She Sure Plays Mean Pinball

Hellen Keller was born June 27, 1880. Though she later became famous as a deaf and blind activist, she was not born deaf or blind. Instead, when she was about a year and a half old, she contracted a disease (possibly scarlet fever or meningitis) that left her deaf and blind. She became a world famous author and advocate for people with these conditions. I have no idea if she ever actually played pinball, but I’m sure she would have been good at that, too. LEARN MORE.

3 thoughts on “She Sure Plays Mean Pinball”

  1. I remember reading about her later activities in the eugenics and socialist movement.  Ironic as how as the national socialist movements took power in Europe they followed the policy of the “humane eradication” of the physically impaired, Germany notorious for its T4 program.
     
    Ironically as she was in support of the eugenics movement, the only man she loved was forced out of her life because of popular eugenic ideas, as he was forced out of her life after they applied for the marriage license because it was popular thought that the disabled shouldn’t reproduce.  (I don’t recall his name, and it is not in her wikipedia article.)
     
    Here is a short link from a google search: (I have not vetted the site but the facts on her seem accurate to my memory.)
    http://newsrealblog.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/the-forgotten-side-of-helen-keller/
     
    I don’t judge many of the socialists at that time as they had yet to see the consequences of the full manifestation of their ideas in the national socialist Germany and USSR.  For example Orwell, a prominent socialist, is today held up by many conservatives and anti-socialists as a brass serpent in the desert.
     
    Keller did great work as an advocate for the disabled and should be remember for her many positive actions and her great desire to help the poor and marginalized.  We should remember people fully and in the light of their times.  I think it was a disservice for her to be memorialized in Washington DC as a seven year old.  She did much more as an adult.
     
    (Statue in congressional hall of her as a seven year old:)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hellenkellerstatue1.jpg

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