Inspiration from Helen Keller

The weather is forcing me to write. My friend Eric, a well-known writer here is writing because he is a writer. I am writing because I no longer want to procrastinate being a writer.

Keep those fingers moving along typing silly girl and one day you will not only look forward to moving those fingers but make money at it.

My perfect scene as a writer
The book is published an I am so happy to know at last the 3d world now has a slice of my cherry picking brain. I will not say where the pen hits the paper but where the type hits the screen. Words flowing in unison proclaiming worth chapter after chapter, as the story unfolds with the exciting or least unusual parts of my life I care to share.

Typing words out as fiction so exact dates, names or occurrences can happen, as they will. Like spilling juice all over the place.

Helen Keller writes books even though she is deaf and blind. I am able to hear and see the world as it presents itself to my perception. Surely the words will flow by allowing thoughts onto paper with no judgment.

With the above-unedited words I make the decision to find out more about Heller Keller. If you are like me you are familiar with a movie about her and some of her quotes. Here are some things you may find interesting about her life.

Helen wrote 6 books, the amount a friend says is good to do and she was a best friend with Mark Twain. He helps her get funding for education.

Twain wrote to his wealthy friend, Henry H. Rogers of Standard Oil, asking him to fund Helen’s education so she could attend Radcliffe.

Here is what Helen had to say about Mark Twain.

Helen had learned to understand a person’s words by touching her fingers to their lips when they spoke and Twain, she said, had a truly wonderful voice. “To my touch, it was deep and resonant ... he spoke so deliberately that I could get almost every word with my fingers on his lips.”

She also noted, “I can feel the twinkle of his eye in his handshake. Even while he utters his cynical wisdom in an indescribably droll voice, he makes you feel that his heart is a tender Iliad of human sympathy.”

Mark Twain was 60 years and Helen 14 years old when they first meet and remained friends until his death.

Alexander Gram Bell best known for inventing the telephone went to visit Helen Keller when she was 6 years old. Dr. Bell’s mother and sister were both deaf and he became a doctor and helping those with hearing disabilities.

This excerpt about Dr. Bell is from Chapter 3 of Helen’s book, “The Story of My Life”.

He held me on his knee while I examined his watch, and he made it strike for me. .He understood my signs, and I knew it and loved him at once. But I did not know the interview would be a door through which I should pass from darkness into light, from isolation to friendship, companionship, knowledge, love.

After the meeting she wrote Dr. Bell and it is one of her first letters.

Dear Mr. Bell. I am glad to write you a letter, Father will send you picture. I and Father and aunt did got to see you in Washington. I did play with your watch. I do love you.

My first question early on was how did Helen Keller learn to write?

Anne Sullivan taught her sign language. I later read somewhere she learns sentence structure by using cut outs, for example a doll and then put next to it the words, “lay on the” then a representation of a bed.

Helen Keller learns to type with a braille typewriter that uses a stylus that pushes dots into paper. Because of the words are being created from back to front they are read left to right. So the words have to be typed backwards.

source Braille typewriter

This is a first to me ❤️ Helen Keller falls in love.

Not only did Helen Keller travel the world she fell in love.

While Sullivan, Helen's teacher was sick Peter Fagan became her personal secretary. Helen Keller is 36 and Peter Fagan is 29 years old. They got engaged secretly and took out a marriage license and planned a secret marriage.

When Keller’s family found out they stopped the marriage because of her disabilities. A Boston reporter is to blame for letting everyone know their secret plans.

What Helen writes after the break up.

"The love which had come, unseen and unexpected, departed with tempest on his wings," Miss Keller wrote in sadness, adding that the love remained with her as "a little island of joy surrounded by dark waters."

The following photographs all have something in common. She is always photographed in profile until something happens, which I will share with you soon.

Wikipedia Keller with Anne Sullivan vacationing on Cape Cod, July 1888

cc source Helen Keller at 10 years old in 1890

cc source Helen Keller in cap and gown

cc source Portrait of Helen Keller with Anne Sullivan Macy and John Macy, ca 1090-1919

The secret:

She had always been photographed in profile; this hid her disfigured left eye. In maturity, she had both eyes surgically removed and replaced with glass—an expedient known only to her intimates. Everywhere she went, her sparkling blue prosthetic eyes were admired for their living beauty and humane depth. source

Helen Keller photographed later on showing both eyes.

Public domain Helen Keller holding a magnolia, ca 1920