Brain Matters

Acquired Savant Syndrome occurs when the brain responds to trauma. Here are three fascinating examples from an article at foxnews.com, edited by yours truly: Orlando Serrell, ten, was struck by a baseball during a game. He continued playing. After his headache eventually left, he noticed he could name the day of the week for any past date. He could also remember the weather, where he was, and what he was doing for every day since the accident… Derek Amato hit his head on the concrete bottom of a Jacuzzi. He suffered hearing loss in one ear, memory loss and headaches. He also developed the ability to understand and play complex tunes on the piano, without any training… Alonzo Clemons suffered a brain injury as a toddler. He started creating life-like sculptures from memory alone, without formal training. His works are in fine arts galleries around the world… Please don’t try this at home.

The books are closed on the floating book shop 2019. For the third straight year I sold 41 copies of my own fiction on the street. That’s disappointing, as my target is 52, one per week. As the hackneyed cliche goes, it is what it is. I’ve whittled the deficit of my own books to $518. It stems mostly from the first two, Close to the Edge and Adjustments, before I got the hang of turning a small profit on most of the others. The deficit will grow when I buy copies of the novel I hope to self-publish shortly. The sale of other books, CDs, DVDs and miscellany more than makes up for the loss. I should never complain. I’m fortunate to still be able to go out and make a fool of myself just about every day.

My thanks to the woman who bought two books in Russian, and to Ira, who purchased bios of Humphrey Bogart and Nostradamus; and to all of the folks who exchanged Happy New Year wishes.

I used google to try and find what Nostradamus got right, and nothing came up. He remains a controversial figure. Tons of books have been written about him by either true believers, those hoping to cash in on the name, or both. I wonder if he predicted that. Here’s a paragraph from an article at history.com on unknown facts about him, edited by yours truly:
“Shortly after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Magda Goebbels, wife of Hitler’s propaganda minister, stumbled upon a passage in the book Mysteries of the Sun and Soul in which Nostradamus’ was believed to have predicted that crises would develop in England and Poland in 1939. After she brought it to her husband’s attention, Joseph Goebbels ordered the creation and distribution of a brochure he hoped would convince those living in neutral countries that a Nazi victory was inevitable, as Nostradamus had predicted centuries earlier. The Allies retaliated by airdropping large quantities of flyers over German-occupied territories, claiming Nostradamus had actually foreseen Germany’s defeat…”

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