and the disadvantages of being left handed.

As they say on their website - for 364 days of the year, Left Handers fit in with home and office layouts designed for right-handers’ comfort – put up with doors, cookers, sinks, computer mice, keyboards and desks that are efficient for right-handers to work at, and hundreds of times every day they have to contort themselves using back-to-front tools and gadgets that make them look clumsy and awkward in their efforts to make them to work …, but on this one day of the year they can celebrate their distinctiveness and declare their personal space as a “Lefty Zone“.

The term Left Handed is not precisely defined anywhere … but in common parlance it refers to people who habitually, or more readily, use their left hand to perform everyday tasks than their right hand.

Technically speaking – although we might be tempted to think of there being two kinds of people: Righthanded and lefthanded – people who tend to prefer the use of either their right or their left hands to perform manual tasks … there are in fact two other categories: mixed handed, (where different hands are preferred for the completion of different tasks … for some tasks the right hand but for others the left … President Garfield, for example, is reputed to be able to write Greek with the left hand and Latin with the right), and ambidextrous, (where the person can perform any task equally well with either hand).

About one in eight of the population are left-handed, but nobody knows why although there are several competing theories … ranging from the division of labour between the hemispheres of the brain to genetic factors inherited from the parents – but one study found that although there was a correlation with one particular gene in women, there was a negative correlation amongst men – to a combination of genes and environmental factors – perhaps some trauma during pregnancy or in birth – for example linked to ultrasound or levels of testosterone, or premature births.

There has been quite a lot of research into how our handedness affects us … if you can believe all of it, it turns out that:

• there is a correlation between handedness and certain medical conditions – such as alcholism, arthritis, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, (ADHD), autism, Crohn’s disease, dyslexia, mood disorders, schizophrenia, stutters and ulcerative colitis.
• there seems to be some connection between handedness and creative talent … divergent thinking and so on
• left handed people are greater represented among our elected leaders than the proportion in the general population … there have been, for example, eight of the forty four American Presidents were left handed – if you count Ronald Reagan who, like so many others before him, had it “beaten” out of him as a child.  (In the past lefthanded children might be spanked in school and chastised at home for being different, their left hands would be tied behind their backs, in an effort to force them to write with their “correct” hand. )
• left handers are also well represented in sports …
•  lefthanders may die as many as nine years earlier than right-handers
• left handers hear speeches differently than people who are right handed
• there is apparently some evidence that left handers tend to feel some emotions, (such as anger, embarrassment and fear), more strongly than right handers

There have also been attempts to research if there is any correlation between handedness and topics such as incomes earned, IQ, mathematical ability, musical ability and  sexual orientation.

Surprisingly enough, archaeologists tell us that the preference for right handedness is not just limited to humans … apparently Neanderthals were also predominantly right handed.  On the other hand, some research suggests that among cats, rats, and mice handedness seems to be equally split between right- and left-pawedness

Over the years, lefthandedness has been seen as: a mark of the devil; a sign of neurosis, rebellion, criminality, and homosexuality an indication of creativity and musical abilities … or simply as a “nasty habit”.

We can see some interesting lexical influences: for example, the Latin term for left, “sinister“, can be interpreted in modern English as meaning “evil”; “menacing”; or “threatening”.  In English the word left comes from the Anglo-Saxon word lyft, which means weak or broken. No less an authority than The Oxford English Dictionary defines left-handed as meaning crippled, defective, awkward, clumsy, inept, characterized by underhanded dealings, ambiguous, doubtful, questionable, ill-omened, inauspicious, and illegitimate.  In German the term for “left-handed’ is linkisch, which means awkward, clumsy, and maladroit. In Italian, the word is mancino, which is derived from “crooked” or “maimed” (mancus) and is also used to mean deceitful or dishonest. In Russian, to be called a left-hander (levja) is a term of insult.

It’s not all bad news however.  The Incas, for example, thought lefthanders had healing powers and possessed magical abilities whilst at least one North American tribe believed lefthandedness signified good luck.

This list of prominent lefthanders, on the other hand, is quite impressive – it is predominantly American orientated and I have to admit that there are many people of whom I have never heard …  but there ere also many that could be considered “instantly recognizable” names.

 

It would be nice to round this postcard off with a Kyrgyz connection, such as a legend like the story of Ehud the Benjamite in the book of Judges, (go and look it up … if you dare), but I am afraid I’ve draw a blank in my research apart from the following:

• in Kyrgyz tradition – as in Medieval Europe –  evil spirits were thought of as operating through the left hand, so one is never offered the left hand to shake – or anything using the left hand,
• children who are lefthanded are encouraged, like Ronald Reagan, to  become  right-handed;
• the only prominent lefthander that I can find any reference to is Orzubek Nazarov, a Southpaw (left handed) boxer who a Bronze medal at the 1986 World Amateur Championships in Reno … and Gold at the 1987 European Championships in Turin.  He was born in Kant on 30th August, 1966 and after his successes in the Amateur ring turned Professional in 1990 and three years later won the title as WBA Lightweight Champion which he successfully defended five times.  Eye problems plagued him, however, and after losing a bout in France he retired from the ring although he is still active today in the administration of the sport as a member of the Asian Boxing Confederation’s Executive Committee.

 

So … Happy Left-Handers Day! … and if you’re right handed, (like me), even if you don’t encounter an “official” Lefty Zone … try and see how well you can cope doing some everyday tasks using your left hand … it’s an eye opener! … and it will give you an idea of how difficult it can be for someone to who has to try and “fit in” and “cope” in a world that appears to be totally alien – and designed for “other people”.

.

 

Tags: Calendar, Expat, For_the_Record, People, Sport