Helen Selsdon

We are delighted to present the first of the many blog posts that will appear over the next two years as part of the Helen Keller Digitization Project. We are kicking off with a post by Kim E. Nielsen, professor of Disability Studies at the University of Toledo, and Helen Keller expert. Enjoy! Every year my spring is marked by phone calls, emails, letters and Skype conversations about Helen Keller initiated by nervous middle- and high-school students. These participants in National…

Helen Keller was born on June 27th 1880 and we've made a cake to celebrate her birthday! It's inscribed with the Helen's words "Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much" This is very appropriate as we are also celebrating the beginning of our digitization project! We are thrilled that as a result of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, AFB has begun the task of digitizing the over 80,000 items contained in the Helen Keller Archives. Correspondence, press…

Helen Keller was interviewed in her home in Forest Hills, Queens by Hazel Gertrude Kinscella in 1930 for Better Homes and Gardens. The article, entitled "Helen Keller Sees Flowers and Hears Music" is excerpted here; it appeared in their May issue. Read on and enjoy! "...You wish to know what home and garden mean to me,” she said, at once. " "My garden is my greatest joy. I feel that I am in the seventh heaven when among my plants. I feel the little heads pop up to look at me — my…

Before there was Anne Sullivan Macy, there was Helen Keller’s mother: Kate Adams Keller. This sensitive and intelligent woman fought to find help for her young deaf and blind daughter when her child was an infant. Helen always spoke fondly of her mother’s intelligence and determination and corresponded with her mother continuously once she left Alabama and lived in Massachusetts. On Mother’s Day we honor Kate Keller for her tenacity and love. In Helen Keller’s autobiography, Helen relates an…

Helen Keller in the garden of her home, Forest Hills, New York, circa 1920 “I have great joy in the tulips and lilacs which make my garden ‘look like the waking of Creation.’ O the potent witchery of smell! Leaves opening delicately on tree and rambler and rose-bush tell me God has passed this way, and I forget the disturbing nearness of the city in the eternal miracle of a tiny garden great with wonders.” —Letter to Waldo Mac Eagar of the British Empire Society of the Blind May 13, 1933…

Anne Sullivan Macy (1866-1936) was a woman whose brilliance, passion, and tenacity enabled her to overcome a traumatic past. She became a model for others disadvantaged by their physical bodies, as well as by gender or class. Anne was born on this day, April 14, in 1866—the eldest daughter of poor, illiterate, and unskilled Irish immigrants. She grew up to become a pioneer in the field of education. Her work with Helen Keller became the blueprint for education of children who were blind,…

Helen Keller reveled in nature. Her enjoyment of physical exercise and her love of the outdoors is beautifully captured in an article written 80 years ago this month and published in "The Guardian," a magazine "For Leaders of Camp Fire Girls." Read the transcription below and become inspired to stretch those limbs and enjoy the spring! Introduction: Among our hundreds of thousands of joyous Camp Fire Girls there are some who are blind, some who are deaf and some who are otherwise handicapped…

Today, March 3rd, we salute 3 titans of American history: Alexander Graham Bell, Anne Sullivan Macy and Helen Keller. Alexander Graham Bell was born on this day in 1847. Famous for his pioneering work with the telephone, Bell was also very influential in the field of education for the deaf. In 1886 Helen Keller’s parents Captain Arthur Keller and Kate Adams Keller contacted Bell seeking assistance for their deaf and blind daughter. Bell put them in touch with the Perkins School for the Blind…

Sixty years ago, Helen Keller was given an honorary Oscar as inspiration for the movie Helen Keller in Her Story a documentary by Nancy Hamilton about her life; she turned 75 that year and had spent 6 decades fighting for those with vision loss. Decades earlier, in 1916 she delivered an address on the Midland Chautauqua Circuit in which she said: I, for one, love strength, daring, fortitude. I do not want people to kill the fight in them; I want them to fight for right things. And that…