Yesh Li Blog: A is for Aircraft Carrier

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

A is for Aircraft Carrier

Okay, so this is really not about aircraft carriers; it's more pictures of the family, but I couldn't come up with a good A-word, and after all, I have served on three different aircraft carriers (if only for short periods of time).

Yesterday, we saw some pictures of Aidan. Now for more pictures, including Ellie, Ryan, and Jack. The first day I was in town we ate at a wonderful little Korean place. Here are the boys.

Here's Jack watching TV. He has a DVD called Baby Einstein, which I also found captivating. (It's in seven languages, teaches common phrases, alphabets, and simple songs in Hebrew, Italian, Russian, Japanese, French, German, and English).

Here's another view of the little guy watching his DVD (i.e. learning seven languages).

Here are some shots of Aidan and Jack.

Aidan is always talking to his little brother and loves to hold him and play with him.

As Ellie said on her blog, sometimes you take a bunch of pictures, and you just have to post them all. Here's another shot of the boys.

Jack seems to be saying, "Where am I, and what am I doing here?"

Oh, okay, everything's all right now.

Here he is—sleeping sweetly. Frère Jacques; Dormez-vous?

A picture before saying goodbye at the airport.

A family picture.

And a silly version.

Sabba saying goodbye to Jack.

Oh, and about those aircraft carriers. Here they are. I spent a short time on the John F. Kennedy (CV-67) in the North Atlantic and again in the Mediterranean.

I spent a month or so on USS America (CV-66) in the Med.

USS Independence (CV-62) had a long escalator to bring flight crews quickly from below decks. I did a couple of months TAD (Temporary Additional Duty) aboard Indy in the Mediterranean.

Here she is in Yokosuka, Japan, which happens to have been my last duty station.

Orig: 5/20/08

2 comments:

Bonnie said...: How did I not know you were stationed on aircraft carriers ?? And three of them !?! Were you actually on the Independence or did you do two tours on the JFK ? When were you stationed on them ? Was I so young that I don't remember ?

Love the photos of the family ... I have snagged a few of them to put on my blog !!; 11:21 PM
Sabba and Nanny said...: Bon,
I did a couple months on Indy in the Med, a month on America in the Med, and two short TAD trips on JFK, one of about a month in the North Atlantic, where I became a Bluenose (I'll write about that some day; it has to do with crossing the Arctic Circle on a ship) and another tour of a couple of months in the Med. My other TAD out of Rota was three months aboard USS Lasalle in the Persian Gulf. You were three when we left Spain the first time, so yes, you were too young to remember. I'm glad I got most of my sea time in while you were too young to remember. God bless the guys and gals who spend years away from their families protecting our freedoms.; 2:03 AM

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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!