[stylist] A New Member

Barbara Hammel poetlori8 at msn.com
Sun Dec 28 04:32:54 UTC 2008 

May I be so bold as to ask what the name of that song is?  Is it in that 
songbook they sell at convention?
Barbara

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Angela fowler" <fowlers at syix.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2008 1:31 AM
To: "'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [stylist] A New Member

> Wow, John, that's very interesting. Sounds like she's the 1800's 
> equivalent
> of the "Super blind person" who goes sighted guide everywhere, barely 
> reads
> Braille, but revels in sighted people's ignorant praise. There's an NFB 
> song
> about that ... Not politically correct, but to the point. Maybe some time
> off list I'll tell you more about 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 10:42 PM
> To: 'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [stylist] A New Member
>
> 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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