Aztec Classes with My Father: From Nahuatl to Yiddish

Dear Susie,

This email to you has been germinating for several years.

I was a student of your father's— or as I knew him,"Professor Bright"—  at UCLA in the early 1970s.

Bill with his beloved card catalog of ALL the words. © SBright, 1974.

Since reading his obituary in the Times years ago, I have wanted to write you a note expressing my condolences and telling Dr. Bright stories.

I can see the bandana'ed man as I write. In fact, even without knowing him, he was one of the reasons I chose UCLA for grad school.

I had been living in Mexico as a Fulbrighter, studying at the Escuela Nacional de Antropologia and working at the Museo de Antropologia.

After months of fieldwork where I would "run out of questions," I knew something was missing and that I needed to go to graduate school. UCLA came out on top because I wanted to study Nahuatl to do fieldwork with contemporary Aztecs, whose embroidery I had fallen in love with. This may seem a roundabout way to learn a language but you have enter one d…