Long Term Memories

Friday, December 23, 2005

Latka Memories (from the 60s)

Every year about this time somebody askes me something about Latkas. I learned to make them many years ago, in the early 60s from my mother because the recipe is relatively simple and there was one step she wanted me to do (grating the potatos and onions). Basically, you cook potatos then grate them. You grate onions. You mix the batter with either eggs or oil and you fry some up in oil. When I was an undergraduate at the U of Wisconsin in the late 60s, one of the girls found out I knew how to do this and I actually did a "class" for a group of 4 girls (I presume they were all Jewish but come to think of it, I really didn't know). Both my kids like this story. Beth was impressed that I knew so much about latkas. George was impressed that I found a cool way to impress girls. ¶ 12:45 PM

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Translation - sort of - 1972

I was an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin majoring in math and meteorology. At the meteorology department, the chairman was a Professor Werner. Every so often, he would walk by the part of the hall where weather maps and charts were hung and give an impromtu lecture (typically about 3-5 minutes). He had a heavy German accent and used german syntax which made him incomprehensible to a lot of the people. I noticed this and one day, after he lecture, I said, "Well, what the professor just said was, '....' and I went thru it unaccented and with standard American syntax. Apparently the Professor appreciated it because he wrote a very nice recommendation that got me a research fellowship at the University of Nevada in 73-74 (the fellowship was cancelled when the Dept of Interior froze it's share of the funding in the summer of 74). I did get a lot of cross country skiing in however. ¶ 6:04 AM