Yesh Li Blog: March 2008

Sunday, March 30, 2008

This One's for Our Children and our Children's Children!

The Children

The Children's Children

The Elder Set!

The Original

Sunday, March 16, 2008

For Music Lovers: August Rush

August Rush.

If you love music, you'll love this film.

If you love tear jerkers with a happy ending, you'll love this movie.

If you can suspend disbelief and love a totally unlikely but thoroughly enjoyable fable, you'll love this production.

Favorite quotes from the film:

"You know what music is? God's little reminder that there's something else besides us in this universe; harmonic connection between all living beings, everywhere, even the stars."

"The music is all around you, all you have to do is listen."

Here's a trailer

This movie combines the classical (Keri Russell's character playing with the New York Philharmonic)

with the contemporary (Jonathan Rhys Meyers's character playing with a rock band).

August is a modern-day Mozart, a musical prodigy to whom music comes as naturally as breathing!

Here he is conducting the New York Philharmonic in a rendition of his composition, August's Rhapsody.

Hannah's Birthday Celebration

With everything going on in recent weeks--a new grandbaby in Washington and Kathy going out to help for a couple of weeks, Jimmy and Stephanie's wedding, and trying to keep all of our work caught up--we didn't get around to celebrating Hannah turning 27 until just the other day. She had requested Philly cheese steaks for her birthday meal, so we all went over to Olde Philly Towne in Broomfield, an excellent family owned restaurant, where Jimmy worked for a short time. After that we all gathered at Cold Stone Creamery for dessert.

Here's the gang at Olde Philly Towne.

And here's the birthday girl.

Happy Birthday, Hannah!

Family Memories from Canada

A friend from our tour of duty in Ottawa, Canada's capital city, sent me these pictures, taken at the U.S. ambassador's residence on the occasion of a visit by the then Vice President of the United States, George H.W. Bush. Here are two pictures of our family, one outside the residence and one inside.

With the V.P.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

The Reception

The weekend following the wedding, we had a reception for Jimmy and Stephanie and their friends, including some from as far away as Florida and California. Church friends, work friends, school friends. Jimmy's friends from Japan, when we lived in Negishi housing, near Yokohama. It was a beautiful, Colorado day outside and a very warm, loving one inside. One of Jimmy's friends made a huge, delicious chocolate cake.

Four friends from Negishi, Yokohama, Japan.

Friends reminiscing.

The Negishi crew and families.

Stefan, gifts, and the guest book, which had at least five languages in it--last I checked!

More family and friends.

Church friends of Jimmy and Stephanie. In the front, there was a slide show of the wedding.

Kathy with friends from my workplace.

Portrait with fireplace.

This was from the previous weekend at Beit Shalom. I love it and just had to add it.

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!