“Did you ever see a blind man who didn’t smile”? asked Joe the Pro, thinking back to his roots at the University of Chicago, amist Helen Keller. Born deaf blind and mute, the story of her teacher and companion Annie Sullivan(“The Miracle Worker” by William Gibson) is divinity inspirational, the fabric of what frailties of birth, can be overcome, metamorphosed and transcended into what can be.
III
A renaissance woman, a human being beyond any Eleanor Roosevelt’s own dynamics, the powers to be, selecting afeminine role model for the ten dollar bill, usurping Alexander Hamilton.
After all those years when his profile glorified the ten spot.
III
What hath a soul, born with a handicap? A blind pianist like Alec Templeton? A blind violinist playing Mozart’s stringsonata in Harvard Square. Enraptured audiences identifying with the timeless early Mozart, enraptured by such God likereckoning, wouldn’t you say?
III
Joe the Pro reached for his wallet and took out a note like ‘Ace of Spades’, long before cyber space dialectics..
‘To remember Helen Keller. How she overcame physical frailties, identifying with her teacher Annie Sullivan, the two becoming kindred souls, the alter ego Miss Sullivan losing her ego to discover Helen Keller. And in doing… find herself!
In the ensuing moment, discovering her own raison de etre….
Letting asunder any shallows and insignificant significantmiseries to waste.
Hallelujah neighbor!
IV
New York Presbyterian “Amazing things are happening here”. That selfless claim, rivals Helen Keller’s own rebirth.
Annie Sullivan’s own reinvention … through osmosis: model student patient and finally a complete partnership. . .
V
Joe the Pro, the former partner of Adlai Stevenson, put the “amazing things are happening here” ‘Ace of Spades’ back in his wallet.
“FDR’s wife and widow, Eleanor Roosevelt, deserve s her image on the Alexander Hamilton ten spot. But for me, Helen Keller suspends judgment.
Overcoming her impossible frailties. Mrs. Roosevelt born intothe aristocracy… she could have become a snob, writing her column “My day”.
Yet identifying with the immigrant masses during the depression.. No documentary could do her justice, identifying with the huddled masses.
“Do as you do, not as you say.”
“Right neighbor?”
“Right!”
August 6, 2015 The City that never sleeps.
