[nabs-l] Importance of Using Braille

[Jedi]

Chelsea,

That was beautiful. I must admit that I nearly cried. I love how you 
painted pictures of your imaginings: I could see you listening to the 
Louis Braille coin launch, I could imagine you reading Braille, and I 
could feel the energy that connected you to the mathematicians and 
physicists of old. I wish the best for you in your endeavor to reach the stars.

Respectfully,
Jed


Original message:
> I agree with Briley and Jedi on this matter.  I am not employed,
> but feel as though Braille has been the one secret, or key, to my
> success as a student.  I'm going to post below my signature a
> speech I delivered at the 2009 NFB of Virginia State Convention
> (sorry if I posted it before; can't remember.) Please comment; I
> welcome feedback.  I like the comment about the shoe fits and
> doing what you love no matter what.  Enjoy the speech.  As a
> final note: did anyone read the description of the tactile art in
> the January Braille Monitor? That also captures the essence of
> what I am about to say and has significant meaning for me.
> Thanks,
> Chelsea
> "I ask you to look both ways.  For the road to a knowledge of the
> stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom
> has been reached through the stars."
> Sir Arthur Eddington, British astrophysicist (1882-1944), Stars
> and Atoms (1928), Lecture 1

> Literacy and Opportunity:
> Learning Braille, Using Braille
> by Chelsea Cook

>   Believe it or not, there was a time when I didn't want to learn
> Braille.  I vaguely remember my mother sitting me down in front
> of small alphabet flash cards and forcing my fingers down upon
> those wretched dots which felt so strange.  I was probably not
> even four, and did not yet know the power this code brought: to
> me or to the rest of the blind.
>   Then I found it.  I don't know how and I don't know when, but
> somewhere along the way, Braille clicked.  It was the catalyst
> that set off all my other academic adventures.  Because of my
> early start and my parents' persistence, I developed a love of
> reading that holds true to this day.  I have pulled that trick
> many times over the years of staying up late into the night with
> a book under the covers, as many Braille readers out there can
> relate.  On a few such occasions, those books were textbooks:
> Noreen Greice's Touch the Stars, for example, or a few sacred
> volumes of our eighth-grade science book.  The school had
> switched the grade levels' books when I was in seventh, but I
> didn't care.  I was reading physics and chemistry a year ahead of
> the standard biology curriculum to satisfy what I now know was
> the beginning of an unquenchable thirst for knowledge that only
> understanding of the physical sciences could provide.  Even now,
> when I do college-level physics, I can visualize the mathematical
> relationships between quantities only by remembering their Nemeth
> symbols.  Last year, going through a period of no physics at all,
> my vision teacher Brailled out a twenty-one page formula sheet.
> The equations under my fingertips radiated a tangible energy; it
> was as though I were connecting with the very scientists who had
> developed them.  They held the secrets of the universe.  All I
> had to do was learn and follow.
>   I read extensively out of school as well.  By third grade, I
> had read all the Braille books in my elementary school's library.
> Bookshare and Web Braille were far-distant dreams then, and even
> now it still awes me how there are so many books being produced.
> The Harry Potter series has always been one of my favorites; I
> have bookcases filled with all seven.  The words of authors took
> me places.  Traveling through space and time with Robert Hineline
> and Madeline L'Engle, I discovered the wonder of science fiction
> and decided to write my own.  I compose novels and poetry so that
> one day, readers will read my work and I can spread the message
> of hope and literacy.  There is a special pleasure in reading
> poetry in Braille, a suspense as to what the next line will
> invoke.  As far as learning the "music" of the words, audio does
> not measure up.
>   I cannot imagine what it is like when other blind people tell
> me they don't know or have never learned Braille.  Braille has
> given me every opportunity in life: It allowed me to hold office
> in the NFB at the national level; it allowed me to return home
> from Colorado with my plane tickets properly labeled and
> identified; it brought amazement to my classmates when they found
> out I don't have to abbreviate my notes.  Earlier this year, Dr.
> Schroeder asked me if I was going into space with the Louis
> Braille coins.  I told him I wished I could, and someday intend
> to follow them to the final frontier.  As I was listening to the
> shuttle launch, I smiled at all the familiar radio calls as
> everything was reported to be nominal.  When they made it into
> orbit, I thought I was there with them, circling the globe at
> 17500 miles per hour, looking around at the stars and the small
> blue planet we call home, realizing my dream of being an
> astronaut.  The symbolism of knowledge gained by blind people and
> by astronomers studying the depths of the universe with the
> Hubble Space Telescope was not lost on me; it was amplified.
> Those coins being launched were my two worlds coming together,
> and they were just waiting for me to join them.
>   We must keep teaching Braille.  Those six dots unlock doors.
> Those six dots help solve the mysteries of the universe.  Those
> six dots give freedom.  Braille makes dreams reality.  While
> important, it is not rocket fuel, but Braille that will carry me
> to the stars.  Braille gives us words; words give us knowledge;
> knowledge gives us power.

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