[stylist] A New Member

John Lee Clark johnlee at clarktouch.com
Sat Dec 27 06:42:25 UTC 2008 

Angela:

Oh, but it was her fault.  Sure, she was operating under influences and
forces of her times, but there was still a choice.  There were already
independent deafblind people before she was even born, who insisted on being
treated as ordinary, nothing more, nothing less.  Keller was exposed to
their sentiments when she participated in the deafblind community, which in
those days of slow travel existed mainly via correspondence and circulars.
For a while as a young woman, she followed the example of her deafblind
"Uncle Morrie" and others.  When Andrew Carnegie offered to set up a trust
for her and send money to her on a monthly basis, Keller turned him down.
She wanted to be independent and earn her own living.  

But for a number of reasons, she changed her mind and compromised on the
values of the deafblind community.  She wanted to keep her full-time
companion and wanted to pursue her writing, so she came back to Carnegie and
asked if the offer was still on.  She then went off on that tagent in her
life from there, and grew increasingly estranged from the deafblind
community.  She would later polarize the blind community as well.  She made
a choice.  She bought into the deal society was offering her.  She went on
vaudeville tours.  She accepted undue praise everywhere she went,
reinforcing again and again that deafblind people and blind people aren't
"supposed" to be successful.  You understand, her accepting unwarranted
exaltion devalued the efforts of everybody else, with the result that
society either looks down its long nose at you or, when it is impossible to
ignore the facts of some achievements, hold you way up there in the clouds
of sainthood.

Anyway, Helen Keller was torn inside all her life, torn between selling more
of herself and having a normal life.  She had ample opportunities to choose
the latter, but consistently fell for the former.  Near the end of her life,
she had been so used to allowing blindness and deafness to be the excuse for
her not having a normal life, she really believed in it.  She told a
reporter, "If I could see, I would marry first of all."  Never mind that
there were deafblind people who were married, even to a deafblind partner,
since 1785, nearly one hundred years before Keller was born.

It is astonishing, the literature about Keller written by her deafblind
contemporaries.  The stuff, because it was all written in Braille, never
shows up in the biographies.  But this is precisely why the American
Association for the Deaf-Blind doesn't have an award or anything named in
Keller's honor.  It is only the hearing and sighted people who use her name
for things.  This is also why my father, who is also deafblind, told me when
I was very young that Keller was a "bad woman."  I grew up in the deafblind
world and found deafblind people harboring a great dislike of Keller.  They
weren't always able to explain why, but they couldn't stand her.  It was
only later, after reading some biographies and some of what deafblind people
had written in old issues of their magazines, that I understood more how
Helen Keller was once one of them but then decided to be "special."  Keller
lost many friends in the deafblind world, and that's why she rarely
presented at deafblind functions and by extension deaf ones.  I have older
deafblind friends who knew her in the latter part of her life, and they tell
me she was very weak on the independence front and lacked most of the skills
they had.  When they asked her why she didn't know how to this or that, she
told them that she knew she should have learned it long ago.

But my point is that Keller herself is at fault.  Sure, you can blame this
or that on the way your parents raised you, on the trauma you suffered at
age twelve, on peer pressure, on whatever.  But it is still your full
responsibility what you end up becoming.  There were influences, but they
can't be an excuse for anything, you know?

Don't get me wrong.  Half ot eh problem is the way society responded to her
and thought of her and treated her.  But other deafblind people were under
the same conditions, having the same "You're amazing" crap fed to them, the
same forms of special treatment taking turns with discrimination, and
everything.  And let me assure you that Helen Keller wasn't the smartest
deafblind person in her day.  She wasn't the best deafblind writer.  She was
smart and a good writer, but so were other deafblind people.  The others,
some of them gained fame, but it was more in line with the merits of their
accomplishments, and the fame, quite naturally as it should, faded and they
got justifiably forgotten.  But Helen Keller made choices that created such
a disorted relationship with fame.  She began by being rightly famous, and
it should have cooled off ater the publication of her book.  But then she
sold herself to vaudeville and that led to her becoming more famous, but for
the wrong reasons.  Oh, she knew it, all right.  But it was her choice; she
compromised herself again and again.  You could say that she was like a
prostitute in this regard.

Anyway, I hope you'll share your perspective!  

John





From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Angela fowler
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 8:26 PM
To: 'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] A New Member

Donna, I haven't read it, but I know what she means. It isn't even Helen
Keller's fault, as someone on here (can't remember who) pointed out she
lived in the 1800's and things were a lot different then. When people see us
not as individuals, but as "like Helen Keller," and Helen Keller was not
truly independent, you can understand why many of us would want to pick on
her a little.   

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Donna Hill
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 4:25 PM
To: NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] A New Member

John and Angela,
Have either of you read the book "Blind Rage: letters to Helen Keller?"  
It's by a blind woman college professor who apparently got sick and tired of
being continually compared to Helen.  I borrowed it from NLS, but haven't
gotten to it yet.
Donna

--
For my bio & to hear clips from The Last Straw:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/donnahill

Apple I-Tunes

phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playListId=259244374

Performing Arts Division of the National Federation of the Blind
www.padnfb.org





Angela fowler wrote:
> Picking on Helen Keller, I love it! We should start our own picking on 
> Helen Keller tag team.
> 	I write about current events type stuff, from a conservative point
of 
> view, but lately I've been writing about issues relating to blindness, 
> or rather society's paternalistic treatment of blind people which is 
> born of its ignorance of the alternative techniques we use in our 
> every-day lives to do ordinary things. My recently completed paper on 
> the ADA is an example of this. Would you like to read it?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] 
> On Behalf Of John Lee Clark
> Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 2:23 PM
> To: 'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [stylist] A New Member
>
> Angela:
>
> Hey, thanks for the cordial welcome.  
>
> An editorial writer, that must be fun.  I write quite a bit of social 
> commentary related to the signing community, deafblind issues, and I 
> love picking on Helen Keller.  What do you like to write about?
>
> John
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] 
> On Behalf Of Angela fowler
> Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 1:10 AM
> To: 'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [stylist] A New Member
>
> Hey John,
> 	A quick shout-out from just North of Sacramento California, Angela 
> Fowler here. I'm usually a lot more chatty, but I've been shuffled 
> from one family gathering to the other today, and didn't go near my
computer all day.
> Christmas is over, however, and the family is in bed, so I finally have a
> moment to myself.   
> 	I'm more of an editorial writer, haven't taken a crack at fiction 
> yet. I have a paper on the ramifications of the ADA for blind people 
> which has drawn some interest. I also have a web site aimed at 
> informing folks about the adaptive techniques used by blind people.
> 	I would like to cordially welcome you to our list. I know you'll
find 
> it interesting and entertaining. We're a friendly and supportive group
> of folks here, and we love to laugh.     
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] 
> On Behalf Of John Lee Clark
> Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 10:11 PM
> To: 'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [stylist] A New Member
>
> Lori:
>
> Oh but it is quite easy to ignore Christmas.  At least, that has been 
> my experience.  I suppose part of it is because I live in downtown St. 
> Paul, where many places are good about being still open.  Today, for 
> example, my sons wanted candy from the food store on the skyway level 
> in our building, and sure enough, it was open.  Then later we ate out 
> at our favorite steakhouse, which was also open.  So that's very nice.
>
> Now, your half-finished story.  If you'll resend it, I'd be glad to 
> read it and find out if I am up to finishing it.
>
> John
>
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