Happy Holidays 2011

True crime (and Sherlock Holmes)

Former FBI agent and retired criminal justice professor Jim Fisher is also a well-known author. A graduate of Vanderbilt University Law School, he has published nine non-fiction crime books, two of which have been nominated for Edgar awards.

He writes prolifically, engagingly, and sometimes pugnaciously about true crime on his blog at http://jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/ . I don’t always agree with him, but I consistently find his blog absorbing.

He has kindly answered some questions for me at EJdissectingRoom.

Knowing that Jim has written extensively on polygraph “lie detector” examinations, I asked him:

EJ: There have been cases in which individuals holding sensitive positions at both the FBI and the CIA, have passed polygraphs given by highly trained examiners, only to be later exposed as foreign agents.  How difficult is it, in your opinion, to train some one to cheat the test?

Jim Fisher: Errors in the polygraph procedure are almost always human. The instrument itself, assuming the correct questions have been asked and the subject is suitable for the polygraph, rarely fails to detect deception. Polygraph examinees can do things that will make the results inconclusive, but that’s not the same as beating the polygraph.

EJ: Do you believe results of polygraph should be admitted in court?

Jim Fisher: Polygraph results should not be used in court as evidence of a defendant’s guilt. These instruments, however, are valuable investigative tools and should be used in that context. . . .

I do not believe that criminal suspects should be required by law to take a polygraph. The polygraph technique will not work unless the test is voluntary.

In his blog, Jim has also commented on crime laboratory problems.

EJ: Shortage of forensic pathologists, adequately funded crime labs, and lack of uniform standards in the forensic sciences present huge problems. What are your thoughts on improving this situation?

Jim Fisher: The shortage of forensic pathologists is a problem that has resisted solutions for decades and I don’t see that changing. Crime labs, due to the economy, will remain under-funded. Unless the federal government gets involved, I don’t see uniformity in the forensic services.

Writing about the recent film biography of J. Edgar Hoover, Jim describes his own stint with the FBI in less than happy terms. . . .

EJ: In your blog discussion of your time in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, you mentioned that leaving the organization felt “like getting out of prison.”  Given the extremely controlling atmosphere under Hoover’s administration, what made many good people willing to submit to the regimen?

Jim Fisher: Out of my FBI training class of 50 agents in 1966, all but thirteen stayed in the bureau until retirement. All of the 13 agents who left before then had law degrees. Agents put up with J. Edgar Hoover because they could retire at age 50 with good benefits.

Aware that Jim has written on the Lizzie Borden unpleasantness and other historical classics, I asked:

EJ: Of the myriad “Crimes of the last Century” which do you find most intriguing? Why?

Jim Fisher: My favorite 20th Century “crimes of the century” are: The Lindbergh kidnapping (1932-1936); The Sacco and Vanzetti Case (1991-1927) and the Hall-Mills Case (1926). I like cases that hinge on forensic science and the interpretation of physical evidence.

[These are all American cases.

In March of 1932 the twenty month old son of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh was snatched from the nursery at the family home in New Jersey. The child’s body was found in a wooded area two months later.  Extensive physical evidence heavily implicated Bruno Richard Hauptman , who was convicted and executed for the crime.

Sacco and Vanzetti involved a double shooting murder in Massachusetts for which Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in August of 1927. The case had political overtones and attracted international attention.

The atmospheric Hall-Mills Case remains officially unsolved. The bodies of a minister and his choir singer lover were discovered supine under a crab apple tree on Lover’s Lane in New Brunswick, New Jersey in September of 1922.  Love letters from the murdered woman to the minister were scattered about the crime scene.  The resulting investigation involved, among other things, the testimony of a former maid in the minister’s household, that of a lady who raised hogs and was known therefore as “The Pig Woman” and fingerprint evidence.  The betrayed widow of the minister and her two brothers were tried for the murders in 1926 but acquitted.

- EJDissectingRoom]

Sherlock Holmes was a collector of criminal history and advises in The Valley of Fear “. . . to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of crime.”

EJ: Do you agree with Mr. Holmes that the study of old cases is of value to modern investigators?

Jim Fisher: I discovered the works of Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) in adulthood….  Sherlock Holmes was right. To know the future of crime you must know it’s history. Studying old cases and how they were solved or bungled is an excellent teaching tool.

[The last word belongs to Mr. Holmes (in The Valley of Fear):

“Everything comes in circles . . . The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done before, and will be again.”  - EJDissectingRoom]

You can visit Jim’s intriguing crime blog at http://jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/.

Still pursuing verity,

E. J. Wagner

“The Science of Sherlock Holmes” in French !

Delighted to tell you that the French translation of The Science of Sherlock Holmes has just been published – it includes an Afterward, about modern forensic practices by Patrick Roget, the head of the Toulouse Crime Laboratory.

French language edition: La Science de Sherlock Holmes translated by Sarah Gurcel published October 2011 by Éditions Le Pommier – ISBN 9782746505520 – publisher’s price 23.00 Euros – publishers web page for the book http://www.editions-lepommier.fr/ouvrage.asp?IDLivre=502

It joins a number of other translations, details of which are on my website at http://www.ejwagner-crimehistorian.com/TopSSH.html

Science,Superstition,Sherlock Holmes at SPI

On Thursday 22 September 2011, I’ll be talking about  Science, Superstition, and Sherlock Holmes at the 6 pm dinner meeting of the Society of Professional Investigators at Forlini’s restaurant at 93 Baxter Street (just south of Canal Street in Chinatown behind the Manhattan Criminal Court Building) – this event is open to the public; the price (including dinner) is $50.Parking is available next door to the restaurant at a discount to dinner patrons.

There will be a few copies of The Science of Sherlock Holmes for sale and I’ll be happy to sign any copies you bring as well.

For further information: contact Bruce Sackman, president, Society of Professional Investigators,PO Box 1087, Bellmore, NY 11710 - e-mail  bts1811@aol.com – web site www.spionline.info

Discarding Publlc Records

Sherlock Holmes kept detailed records of ancient crimes to help him investigate new ones. In that spirit, centuries of cases tried at the Old Bailey in London are online, available to both the simply curious and the serious historian.

In contrast, here in the U. S., in the name of cost cutting, the National Archive and Records Administration plans to toss the baby out with the bathwater, by discarding old legal documents without regard to the future, and with little public discussion.

As It is impossible to predict exactly what may be vital information in the future, the destruction of legal records merits our attention.  Click here – http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ispla/ – to examine a petition addressing this issue

As always, pursuing verity,

E. J. Wagner

 

London On My Mind: The City of Sherlock Holmes

This article first appeared in Mystery Readers Journal, Volume 27, No. 2, Spring 2011, London Mysteries II issue, published by Mystery Readers International. Issues are available for purchase individually or by subscription.

It’s a typical day for a storyteller and crime historian like me. The setting is an animal preserve on the north shore of Long Island. It is late afternoon in spring. Fifty people, sitting on folding chairs, face me.

I’m perched precariously on a rock to regale them with tales of crime involving the furred and feathered. I’m hoping not to be drowned out by the roar of a caged cougar, or the shrieks of the nearby peacocks, who are evidently in a state of erotic hysteria.

As the sun dips, I describe the mysterious disappearance of the famous bloodhounds, Burgo and Barnaby, while tracking Jack the Ripper through fogbound Victorian London. Inevitably, even in an animal preserve on Long Island, London is part of my story.

London has always been on my mind.

Even before I made the acquaintance of Mr. Sherlock Holmes in my home territory of the Bronx, even before I read about the Dickensian miseries of workhouses and orphans, my fascinated immersion in the original, acerbic “Mary Poppins” had implanted the city in my very active imagination. London, from the fecund pigeons of Trafalgar Square to the idyllic stretches of Hampstead Heath was in many ways more real to me than the New York in which I lived.

In this fantasy I was aided and abetted by our family housekeeper, who had arrived in the U. S. from Poland by way of London. She made it clear that a napkin was properly called a “serviette,” a diaper a “nappy,” and that the early supper I was fed as a child was actually my “tea.”

In college, my anglophilia grew apace and kept company with my interest in atmospheric homicide. As a theater arts major, I studied dramatic works of Jacobean revenge, Elizabethan hauntings, and Victorian suspense. I was cast as Bella in “Angel Street” (a play set in 1890 London, of course) and played both Ophelia and Lady Macbeth (roles written by a very well-known London-based playwright).

This necessitated long discussions with my pathologist cousin as to the details of death, which led in turn to quite a bit of time in autopsy rooms and crime laboratories. Blood and guts and dramatic literature have a long conjoined history.

Off stage, in between muddling through turgid tomes on the influence of the English monarchy on Globe Theater productions, I delved into crime novels featuring sensitive London detectives with complicated, bittersweet romantic lives. I read accounts of true crimes solved by science, and grew familiar with an entire panoply of Victorian poisoning trials, not to mention the odd bludgeoning and occasional stabbing. I studied the memoirs and biographies of long dead pathologists. I immersed myself in Sherlock Holmes adventures and grew increasingly riveted by the inherent dramatic tension between English understatement, sardonic humor and bloody murder.

Which is most likely why, decades later, weaving these divergent threads together, I found myself in the odd business of writing and performing one‑person presentations about the history and folklore of crime and forensic science—and why my beloved London was always part of the show. I could offer detailed descriptions of Regent’s Park, The Strand, Waterloo Bridge, Whitechapel, and explain exactly how a villain could walk through them, hide in them, live in them. I could conjure up the fog, the sound of footsteps, the splatter of rain on ancient cobblestones.

But this was only an actor’s license—because I had never seen these things for myself.

It was not from want of trying. It was due to a truly rotten sense of timing. It seemed every time my husband, Bill, and I tried to plan a trip to London, a family illness or a crisis at his job or mine interfered.

And I must admit—in the interests of full disclosure—on a few occasions, I managed to sabotage things myself, with my weakness for acquiring black Labrador puppies who needed immediate training during what was supposed to be vacation time. (This wasn’t without advantages—honoring the adage that nothing in a writer’s life should go to waste—I sold an article about such an abortive London trip to the New York Times; “Labrador Love” the editor headed it. The piece was illustrated with a drawing of a Lab pup enthusiastically chewing a picture of the London skyline.)

The worm turned in 1993 just when we were busily planning the imminent wedding of our younger daughter. I was made an offer it would hurt to refuse. It involved a trip to England, first class on the Queen Elizabeth 2, for my husband and me. The work was minimal—I had only to give two lectures on crime during the crossing to Southampton. Bill and I considered, with anguish, the dicey timing. There were invitations to send, dresses to be fitted, flowers to be ordered, seating plans to be decided on. What sort of parents could leave at such a time?

Evidently, our sort. We packed, dumped the wedding arrangements in our two daughters’ willing hands, advised our Resident Labradors, Dickens and Poppins, to be gentle with the house sitter, and headed for the ship. We were armed with a reservation at a Hampstead bed and breakfast, and, courtesy of a pal at the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory a contact number at the Scotland Yard Forensic Science Laboratory, as well as a comprehensive London A to Z.

We arrived in London with an odd sense of home-coming. The city seemed to resonate with echoes of the old crimes whose details I knew so well. The reminders were constant.

The B and B in which we stayed at Frognal and Finchley had been the last address of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the eminent if controversial pathologist. Sir Bernard had given testimony with fatal results to the accused in over 250 cases, and as Richard Gordon, the physician/author acutely noted, if Spilsbury had been mistaken in only 8 of these, he had been responsible for the loss of more innocent life than Jack the Ripper.

The neighborhood of Hampstead whispered murder to me. Finchley Road, for instance, was the scene of the dispatching of Stanley Setty in 1949. He was done in by one Brian Donald Hume, who finished the job by dismembering his victim and wrapping him in parcels, which he then dropped into the sea by plane. The remains were discovered, a trial ensued, but Hume got off—enabling him to kill another chap in Switzerland some time later.

Not far away is the Magdala Tavern, in front of which blonde Ruth Ellis shot and killed her racing car lover David Blakely. She was executed in 1955, the last woman hanged in England. Her post mortem report stated that her body showed “no sign of disease” but betrayed “an odor of brandy.”

Visiting the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) Forensic Laboratory in Lambeth, we were taken to lunch by the Deputy Director, and made the interesting discovery that the Met had it’s very own wine label, a nicety not given to NYPD. Walking through the  Lambeth area, I inevitably thought of Dr. Thomas Cream, the physician/serial killer who haunted the neighborhood in 1891, plying unsuspecting ladies of the evening with “pills for their complexion.”

Every part of London reminded me of old cases—Florence Bravo and the fatal glass of Burgundy her husband drank in 1876, Ada Bartlett, and her husband’s mysterious death from chloroform . . . and of course this led us to an afternoon at the Old Bailey where these cases were famously tried, as well as to the pub across the street, to watch the barristers and solicitors lifting lunchtime liquids.

Since that trip, Bill and I have returned to the UK a number of times. When an editor at John Wiley & Sons asked me to write a book on the history of forensic science, to be called The Science of Sherlock Holmes, my first thought was that it gave us a great excuse for another trip.

London was on my mind again.

Science of Sherlock Holmes and NOOK

“The Science of Sherlock Holmes” by EJ Wagner (that’s me) about the history of forensic science, is now available on Barnes and Noble’s NOOK and NOOK Color, as well as on Kindle.
When researching old cases, Holmes would say “Make a long arm, Watson” and Watson would have to haul down dusty tomes delineating ancient crimes. If an e-reader had been available, Watson could have stored most of the library on it and kept it, along with his stethoscope, in his top hat.

The Science of Sherlock Holmes audio

Happy to tell you that a new audio version of The Science of Sherlock Holmes is available.
The original had a few technical glitches now repaired. Audible.com will replace the old version free of charge if you contact them.
Sample of audio is here;

http://www.audible.com/pd/?asin=B0044TJZL8&source=PPPP0001WS011910

(That’s me narrating )

The French Connection of Sherlock Holmes

by E. J. Wagner

This article first appeared in Canadian Holmes, The Journal of the Bootmakers of Toronto (for subscription information see their web site) – Volume 33 Number 2, Winter 2010/2011 – the illustrations here were included with the article in that issue and are reproduced here with the permission of the publisher.

E. J. Wagner is an American crime historian, lecturer and the author of the Edgar®-winning The Science of Sherlock Holmes.

In 1910, the criminal courts of Lyon were housed in the old Palais de Justice, which has a cornerstone laid in 1835. It was an enormous and impressive building, boasting an elegant entrance and a sweeping exterior staircase that ran the down to the Saône river.

A much less salubrious door in the rear of the building led to cramped jail cells, rank with the smell of mold and despair. Next to the cells lay cluttered rooms bursting with massive police files, which included exacting dossiers on anyone who had ever suffered the misfortune of attracting the attention of the French police.

Just off the file room, a creaking staircase twisted up three stories to the pair of attic rooms newly assigned to the experimental cause of forensic investigation. These were equipped with a microscope, a spectroscope, a collection of basic chemicals, and a Bunsen burner. Presiding over the Lilliputian space was a slim man whose aquiline nose and hooded eyes lent him the keen expression of a benign hawk.

His name was Edmond Locard. Within two years his small attic rooms would become world famous as the formidable Police Laboratory of Lyon, and he would earn the sobriquet of “The Sherlock Holmes of France.”

Born in 1877, Locard was a child of ten when The Great Detective made his initial appearance in A Study in Scarlet, and the two scientific investigators, one fictional and one very real, developed and matured simultaneously, Holmes often providing the source of the Frenchman’s inspiration. (Holmes, of course, had French forbears, and perhaps this made Locard find him particularly congenial.)

As eclectic in his interests as Holmes was, but more traditional in his pursuits of them, Locard acquired formal degrees in both medicine and law. He served an apprenticeship with the great forensic specialist Lacassagne, worked with the criminologist Bertillon in Paris, and traveled the world studying police investigation before he undertook the directorship of the tiny Lyon laboratory. Passionate and knowledgeable about music and theater, he wrote criticism of both for Lyon newspapers. A generous man, he repeatedly gave full credit to his fictional mentor.

In his 1929 paper on “The Analysis of Dust Traces,” Locard wrote:

I hold that a police expert, or an examining magistrate, would not find it a waste of his time to read Doyle’s novels. For, in the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the detective is repeatedly asked to diagnose the origin of a speck of mud, which is nothing but moist dust. The presence of a spot on a shoe or pair of trousers immediately made known to Holmes the particular quarter of London from which his visitor had come, or the road he had traveled in the suburbs. A spot of clay and chalk originated in Horsham; a peculiar reddish bit of mud could be found nowhere but at the entrance to the post office in Wigmore Street.

And urging his readers to seriously study Holmes, Locard added:

One might profitably re-read . . . the stories entitled: A Study in Scarlet, The Five Orange Pips, and The Sign of Four. Elsewhere Holmes insists upon the interest and fascination to be found in collecting tobacco ashes . . . (The Boscombe Valley Mystery.) On the latter point one should again read The Sign of the Four, and also The Resident Patient.

Sharing Holmes’ regard for the importance of dust, Locard examined specimens gathered from unusual sources—including human ears, eyebrows and nostrils.

In one experiment, he was able to accurately discern the occupations of 92 of 100 individuals merely by careful analysis of dust gathered from their eyebrows—flour in the baker’s, soot in the chimney sweep’s, iron filings in the locksmith’s. (There is no record of what, if anything, was discovered in the eyebrows of an accountant.)

One hundred years ago forensic science was still a generalist’s field—and Locard, like Holmes, vigorously researched and wrote extensively about fingerprints, trace evidence, document examination, tobacco, seeds, insects, and other detritus found at crime scenes. His passion for experimentation led him to burn his own fingertips to determine if fingerprints can be permanently removed this way.  He painfully discovered they could not.

He was responsible for the incarceration of countless unpleasant persons—forgers, murderers, sexually repressed purveyors of poison pen letters, and enterprising thieves, including a burgling monkey with a penchant for jewelry.

Like Mr. Holmes, Locard was intensely interested in cryptology, and in September of 1914, much to the relief of the French Command he helped to break the German cipher, preventing an early French defeat.

In Locard’s seven volume study of forensic science, Traité de Criminalistique, he made the statement which has influenced generations of forensic investigators: “Il est impossible au malfaiteur d’agir avec l’intensité que suppose l’action criminelle sans laisser des traces de son passage” (It is impossible for a criminal to act considering the intensity of the crime, without leaving a trace).

This is often referred to as “Locard’s Exchange Principle” and sometimes given as “Every Contact Leaves Trace.” This abbreviated version, while true enough, neglects the emotional sensitivity of Locard’s observation—the idea that the criminal will be undone by his own tension and excitement.

One fine example of this is a celebrated train murder of 1864 in London, in which Franz Müller, having killed a fellow passenger, departed the scene carrying the victim’s hat, which he had mistakenly exchanged for his own easily identifiable one, left behind with the body.

A recent example is provided by the terrorist who, in May 2010, left a car loaded with explosives in New York City’s very busy Times Square. Evidently the “emotion of the moment” caused him to forget all his keys in the vehicle, leaving him unable to access either his getaway car, parked eight blocks away, or his domicile. As he also left his hazard lights on, the attention of the authorities was prompt. Locard, no doubt, would have smiled.

(How the tyro terrorist managed the feat of locating not one, but two free parking places in mid-Manhattan, remains a puzzlement.)

Edmond Locard died in 1966, but his work remains relevant and vital today, and tied forever to insights and adventures of Mr. Holmes. In May 2009, Dr. Locard was posthumously awarded a decoration in honor of his contributions to science.  It was given by the Société Sherlock Holmes de France.

Editor’s Note: E.J. Wagner’s website can be found at http://www.ejwagner-crimehistorian.com/
Her web log is http://EJDissectingroom.wordpress.com/

Channeling Olivia; or Miracle on Mosholu Parkway

An amazing number of people who have never visited the Bronx have strong opinions about it. Their view tends to be of a bleak urban area, convulsed by gang warfare and illuminated by fires set by antisocial delinquents.

In reality, the Bronx, (where I spent my childhood), is  a place of infinite variety. Its  marvels  include extensive parkland,  a number of lavish  estates, spectacular river views, world famous botanical and zoological gardens, and Arthur Avenue, the main location for southern Italian  foods  in the northeast U.S..

(True, there is at present a dearth of good  kosher deli’s, but this could change.)

Edgar Allen Poe’s dismal little cottage is in the Bronx, and so are a number of great medical facilities, such as  Montefiore and Jacobi.

Woodlawn Cemetery, the last stop for many interesting and celebrated dead folks, is in the Bronx. (It’s near Montefiore, but only by coincidence). City Island is part of the Bronx, and more like a New England fishing village than may be found in most of New England.

The Bronx  is where I first met Sherlock Holmes, thanks to a kind and creative English teacher. It is also where I applied the Great Detective’s problem solving methods to culinary questions. As Hanukkah begins on December 1st this year, it seems a good time to post this.

(A version of this article appeared in the Long Island Times Beacon Record.)

On Hanukkah, as we do each year, Olivia’s ghost and I will make latkes.

The ritual of producing slightly paranormal potato pancakes began years ago in the Mosholu Parkway apartment in the Bronx where I grew up.

My parents’ much-loved friend and housekeeper Olivia had died before I was born, but tales of her culinary prowess, her storytelling gifts, and her extraordinary management skills were a constant part of our family’s dinner table conversation.

My mother, a drama teacher who worked long hours, had a limited knowledge of cooking but a well-developed appreciation of good food. Unable to remember Olivia without tears, she had lovingly preserved Olivia’s kitchen tools—Olivia’s big cream-colored mixing bowls, Olivia’s worn but effective masher, Olivia’s businesslike grater, Olivia’s huge wooden spoons—and with these I largely taught myself to cook.

But although I had Olivia’s tools, I lacked Olivia’s recipes. She had been a master who worked by inspired instinct. I managed to approximate some dishes by carefully following my parents’ detailed descriptions, but the historic latke stubbornly eluded me.

“Good,” my father, Max, would say, manfully chomping on my latest effort. “Very good, kid, but, not Olivia’s. … Maybe you’ll hit it next year?” he’d add wistfully.

By the time I was 15 I was determined to meet my father’s challenge and find the latke secret.

My mother had invited a dozen Hanukkah guests—including, she said apologetically, “The Difficult Ones (a cousin ‘Who’d Had a Tragic Life,’ an uncle ‘Who Had a Condition’),” a few friends, and some neighbors, including “Seymour Who Lives Alone Like a Stone.”

It would be a large audience for a new cook, but at least, I hoped, not a threatening one.

With my father as sous chef and adviser I began serious research.

Week after week, I shredded and grated into Olivia’s bowl. I tried onions and shallots, matzo meal and flour, eggs and no eggs. Olive oil and chicken fat. Nyafat and Crisco. I fried and I cried. Platters of latkes of various sizes and shapes covered the counter, the top of the fridge, the windowsills. My father nibbled and critiqued.

“Very good. Really is. But . . . it’s not Olivia’s.”

Finally, the night before Hanukkah, exhausted and demoralized, as I was washing the onion smell from my hands, a realization hit me. The task was impossible. This Hebraic Holy Grail could not be found. I would never find Olivia’s latkes. They had assumed such mythic force that no real latke would ever suffice. I felt a great accepting calm—as if I had received a warm hug from a dear friend. I marched into the kitchen to share the epiphany with my father.

He was munching thoughtfully on a latke.

“You’ve really done it kid!” he said.

“I’m proud of you! This,” he proclaimed, waving the latke at me, “is Olivia’s Latke!”

“Really?” I gasped.

My mother’s opinion was requisitioned. Slightly distracted, as she had been frantically rewriting the third act of the holiday play she was directing, she dutifully tried the specified pancake.

“You’re right!” she said, her eyes reddening. “It’s Olivia’s!” There was much hugging and laughing and marveling.

“Wonderful!” my father said. “It’s almost as if Olivia taught you. You do remember exactly which batch this one came from?” he demanded.

“Certainly,” I lied.

So my parents went happily to bed and I stayed up frantically tasting and frying. Thankfully there were only four possibilities in the kitchen that night and so by the next evening I had figured it out.

The guests arrived, and we put both leaves in the dining room table and brought in extra chairs from the living room and we all ate Olivia’s latkes by the light of the menorah.

“The Difficult Ones” relaxed, comparatively. The cousin “Who’d Had a Tragic Life” didn’t cry much and sang only a few sad Russian songs. We all debated the relative merits of sour cream or applesauce as accompaniments to latkes.

“Seymour Who Lives Alone Like a Stone” sat next to “Fanny Who Still Lives With Her Parents, Poor Thing” and actually spoke to her twice, which made my matchmaking mother giddy with joy.

Bursting with adolescent pride I listened as my father told everyone how hard and long I had worked and how Olivia would have been proud of me.

And then, looking at me down the length of the table, he remarked, “You know one of the things Olivia used to make that was terrific? Mushroom and barley soup. Boy, how I loved that soup. And no one knows just how she made it  . . .”

Olivia’s latkes

(I have adjusted this for a food processor. Olivia used a fiendish hand grater.)

Ingredients:

2 lb russet potatoes

Large sweet onion, chilled in fridge.

2 eggs

About 6 tablespoons matzo meal

About ¾ tsp salt

Fresh ground pepper (about 8 good grinds)

Oil for frying

Directions:

Peel potatoes, cut in chunks. Process ⅔ of them with steel blade—do not get too mushy. Spread on clean tea towel.

Process onion same way. Put onion in bowl with eggs, salt and pepper.

Shred the remaining potatoes with shredding blade in processor (the combination of textures is one of Olivia’s special contributions).

Put shredded potatoes along with grated ones in the tea towel. Fold towel over, wring as hard as you can over sink (contemplate hateful politician as you do this—I’m sure you’ll find no shortage of candidates).

Put wrung-out potatoes in bowl with egg and onion. Mix. Cover with matzo meal (if you are out of matzo meal, panko works well). Toss with fork. Do not over-mix. Mixture should just hold together—if it doesn’t, add more matzo meal, a little at a time, until it does.

Have oven at about 250 °F. Spread paper towels over work surfaces, enough to drain latkes (Olivia used brown paper grocery bags).

Heat two large heavy frying pans containing about ¼ to ½ inch of oil (Olivia used chicken fat. In the interest of long-term survival I suggest olive or canola oil).

When oil is hot enough to brown a bread crumb as soon as it hits the pan, begin spooning batter in pan using heaping tablespoon for each. Flatten with pancake turner. Flip when crisp and brown on bottom side (taste an early one to see if there is enough salt. If not, add salt to batter. Potatoes are not all alike). Drain on paper towels as they are done. Keep warm in oven.

Serve with applesauce or sour cream—or yogurt.

These can be frozen. To freeze, fry to a lighter color than if to be served immediately.

Spread out on a cookie sheet, place in freezer. When frozen, repack in plastic bags.

Heat in oven at 375 °F about 10 minutes.