"I write with my left hand," opens a 2022 collection of essays titled A Left-Handed Woman by Judith Thurman, the award-winning biographer of Tokin' Woman Isak Dinesen. Thurman continues, "Left-handedness used to be considered a malign aberration ('sinister' is Latin for 'left'), and in the generations before mine, schoolchildren were routinely 'switched.' Enforced conformity, especially, perhaps, when it selects an inborn trait to repress or persecute, breeds intolerance for difference of all kinds. Singled out for bullying or conversion, a child internalized the message that she isn't 'right'.”
Eudora Welty, whose novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973, wrote in One Writer's Beginnings, "I'd been born left-handed, but the habit was broken when I entered first grade." Her father "had insisted. He pointed out that everything in life had been made for the convenience of right-handed people, because they were the majority, and he often used 'what the majority wants' as a criterion for what was for the best." Her mother was also born left-handed, but "she had been broken of it when she was young," causing her to develop a stutter.
I've personally gathered thousands of signatures on pro-pot petitions, and I've noticed a preponderance of left-handed signatories, much more than the 10-12% of us in the general population today. It could be that being left handed brands us early on as different, providing an incentive to try something that was and often remains countercultural: using cannabis. The "enforced conformity" against cannabis users comes in the form of criminalization, ridicule, and drug testing.
Benjamin Franklin, who used a hemp kite string in his famous electrical experiment, wrote an amusing essay as a left hand that objected to the preferential treatment his sister right hand received. “Petition of the Left Hand,” first published in 1815, complains, "From my infancy, I have been led to consider my sister as a being of a more elevated rank. I was suffered to grow up without the least instruction, while nothing was spared in her education. She had masters to teach her writing, drawing, music, and other accomplishments; but if by chance I touched a pencil, a pen, or a needle, I was bitterly rebuked; and more than once I have been beaten for being awkward, and wanting a graceful manner."
Despite wild claims to the contrary, it is difficult to discern whether some historical figures were left or right handed, especially because lefties were often trained to perform tasks like writing or using tools with their right hands. A painting of Franklin drawn from life shows him holding a quill pen in his right hand, but in this portrait painted by David Martin in 1767, which hangs in the White House, he reads from papers that he holds in his left. Leonardo da Vinci is often mentioned as a famous left hander based on the style of hash marks in his drawings; others dispute this assessment, presenting some evidence his right hand was injured, causing him to switch hands. By looking at cave paintings and tools, some have discerned that the prevalence of left-handedness among cave dwellers was much greater than in modern society. Others dispute this as well.
Or maybe it's brain differences. According to a 1995 paper in the American Journal of Psychology, left-handed males are better at "divergent thinking," and the greater their "sinistrality," the greater their divergence. (Funny that females didn't feel free to diverge.) Research conducted at the Illinois Research Consortium in 2008 found that right-handed people process information using analysis, while left-handed people do it using synthesis, solving a problem by looking at the whole and trying to use pattern-matching. Experiments on multi-tasking performance showed that when given two tasks to simultaneously complete, left-handers outperformed right-handers. However, when instructed to focus on one task at a time, right-handers completed the tasks more quickly. While left-handers showed more accurate memories of events, right-handers displayed better factual memory.
In 2021, the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the Donders Institute in Nijmegen investigated brain image and genetic data of 3,062 left-handers and 28,802 right-handers. Left-handedness was associated with differences in brain asymmetry in areas related to working memory, language, hand control and vision. As MPI’s Clyde Francks explains, “Hemispheric specialisation is important for language and other cognitive functions. Various psychiatric traits involve increased rates of left-handedness, including autism, schizophrenia and intellectual disability – although of course most left-handed people do not have these.” Marijuana use can trigger schizophrenia in those predisposed to it.
Benjamin Franklin, who used a hemp kite string in his famous electrical experiment, wrote an amusing essay as a left hand that objected to the preferential treatment his sister right hand received. “Petition of the Left Hand,” first published in 1815, complains, "From my infancy, I have been led to consider my sister as a being of a more elevated rank. I was suffered to grow up without the least instruction, while nothing was spared in her education. She had masters to teach her writing, drawing, music, and other accomplishments; but if by chance I touched a pencil, a pen, or a needle, I was bitterly rebuked; and more than once I have been beaten for being awkward, and wanting a graceful manner."  |
| Lorenzo Ghiberti
The Madonna and Child, 1423-1440 |
When Thurman started school in the McCarthyist 1950s, her mother warned her not to describe herself as a "leftie." This "token of difference seems to have instilled in her a lasting affinity for people — especially women — who, in their lives and careers, have been vilified for swimming against the current," writes the LA Times.
Here then, to celebrate International Left Handers Day (August 13), are some against-the-current swimmers who were certainly or likely lefties, and (possibly) passed the kouchie 'pon the left hand side.
Ashurnasirpal II
Stone reliefs carved c. 870 BC discovered at the palace in Nimrud of Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II depicting him tending (with his right hand) to a Sacred Tree, and show his left hand in what looks like a sling, necessitating the use of his right? Could he have been the first known person to be beaten into using his right hand? Another statute of him found at the Temple of Ishtar Belit Mati in Nimrud depicts him holding a sword in his left hand. Ishtar and her mother Asherah were associated with the Tree of Life, also known as the Tree of Knowledge, which appears in the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden bearing the forbidden fruit that allowed Eve, then Adam, to think like gods (or goddesses). To me the not-very-tall Tree looks like a stylized cannabis plant, with its 7 or 9 leaves, large cola, and rope-like stalks. The winged, Holy Ghost-like figure above the plant represents the god Ashur, who may have morphed into the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda, or the Holy Ghost (the way that the Goddess was Ghosted).
Joan of Arc
Some say Joan was left handed based on handwriting analysis and depictions of her holding a sword in her left hand, including the only contemporary portrait, drawn by Clement De Fauquembergue on May 10th, 1420. Some contend she was smeared as writing with the hand of the devil, along with using witching herbs like mandrake. Jean Seberg, who portrayed Joan of Arc in her first film role, was reportedly left handed, as is Milla Jovovich, who played Joan in the 1999 film "The Messenger." Seberg smoked pot and got into left-wing politics, with disastrous results in a modern equivalent of burning at the stake. Jovovich, in more enlightened times, merely played with a lighter in "Dazed and Confused" and is an advocate for marijuana legalization.
Queen Victoria
Victoria, who had a physician that wrote glowingly of medical marijuana, painted with her left hand, although she was forced to write with her right. This watercolor pictured above painted of her son shows she had dexterity with her left. Her descendant and heir to the throne Prince William is left-handed, leading to a crack about his bad handwriting in the Netflix series "The Crown" from his father King Charles, who possibly was also forced to use his right hand, as was his ancestor George VI (he of the famous stammer, who played tennis at Wimbledon with his left hand). Other possible lefties among historical monarchs are Ramses II (whose grave contains cannabis), Alexander the Great, King Louis XVI of France, and Napoleon, along with Josephine.
Lewis Carroll
Charles Dodgson wrote 11 books on mathematics, and 12 works of literary fiction as Lewis Carroll, including the trippy Alice in Wonderland with its hookah-smoking caterpillar. He reportedly suffered from chronic migraines, epilepsy, stammering, partial deafness, and ADHD, and is thought to have also been damaged a left-handed person forced to write with his right hand. Like Leonardo da Vinci and Paul McCartney, Carroll was a mirror writer, something more prevalent among left handers. H.G. Wells, author of The Invisible Man (which starts with a metaphor about marijuana), Franz Kafka (The Metamorphosis), and Richard Nixon's cousin Jessamyn West (Friendly Persuasion) wrote their books with their left hands, as did feminist author Germaine Greer, who presciently wrote in 1968, "Our masters will not legalize marijuana until they have worked out to control it, which means how to exploit it."
Nikola Tesla
It's hard to think of a more original and accomplished thinker than Tesla, who wrote about playing with hemp as a boy. Reportedly born left-handed, Tesla taught himself to be ambidextrous. Other scientists thought to be left-handed are Isaac Newton, both Pierre & Marie Curie, Alan Turing, and James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA (with Francis Crick, who used marijuana and LSD).
M.C. Escher
Like many, master graphic artist M.C. Escher was forced to write with his right hand in school, and this may have affected his trippy view of the world. He wrote, "I was exclusively left-handed from my earliest childhood (at primary school I found learning to write with my right hand extremely difficult; I would probably have managed to write in mirror image with my left hand far more easily and naturally)." His "Drawing Hands" (above) depicts both hands. His self portrait "Hand with Reflecting Sphere" has his left hand holding a spherical mirror, and his 1950 woodcut "Self portrait in a spherical mirror" depicts him drawing with his left hand.
Elizabeth Cotten
Cotten was a self-taught left-handed guitarist who played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down. This position meant that she would play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as "Cotten picking." Jimi Hendrix also played right-handed guitars strung upside down, something lefty Paul McCartney did when he auditioned for John Lennon to become part of his band. Other left-handed musicians, with connections to marijuana, include Cole Porter, Paul Simon, Kurt Cobain, Miley Cyrus, Adam Levine, Lady Gaga and Pink.
Judy Garland
Judy Garland, who was only 15 when she sang "La Cucaracha" on film, admits to Fred Astaire in this clip that she's somewhat dyslexic, because her mother was advised by a doctor she'd go sinister if she used her left hand, so she was trained to be right-handed. Both Garland and Astaire were left-handed.
When Cary Grant lit a cigarette for Eva Marie Saint on the train in the Hitchcock film North by Northwest, he held the match in his left hand and she held the cigarette in her left (both were left handed). Later in the film, when Saint is back in the clutches of bad guy James Mason, he caresses her shoulder with his right hand. Hitchcock heroines Kim Novak and Tippi Hedren were also lefties. As Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins was left handed, but as his mother he wielded the knife that stabbed Janet Leigh to death in the shower with his right. Was Hitchcock trying to tell us something about which hand is actually evil?
Robert Downey Jr. famously learned to play the violin and tennis left-handed in order to portray lefty Charlie Chaplin. Other acting lefties, some with (linked) marijuana connections, are Betty Grable, Shirley Jones, Dawn Wells (Mary Ann on "Gilligan's Island), Diane Keaton (who won an Oscar for playing a pothead in Annie Hall), Shirley MacLaine, Peter Fonda, Brad Pitt, Paul Michael Glaser, Pierce Brosnan, Julia Roberts, Frances McDormand, Fran Drescher, Teri Garr, Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson, Lisa Kudrow (the stoner Friend), Jennifer Lawrence, Anna Kendrick, Kathryn Hahn, Cloris Leachman, Hilary Swank, 2016 Tokin' Women of the Year Whoopi Goldberg, Emma Stone, and Mary-Kate Olsen, who played a pot dealer on TV's Weeds. Her twin sister Ashley is right handed (maybe she's the straight one). Pro-pot actor Morgan Freeman (aka God), was born left handed but lost the use of his left hand in a 2008 car crash.
Barack Obama
In his 2005 book Right Hand Left Hand: The Origins of Asymmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms and Culture, Professor Chris McManus celebrates asymmetry in humans at all levels from amino acids to kingdoms. Filled with marvelous detail and much debunkment about famous so-called lefties, he relates that Harry Truman wrote with his right hand but "always used his left hand for the president's throw that inaugurated the baseball season."
McManus says that Gerald Ford was branded as clumsy because he would turn the wrong way at events due to his left handedness, something aides to his fellow lefty Ronald Reagan took pains to avoid. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all signed bills as US President with their left hands. Hemp parachute riggings saved Bush's life when he was a Navy pilot; Clinton and Obama both smoked marijuana, but only one was smart enough to inhale.
Other lefties (some in more ways than one) include NBA star/senator Bill Bradley, John F. Kennedy Jr., Caroline Kennedy, AOC, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Steve Jobs / Bill Gates
Both Jobs and Gates experimented with marijuana and other drugs, changed the world, and were left-handed. Other high-achievers who did it left handed were Helen Keller, James Baldwin, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Buzz Aldrin, Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah Winfrey.
Ted Lasso
Lefty Jason Sudeikis, who once told his girlfriend Olivia Wilde he'd marry her when marijuana was legal in every state, wins one big time for lefties everywhere in a dart game as Ted Lasso in this clip. Lefties can have an advantage in sports, often involving the element of surprise. The "Sultan of Swat" Babe Ruth batted and pitched with his left hand and wrote with his right. Basketball great Bill Russell was a lefty, as was the Zen master Phil Jackson. Other left-handed sports stars include tennis players Martina Navratilova and John McEnroe (who just smoked pot with Bill Maher on his podcast), and marijuana proponent Ronda Rousey, a women's wrestling champ.
Bart Simpson
Matt Groening, who draws "The Simpsons," is left handed as are many of his characters, including Bart Simpson and his neighbor Ned Flanders, who operates a store called the Leftorium. Others in the humor department who like to give left-handed compliments are pot pioneer Lenny Bruce, Dan Aykroyd, Seth Rogen, Carol Burnett, Janeane Garofalo, Ruth Buzzi, Tim Allen, "South Park" creator Trey Parker, Jerry Seinfeld, and "enhancement smoker" Jon Stewart.
Jack Herer
When hung to dry, flax twists to the right and hemp to the left, a fact Jack taught to me that amused him very much, being left-handed himself. Herer was a straight-laced Republican and Korean War veteran when a girlfriend turned him onto marijuana, blowing his mind, opening his senses, and turning him left. He published the underground classic, The Emperor Wears No Clothes: Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy and never stopped stumping for hemp, bringing its uses for industrial purposes back from the brink of obscurity and breathing new life into the marijuana reform movement starting in the late 1980s, after the Reagan "Just Say No" regime had all but squelched it. Nowadays, young folks know Jack as the Sativa strain named in his honor, and the hemp activist banner has been picked up in the left hand of activists like Dr. Frank Lucido and veterans' advocate Etienne Fontan (and me).
"I love the left-handed cigarette lingo," Fontan wrote me. "My mom used that exact nomenclature when she spoke of her high school friend who dared light up a left-handed cigarette in her presence when they went for a drive in New Orleans and went to hang out at the Mardi Gras fountain, which was a well colorfully lit stoner fountain that turned many colors, a big thing in 1959. She asked her to put it out, drove her home, and she never spoke to her again. That always stuck with me, one because I was lefty, and then I was like, what the f** is a left-handed cigarette? No one in my circles had any clue what that meant."
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