Beauty Barn

A few weeks ago, Hannah's riding class held what they called "Beauty Barn." Each rider was to spend the entire class period creatively grooming her horse. Here's Hannah with her horse, Corky.

Hannah loves to braid hair and is very good at it. Here's how she braided Corky's mane.

Another view of Hannah's beautified horse!

The End!

(Note the braided tail!)

A is for Appraise and Apprise

I hope this post will apprise you of the difference between apprise and appraise.

After reading it, you can appraise it (and apprise me of your conclusions, if you so desire).

The confusion in usage between apprise and appraise has come to my attention on numerous occasions on the radio and in person in recent days. This is my appraisal.

Interestingly, people often use appraise when they mean apprise.

I do not believe I've ever heard people use apprise when they mean appraise.

People never think to say, "the jeweler apprised the gem collection." They do say (incorrectly) "Johnny's mom appraised his teacher that little Johnny would not be in school on Tuesday."

A simple rule of thumb: You apprise people. You appraise things. You appraise things for people. You apprise people of your appraisal of things.

To appraise means to put a value on. If you appraise me, you are putting a price tag on me. That's not nice.

To apprise means to inform.

Below, some dictionaries apprise us of their appraisal of the two words.

ap·praise
tr.v. ap·praised, ap·prais·ing, ap·prais·es
1. To evaluate, especially in an official capacity.
2. To estimate the quality, amount, size, and other features of; judge.
[Middle English appreisen, possibly from Old French aprisier, from Late Latin appretire : Latin ad-, ad- + Latin pretium, price]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company

Origin: 1400–50; late ME apraysen to set a value on, prob. a conflation of aprisen to apprize and preisen to praise (with sense of prize)
Dictionary.com UnabridgedBased on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009

ap⋅prise
verb (used with object), -prised, -pris⋅ing.
to give notice to; inform; advise (often fol. by of): to be apprised of the death of an old friend.

Origin: 1685–95; appris taught, informed, ptp. of apprendre; see apprehend
[French apprendre, appris-, from Old French aprendre, to learn, from Latin apprehendere, apprēndere; see apprentice.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth EditionCopyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Word Origin & History
apprise: "to notify," 1694, from Fr. appris, pp. of apprendre "to inform, teach," lit. "to lay hold of (in the mind)," another metaphoric meaning of L. apprehendere (see apprehend).
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper

Congratulations, Dalia!

It is a pleasure so soon after the 4th of July, our Independence Day, to welcome someone who has just become a citizen of the United States of America.

Dalia is a friend and coworker at Affordable American Insurance. Here she is, with her three children, in front of Mt. Rushmore, a symbol of the best this country has to offer.

Dalia had been studying and preparing for citizenship for years. Finally last week, her dream became a reality in a ceremony in which she, along with about 280 others from 75 countries, were officially naturalized citizens of the United States.

I have always been proud of the fact that ours is a nation of immigrants, welcoming new citizens from around the world. We have been greatly enriched by that process. We have provided sanctuary for the oppressed, economic opportunity for the disadvantaged, and hope for the downtrodden. In return, our nation has been greatly blessed by the hard work and creativity of our newest citizens.

Welcome, Dalia. We hope you are as blessed to be here as we are to have you here!

My family has only been in this land for a few generations, so I too am a beneficiary of the largesse of a nation that opens its heart to the world with these immortal words, engraved on a bronze plaque, mounted inside the Statue of Liberty:

The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
—Emma Lazarus, 1883

Central City Opera Weekend 2009

We just returned from another wonderful weekend in Central City, Colorado. We saw two of the three operas in the Central City Opera House Association season.

The three couples arrived at our favorite Bed and Breakfast, the Chase Creek Inn, on Friday night.

Here's the group gathered in the Dining Room.

On Saturday afternoon, we saw the musical "A Little Night Music" by Stephen Sondheim. It was a lighthearted farce, and we enjoyed it very much.

Reviews:

CCO makes much of "A Little Night Music"

Daily Camera, July 6, 2009

Soprano McNair very much "still here"

Denver Post, July 3, 2009

Sunday afternoon we saw the opera "Lucia di Lammermoor." It was also very enjoyable but quite different from the Sondheim musical, not at all lighthearted.

Mad about her: Central City's spellbinding "Lucia"

The Denver Post, June 30, 2009

CCO Stages luminous "Lucia"

Daily Camera, June 29, 2009

Russian soprano finds depth in madness of "Lucia"

The Denver Post, June 21, 2009

Incredibly, the Central City Opera House, opened in 1878 and in its 77th year after reopening in 1932, has never performed a Handel opera. This year, that all changes, with the performance of Rinaldo.

Reviews:

A spellbinding staging of "Rinaldo"

Denver Post, July 14, 2009

Opera has a crush on Handel

Denver Post, July 5, 2009

Central City Opera House, Opening Night, 1932

Former Weekends

2008     2007

Happy 233rd to the Declaration

On July 4, 1776 a radical new document gave birth to "a new nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" (to borrow some famous words).


This great experiment is now 233 years old, and from my perspective, its successes have far outweighed its failures. Yet there are those who despise and are ashamed of that history. Do not count me among them.


To borrow more words from our 16th president, we are now "testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."


Count me concerned about whether or not we can long endure, given the current state of affairs in this nation.


For further thoughts along these lines, check out Independence Day 2008 and 2007.

The full text of the Declaration of Independence can be found here.

Congratulations, Tony Fernandez

This is a very special blog post in honor of a very special person in our lives. My cousin Lissa's husband has been like another brother to me ever since we met in Spain many years ago (just as my cousin and I grew up like sister and brother, our families were so close). Today he is also my employer at Affordable American Insurance, the highly successful enterprise he and Lissa established, as well as my golfing buddy, and a very dear friend. Recently, Antonio was honored with a prestigious award, Rotary's Paul Harris Fellow for his efforts on behalf of the people of the Dominican Republic.

Tony Fernandez Honored with Rotary’s Paul Harris Fellow
Local Rotarian Honored for His Work Helping Needy Third-World Children
Thornton, CO (Rotary Newswire) 12 Jun 09 – Recently Tony Fernandez, a local business owner and Rotarian, was honored for his tireless efforts to help children in the third-world country of the Dominican Republic with Rotary’s prestigious Paul Harris Fellow.

Several years ago Tony was in the Dominican Republic with his family and church group when he realized the overwhelming need for health-care for the children of this impoverished nation and decided to do something about it. Shortly thereafter, he contacted the people at Project Cure (http://www.projectcure.org/) and got them to commit to giving him $1.5 million dollars worth of medical equipment. Project Cure gathers medical supplies that are no longer needed in our communities so that they can be donated to needy peoples around the world.

The real problem was getting all of these medical supplies from here in Denver to where they are needed most. Tony solved the problem by going to his local Rotary club (of which he is a member) and asking for a small donation of $3,000. He also approached a few other clubs asking for donation. All together local Rotary clubs donated $10,000 but that still wasn’t enough to get all of these supplies to the Dominican Republic. Tony took these funds to the local Rotary District and to Rotary International to get matching funds that totaled $38,100. At long last, Tony had the money needed to ship all of these valuable medical supplies to the Children’s Hospital in the Dominican Republic.

Later this month, Tony will gather a large group of local Rotarians to load all of these supplies into cargo-containers so that they can begin their long journey across land and over sea to the small Caribbean island nation of the Dominican Republic. In about 4 month’s time Tony plans to fly down to the Dominican Republic to meet with the first lady of that nation so that he can present over 1.5 Million dollars worth of medical supplies to her and her charity which is the local childrens’ hospital.

Rotary’s Paul Harris Fellow that is given in appreciation of tangible and significant assistance given for the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world. Rotary International is the world's first service club organization, with more than 1.2 million members in 33,000 clubs worldwide. Rotary club members are volunteers who work locally, regionally, and internationally to combat hunger, improve health and sanitation, provide education and job training, promote peace, and eradicate polio under the motto Service Above Self. For more information: http://www.rotary.org/en/AboutUs/Pages/ridefault.aspx.

About the Rotary Club of Denver Metro North: 
The Rotary Club of Denver Metro North was founded on April 24th, 2007 with 20 members and has done a large amount of service to the community and for the world in it’s short lifespan.

In 2007 this club hosted a fund-raising roast of former Thornton Mayor, Noel Busck, and raised $23,000 for Holy Cross Church for a rec-center expansion project. Last year they roasted Odell Barry (former Northglenn Mayor and Broncos football player) where they netted about $42,000 of which $21,000 went to the Butterfly Pavillion (to help them with operating expenses) and the other half went to other local charities by way of it's Rotary Foundation. This last year the Rotary Club of Denver Metro North roasted Jack TerHar (of Sil-TerHar Motors) to benefit The Broomfield Community Foundation (http://www.broomfieldfoundation.org/) and it's Rotary Foundation. They are still waiting on the numbers for that fund-raiser.

Every year the Rotary Club of Denver Metro North delivers free Thanksgiving dinners to many needy families in the local community. They've also participated in getting flowers from Denver’s Home and Garden show to senior centers in the community after the show to help brighten the days of local seniors.

The Rotary Club of Denver Metro North is composed of a wide cross-section of the local communities. They participate in many worthwhile Club, Vocational, Community and International Projects and they meet at the Egg and I at 855 Thornton Parkway, Thornton CO 80229 every Tuesday morning at 7am. Prospective members are always welcome as they're always looking for a few good people to help serve the local community and the world.

More information about the Rotary Club of Denver Metro North can be obtained by visiting http://www.denvermetronorthrotary.com/.



Earlier this year, Antonio and Lissa's insurance agency, Affordable American Insurance, was recognized as one of the Top 50 Family-Owned Companies in Colorado.

Homemade Pesto Pasta

Jill and Marissa decided to make homemade pasta the other night. Here are the wondrous results.

Beautiful fettucine.

A simple pesto sauce, some grated parmigiano, and voilà.


A simple, yet marvelous meal. A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and Thou...


Pam serving.

In honor of our Australian family and friends, we enjoyed a fine Cabernet Sauvignon from the Angove winery in the Coonawarra wine-producing region, southeast of Adelaide.

And for dessert, a delicious Baileys Frozen Russian.

Photos courtesy of NJ (Niece Jill)

Bike MS: Virginia's Ocean to Bay Ride 2009

Back in April, I posted an announcement about an event in which two of our cousins participated. They were to ride 150 miles to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Hampton Roads, Virginia. The event took place this past weekend, and I have it on good authority, they completed the ride (Bob's note on Facebook).

I did not realize they were part of a much larger team called the Killer Bees. Here's a little synopsis from the web site about their team.

Team Killer Bees is a group of 80 riders, who ride at different paces, and have been an award winning team, having raised over $300,000 in the past years for Multiple Sclerosis. They started as a small team of four riders, who one day finished a bike ride at a Killer B pace and thus was born the name of this highly recognized team. Last year, although the Killer Bees were the third largest team, of those three teams, their 49 active riders raised the most per rider ($1,180 each). After many years of participating in this event, the team has raised well over $300,000 to help find a cure!

Congratulations to the Killer Bees and to Bob and Em on a job well done. Thanks for inviting us to vicariously share your joy and excitement in this great accomplishment.

Our Old Chipiona Home

Friends recently made available pictures that brought back wonderful memories from our time in southern Spain in the mid-1970s.

Here is the front of our beautiful mansion/community house in Chipiona, Andalucia.

Unfortunately, the house was torn down in favor of apartment buildings in the 1980s.


From the balcony overlooking the celebration below. The Spanish tile in this house is the same as that found in the renowned Plaza de España in Seville, Spain.


"Our" beautiful stretch of beach on the Costa de la Luz in Chipiona.

Another view of the beach with the cathedral in the background.

A typical get-together at the Chipiona house, sharing food and fellowship with family and friends around the dinner table.

They say the more things change, the more they stay the same. Here we are in Colorado over 30 years later, sharing with family and friends around a fine feast!

A is for Autodidact

The definition of autodidact in its very simplest form is "a self-taught person." This is the idea I have in mind of autodidacticism—a self-taught person.

We often think of an autodidact as one who has learned a subject without the benefit of a teacher or formal education, but it seems that on one level, we are all autodidacts. No matter how good the teacher, or rigorous the education, each of us must exert some effort, however slight, to allow learning to take place.

No matter how excellent the instructor, the student must actively listen in order to ingest, digest, remember, and use the information. If one is not interested in learning, the best teachers and the most expensive schools will not suffice.

On the other hand, if one is obsessed with learning, nothing will prevent that one from seeking out knowledge.

Much autodidacticism takes place through the medium of books, yet this is not strictly self-teaching. The author is a teacher in absentia. On the other hand, without the autodidact's effort in reading and understanding, no learning (and therefore no teaching) takes place.

For more on learning and teaching, see my previous post here.

Although I have had many fine teachers over the years, both in school and out, I consider myself an autodidact.

Have I sufficiently muddied the waters concerning the meaning of the word "autodidact"? If so, I have accomplished my purpose.

Seriously, though, I love the word, and so does Detective Robert Goren of Law and Order, Criminal Intent, who has used it on at least two or three shows that I've seen.

Etymology: [from Greek auto-, auto, self and didaktos, teaching]

Other forms: autodidactic, autodidactically

Related words: didactic, didacticism

A is for Amen

Recently someone made what he considered a clever comment about three English words known around the world—amen, hallelujah, and Coca-Cola. The ironic thing is that none of the three is really English. (Okay, I suppose we can consider the word Coca-Cola in its form as a trademark to be a native American English invention, but coca and cola themselves are simply transliterations from their original languages—Quechua and Temne respectively).

Amen
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language gives the etymology of amen as follows: [from Middle English from Old English from Late Latin from Greek from Hebrew] The word passed through these languages virtually unchanged, simply transliterated in each case.

The original Hebrew word amen is part of a wonderful constellation of words having to do with truth (see my earlier entry)—or faithfulness. The word amen has been used in its untranslated form in virtually all of the world’s languages and thereby has blessed and enriched virtually all of the world’s peoples.

Hallelujah
This is another Hebrew word that has found its way around the world without translation. Although today it is commonly used as an exclamation or interjection used to express joy or praise, the original word is in fact an imperative, i.e. “praise the LORD” (the word LORD being an evasive synonym in English for the name of God after the pattern used in Hebrew). The word Hallelujah (and its unaspirated Greek form alleluia) are among the most popular words in western religious hymns and songs of praise.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is not, strictly speaking, an English word either. Coca comes through Spanish from Quechua, from the dried leaves of the plant from which cocaine is extracted.

Cola, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is either of two tropical African evergreen plants having nutlike seeds yielding an extract that contains caffeine and theobromine and is used in carbonated beverages and pharmaceuticals. Cola finds its origin in West Africa, possibly from the word kola (the kola nut) in the Temne language.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

My blog has functioned as a place to record family celebrations and events. Birthdays are celebrated (the first one was in 2007-here), and travels and special events of all kinds are documented. With family in different states, not to mention continents, it seems to be a convenient way to communicate what is going on in our lives.

So what better place to wish a very Happy Mother's Day to my Mom.

In so many ways, she is the person most responsible for loving and nurturing me, and laying the groundwork to make me the person I am today.

The picture above is an early picture of us together.

Here is a picture with us and the next generation, taken at Estes Park last year.

This is a picture of Mom and her sister, whose family was always very close to ours.

As I was pondering this blog post, some ideas came to mind about the divine and motherhood. Much religious doctrine recognizes and proclaims God as father and makes much of this fatherhood in relation to his children. Yet it seems to me there is a great motherhood of God as well, a nurturing, nourishing, inspiring, hovering presence that corresponds to the female side of the human being (the Adam). Consider the following:

Genesis 1:27 And God created man (Heb. the Adam) in his image. In the image of God he created him; male and female, he created them.

From this we learn that the image of God is made up of both male and female elements. Without one or the other, the image of God is simply incomplete. So without an image of the motherhood of God, as well as the fatherhood, our understanding of God is incomplete.

The idea is further buttressed in Genesis 5:1, 2. When (lit. in the day) God created man (Adam), he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when (lit. in the day) they were created, he called their name Adam.

I am thankful that, just as my father gave me a model of God in that role, so my mother gave me a wonderful example of a heavenly mother, watching over, nurturing and loving me always.

Mother's Day 2009

We met at our new favorite sushi place with Jimmy, Hannah, Pam, and Jill.

The character for dragon is certainly correct, but all my dictionaries translate the last character as "castle," so this might really be the Dragon Castle!

The sushi is excellent, and the Chinese food isn't half bad either.

Happy Mother's Day!

Our new favorite sushi chef. He even talks to us in Nihongo!

Kathy and Hannah being silly with the rose given Kathy by the restaurant.


Dragon Wall is located at 9931 Grant St. in Thornton. For more information, please call 720.872.1818. Metro North Chamber of Commerce blog post is here.

Recipe Blog

I just think it's a shame, a shame, mind you, that more people do not visit our daughter's great recipe blog, which she calls Pass the Beans, Please or The Beans Blog.

When Kathy and I were driving to Manitou Springs (earlier post gives the details), we were listening to 850 KOA's The Ride Home, and they were discussing food and taking pictures of food. We called in and mentioned our daughter's food blog, with the address of the web site. I figured that would cause a lot of hits on her site, but no such luck.

I'm hoping that this post will bring the thousands of hits I expected from 850 KOA to visit her recipe blog. It really is a great site. Nothing there but great menu ideas and recipes.

Check it out here.

A is for Avuncular and A Nuncle

All right, it's time for more exposition of my dictionary exploration. I know because of the thousands of emails and requests I've received to resume my dictionary writings. (Okay, not really, it's because I can't help it.) Although I haven't written anything recently, I am constantly delving into words and their origins. I thought I would write some of it up tonight.

Something today reminded me of the word "avuncular," which is personally relevant. It means "of or having to do with an uncle" or "similar to an uncle, especially in benevolence or tolerance." It comes from Latin avunculus. The word "uncle" itself derives from the same Latin word.

I, of course, knew the word avuncular, but as I began to research it, I found some other interesting terms. It turns out that in Latin, an avunculus actually only represents a maternal uncle. Avunculus apparently derives from avus (grandfather), so an avunculus is a "lesser grandfather." It doesn't take much imagination to see how avus could derive from Hebrew av (father). See my discussion of av and abba here.

A paternal uncle is a patruus (father's brother is a "second father" from pater, father).

A maternal aunt is known as a matertera in Latin (a second mother, from mater, mother). There is apparently an obscure English word, materteral, in the Oxford English dictionary (in 1823) which predates avuncular (1831), but it is rarely seen, whereas avuncular is in common usage. More on this here. A paternal aunt (father's sister) is called an amita.

That brings us to another concept I wrote about here—a process called false splitting or juncture loss. A chiefly British usage derived easily from the phrase "an uncle" into "a nuncle." The Bard himself used it as follows: "Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?" —Shakespeare

Seis de Mayo

So Cinco de Mayo is a very important date to our neighbors to the south, but to me a much more important date is Seis de Mayo.

It was on that date 37 years ago (okay, 38!) in Columbus, Ohio that we met. Since then, we've been together pretty much ever since.

The following picture isn't exactly contemporaneous to that date, but it's closer than anything else I could find after searching for four hours (I have the perfect pictures of us, somewhere, but I put them away in a safe place, a very safe place. They remain very safe!)

The above picture was taken in Rota, Spain in the early 70s. In response to Bonnie's question, this is at the terminal in Rota, picture taken by our friend, Marcelle. I was returning from an 83-day deployment to the Persian Gulf aboard USS Lasalle. We are looking at our sweet little girl, Bonnie! (Here's a picture of her in downtown Rota at about the same time.)

Here's a shot of USS Lasalle, cruising in the Persian Gulf.

Of course, even before Kathy and I met, Seis de Mayo was an important date to me. It is the birthday of my brother, shown here in one of the only periods of my life when I wore a hat (the other being my military service, although we called it a cover)!

Happy birthday, John!