Yesh Li Blog: February 2011

Saturday, February 05, 2011

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Share the Warmth Coat Drive

Share the Warmth Coat Drive

Affordable American Insurance is teaming up with Metropolitan State College in the "8th Annual Share the Warmth Coat Drive" for the Denver Rescue Mission.

In the upcoming months, many will be cold this winter. Help "Share the Warmth Coat Drive" this February by donating your used coats to one of our many Insurance office locations around the Denver Metro Area.

Last year, The Coat Drive for the Denver Rescue Mission was a huge success, collecting 581 coats!!! The Denver Rescue Mission was very grateful for such a wonderful donation.

This year we want to double that number. With YOUR Help, I think we can match their donation.

Share the Warmth by donating your old coat to someone in need. We not only help our clients in their time of need but also our surrounding community. Help us reach our goal!

Feel free to drop by any of our Affordable American Insurance offices between January 28th and February 8th to drop off your donation.

By the way, even if you don't have any old coats lying around, you can still help. Drop by a Goodwill or ARC or Salvation Army store, or any of the other organizations that help people and pick up some great coats at reasonable rates. That way you'll help the people in the cold stay warm, and you'll help the people in the stores help others.

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Central City Opera February 2011 Wallpaper

February 2011 Wallpaper provided by the Central City Opera House Association.

Scenes from Carmen.

We saw it performed by Opera Colorado in 2005, when the Ellie Caulkins Opera House opened. Can't wait to see the Central City Opera performance.

What is a Cockle, Anyway?

So the other day I heard a rabbi talk about "the cockles of your soul." I think he was just trying to be different, because of course, the phrase is "warming the cockles of your heart." So naturally, my inward response was, "What in the world is a cockle, anyway?"

Well, notwithstanding some of the scurrilous definitions at Urban Dictionary (none of which come close to the real meaning of the phrase), it is a well worn idiom in English dating to at least the middle of the 17th century.

Quoting from the site World Wide Words: "Something that warms the cockles of one's heart induces a glow of pleasure, sympathy, affection, or some such similar emotion. What gets warmed is the innermost part of one's being. It's not that surprising that it should be associated with the heart, that being the presumed seat of the emotions for most people. But what are the cockles?"

One theory of its etymology is from the heart shape of certain bivalve mollusks, as pictured above. There are other theories, about which you can read here and here.

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!