She was a woman of luminous intelligence, high ambition and great accomplishment~

[sheshe2]

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” – Helen Keller

The Life of Helen Keller

The name of Helen Keller is known around the world as a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds, yet she was much more than a symbol. She was a woman of luminous intelligence, high ambition and great accomplishment who devoted her life to helping others. During her lifetime, Helen Keller was consistently ranked near the top of "most admired" lists. She died in 1968, leaving a legacy that Helen Keller International is proud to carry on in her name and memory.




“The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.” ? Helen Keller


The Legacy of Helen Keller

Founded by Helen Keller in 1915, Helen Keller International is one of the world’s premier international not-for-profit organizations dedicated to preventing blindness and reducing malnutrition. Working worldwide, we combat the root causes and extended consequences of blindness and malnutrition by establishing affordable and sustainable programs that are based on scientific evidence, original research and an unwavering determination to succeed against challenges that can too often be seen as insurmountable.



"The world is full of trouble, but as long as we have people undoing trouble, we have a pretty good world." ? Helen Keller



snip

The Spirit of Helen Keller Gala

HKI will host its eighth annual Spirit of Helen Keller Gala on May 22, 2013 at Christie's in New York. The event will raise awareness and funds for HKI's sight- and life-saving programs in 22 countries around the world. We are thrilled to announce that Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will accept the Helen Keller Humanitarian Award in recognition of her tireless dedication to improving food and nutrition security, enhancing the health of tens of millions of women and children around the world. This year, we will also present longtime Trustee and devoted HKI advocate Kate Ganz with the Spirit of Helen Keller Award and generous HKI supporter Lions Clubs International with the Helen Keller Visionary Award. Christopher Burge, Honorary Chair of Christie’s, will serve as our Gala Honorary Chair.

http://www.hki.org/about-helen-keller/



Overview
Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The Story of my Life is her autobiography written about how teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, as she learned to communicate. The movie "The Miracle Worker" was made about this story.

Helen Keller wrote "The Story of My Life" in 1903, and it was published when she was 22. This volume is supplemented with With Her Letters (1887-1901) And Accounts of Her Education, Including Passages from the Reports and Letters of her Teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, By John Albert Macy

From the first chapter: "It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist. The task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one. When I try to classify my earliest impressions, I find that fact and fancy look alike across the years that link the past with the present. The woman paints the child's experiences in her own fantasy. A few impressions stand out vividly from the first years of my life; but "the shadows of the prison-house are on the rest." Besides, many of the joys and sorrows of childhood have lost their poignancy; and many incidents of vital importance in my early education have been forgotten in the excitement of great discoveries. In order, therefore, not to be tedious I shall try to present in a series of sketches only the episodes that seem to me to be the most interesting and important."

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-story-of-my-life-by-helen-keller-with-her-letters-helen-keller/1114371994

Helen Keller
As Mystic

By Norman D. Livergood



“...Try to imagine, if you can, the anguish and horror you would experience bowed down by the twofold weight of blindness and deafness, with no hope of emerging from an utter isolation! Still throbbing with natural emotions and desires, you would feel through the sense of touch the existence of a living world, and desperately but vainly you would seek an escape into its healing light. All of your pleasures would vanish in a dreadful monotony of silent days. Even work, man’s Divine Heritage—work that can bind up broken hearts— would be lost to you. Family and friends might surround you with love, but consolation alone cannot restore usefulness, or bring release from that hardest prison— a tomb of the mind and a dungeon of the body...”

Helen Keller, September 4, 1948

http://www.hermes-press.com/keller.htm

[Hekate]

1. Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. KnR

Namaste

[sheshe2]

4. Hi, Hekate~

So good to see you.

[KamaAina]

2. In much of the world, notably Europe, she is better known as a pioneering socialist feminist

than as a person with a disability.

Aside: She's on the Alabama state quarter, along with some miniature Braille. How in the world did a evul soshulist end up on the 'Bammy state quarter?

[stevenleser]

5. + infinity! nt

[Lucky Luciano]

8. One of my favorite trivia questions indeed:

Name the only socialist to appear on an American coin.

[KamaAina]

24. So far.

[sheshe2]

10. I want that quarter!

Anne Sullivan, may have been "The Miracle Worker", she taught Helen Keller to be one too.

Thanks for the info, KamaAina.

[indepat]

3. If only each of us, like Helen Keller, could leave this earth a better place for our having

lived. Unfortunately in 'murika, right-wing forces control all the levers of power with income inequality mushrooming, high unemployment and under-employment prevailing, tens of millions on food stamps, and tens of millions without access to medical care notwithstanding passage of the ACA, among others, so tens of millions of 'murikans are just trying to survive, all because right-wing forces set the national agenda.

[whathehell]

7. She was born and raised in 'murka too, and I don't believe the country was very liberal then either.

Just sayin.

[sheshe2]

11. Yes, and

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker."

[info][add][mail][note]Helen Keller

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Helen_Keller/

Thanks, whathehell~

[whathehell]

13. Yep,

and thank you too...I'm glad to learn she was a socialist.

[TBF]

6. And she was a socialist. K&R nt

[sheshe2]

12. Bless her heart, TBF.

[TBF]

14. For those who are interested --

The Socialist Legacy of Helen Keller
An Introduction to the Writings of Helen Keller

Many hearing people, Marxists included, are familiar with Helen Keller in one of two ways. Either we see her as the wild child rescued from the prison of deafness and blindness through the heroic efforts of her "miracle worker" teacher, Anne Sullivan; or as the butt of cruel "Helen Keller" jokes. Neither image bears any relation to the actual, politically active Deaf/Blind woman whom that nearly mythical child became.

In these texts, she explains how she came to Revolutionary Socialism after her graduation from college. Despite her reliance on intermediaries to communicate with the outside world, Comrade Helen Keller is fully her own person.

Helen Keller became a member of the Socialist Pary in 1909 and by 1912, she had become a national voice for socialism and working class solidarity. Her articles and speeches take on a harder edge as the war machine gears up and the reformist tendency in the Socialist Party forced a split with its revolutionary wing. We can see her calling for party unity in 1913, and then breaking publically with reformism and siding wholeheartedly with the IWW in 1916 and taking up the struggle against President Wilson's hypocritical war machine .

Helen Keller's work for the cause of socialist revolution continued through the years of the First World War up until 1921. She had been long active in efforts to reduce the causes of blindess and provide relief for the Blind. With the collapse of the Socialist Party's commitment to revolution and the on-going persecution of the IWW, Keller lost her connections to the workers movement and became increasingly isolated among reformers and government bureaucrats who did not share her political perspectives ...

Much more here: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/intro.htm

References: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/index.htm

[whathehell]

9. She was an outstanding person with a fantastic story. I saw the Miracle Worker at 12 years old

and was moved beyond measure. It remains one of my VERY favorite films of all times.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

17. me too....

I was fascinated with her and with Sign Language. I finally had the opportunity to learn ASL in my 20's

Been a Sign Language interpreter ever since.

[sheshe2]

19. My dear Blanche, WOW.

Good on you~

[BlancheSplanchnik]

20. :)

Wonderful OP, thanks sheshe

I even wrote my college application essay on her! "If you could meet any historical person...."

I saw Miracle Worker when I was 6? 7? And was so deeply moved...I was obsessed with her!!

[mountain grammy]

15. Helen Keller was an American woman who makes me proud to be an American.

Our best foot forward.

[sheshe2]

16. "Our best foot forward", she was mountain grammy.

Helen Keller listening to what her Best friends says.

http://www.sanandres.esc.edu.ar/olivosp/extranet2008/6to/Herobiography/Helen_Keller/Helen_Keller.html

Thank you~

[struggle4progress]

18. Helen got a bit of help from a very nearly blind woman named Anne

[BlancheSplanchnik]

22. Teacher. :)

[struggle4progress]

25. And apparently not only talented but dedicated. I suspect some of Helen's excellent values

were encouraged and influenced by Anne

[BlancheSplanchnik]

26. yes...they were inseparable until Annie's death.

She served as Helen's interpreter into her adulthood and public work.

[William769]

21. Kick & recommended.

[ReRe]

23. K&R

Anne Sullivan was a genius and Helen Keller would have to have been a double genius for overcoming all that she did. Thank you for this beautiful historical OP!

[JNelson6563]

27. She was so remarkable!

Great OP & splendid comments! Nice work Sheshe! I learned much of Helen Keller that I did not know!

Julie

[sheshe2]

28. Hi Julie. Thank you.

She was indeed remarkable and her work continues on. I want to sit down and read her book "The Story of my Life".

Be well, Julie and Happy Thanksgiving~