November 10, 2021
“How the Maestro Got His Hands Back” is an incredible piece by Gabriella Paiella. It is a long and moving story about João Carlos Martins. Let me pick out some of highlights, give you a link to a video, and with that, I invite you to just enjoy. The link above will give you the whole article.
João Carlos Martins was a child prodigy who became one of Brazil’s, and the world’s, best concert pianists, interpreting Johann Sebastian Bach for millions of people around the world. It is trite to say it, but as with any endeavor, Martins’ career came with great effort, great sacrifice, great disappointment, and great success. Here is the way Paiella tells it.
Over the years, fate seemed to do all that it could to stop João Carlos Martins from playing the piano.
It started in the 1950s, when he was 18. Something called focal dystonia. The brain misfires and causes involuntary muscle spasms. He managed to get it under control and, by his early 20s, landed in New York City. To relax, Martins would take leisurely strolls around Central Park, where he played pickup soccer in the park.
One day, while chasing after the ball, he tripped. His right elbow hit a sharp rock and sliced the ulnar nerve. Martins knew he was really in trouble when, in the coming months, his fingers started to atrophy.
Martins kept going, though his skills as a pianist were diminished. He even embarked on a decades-long quest to record the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach. In 1995, at the age of 54, he traveled to tape in this one theater in Sofia, Bulgaria, with great acoustics. He was walking back to his hotel late at night when two muggers ambushed him with a metal pipe, and they took off with his passport and wallet and left him for dead.
In 2000, a failed surgery originally intended to restore functionality did his right hand in for good. Soon after, doctors found a tumor in his left. They removed it, along with any remaining hope of his fingers gliding over his beloved keyboard ever again.
Fast forward to 2019 and an industrial designer named Ubiratan Bizarro Costa, who became familiar with Martins while watching a documentary on the maestro. Costa created a pair of bionic gloves, very low tech, with a neoprene sleeve outfitted with a 3D-printed frame and stainless steel bars on the fingers. When weight bears down on it, the bar springs back up. Without the gloves, when Martins’s fingers hit a key, they stay depressed; the steel bars pop them back up.
Martins reinvented himself as a conductor before meeting Costa. Today, with limitations, he has returned to the piano. Here is the video I mentioned earlier.
The trash bin became somewhat weathered throughout the journey, but the city of Myrtle Beach’s logo is still clearly seen. “I don’t think it’s possible to tell when it went missing, but it probably was during a wind or storm event. We typically remove trash containers from the beach before a hurricane, but this one apparently had a mind of its own,” the City of Myrtle Beach said on Facebook.
McGreal said the bin is being used as a trash receptacle on the remote stretch of beach where it was found.
Another name is the “Nutmeg State” honoring peddlers who sold the spice. The “Provisions State” is a nickname given because during the Revolutionary War, Connecticut supplied most of the food and cannons for the Continental forces. And the fourth nickname is the “Land of Steady Habits” applied in allusion to the strict morals of its inhabitants.
Connecticuters, or Connecticotians, or Connecticutensians have strange ways of pronouncing the names of cities in their state. For instance, Berlin is not pronounced like the city in Germany – it’s burr-lun. And Meriden is not pronounced like the city in Mississippi (Mah-rid-ee-n), but Mare-uh-done. Just so you’ll know.
No nickname, and no strange pronunciation, but for a short time we lived at 1365 Stanley Street in New Britain, CT, the street named for the famous tool manufacturer.
👉 Here’s a 2-for-1 Blackout:
👉 A menace by Dennis:
👉 Two great panels from Family Circus:
👉 Just for fun:
👉 Today’s close is from New Morning Mercies, by Paul David Tripp.
Grace produces what you and I desperately need but have no power to produce on our own – vertical and horizontal peace. Jesus really is the Prince of Peace! Sin alienates us from God and one another. Sin makes us the enemies of God and casts us into constant conflict with other people. Sin cuts us off from the two communities of love that we were created to live in – loving and worshipful community with God and loving community with others. Sin makes us better fighters than lovers. Sin is antisocial; it is fundamentally destructive to the relationships that are to shape our lives.
We desperately need peace, but it often seems as if there is no peace to be found. This is why Isaiah’s Old Testament prophecy of a Prince of Peace who was to come was so important, so exciting, and so encouraging. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). The world was groaning, burdened and broken by vertical and horizontal conflict. The world and the people in it could not fix themselves. Peace seemed to be a distant and delusional hope. But then came the words of Isaiah.
God had a solution. It would not be a negotiation. It would not be a call to action. It would not be a strategy for peace. No, God’s solution would come in the gift of his Son. He would bring the peace that eluded our grasp. He would live the life we could not live, fulfilling God’s requirement. He would bear our punishment, satisfying God’s anger. He would rise from the grave, defeating sin and death. He would do it all so that we could experience what we could never have achieved, earned, or deserved – peace with God. And peace with God is the only road to lasting peace with one another. It is only when the peace of God rules my heart that I can know real peace with you.
This is the good news of the gospel. Peace came. Peace lived. Peace died. Peace rose again. Peace reigns on your behalf. Peace indwells you by the Spirit. Peace graces you with everything you need. Peace convicts, forgives, and delivers you. Peace will finish his work in you. Peace will welcome you into glory, where Peace will live with you in peace and righteousness forever. Peace isn’t a faded dream. No, Peace is real. Peace is a person, and his name is Jesus.
In Christ, you have everything you need to live in peace with God and the people he has placed in your life.
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