Yesh Li Blog: First Blizzard 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009

First Blizzard 2009

Some may argue my characterization of our recent weather phenomenon as a blizzard, but at the very least it was our first heavy snowstorm. It blew in yesterday, lasted the better part of two days, and left a couple feet of snow behind. Here's the front of the house.

I had to dust a little snow off my car.

Trudging through the Great, White North (actually, it's just our backyard).

That evergreen tree was about her height when we moved in.

Clearing the way to the barbecue.

Preparing for the barbecue.

Gotta love Colorado. You can barbecue year round. When we first moved to Colorado, I marveled at people in their shorts in the winter. As our daughter says, I have completely acclimatized. (For my "steak recipe," check out her blog here.)

Many schools and businesses closed yesterday and today, along with large stretches of interstates 25 and 70. Most Denverites chose to stay inside and enjoy the warmth of their homes. Our Nuggets managed to play their season opener at the Pepsi Center last night and prevailed over the Utah Jazz for their first victory of the newborn NBA season.

Mi-ke (pronounced Mee-kay, Japanese for calico) thought she wanted to go outside but soon changed her mind.

2 comments:

andrafaye said...: "i had to dust a little snow off my car."
hilarious!; 12:51 AM
Bonnie said...: i was thinking the same thing Andrea !; 2:18 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!