Anne Sullivan, Samuel Clemens, and Helen Keller

 

 Little Anne was 5 when she contacted Trachoma, a bacterial disease that leads to rough scars inside the eyelids, erosion of the cornea and eventual blindness.   At 8 her mother died of tuberculosis and the children were orphaned.  Half-blind, Anne Sullivan was sent to an asylum at Tewksbury, Massachusetts.  The nuns there mismanaged the orphanage, but loved the children and taught Anne to be generous. They taught her to finger-spell, a method of touching fingers to a palm to spell a word.  Perhaps she could help another blind person in some way. Anne was transferred to Perkins School for the Blind soon thereafter. Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama and at age 19 months contracted something, perhaps Scarlet Fever, which left her deaf and blind.  She lived, as she described it, “at sea in a dense fog.’ But she was not dumb, having devised over 60 signs with which she communicated to Martha Washington, daughter of the black cook of Helen’s wealthy parents. The Perkins school was eventually contacted and they sent Anne to help the Helen.  It was an enormous struggle at first.  Anne was relentless in finger spelling but 7 year old Helen didn’t even know what a word was. Then one day, Anne ran cool water over Helen’s hand, and finger-spelled W-A-T-E-R. Helen remembered, “I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten —A thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!"  That phraseology isn’t accidental.  Anne had shared her faith with Helen too.

            The brilliant student progressed rapidly,  Anne devised ways to teach vocabulary, not just names for everything.  The two were sent back to Perkins and then to 2 deaf schools in New York City.  At age 14, 1894, Helen met Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain, and they became best friends. “To me, he symbolizes the pioneer qualities—the large, free, unconventional, humorous point of view of men who sail new seas and blaze new trails through the wilderness.” The famed author helped arrange for her to attend a secondary school and then Radcliffe College where she graduated in 1904, the first blind-deaf person to ever get a Bachelor of Arts degree.  She learned Braille and found she could “hear” music through vibrations, and identify people by their walk.  Determined to communicate with others as conventionally as possible, Keller learned to speak and spent much of her life giving speeches and lectures on aspects of her life. She learned to "hear" people's speech using the Tadoma method, which means using her fingers to feel the lips and throat of the speaker. She would travel to Clemens’ Connecticut home and practice on him. One evening he offered to read to her from his short story, “Eve’s Diary.” But how would they arrange it? She said, “Oh, you will read aloud and my teacher will spell your words into my hand.” “Well, I would have thought you could read my lips,” he teased. But she did.  She rested her fingers lightly upon his lips, felt his vibrating voice which she instantly identified as his southern drawl, and tried to not be mixed up by his gesticulations as he read. “To one hampered and circumscribed as I am it was a wonderful experience to have a friend like Mr. Clemens.  He never made me feel that my opinions were worthless…He knew that we do not think with eyes and ears, and that our capacity for thought is not measured by 5 senses.  He kept me always in mind while he talked, and treated me like a competent human being. That is why I loved him. Whenever I touched his face, his expression was sad, even when he was telling a funny story.  He smiled, not with the mouth but with his mind—a gesture of the soul rather than the face. Ah, how sweet and poignant the memory of his soft slow speech playing over my listening fingers…It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me, but when I recollect the treasure of friendship that has been bestowed upon me I withdraw all charges against life.  If much has been denied me, much, very much has been given me.”

            Keller went on to learn English, French, German, and Latin in braille, to write like Twain and to become world famous.  Clemens died 1910, the year after he had read “Eve’s Diary” to her. Anne Sullivan died in 1936 holding Keller’s hand, herself totally blind by then. Helen Keller lived and lectured for years until she died in 1968.  Her life was portrayed by Patty Duke in both play and film.  The interaction between Samuel Clemens and Helen Keller reminds us of ourselves and our best friend, Jesus Christ.  We are hampered with sin, but He found us not worthless.  We revere his Word, yet know that His Truth transcends the mere human words on a page--we see with eyes of faith. And though we are handicapped, He has given us New Life, so much that we cannot complain.  And we owe much to our generous human friends.  We “see” Jesus in them. Very much has been given us.

SOYA

I’ve been out on a roof shingling.  It seems like I’m not bothering anybody. But the guys on TV are screaming, STAY AT HOME!!  Well, it isn’t my house, it is a rental.  Fortunately, what I am doing is considered “essential” but that is just some bureaucrat’s classification.  I could just yell at my renters, PUT OUT SOME BUCKETS!  If I carry coronavirus, there exists about 12 miles of atmosphere above my head in which it can diffuse, and nobody is within 60 feet of me let alone 6.  But here’s my question.  Since we now have lowered estimates to 60,000 people dying from COVID-19 this year, isn’t that about like flu?  And should we be asking what the trade-off is compared to depression, drug use, alcohol use, etc. from having people cooped up?  Maybe you are one of those people who say drug use never cost anybody their life.  Or you think the sum of all these things is only a fraction of a percent compared flu or pneumonia?  My instinctive thought is that this comparison is important.  80% (my estimate) of men are hard-wired to want to follow their dreams in life.  There’s another 20% that want to SOYA, “sit on your aimlessness.”  The rest of us are driven to be tops in a skill, produce and protect someone, to go where none have ever gone, or to leave the world a better place.  I have one renter who is on disability and dialysis.  He constantly frets to me about needing something, Anything he can do of value.  I suggest a lot of things-- seasonal tax preparation, helping his church, mowing lawns.  Liberals don’t spend time worrying about forcing some entrepreneur into bankruptcy by demanding he shut down too long. Well,I guess dreams don’t make noise when they die. Worse still, the media people seem to be locked into an urban world.  Yet we aren’t all concrete jungle bunnies.  Being outside doesn’t solve all coronavirus transmission problems but it enormously lowers probabilities of it. But no one on the tube ever mentions by how much.  And they run stories about how distraught a zoo was when a tiger got coronavirus, they think from the zookeeper.  Ho! Animals catch it! Hey, I actually long for the news that pit bulls spread the virus. I’ll prepare a memo to my renters. And I need to write Major League Baseball that if they want to play w/o fans, why not play at that place that was once a corn field in Iowa? Meanwhile, I’m up on a roof, enjoying clouds move in, gleeful that I fixed my nailgun with lithium grease. Not SOYA.

Why America Lucks Out

Obama the Clairvoyant told us in 2010, “We can’t drill our way to cheap gas prices.” We did it anyway.  A bunch of oil patch engineers who were just struggling in the oil bust in the late nineties came up with fracking. Someday a sixth grade history teacher will be talking to the class about the great developments of the millennial era and surely fracking will be in the lesson. How does America get so lucky?

About 2005 petroleum engineers and geologists realized the technique of fracking could apply to numerous oil shales that had a spotted history of production or even no production.  Shales are the source rocks for petroleum and natural gas, but traditional production was from reservoir rocks of better porosity and permeability nearby.  But by tapping the shales, a new world or giant production occurs.  From 2007 to 2014 US production more than doubled and matched Saudi Arabia.  The OPEC countries, in panic began to pump oil in a game of chicken.  Could they break the upstart Americans before they put Arab royalty owners in the also-ran category?  Even in 2015 this looked doubtful, although they could inflict damage to the marketplace prices. 

This phenom of American innovation makes the rest of the world scratch their head.  How can USA always come up with so much new stuff? After all, aren’t there smart people everywhere?  Don’t the Russians have chess masters and can’t the Chinese hack? Wasn’t France the world leader in new ideas throughout the 19^th century?  And don’t others have the oil resources waiting to be exploited—Argentina, Brazil, Russia, Venezuela, China, the Middle East?  Why is America such an exception to the rule and Canadians with them?

Our foreign exchange kids and son who spent a year on exchange in Germany provided the answer.  In Europe and the East, education now surpasses USA.  But if you want to change your German farm from raising cattle to hogs, you can’t do it without a production permit from the government—takes months. Acountry with many educated unemployed is India.  It takes an act of Parliament and a lot of bribery of local officials to do a reasonable-sized business.

That’s because the world of dictators, elites, and educated classes have seized control.  America lets people arise out of nowhere to do great things.  The Wright Brothers just owned a bicycle shop.  The Okies and Texans who invented fracking were common folks among the1400 small, independent oil producers. The individuals who owned the mineral rights were not a state government but individuals who let the drillers try something new. And the rest of the common folks didn’t riot from the occasional tiny earthquake. Instead, most folks cheered them on.

In the statist world, they have geniuses and prodigies and tycoons.  But what do you do with the remaining 99%?  They just manage them.  In America we place millions of bets on common folks, and every once in a while a payout occurs.  Luck or Dreams Fulfilled?

The exchange kids could see this.  For they had lived in places where elite banks controlled finances, taxes and regulation were rampant, and you had to watch out for pick pockets. But the worse condition was when government and business were in cahoots.  Individuals aren’t lucky enough to be in cahoots, so government populists promise all sorts of entitlements that make people think they have an “in”.  The end result is that it just keeps the masses on the plantation.

America is the exception to the statist world.  We demand to be free to pursue our dreams, crazy ideas, faith, or what just seems right to us.  We are a free society that is willing to give encouragement to millions of small people, not just the guys who are in cahoots.    This is what is meant by American Exceptionalism.  We are the exception to the rule.  That is why people flock to this country.  You can be the person you want to be in America.  You can have an American Dream and pursue it.

But some in America dislike this notion. The American Dream is just wealth. Better we should have the security of big government, a government that administers, directs, and regulates. They want cahoots, elites and charismatic populists.  They fear people who seem motivated by faith. And so they are trying to upend the dreams in favor of a complete corporate one.  They accuse the rest of us of being racist and bigoted. They demand we credit government for a good economy rather than the ingenuity and perseverance of the American people.  Did government or the elites create the Model T?  Radio? Television? Polio vaccine? Mobile Apps?  Neither did they create fracking and the oil boom.  Big oil companies were slow to adopt fracking plays.  Obama was found in contempt of court for trying to ban offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.  He drags his heels on drilling federal land, and uses his EPA to oppose fossil fuels any way possible.

The people still vote to be free.  It doesn‘t matter what race or tribe you come from if you have a great idea or product. Upon seeing something new, the typical American response is, “Why didn’t I think of that!” We still want to be free to raise our kids.   And that is why conservatives outnumber liberals 2 to 1.  We got the dream.