Friday, April 13, 2018

2018 The Secret to Success

Steven B. Zwickel
April, 2018

A lot of people tense up as soon as I tell them that I am going to explain the secret to success. They think I am going to tell them that the secret to success is hard work. People expect to hear that, even though they don’t really want to hear that. People are hoping you will give them a secret shortcut that doesn’t involve having to get up and go to work every day. But, they expect me to tell them that the secret to success is hard work. It confirms their own beliefs that, by working hard, they are on the right path to success.

Hard work can help a person become a success. It may help and it (probably) won’t hurt, but it is not a sure way to reach success. Millions of people have worked very hard and not been successful. At the same time, it seems obvious that many people who didn’t work very hard at all have become successful. So there is no correlation between hard work and success.

I am not going to tell anyone to find something you love doing and turn it into a career. If it did that, I would be afraid that far too many people would try to make a living ciriticizing other people’s taste in music. If you have a passion and can make a career out of it, more power to you. Few of us are able to follow that path. I suspect many people put that sort of thing off until they are retired and less concerned about making enough money to live on. Besides, turning a hobby into a business is very, very hard work and I already explained why that is not the secret of success.

The secret to success is something that is, unfortunately, beyond our control. It is luck. Good luck. Great good luck.

You can’t make luck and you can’t make yourself lucky. You can put yourself in a position where, should you get a lucky break, you can take advantage of it. Opening yourself up to opportunities as they come along is one way to encourage Fortune to smile on you. Preparing yourself with a solid set of skills would also make it easier if and when luck comes along. There’s no official list of skills, so you’ll just have to learn to do everything and hope that you are ready when luck shows up.


Good luck!

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Ask Mr. Advice


Ask Mr. Advice

“It depends!”

Dear Mr. Advice,
I am studying engineering, but I am thinking of changing majors.
What should I do?
                                  —Puzzled in Madison


Dear Puzz,
It depends.
You certainly want to follow the guidelines provided by the university before you change majors. Do not change majors on an empty stomach. You should wait at least 12 hours after eating chocolate, red wine, aged cheese, or fatty meat. Do not change majors if you are taking medication for a chronic condition or death. Consult a physician if you are a male or female who is pregnant, nursing, may become pregnant, or have an erection lasting more than four hours. Side effects include nausea, blurred vision, blurred hearing, blurred speaking, and blurred thinking.
US citizens should notify the State Department if they plan to change majors outside the country. International students may have to leave the country for 30 days before re-entering after changing majors.
As a courtesy to others, please turn off your electronic devices before you change majors. You may lose rollover minutes if you switch majors outside the service area. Some restrictions may apply. Use majors before the “Sell by” date printed on your transcript. Recycle old majors properly—carry them out to the curb on collection day and place them with required and senior-level courses facing on-coming traffic. 
If you decide to switch majors, take your old major to the no-kill humane society shelter. Do not switch majors in direct sunlight; always wear sunscreen. 
Connect the red wire on your old major to the red terminal on the new major, then connect the black wire to some other part of the university before starting a new major. Shower off before and after you enter the pool. Running and horseplay are forbidden and will get you ejected from the pool area. Do not dive into the shallow end.
If a major has been opened or tampered with, report it to the Chancellor’s Office immediately. Breaking the seal on a new major may void the warranty. Unused majors may be returned within 30 days for a full refund. Re-stocking fees may apply.
Check your rear-view mirror before changing majors. Always wear a seatbelt when changing majors. Put your seatback and tray table in an upright position and turn off all electronic devices.
Close all windows and applications before you change majors. Restart your education by pressing the On button for five minutes until a green or red light comes on. You will need your old password, a new password (eight or more characters, one must be punctuation, one must be a numeral, and one must be a capital letter) with an Admin to change majors.
Changing majors is a personal life-style choice and taunting or teasing someone who has changed majors is considered a serious offense at the university. You must have exact change. Do not talk to the driver while the vehicle is in motion. Stand behind the yellow line. Exit via the rear door. Do not leave baggage unattended.
Pre-heat the oven to 300° F before you change majors. Majors should reach room temperature before changing. The procedure involves a local anesthetic and a small incision that will probably not leave a noticeable scar. Feel for a pulse and check airways for obstructions before switching majors.
After you change majors, you may receive a notice from the IRS telling you to file a form in compliance with subsection 47 (h) 3, explaining why you are letting your family and friends down. Depending on which major you choose, you may receive an annual “Tsk, tsk” Notice from the Treasury Department.
If you experience anxiety, shortness of breath, or trouble sleeping after switching majors, you may be able to use your extra miles to pay for an upgrade to Business or First Class. No part of your new major may be rebroadcast without the permission of Major League Baseball. Help is available for those who can’t help themselves from changing majors frequently. There are support groups in the area that meet on a regular basis. Most of them welcome walk-ins, but certain majors are not a good fit, so call ahead to reserve a table at least three hours before you change majors.
Some of my notes got mixed up before I wrote this, but the advice is certainly as good as you’ll get anywhere!

2018 Writing a Guide to Magazine & Newsletter Photography

Steven B. Zwickel
March, 2018

📷 As part of my job at the University of Wisconsin, I am Faculty Advisor to the student organization that publishes the Wisconsin Engineer Magazine (WEM). One area the students need help in is taking usable photographs to illustrate the articles in the magazine. The staff is composed entirely of undergraduate students, most of whom are majoring in engineering. Their photographic skills range from none to very experienced.
I searched in many places for a book that would teach them the basics of photography— nothing fancy, just enough to make clear, interesting photos that could be printed in black and white (or color, if the budget permitted). In 2000, the student who was magazine photo department head wrote and illustrated a very good basic guide to taking photos for the magazine. But, because she was an expert photographer herself, a lot of what she put in the handbook was too complicated for the staff photographers, some of whom had never used an SLR camera before. Nevertheless, I was able to revise her work and turn it into a usable Guide to WEM Photography that did the job for several  years.
Then the smartphone put a camera into the hands of millions of people who had never taken pictures before. Not only did it make cameras ubiquitous, using them is fairly easy and the quality of digital images has steadily improved. Unfortunately, the smartphone became so good as a camera and  made it so easy to take photos that people didn’t bother to learn the basics of visual composition and graphic design. We started to see students joining the magazine photo department who had never taken photos with anything other than a smartphone. Our photo editors did a good job of training them to use a digital SLR, but the learning curve can be steep and time was limited.
      In 2015, I went on another hunt for a decent text that would introduce students to the basics of taking photos for the magazine. Even though content on the internet has exploded in size, I still couldn’t find a book on the topic.
      Photography books tend to showcase the work of professional photojournalists and fashion photographers, or they teach readers how to get started in photographing weddings. The photos you’ll find in WEM are of professors and scientists, experimental labs, and the cool inventions and devices engineers come up with. Needless to say, guides explaining how to shoot lions hunting gazelles in the veldt or models wearing the latest swimwear in Majorca are not helpful. The terminology they use is confusing to anyone who doesn’t have a good background in the field, and there is an assumption among some writers that no one should be taking photos who isn’t capable of spending thousands of dollars on equipment.
No one, it seems, has written a simple guide for the non-professional photographers who illustrate the thousands of  newsletters and magazines put out by schools, companies, religious organizations, community groups, etc. Apparently, the job taking pictures to illustrate the articles is given to the writer/editor, who may hand it off to “some guy who owns a good camera.”
What the WEM photo staff, and anyone else who wants to use photos in a non-fashion, non-travel newsletter or magazine need was a simple manual without a lot of bells and whistles. I don’t claim to be a professional photographer, but I have been taking pictures for 60 years, I used to have my own darkroom, I am an expert user of Adobe Photoshop, and I know my way around different types of cameras. I put together two guidebooks for the WEM staffers—one on taking pictures of people, the other on taking photos of places and things.
Portrait Photography: Using Photos of People to Illustrate Articles, came out in 2015. There are no examples of tracking lions in the wild and no tips on lighting fashion models. I divided the material into four chapters:
    Working with a Human Subject
    Lighting the Subject and the Scene
    Composition
    Preparing Photographs for Printing: Black & White and Color
I made the advice given in each chapter simple and straightforward, with a minimum of technical jargon (although I did provide definitions of terms in case a reader wants to try using one of those other guidebooks).
To illustrate the guide, I used my own photos and added examples of how the photos could be used to design a magazine layout. While the material in Portrait Photography: Using Photos of People to Illustrate Articles was prepared specifically for the college students who work on the Wisconsin Engineer magazine, the information really applies to anyone who takes on the responsibility of illustrating any magazine, program, or newsletter.

If you would like a copy of Portrait Photography: Using Photos of People to Illustrate Articles, please contact me at ProfSBZ@gmail.com.

The follow-up to Portrait Photography is Photos of Places and Things Using Interesting Photos to Illustrate Articles © 2016, Steven B. Zwickel.
    The Exposure Triangle
    Photos of Places
    Photos of Things
    Captions

  ======================
Portrait Photography:
Using Photos of People to Illustrate Articles
Contents
📷 Working with a Human Subject
    Kinds of Portraits
      Orientation
      Types of portraits
      Sizes
    Poses
      Warming up
      Smiling
      Where should the subject look?
      Sitting, standing, leaning, and bending
      Clothing and Props
📷 Lighting the subject and the scene
    Lighting Outdoors
      Sunshine and Clouds
      Bracket your exposures
    Indoor  Lighting
      Shooting in Low Light
      Use a Tripod with a low ISO in low light
      Backlighting
      White Balance
    Using a Light Kit
    Catchlights
📷 Composition
    Taking photos of more than one subject
      Two people (not always a Couple!)
      Group Photos
      Compensating for some physical attributes
    Camera Angle and Viewpoint
      Background
    The “Rules” of Composition
      Rule of Thirds
    Balancing Elements
      Composition: the camera “Portrait” setting
    Crop images
      Why crop?
      Cropping tips
      Size photos proportionately
      Cropping in the camera
📷 Black & White and Color
    Choosing the correct mode
    Black and White Printing
    Converting Color to Black & White
      Color to grayscale in the camera
      Color to black & white with Adobe Bridge
      Color to black & white with Photoshop
      Hue/Saturation
      Black & White
      Black & White Properties
      Desaturate
    Desaturation is just the first step
    Increasing Contrast
    Photoshop tools for adjusting contrast
      Brightness/Contrast
      Levels
      Curves
      Shadows/Highlights
    Ethics and Photoshop

Monday, January 16, 2017

2017 Immigrant name changes

Why Sam Ting and Sean Ferguson Never Were: The Ellis Island Myth

Steven B. Zwickel, 2016

“…the idea that an entire family’s name was changed by one clerk—especially one at Ellis Island—is seldom supported by historical research and analysis.
American name change stories tend to be apocryphal, that is, they developed later to explain events shrouded in the mist of time. Given the facts of US immigration procedures at Ellis Island, the … story becomes suspect. In the story, the immigrant arrives at Ellis Island and a record is then created by someone who cannot communicate with the immigrant, and so assigns the immigrant a descriptive name. {See the Sam Ting and Sean Ferguson jokes in the endnotes}
In fact, passenger lists were not created at Ellis Island. They were created abroad, beginning close to the immigrant’s home, when the immigrant purchased his ticket. It is unlikely that anyone at the local steamship office was unable to communicate with this man. His name was most likely recorded with a high degree of accuracy at that time.
It is true that immigrant names were mangled in the process. The first ticket clerk may have misspelled the name (assuming there was a “correct spelling”—a big assumption). If the immigrant made several connections in his journey, several records might be created at each juncture. Every transcription of his information afforded an opportunity to misspell or alter his name. Thus the more direct the immigrant’s route to his destination, the less likely his name changed in any way.
The report that the clerk “wrote down” the immigrants surname is suspect. During immigration inspection at Ellis Island, the immigrant confronted an inspector who had a passenger list already created abroad. That inspector operated under rules and regulations ordering that he was not to change the identifying information found for any immigrant UNLESS requested by the immigrant, and unless inspection demonstrated the original information was in error.
Furthermore, it is nearly impossible that no one could communicate with the immigrant. One third of all immigrant inspectors at Ellis Island early this century were themselves foreign-born, and all immigrant inspectors spoke any of three languages. They were assigned to inspect immigrant groups based on the languages they spoke. If the inspector could not communicate, Ellis Island employed an army of interpreters full time, and would call in temporary interpreters under contract to translate for immigrants speaking the most obscure tongues.
Despite these facts, the Ellis-Island-name-change-story (or Castle Garden, or earlier versions of the same story) is as American as apple pie (and probably as common in Canada).
From “American Names” by Marian L. Smith, INS Historian <http://www.iabsi.com/gen/public/imm_names.htm#changing_names>

Read more about how family names were Not Changed at Ellis Island 

"Why Your Family Name Was Not Changed at Ellis Island (and One That Was)"
Philip Sutton, Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History & Genealogy
New York Public Library July 2, 2013    https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-island
++++++
"Did Ellis Island Officials Really Change the Names of Immigrants?"
On the 125th anniversary of the famous portal to the U.S., history shows inspectors were not the ones changing people’s names
Alicia Ault
++++++++
"They Changed Our Name at Ellis Island: Truth is, they almost certainly did not, and here are the reasons why"
+++++++++
"Was Great Grandpa's Name Changed at Ellis Island?" There is not one shred of evidence to support the claim that officials changed the names of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island.
+++++++++
"Why Your Family Name Did Not Come From a Mistake at Ellis Island"
Arika Okrent    
++++++++
"Ellis Island: Was your name changed?"
Schelly Talalay Dardashti, MyHeritage’s US Genealogy Advisor
++++++++
"No, Your Ancestors’ Names Were Not Changed at Ellis Island: Part 2, The Truth"
Caitlin Hollander
++++++++
"Jewish Americans changed their names, but not at Ellis Island"
Kirsten Femaclich
++++++
"GovDocs to the Rescue! Debunking an Immigration Myth": The charge against immigration officials, however, is provably false: no names were written down at Ellis Island, and thus no names were changed there. 
Rosemary Meszaros and Katherine Pennavaria
+++++++++
"Immigrant Name Changes"
US Citizenship and Immigration Services
++++++++
A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America
[NYU Press, 2018, 256 pp]
Kirsten Fermaglich "refutes a number of widely cherished folk myths about the topic, namely that Jewish names were regularly changed at Ellis Island and that name-change was an individual (and male) strategy that indicated a rejection of Jewishness."
++++++++
 "Quote-unquote." "NEARLY ALL these name-change stories are false. Names were not changed at Ellis Island."
VJ Cannato
Irish Literary Supplement, Vol. 30; Spring, 2011 
++++++++
"No, family names were not changed"
Eastman, Dick
Swedish American Genealogist:  (2012) Vol. 32 : No. 2 , Article 4. https://digitalcommons.augustana.edu/swensonsag/vol32/iss2/4
++++++++

Changing Names

If most immigrants had official documents with their real names when they came to the US, when and how did they change their names?     The short answer is that before 1906, the only legal way to change one’s name was to get a court order making the change. After 1906, most people changed their names when they became naturalized citizens. The long answer can be found at United States Naturalization and Citizenship https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/United_States_Naturalization_and_Citizenship#Naturalization_From_1790-1906.5B2.5D     Of course, anyone could use an alias or nickname in daily life, but “When an immigrant’s new name no longer matched that shown on their official immigration record (ship passenger list), he or she might face difficulties voting, in legal proceedings, or naturalization”. <https://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy>
     After 1906, most people changed their names officially when they became naturalized citizens. When the INS was created in 1906, naturalization records were created to process naturalizations and keep track of immigrants in the United States. Copies of these documents are in the possession of the former INS, now United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). <www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis>

Searching court records

Searching for official court records of name changes can be daunting. The changes were made in both federal and individual state courts. If you know where your ancestor lived in the US, you can try finding the name change records in state archives.
Try searching online using [State Name] + name change records. This is what I found searching for records in New York State:

New York State Records of Name Changes

New York State Archives Record Series Cited ›http://www.archives.nysed.gov/research/res_topics_gen_naturalization_namehttp://www.archives.nysed.gov/research/res_topics_gen_naturalization_name 
“Many immigrants to New York legally changed their names in order to simplify the spelling, or to adopt an American -sounding name. Prior to 1875 a change in a personal name could be accomplished through a special act of the Legislature. In addition, an 1847 statute authorized a court proceeding for the same purpose. Any person over age 21 could petition a county-level court to issue an order changing his or her name. 
“Starting in 1861 and continuing through 1912, lists of names changed by the courts (stating the old and new names, date of change, and court ordering the change) were published in the annual session laws of the Legislature. The court order changing a personal name is recorded in the county clerk's office in the county where the person resides. The name changes published in the session laws are indexed in each volume. 
“If you know the year in which a person changed his or her name, you can find name changes by the Legislature and the courts listed in:
General Index to the Laws of the State of New York, 1777-1901 (Albany: 1902), vol. 2, pp. 1309-87 
     HathiTrust Digital Library http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hl3jkj  
or 
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112203969532
     Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=cLIwAQAAMAAJ&dq 
and in a supplement for period 1902- 1907 (Albany: 1908), pp. 469-567.General index to the laws of the state of New York, 1902-1907, ...New York (State) pp. 469-567.
     HathiTrust Digital Library http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hl3jkj orhttps://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?view=image;size=100;id=hvd.hl3jkj;page=root;seq=475;num=469     Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=tmMSAAAAYAAJ&pg
Example page from New York State Archives    

New Jersey Legal Name Changes, 1847-1947


Naturalization records

You may be able to determine if a name was changed from naturalization records.
Because immigrants were allowed to naturalize in any court, they often selected the most convenient court. If they lived in New Jersey but worked in New York City, check the courts of New York City for the naturalization records. If an immigrant lived on the border of a county, they may have naturalized in the adjacent county because the courthouse may have been closer.
These online resources include naturalization indexes as well as digital images of naturalization records.
  • « Online Searchable Naturalization Indexes and Records—Free links to naturalization indexes and records arranged by state. Gives statewide indexes and records first, then gives the countywide indexes and records. Updated regularly and a great place to begin searching for naturalization records on the Internet. <www.germanroots.com/naturalization.html>
  • « FamilySearch Historical Records—Free website containing indexes and images of naturalization records. New databases are added monthly. Search by state. <www.familysearch.org/search/collection>
  • « Fold3.com—Paid subscription, but free access is available at the National Archives, at National Archives regional branches, and at Family History Centers that have Internet access. Contains digital images of some of the National Archives collections. Naturalization databases on fold3.com are under the “browse all” link. Under category, click Naturalizations 1700s - Mid 1900s. Use the “search within” box at the bottom of the screen to type in a name. An “advanced search” option that helps narrow down common names when more information is known about the ancestor.
  • « Ancestry.com—Paid subscription website but many public libraries will give you free access. Most of Ancestry’s naturalization records are found under Immigration and Emigration.

New York, County Naturalization Records (Family Search Historical Records)

If you know in which county your ancestor lived and when he or she applied for naturalization, you can browse through images in this collection by visiting the familysearch.org browse page for New York, County Naturalization Records, 1791-1980 at <https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/New_York,_County_Naturalization_Records_(Family_Search_Historical_Records)>
To begin your search it is helpful to know the following:
  • « The full name of your ancestor
  • « The approximate immigration and naturalization dates
  • « The ancestor’s residence

If you do not know this information, check the 1900 census and then calculate the possible year of naturalization based on the date of immigration. The 1920 census may tell you the exact year of immigration or naturalization. If your ancestor naturalized before 1900, check the census records to see when he or she first appeared in the census. This will give you a 10 year window in which they may have immigrated.
Example page from New York County Naturalization Records

Jewish Family Names 

The name “Zwickel” is probably not my family’s original name. Before the Jews of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were “emancipated” in the mid-1800s, Jews were known only by their Hebrew names and as the son or daughter of a Jewish man. {Shmuel’s father was named Yitzhak, so he would be called Shmuel ben Yitzhak.} After emancipation, the Jews were required to take last names.
“Jews in most of Europe did not use surnames until forced to take them by the governments in power from about the time of Napoleon. Before Napoleon, Jews used patronymics (Israel ben Chaim, for example, meaning Israel the son of Chaim). The Napoleonic reforms gave Jews more equal treatment by government but required that they take permanent surnames. The central and eastern European Empires saw the advantages of permanent Jewish surnames in terms of better tracking for taxes and military service. They adopted this requirement in the early 19th century, with less attention to granting more equal treatment for the Jews.”
“Most states required that the selected surnames be in the language of the state, or at least that the names not be Biblical in some senses. The language of the Austrian Empire and of the Germanic states was German. The secular language of the Jews of central and Eastern Europe was Yiddish, a language with substantial roots in medieval German. The language of the Russian Empire was Russian, a Slavic language. Thus the surnames of central and eastern European Jews sound Germanic or Slavic because they are.”
“Sometimes there was indeed a meaning that might translate from a Hebrew term, but in some areas only a limited number of specified names were available for Jews to choose from.

From a submission to Gesher Galicia SIG by Peter Zavon

My own family’s story: Zwickel = Little Beet?

Legend has it that one of our ancestors, desperately trying to avoid serving in the Russian Tsar’s army, slipped across the border from the Russian Pale of Settlement into Poland. He is supposed to have been hidden in a wagonload of beets (or to have had a shock of dark red hair). In either case, when he emerged from his hiding place, someone called him a “Zwickel” a common local term for “beet” and the name stuck. There may be some truth to that: the Yiddish word for beet is tzvik צוויק and the Russian and Ukrainian word for beet is tzv’kl свёкла. The Yiddish word tzviker ערצוויק means pair of tweezers. 
But there are other stories, too: 
  • In German, a “zwickel” is a term used in sewing to describe a gusset, a dart, or a pinched fold of cloth. By extension, it also means a “crotch”. 
  • Wolfgang Zwickel says: The name Zwickel derives from the place where the house stood. In Bavaria, a Zwickel is a street, which is divided in two parts like an Y—a fork in the road. 
  • Michael Cwikiel wrote: the Polish word ćwik means “capon” (a castrated rooster) also used as a nickname for an imbecile. Ćwikl would be a small capon. 
  • Ellyn Randy Zwickel said that in her family’s version Zwickel means “twig in Yiddish and that it is short for a longer name. Possible, but the yiddishdictionaryonline.com translates twig as tsvaygl or צווײַגל.
  • Jonathan Leavitt wrote: “the Zwickel family of Brooklyn was reportedly descended from a Jewish family named RAUCH (German for smoke) or RAUSCH (German for a state of intoxication or inebriation), which lived in Galicia (the southwestern region of Poland), which was part of the Hapsburg (Austro-Hungarian) Empire prior to World War I.” [1] His grandfather supposedly purchased the papers of a dead man named Zwikel and assumed his identity to avoid being drafted into the Austrian Army. The exact same story came from the descendents of Wolf Zwicker (whose name was changed from Zwickel to Zwicker by clerical accident after he came to New York). 
The Russian Czar conscripted Jews for 25 years of service, during which they were brutally treated and many were forced to convert to Christianity. But the Zwikels, living outside the Russian Pale of Settlement (a region where Jewish life was tightly controlled by Russia) did not have to worry about being drafted into the Czar’s army. The Zwikels were subject to Austrian laws, not Russian. They were eligible for service in the Austrian Army. Service in the Habsburg army was a trial, but the term was short and training often lackadaisical. In short, it doesn’t seem like evading the draft was worth the effort. One can find anecdotes about Jews avoiding army service by fleeing the country or by bribing officials (or by their parents failing to register their births!), but no credible source describes the strategy of a Jew buying a dead man’s papers. The Rauch/Rausch story is possible, but unlikely.
  • And I recently found a Yiddish-English dictionary that has a definition for viklen - וויקלען\VIK-len\ Verb \ Past Participle: Geviklt, meaning:
1. To wrap, swaddle.
2. To wind, spin (with the reflexive particle zikh [זיך]).
This word is the root of the word tseviklen (צעוויקלען) - to unroll, unfurl, deploy; as in the expression “Az men hot a kind in vikl, zol men shoyn avekleygn a tsvikl” Already when the child is in diapers, one should start keeping it in check (lit., one should apply a safeguard [to it]).

Conclusion

I have no idea where my family name came from.

Sam Ting and Sean Ferguson

A visitor to New York’s Chinatown was puzzled when he came across a building with the sign “Mendl Plotnik’s Laundry.”     He walked into the shop and found that everyone working there was Chinese. So, he went up to the old Chinese gentleman behind the counter and asked, “How this place got a name like “Mendl Plotnik's Laundry?”     The old man answered, “Ah...everybody ask me that. It name of owner.”     Looking around, the visitor asked, “Is he here?”     “It me," replies the old man, “I am Mendl Plotnik.”     “Really? You're Chinese. How did you get a name like “Mendl Plotnik?”     “Simple", said the old man. “Many, many years ago I came to this country. I stand in line at “Documentation Center of Immigration.” Man in front of me was Jewish man from Poland. Lady at counter look at him and say, ‘What your name?’”     He say, “Mendl Plotnik.”     Then she look at me and ask, “What your name?”     I say, “Sam Ting.”
When Moishe emigrated to the US, he was told by his fellow shipmates that his Yiddish name would not work in America and he needs a new name for himself — one with an American sound. They suggest "Edward Montgomery."
     When Moishe arrived at Ellis Island and he is summoned before the clerk, he is in a highly-nervous state and unable to recall his new name.
     “Name”, asks the clerk and then, trying to be helpful: “nomen?”
     Moishe is stuck, “Ah, ah — och, shoyn fargesn!” (he has “already forgotten”). The Ellis Island clerk promptly writes down the newcomer as “Sean Ferguson.”




[1] In the late 1700s, Poland was absorbed by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. In 1772, during the 1st Partition of Poland, Austria seized all of Galicia. Galician Jews were compelled to adopt German sounding surnames on July 23, 1787, during the reign of Joseph II, (Empress Maria Theresa’s son) following the introduction, in 1781, of the first genuine reforms in Central Europe—Judenreformen und Toleranzpatent (Jew-reforms and Edicts of Tolerance).

Theater Programs are No Longer Interesting

  Theater Programs are No Longer Interesting Steven B. Zwickel July 27, 2026 I Used to Love Theater Programs M y parents, especially my ...