Today, Svetlana Vasilyeva shares a very special Braille moment from her life with us, one she can truly be proud of. Thank you very much, Svetlana, that you add this event to our collection!
Introduction
My name is Svetlana. I was born blind and since I learned Braille at age 7, I cannot stop reading.
When I was growing up, I used to read paper Braille books. We don’t use contractions here, so, it was lots of thick volumes. I remember carrying a whole stack of books at school, supporting them with my chin for stability.
The things changed a lot since then. Now I read books on my Braille display and can have a whole library on one SD card.
War and Peace. Let’s read the novel
2015 was declared the Year of Literature in Russia. At the end of this year, a national TV implemented a large-scale project War and Peace. Let’s read the novel.
For 60 hours, the state TV channels broadcast live reading of Leo Tolstoy’s novel from the first to the last page.
The readings took place for four days in December, one volume of the novel per day. They were attended by both professionals: actors, directors, TV and radio presenters, and non-professional readers: athletes, scientists, statesmen, people of various professions and ages.
In total, about 1500 people took part in the readings.
The broadcast was represented by many Russian and world cities located in different time zones: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Vladivostok, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Beijing, Washington, D.C., and so on. The venues for the readings were recognizable places: theaters, museums, historical buildings, some of which are connected with the text of the novel (Leo Tolstoy’s museum-estate “Yasnaya Polyana, the Museum-Panorama “Battle of Borodino, the State Historical Museum, the State Hermitage, etc.).
I’ve been working for the library for the blind as a Braille editor at the time.
So, I’ve been offered to read a couple of pages in Braille.
A group of readers from my city of Novosibirsk included the mayor of the city at the time, a local actor, a poet, several students, and me.
I was the only person in the whole project reading aloud in Braille.
It was a great and exciting experience!
All my family and friends, located in different cities of the country, watched me reading aloud a couple of the passages from War and Peace in Braille on TV.
I’m from Siberia. It was a winter time. I knew that the camera would focus on a Braille book and my fingers, so, I had snowflakes painted on my fingernails.
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