The FINGER

Is Nothing Sacred?  

   It is the first day of May and it is raining, so I will make my monthly attempt to do a variety of things, ranging from exercising and blogging more, to drinking less. As well, I will strive to be a better person and again promise to visit my physician, a promise I have been making monthly for about a decade. In my defence, some of these attempts and promises are weather-dependent and have nothing at all to do with my lack of resolve.

   There is some indication that I may again fail to achieve just about any of my monthly objectives since I already have spent much of the day reading just about anything which will allow me to avoid attempting anything that requires much effort. But, I just came across an article that will at least give me an opportunity to boost my blogging output, given that it shouldn’t require much effort. As well, I can dedicate this post to a loyal reader, who is ‘loyal’ only if I send him a link to it since he cannot otherwise find Mulcahy’s Miscellany. The subject of the post is the FINGER, the middle one. 

   Here is the article, portions of which I will present because they are more likely to be interesting than this post. The headline: "Three Glass Sculptures by Artist Ai Weiwei Were Snatched From an Exhibition at a Gallery in Hamburg, Germany, During a Daytime Heist."

"The artworks—red, yellow, and orange reproductions of the artist’s hand—were listed each for €9,500 (about $10,000) on the Lumas website. The trio references the Chinese dissident artist’s well-known photography series, Study of Perspective (1995–2017), in which his middle finger is raised to monuments and politically charged sites around the world."
[The image above is also from this article by Tessa Solomon found in ARTnews on April 29, 2022.]

As far as I can tell, the motives of this dastardly felon remain unclear. Perhaps one was money, or that he (they) was offended by the finger art, or that he simply wanted to give the finger to someone. 

   The link of the finger to my ‘loyal’ reader will now be made apparent. A while back he suffered a minor stroke. As a minor aside, I bet that a stroke would be classified as ‘minor’, only by those who haven’t experienced one. Prodded by his determined spouse, an aggressive rehabilitation program was undertaken and goals established. His left side was affected and he told his physiotherapist a primary motivator for him would be to be able again to raise for me his middle finger. I suppose I should be pleased that a goal related to me ranked higher even than guitar playing which is very important to him. Lest you think from all this that I am a rather bad fellow, like the finger stealing felon mentioned above, I will simply say that the gestation of this gesture by my loyal reader began and was developed on squash courts. 

Post Script:

   I realized when doing this that the middle finger has been a subject in other posts on this blog and perhaps indicates the intellectual level of it. The picture above is from "RIP - Reinhold Aman" who was an intellectual, but one who focused on the genre of things that could be said to be related to the middle finger. The post about Professor Alice Dreger ("Facts and Fingers") relates to a book she wrote which is: Galileo's Middle Finger...). The finger also figures, fittingly enough, in "The History of Everything (Revisited"), which features a book, A Cultural History of the Prostate. 

The Bonus: 

   Although I have shamelessly promoted past posts above, I doubt if you will visit them.  Even if you did, you might have missed the link which is provided in Facts and Fingers. Offered here again is a direct link to a more complete history of the middle finger which you are more likely to pay attention to since it is from the BBC: "When Did the Middle Finger Become Offensive?" Daniel Nasaw, BBC New Magazine, Feb. 6, 2012. 

   Thieves will even steal books. See, "The Great British Book Burglary."