The Memory Board at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory - The Origins of the Yeast/Worm Sing-Along

The "tradition" of singing songs at the banquet of the CSH courses began one summer when Erik Jorgensen, a lowly worm and former instructor of the neophyte nematode course, was constantly singing songs in the late evening at the bar in the bottom of Blackford Hall. It seems that the wormy instructors had admitted one or more football hooligans from England to their course that summer. The exalted yeast instructors were not surprised about the clientele of the worm course, knowing they were lucky to even attract a few hooligans. Jorgensen was totally enamored with the bawdy tunes and he encouraged the entire worm class to join in to the cacophony that sounded like a collection of howling banshees singing horribly out of tune.

Night after night we endured the torture. Eventually, the silver throated yeast class declared that they had enough and decided to best the lowly worms (a rather trivial task) by singing an extremely clever song, in perfect pitch with four part harmony, at the final banquet. The lyrics were as flattering to the worms as we could possibly imagine and much more than they deserved. And so began the tradition of serenading the worms at the CSH banquet.

Yeast Genetics and Genomics Course 2005
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