Yesh Li Blog: Boulder Shakespeare Festival

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Boulder Shakespeare Festival

Some years ago (1999, I believe) we took some friends to the Boulder Shakespeare Festival on the campus of the University of Colorado, Boulder, to see the Bard's Comedy of Errors. It took us eight years to get back, but last night we attended with four good friends. Kathy had decided to get tickets for my birthday, and our friends were able to join us. It was a most wonderful celebration.

We started the evening at my favorite Italian restaurant, Laudisio's. I had discovered this Boulder eatery a couple of years ago because of their acclaimed specialty, Buffalo Carpaccio. I often stop in for some appetizers when in Boulder. After a lovely dinner, we drove to the CU campus, which is just around the corner from Laudisio's, to watch the play "The Servant of Two Masters," by an 18th century Italian playwright by the name of Carlo Goldoni. (Yes, I know, we went to the Shakespeare Festival and didn't see Shakespeare! We had already seen the three Shakespeare productions in other places, and anyway, this was in the style of a Shakespeare comedy.) It was a comedic romp, a madcap farce, with a lot of physical humor, mistaken identity, and funny swipes at current politics and popular culture. Everyone seemed to have a good time. The production was in an outdoor venue, and there was a nice breeze and a noticeable absence of mosquitos!

All in all, it was a memorable birthday celebration, and I thought I would share it with all of you. By the way, we did have our camera with us last night, but had no time to snap pictures of the group (and we were forbidden from photographing the performance), so I have included a picture of Will himself on the program cover and a shot (from the program) of the theater with the Rocky Mountains in the background.

For more information about the Boulder Shakespeare Festival, check out this link.

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Why Yesh Li Blog?

Why do I have a blog? Quite simply, I have a blog to share my favorite things with others. The right side of the blog has a long list of links to some of the places on the Internet that I visit often. In addition to sharing those with others, I often come here myself to find a quick link to where I am going.

Bonnie, our eldest, led the way into blogging with her Simple Beauty Blog, and later with her extremely popular Beans Blog. I decided I would give blogging a try and thought "I have a blog" might be a clever name, but in English it sounded rather lame, so I did it in Hebrew, a language I love more and more the more I learn it.

What does Yesh Li Blog mean?

We would translate (i.e. interpret) yesh li blog to mean "I have a blog" in English, but the literal Hebrew means "There is for (or to) me a blog." You cannot literally say "I have" something or other in Hebrew. It is always "there is for me," or "there is for you," or "there is for us," etc. Hebrew, the language of the Bible, is showing us that we are really stewards of what has been provided for us and for our use. Rather than private ownership, perhaps a better term for what we "own" would be private stewardship.

Languages have been my passion since at least the fourth grade, when I studied Spanish from a library book called Fun with Spanish. In high school, I was the rara avis that became enamored of Latin. In later U.S. Navy tours of duty in Spain, Italy, and Japan, we did our best to learn the local languages. Along the way, I studied some Russian and picked up some Greek by studying etymologies and some Chinese by studying Japanese writing systems.

My first introduction to Hebrew was in the early 1980s, when I took a correspondence course, but it was not until the past decade that my primary focus has been on this wondrous language. It has been deeply rewarding, and especially in the past few years since we met Ori, an amazing Israeli woman, who has become not only my primary Hebrew mentor but also our good friend. Moreover, the small group of people who meet weekly to study Torah in Hebrew in Boulder have become dear to us and enriched our lives greatly. Further, reading Jewish commentaries on the Web of the weekly Torah portions has deepened my own faith and opened up new understandings of the scriptures we share and of Christian writings based on those scriptures.

The pursuit of words has been an essential part of my life for many years (since birth?). Many things have changed in my life, but I don't see that part of it changing any time soon (until death?). Lehitraot! Shalom, Chaverim!