Phoebe Snow and Random Thoughts

I haven't posted about Bil lately....I do have some items to report but first, I wanted to pay some tribute to the singer Phoebe Snow, who died yesterday.  She was close to my age.

Not long after I was married Phoebe gave birth to a severely disabled daughter.  Phoebe devoted her life to her daughter, who was not expected to live long.  Her husband, soon after the daughter's birth, left the marriage.

Could I ever have had that type of devotion to a child?  I honestly don't know.  And in a way it reminds me of my mother in law and Bil, although Bil wasn't anywhere near the same type of disability.   I remember reading one of the evaluations done on Bil when he was a teenager, and the person doing the testing remarked on the "symbiotic" relationship my mother in law and Bil had.
 
Thinking about this story, I also thought what happens when people with disabilities have a musical talent.

If we think of entertainers with "disabilities" many of us think right off of blind musicians Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles or apl.de.ap.  The subject of blind musicians even merits its own entry on Wikipedia.   However, it is not as well known that Leon Russell has celebral palsy.

Did their disabilities make them more or less talented?  I suspect it is a combination of both.  It does make me wonder about the nature of the brain, though.

Bil does not have a musical talent but he does have a special talent of memory, and carries a perpetual calendar in his head.  It doesn't seem like something that he could use to make money, more than the pittance he makes at his sheltered workshop job. But.....there has to be something there, in his talent.  If only I can figure out what....