To: The TED Fellows Program
From: Rev. Carolyn Bradley
Re: Nomination to be a TED Fellow

February 26, 2010

Your innovative TED Fellows program gives me the opportunity to introduce you to a cutting-edge inventor working in information systems and education, Mardi-Ellen Hill. I have known Mardi for eight years and have watched the growth of her work with joy and amazement. I am a pastor-teacher, doctoral candidate, and individual committed to preserving and enhancing possibilities for individuals in every place and time. Mardi is the creator to MENDtm, Musical Encode-Decode, a real time invention created and fought over by the characters in her fictional narrative, The Spell of Vaugirard.

This brilliant narrative introduces us to MENDtm, which is constructed from the musical language system culled by the members of the powerful Barrington family to preserve their secret knowledge base and language skills. We are “let in to the secret”: individuals who enter the Barringtons’ world are able immediately to make it their own, and to navigate all of its musical and mathematical intricacies to learn language processes and solve problems. We follow protagonist Lily Barrington as she – and we — write down the family melody and spell out the access code in musical notes understood as international phonetic syllables of text and tone.

Like the Barringtons, each of us has a unique musical signature developed through centuries, across cultures. As we learn each others’ music, we can obtain skills in a place where the thrill of interactivity and the power of sound and speech still exist in the act itself. Mardi possesses both the ability and the unparalleled generosity to create a universe where learners are truly in control of a process which quite literally “sings” with the singular beauty of each person in context.

It is a privilege to nominate Mardi-Ellen Hill to be a TED Fellow. The MENDtm system is a completed and utterly accurate work that is the product of a full and dedicated life, and it deserves to be known.

Thank you.
Rev. Lyn Bradley

Footnote:  Mardi-Ellen Hill was invited to … as a result of this nomination letter.