A random radio mention of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, and its connection to the story of Annie Sullivan, celebrated as “The Miracle Worker” for her role in the education of Helen Keller and the blind and deaf in general, leads me here:
Anne Sullivan Macy: Miracle Worker, from the American Foundation for the Blind.
And to this quote from her biography:
“The essence of poverty, is shame. Shame to have been overwhelmed by ugliness, shame to be the hole in the perfect pattern of the universe. In that moment an intense realization of the ugliness of my appearance seized me. I knew that the calico dress which I had thought rather pretty when they put it on me was the cause of the woman’s pity, and I was glad that she could not see the only other garment I had on … the inadequacy of my outfit did not dawn upon me until the woman pitied me.”
(I wound up reading the entire AFB “gallery” on Annie Sullivan. What a story.)