The success of a mission | Mariana Melnishka | TEDxNBU скачать в хорошем качестве

The success of a mission | Mariana Melnishka | TEDxNBU

The mission is a book. The success is its meeting a demand that has been there, before its appearance on the market. The book is called “When Houses Talk”, and on its 324 pages it “houses” the photographs and the stories of nearly 300 beautiful family houses and remarkable public buildings in the biggest towns all over Bulgaria. The richly decorated, mostly Secession style buildings were created over about half a century – from the Liberation from the Turks in 1878 until WWII – by enthusiastic European architects for eminent intellectuals, politicians, tradesmen, bankers, writers, actors and other personalities involved in the resurrection of the small Balkan country after the 5 centuries of Ottoman dominance. The owners of the properties felt it as their duty to donate buildings and money to the cause of education and cultural advancement, so many schools and dormitories, along with orphanages, were built on their funds or inheritances. Most of these people used to have difficult lives full of loss and bereavement, and heroic deeds, as the succession of three Balkan wars followed by the Great War, sapped their wealth and energy. All those turns of fortune are described in the book, which makes it a saga of Bulgarian history during several decades of free and democratic governing, until the Soviet occupation in 1944. The vivid style of the narrative and the expressive pictures illustrating the way of life past, seem to have met a need that readers have been sensing, so they almost rushed to acquire the book. At book signing and promotion events, the two authors of the encyclopedic venture – text writer and photograph – were telling their own stories of how they came to find out so much about the fortunes of hundreds of people and as many houses. Thus, public interest brought them to the floor of TED-Ex NBU, where the 20 minutes allocated time was not enough for the speaker Mariana Melnishka to convey to the young audience the emotion behind the result of their 4 year effort to enliven and illustrate their country’s noble past. Mariana Melnishka is a journalist, translator, lecturer and an avid traveler. Her MA grade in Philology(English and German) is a good starting point for exploring life beyond boundaries and borders, for making friends all over the world and for venturing into other professions and occupations. From a news reporter on political events in the 70ies, she turned to art reviewing in the 80ies, and when democracy dawned upon her country towards the end of the 20th century, she took up PR jobs in some newly established institutions and organizations. They opened up the world for her, and while traveling for some purpose or for leisure, she never misses the opportunity to describe her experience in exotic places or capital cities of culture. Meanwhile she has translated “Clockwork Orange”, “The French Leutenant’s Woman”, “Thornbirds”, 5 books from the Harry Potter saga, and many more. As a university lecturer for about 20 years, Mariana taught her students to open up to the wide world and to This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx