Finger wrestling has been used in the Alps as a method of resolving disputes since the 17th century.  Now, dueling with digits has become a sport.

Two contestants sit facing each other across a large table, with their fingers threaded into a strong strap. On a signal from the referee, the contest begins, and the competitors pull as hard as they can.  The winner is the competitor who successfully pulls their opponent across the table, using just their finger.

In Bavaria, the home of finger wrestling, it’s serious business.  Competitors train their fingers for the intense strain (and pain) of competition, by squeezing tennis balls, holding their body weight on their competitive finger, and doing one-finger press-ups…  While wrestlers are free to use any finger they wish, the finger of choice is, of course, the middle finger.

Read more about finger wrestling, and see video of the recently-completed 35th Annual Finger Wrestling Championship, at The Sun.

***

As we flex our phalanges, we might send prodigious birthday greeting to G.K. Chesterton; he was born on this date in 1874.  The author of 80 books, several hundred poems, over 200 short stories, 4000 essays, and several plays, he was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, Catholic theologian and apologist, debater, and mystery writer. Chesterton was a columnist for the Daily News, the Illustrated London News, and his own paper, G. K.’s Weekly, and wrote articles for the Encyclopædia Britannica.  Chesterton created the priest-detective Father Brown, who appeared in a series of short stories, and had a huge influence on the development of the mystery genre; his best-known novel is probably The Man Who Was Thursday.

Chesterton’s faith, which he defended in print and speeches, brought him into conflict with the most famous atheist of the time, George Bernard Shaw, who said (on the death of his “friendly enemy”), ”he was a man of colossal genius.”

George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire Belloc, and G. K. Chesterton

source

[TotH to the indispensable Dangerous Minds...  who may have picked it up from the differently-but-equally-indispensable O'Reilly Community]

***

As we try on our Google Glasses, we might spare a (humble) thought for Alfred Adler; he died on this date in 1937.  An Austrian doctor and psychotherapist, Adler was an early collaborator with Freud in founding the psychoanalytic movement; after parting ways with The Master, he founded the school of individual psychology.  Indeed, we have Adler to thank for the “inferiority complex.”

 source

“Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.”
― Tobias Wolff, This Boy’s Life

“Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do – and it feels pretty good.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“I wanted to try this new drink: That’s all we do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks?”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories

Many, many more at Slaughterhouse 90120.

***

As we juxtapose radically, we might recall that it was on this date in 1784 that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart bought a starling that sang a passable version of the opening theme of the third movement of his Piano Concerto No. 17 in G, K. 453.  (In fact, the bird inserted a fermata on the last beat of the first full measure, and sang G sharp instead of G in the following measure.  Still…)

Mozart kept the bird as a pet until the warbler’s death on June 4, 1787.  Mozart wrote and recited a commemorative poem that he read as the pet was buried in the composer’s backyard.

a European Starling

Mozart’s transcription of the starling’s song

source

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

- Jorge Luis Borges, from The Art of Poetry

To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the General’s unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.

- Jane Austen, from Northanger Abbey

This game is seven-card stud.

- Tennessee Williams, from A Streetcar Named Desire

More final sentences from literary works of all sorts at “The Final Sentence.”  (Even more here– from whence the end tile card, above.)

***

As we sum up, we might send carefully-composed birthday wishes to Alexandr Sergeyevich Pushkin; the Russian author was born on this date in 1799 (using the calendar then in effect in Russia).  Pushkin was born into the nobility, an achieved literary acclaim early in his creer.  But his free-thinking bought him trouble with the Tsar.  Indeed, it was while he was under surveillance by the Imperial secret police that he wrote the work for which he’s probably best known, Boris Godunov.

(The people are silent with horror.)

- The stage direction that is the last line of Boris Godunov

 source

Swimming Lessons

circa 1910

seen at the 1939 World’s Fair

Many, many more arresting images at Black and WTF.

***

As we slip into sepia, we might send ethereal birthday greetings to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; he was born on this date in 1859.  While the Scottish physician and author is, of course, renown as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle was also a prominent spiritualist, who devoted years of his life (and over 1 million pounds) to supporting belief in the existence of “little people,” or Fairies.

Conan Doyle was deeply moved by the “Cottingley Fairies Photographs,” a series of five pictures taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England– indeed, he used them to illustrate a 1920 article in The Strand.  (In the early 1980s, Elsie and Frances finally admitted that the photographs were faked [using cardboard cutouts of fairies copied from a popular children's book of the time], though Frances continued to claim that the fifth and final photograph was genuine.)

The first of the five photographs, taken by Elsie Wright in 1917, shows Frances Griffiths with the alleged fairies.

Your correspondent is off to visit the fairies, and thus out of radio contact for a few days.  Regular service should resume by the beginning of next week…  meantime, readers might amuse themselves, even as they improve themselves, with this informative interview and  this helpful how-to.