Sunday Serenity #368

Learn to Read Braille

This is an ongoing series from my Bucket List
of things I desperately want to do before
I loose the rest of my vision

My Bucket List
#10 Learn Braille

Double Side Braille Text

This bucket list item has two things in common with last week's #9.  It's learning a new language and it's something within my grasp if I reach for it.

OK so technically it's not a language but a transcription of a language. It's a new alphabet for reading English by touch instead of sight.  I find this concept more daunting than the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.  In fact, I think it would be easier to learn to read Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Russian and Arabic by sight than to learn to read anything by touch.

But learning to read Grade 1 Braille (a one to one correspondence between characters) by sight would probably be a breeze and give me the foundation for proceeding on to reading by touch.  Grades 2 and 3 tho are another matter as they involve contractions, abbreviations, personalized shorthand with a letter's braille symbol standing in for common words.

As for writing braille--that's another story altogether.  Especially if you mean by using a stylus on paper for that involves punching the dots from the back side in a mirror image of the page--writing the characters backwards and the lines right to left!  As if that isn't enough, mistakes are not forgiven.  You cannot fix and reuse a letter cell once any of the six dots are punched.

My Bucket List

#1 Hot Air Balloon Ride
#2 Play on a real drum set
#3 Swim with dolphins
#4 Visit Shakespeare & Co. Bookshop in Paris
#5 Visit the Library of Congress
#6 Attend a Performance of Beethoven's Symphony #9 by a top notch Orchestra

#7 Visit Hawaii
#8 Visit Russia 
#9 Learn Russian

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Sunday Serenity #367

This is an ongoing series from my Bucket List
of things I desperately want to do before
I loose the rest of my vision

My Bucket List
#9 Learn Russian 
well enough to read their literature, 
comprehending nuances like a native speaker

..continued from last week's #8 Visit Russia

Around the same time as I began yearning toward the landscapes of the Russian novels, it also occurred to me that I was missing a whole other dimension in the stories by not being able to read them in the author's native language.  Especially the poetry, but even in prose the music of the spoken language is lost as well as the word connotations that add layers of meaning.

When I entered college in my late twenties, Russian Language was one of the first things I tried to sign up for but I was entering for Winter term and had to wait for Fall term to take a language.  By the end of the fall term I was hooked on Russian and by the end of my second year of Russian Language, my professor was encouraging me to pursue further studies in Russian and consider adding another language or two.  He said I had a talent for language and if I'd gotten an earlier start--say in my early teens or sooner--I might have had fluency in half a dozen by then.  

Ah, the paths not taken.

Monument of Vladimir Nabokov
in Montreux

Well as I was exploring the Cyber Monday Week sales I stumbled onto a massive slash in the Rosetta Stone course.  Still a bit steep for me but I was sure I'd never find another near my range for a long time, if ever.  So I took the plunge.  My Christmas present to myself.

For several years after dropping out of college, I tried to continue on my own with the Russian text, English/Russian dictionary and flash cards from my classes.  I advanced some in the reading and writing but it was less than a year before I started loosing pronunciation.  I could't 'hear' it clear in my head anymore.

This is the first item in this Sunday Serenity Bucket List series that has been even remotely in my reach and by buying Rosetta Stone Russian, I have reached for it and taken the first step toward it.

My Bucket List

#1 Hot Air Balloon Ride
#2 Play on a real drum set
#3 Swim with dolphins
#4 Visit Shakespeare & Co. Bookshop in Paris
#5 Visit the Library of Congress
#6 Attend a Performance of Beethoven's Symphony #9 by a top notch Orchestra

#7 Visit Hawaii

#8 Visit Russia

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Sunday Serenity #366

The Cathedral of Intercession of the Virgin on the Moat
(Собо́р Покрова́, что на Рву)

 AKA 

The Cathedral of Saint Basil the Blessed
(Храм Васи́лия Блаже́нного)

Red Square, Moscow

Credit: Christophe Meneboeuf

This is an ongoing series from my Bucket List
of things I desperately want to do before
I loose the rest of my vision

My Bucket List
#8 Visit Russia

Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov
 in Yalta 1901

I became fascinated with all things Russia after taking an advanced literature class my senior year of high school that introduced me to Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev. Leo Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  I favored Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky at the time.  

Anna Akhmatova. 1922

In the decade following high school I discovered several more to join the trinity in the top tier: 

• Boris Pasternak, 
• Sergei Lukyanenko, 
• Vladimir Nabokov, 
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Anna Akhmatova. 

Boris Pasternak

By my mid twenties I'd developed a growing desire to see the landscapes and buildings these writer's described, to hear the music mentioned, to learn the history, folklore, religions, entertainments and other cultural influences so I'd have an understanding of what might be common knowledge to the character's which would help me read between the lines.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

So when I went back to school in my late twenties, Russian Lit, Language and History were as high on my list as creative writing classes.  Many times after, unwillingly, dropping out of college as I was about to start my senior year, I went on spurts of checking out anything to do with Russia from the library.  I feel that urge coming on again.  Only this time I have the online resources as well. Not that I hadn't already realized that but since my introduction to the Internet in 1996 I've done little more than collect URLs in browser bookmarks and note taking aps.  Hundreds of them that overwhelm me with every encounter, by the sheer quantity and by the disorganization and the only clue to their content being the info in the url itself.

to be continued...

My Bucket List

#1 Hot Air Balloon Ride
#2 Play on a real drum set
#3 Swim with dolphins
#4 Visit Shakespeare & Co. Bookshop in Paris
#5 Visit the Library of Congress
#6 Attend a Performance of Beethoven's Symphony #9 by a top notch Orchestra

#7 Visit Hawaii

Read more...