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June 2004
Random Profile: Raisa Leifer
Every other month, Staff Notes Monthly spotlights
a stochastically chosen staff member. This month we profile
Raisa Leifer, a computer operator in the Scientific Computing
Division.
A veteran of the computer
industry: Raisa
taught Russian language and literature in Ukraine before
moving to the United States in the 1980s.
Raisa Leifer |
“How am I going to teach here if I can’t speak
English?” she asked herself on arrival. So she made
a career switch and has now spent the past 20 years in the
computer industry. “I know that whatever I put into
the computer, it will understand,” she says.
Raisa has been at NCAR for about
six months. Her previous job was with Coors Brewing Company
in Golden, but most of her experience has been with small
geophysical companies. “It’s
very interesting because working for small companies you
do everything,” she says. “Data processing, digitizing,
plotting, mapping, filming, splicing.”
As a computer operator,
Raisa’s schedule includes both
day and night shifts. “It’s nice because it’s
flexible, and every shift has different issues,” she
says.
An ear for
languages: Raisa was born in Lviv, a
city that belonged to Poland before it was annexed
to the Soviet Union in 1940 as part of western Ukraine.
She knows six languages: Russian, German, Yiddish,
Polish, Ukrainian, and English. When she was growing
up, her neighbors spoke Polish; she learned Russian,
Ukrainian, and German at school; and she spoke Yiddish
at home. “But I’ve forgotten how to speak
Polish and German,” she says. “To keep
language alive, you need to speak with somebody.”
Raisa speaks Russian to her
three adult sons, who usually answer her in English. “I always try
to keep the Russian language and customs at home,” she
says. “I very often switch between languages.
I can start in Russian and finish in English. Only
my children will understand me.”
She says she prefers Russian
because there is more freedom in the language. “I love the Russian
language. For me it is the most beautiful language
in the world,” she says. “It is very
rich and colorful with thousand of idioms and expressions.
You can create hundreds of words from one root word
by playing with suffixes and prefixes.”
Cooking,
music, grandkids: One of Raisa’s favorite
activities is cooking. “I’m a great cook,” she
says.
Mostly she likes to cook
Russian and Jewish dishes. If she could prepare
any meal, she’d make borscht,
a type of beet soup, followed by pelmeni. Pelmeni
is a Siberian dish similar to ravioli, stuffed with
meat and spices. Traditionally, hunters would stock
cabins with frozen pelmeni, then boil it in melted
snow throughout the winter. She would also cook pierogis,
another type of dumpling stuffed with potatoes or
meat. And for dessert, a flaky French dough with
layered cream.
“I don’t have any recipes,” she says. “This
is all in
my head.”
In addition to cooking, Raisa likes classical music,
including opera, ballet, and symphony. She gets out several
times a month to see live performances.
She also likes history, literature,
and the outdoors. “I used to live near the Carpathians and would
take my students on trips, so I like hiking,” she
says.
One of the reasons she enjoys
work at NCAR is because of the Mesa Lab’s location. “I love the
surroundings,” she says. “You don’t
need to go anywhere. There’s beauty here.”
Raisa has three sons and one stepson. One of her
sons owns an aquarium business in Denver, and another
works at Kohl’s. The youngest just graduated
from CU-Boulder in aerospace engineering.
She also has three granddaughters. “I only
had boys, but now I have girls also,” she says. •Nicole
Gordon
Also in this issue...
A site to behold: www.ucar.edu
Identifying
storms that produce tornadoes
A
fast way to measure PAN
Commuter
of the Year
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