Peculiar People. Unusual folks who will not be denied. Let me share a few with you I know of. Consider a fellow by the name of Beethoven. He was a composer. Wrote music for a living. Some consider him the greatest ever. Not me, but he was pretty good. He was also pretty deaf. Had a rather large collection of ear trumpets. His hearing got progressively worse the older he got. Funny thing, though. The worse his hearing got, the better his music got. Aren't we lucky this peculiar guy refused to listen to the people who told him he could not compose music because he was deaf? Or maybe he couldn't hear them. Then there was this dude, Einstein. His wife would pack his pipe, after breakfast he would light the pipe and go into his study to work. The doctor told him to quit smoking. His wife stopped packing his pipe. No problem. He put fire to an empty pipe, and went into the study to work, puffing on a non-smoking pipe. That was how he quit. Of course, he was quite peculiar in other ways. He could not remember either his Social Security Number or his phone number. Used to say, "I never clutter my brain with what I can look up." A most peculiar person. Let's go back to music. Another fellow, name of Igor Stravinsky. Wrote music. Went to Rio for a music festival. Decided to go fishing. On the ocean. He and the skipper of the boat didn't catch any fish. They did get drunk. They came back into port, went to a bar, and got drunker. Stravinsky finally showed up at his hotel around 11 at night, quite tipsy. He took a double shot of whiskey, drank it down, and sat down at the piano. That night he completed the final movement of the Symphony of Psalms. Most peculiar. Peculiar people. Isn't it great we have them?