You may have heard earlier this month that the Texas School Board recommended the removal of Helen Keller from its required Grade 3 social studies curriculum. The story of Helen Keller’s childhood is well-known. She lost both her hearing and her sight after a childhood illness, and after the breakthrough moment when teacher Anne Sullivan communicated “water,” young Helen Keller learned to read, write and even speak.

I had the honor of speaking at the Perkins School for the Blind early this year. Helen Keller attended Perkins–the courtyard garden is named in her and Annie Sullivan’s honor.

What many people don’t know is that Helen Keller became a radical activist when she grew up. She joined the Socialist Party in 1909, when she was 29, and then the Industrial Workers of the World. She supported Communist Russia and hung a red flag over her desk. The FBI opened a file on her. She advocated for women’s suffrage and for access to birth control. She helped found the American Civil Liberties Union.

Through all that Helen Keller remained the darling of newspaper reporters and columnists, the amazing blind and deaf girl who talks with her hands. When she came out in support of Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs in his campaign for the presidency, though, that was the last straw. Newspaper columnists who had earlier praised her courage and intelligence started calling attention to her disabilities.

One newspaper claimed “the poor little blind girl” was being exploited by the socialist party for publicity’s sake, and the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle wrote that Helen Keller’s “mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development.”

No matter where you stand politically, I’m sure you can appreciate what a blow this must have been to Helen Keller. She had waited to formulate her opinion until after procuring and reading books about socialism in German Braille, and then asking a friend to come three times a week to spell articles from The National Socialist into her hand. From an Essay by Helen Keller:

She gives the titles of the articles and I tell her when to read on and when to omit. I have also had her read to me from the International Socialist Review articles the titles of which sounded promising. Manual spelling takes time. It is no easy and rapid thing to absorb through one’s fingers a book of 50,000 words on economics. But it is a pleasure, and one which I shall enjoy repeatedly until I have made myself acquainted with all the classic socialist authors.

Helen Keller responded to that Boston Eagle article and referred to a time she’d met the editor years earlier:

At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him…

Helen Keller was a saint until she ruffled feathers, and then they said she was limited intellectually. Instead of addressing her arguments, her critics took pains to discredit her, herself. Sound familiar?

The personal attacks and general nastiness in our public discourse and politics is nothing new. Lots of folks who eventually came to be revered by the broader society — Martin Luther King, Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, even Muhammad Ali — were reviled as marginal troublemakers and suffered hateful treatment in their own time. I suppose they’re not on the Texas Board’s list of required third grade curriculum, either. If so, Helen Keller is in good company.

Note: the September 14 vote was preliminary, and the Texas Board can amend the curriculum changes further before taking a final vote in November.

There is a lot of drivel on social media and I own up to having contributed my share of it. Usually it’s best to just let stuff go because, really, it evaporates as an issue in hours. (Unless you enjoy some celebrity and some stupid thing you said years ago comes up—but that’s another story.)

Still, I’m troubled by a little Facebook meme that has popped up more than once in the past couple days. It’s related to the allegations that have arisen about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Basically it goes like this:

Boys report priests molestation after 30 years = public outrage. Girls molested by guys are ridiculed for waiting too long.

Where to start?

First, how about reality. The Boston Globe’s Spotlight reports, made famous in the Oscar winning film, came 16 years ago. Two things about that: As we have learned, it’s still going on. And as we have also learned, it was going on for decades—decades before that. Which is to say, even after these men were heard, boys continued to be molested. We owe them more than complaining that somehow their plight is less awful than young womens’.

We also know that though most boys were afraid to speak up, it’s been documented that many boys did speak up to a parent or other adult. And they were disregarded and even chastised or punished for doing so. Just as many girls and young women who have the courage to speak up today are treated.

Instead of engaging in a “who’s more oppressed” derby in times like these, I think it’s better to recognize that these two situations have a lot in common. The boys (and there were lots of girls, too, btw) in the Catholic church scandal faced oppressive norms and power structures that enabled and covered up for horrific behavior.

Sound familiar?

That’s a human issue, one we all have a stake in and we all need to face, together.

During the current six-week session I’ve given a writing prompt about name changes, and two seasonal prompts as well: “Back to School” and “Rite of Passage.” This essay Audrey Mitchell wrote could have qualified for all three! Hearing it read in class taught us what a gift her mother, Leila Goodwin, had for solving the big problems her youngest daughter brought home from school.

by Audrey Mitchell

I never gave much thought to my name until I was in the third grade and learned how to write cursive. I would copy my cursive letters and write them very neatly on the prepared scripts trying my best to imitate my third-grade teacher, who wrote very beautiful cursive.

That’s Audrey being recorded for a video about our class.

My capital letter “A” was a disaster in my eyes. I could not make the letter “A” in cursive to my satisfaction. I practiced and practiced. The rounded part of my cursive capital “A” was too big, too little, too fat, too thin, too oblong, too square…I could never get it to look right.

It was then and there I decided I wanted to change my name.

I settled on the name “Elizabeth.” How did I pick Elizabeth? Elizabeth Taylor was popular at the time.Queen Elizabeth, or Princess back then…No. I picked the name Elizabeth because I could make a fabulous cursive letter capital “E.” I made a big loop at the top of “E,” continued with a backwards number three and then elegantly connected it with the next letters, all of them flowing on to complete my chosen new name. My letter “z” in Elizabeth, though lower case, wasn’t bad either.

I asked my mother what I needed to do to change my name. She tried to discourage me, but I guess my childhood zeal took over. She said she’d support my efforts. She helped me write a letter to the “powers that be,” whoever they were, and said she would mail the letter to them. She told me that it would take some time. That was OK with me.

She probably was hoping I would forget about it, but in the meantime, I went to school the next day and signed all my papers “Elizabeth Goodwin” using the most beautiful cursive letter “E” that I could make.

And then I got my papers back.

My new name was crossed out in red pencil and my old name was written up above it, also in red pencil. Those red pencil markings really frightened me. I always got good grades, and this was the first time I ever had so many corrections in red pencil.

Going to the teacher was not an option. Back then the only time we had a one-on-one with our teacher was when we got in trouble.

I was devastated, and I wasn’t about to push it any further. Red correction pencil markings on my papers discouraged me from continuing the process of changing my name. And since I did not mention it again, my mother did not bring it up, either.

But I made alternative plans on how to write my old name. I continued using the printed version of the letter “A” and embellished it by making the “A” with an imposing loop starting at the bottom and extent the line leading to the top to an extreme point before I brought my pen down the other side. Then I extended the line up again to the middle and made another loop before crossing the center with a line. Then I brought the line back across the center. At that point, the line went down again on the right side to attach to the next letter. Quite a fancy “A.” It was good enough for me.

If I had been persistent about my name change and not intimidated by the red pencil marks on my school papers, today you might know me as “Elizabeth.”

The art fair drew a good crowd–and the weather didn’t hurt.

It’s that time of the year when my working life eats me alive for a couple weeks and occupies the limited space in my head, which means I’m left with not-so-deep thoughts:

• Here in Chicago I’m happy that we might have a real race for mayor now that Rahm Emanuel has announced he will not seek a third term. I’m hoping that the bigfeet like William Daley and Toni Preckwinkle don’t suck up the oxygen and cash, and that we get to hear from a wide range of candidates. And that local media helps in that cause, rather than deeming only a few worthy of consistent attention.
• The summer here has been delightful, and having seen the wildfires in California, and watching the horrific flooding in North Carolina on TV, I’m all the more grateful for our mild summer.
• This past weekend we strolled the first Printers Row Art Fair. OK, yes, some stuff strained my definition of art, but it was, overall, a pleasant surprise and I hope it comes back. Anything that closes Dearborn and makes for a quiet hush is good by me.
• Our friend Anthony continues to wow passersby with his sidewalk telescoping. But the window for viewing is shortening right now, so I hope I get a few more peeps in.
• Meteorological summer will end this weekend, as the White Sox host the Cubs for what may be meaningful games for one of them. Peace everybody (but if any Sox fan going to the games needs an L flag, I know a guy).

What fun it was to be interviewed in front of an audience by my friend and fellow memoir-writer Regan Burke last Friday. Here’s an account of the evening from her, well, point of view.

That’s Jessica, who wanted to touch the contraption Beth uses to read out loud at events.

Last Friday night Beth and I participated in an event called “Body Language—Reading and Discussions about Writing the Body.” The event was held at Access Living, a non-profit in Chicago that delivers programs and services to equip people with disabilities to advocate for themselves.

As a writer in one of Beth’s memoir-writing classes, I’m included in her latest book, Writing Out Loud. The book tells Beth’s story about teaching memoir to older adults, and I gladly accepted the invitation to get on stage with Beth to interview her about her writing and teaching. After introductions, I asked some of the obvious questions most people want to know:

• What was it like to get fired from your job when you lost your sight?
• How did you get started leading memoir-writing classes?

The shocker came when I asked, “What other jobs have you had since going blind?” Beth answered by “reading” a passage from her book about auditioning to pose in the nude for an art class. She pulled out a phone-size gadget with her passage teed up, put in earplugs and flipped the switch that talked the words in her ear as she perfectly mouthed these words out loud to the audience:blockquote

My robe was still on when I backed up to the table and hitched myself up. Crouching down, I felt the tabletop’s edges to be sure I wouldn’t fall off, then stood up and unbuttoned my robe.

I’d been told to strike six poses, eventually ending up in a reclining position. Had I been able to see that first model do her audition, I might have had a better idea of what was expected. I was suddenly so concerned with coming up with six different poses that I forgot I was naked.

I posed.

The department must have been pretty desperate for models, especially ones middle-aged or older and willing to work mornings. Most models are students who liked sleeping in.

I passed the audition.

Access Living is a leading force in the national disability advocacy community. The audience included people from their extensive list of volunteers, clients, personal assistants, board members and friends. Executive Vice President Jim Charlton even brought students from his classes at the University of Illinois Institute on Disability and Human Development.

Next up after Beth’s interview was a reading from artist Riva Lehrer’s upcoming memoir, Golem Girl. Riva read a riveting account from her magnificently written manuscript about growing up at the Condon School for Crippled Children in Cincinnati. A slide show moved from photo to photo behind her as she read. It showed lovely old black and white yearbook pictures of the school, the students and the teachers.

Riva works at Access Living, is an adjunct professor in Medical Humanities at Northwestern University, and was born with spina bifida. Her paintings focus on physical and cultural representations of hers and others disabilities. Golem Girl will be published by Penguin/Random House next year.

The most startling part of the evening came as questions from the audience started flying. An audience member said she’d read Beth’s book Writing Out Loud and asked if she was writing another. Jessica said she writes, too and asked if Beth ever would start a class for younger people near where she lives, in Skokie. Then, Kapow! Someone asked Riva how she was able to accomplish so much after being ridiculed relentlessly as a child because of her disability.

“I’ve been called crip, gimp, freak, retard, midget, you-name-it,” she acknowledged. “In the Condon school, because we all had something, I felt safe, not so different. Outside of school I was always scared.”

She said that when she first started working alongside so many other people with disabilities at Access Living, she felt safe at work like she always had at school. “I was afraid to go out the door at the end of the workday.” She credited Susan Nussbaum, her friend and colleague at Access Living, for helping her navigate the outside world. “You just have to rely on others.”

Afterwards I walked around the room to chit-chat. When I returned to Beth she was leaning into Jessica showing her how to work the reading gadget so Jessica, who uses a wheelchair and has limited sight, could read her own stories out loud to her own audience. Just before we left, Beth’s guide dog, Whitney, uncharacteristically stood up and lifted her head high enough for Jessica to pet her.