A New Beginning For Adolescents in Our Criminal Justice System

As I step away from the bench, I am feeling more than ever what Dr. Martin Luther King called “the fierce urgency of now.” Now is the time for all of us who care about justice in this country to roll up our sleeves and get to work. We may be in a moment of crisis, but as the saying goes, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. We urgently need to change our focus from jails and prisons to treatment, education, job training. So where is the “new beginning”? The “new beginning” is not a search for new ideas. We do not need new ideas. We know what works, and we sure do know what does not work. The “new beginning” is with each of us—new resolve, new enthusiasm, new dedication to the return of America. It is what President Obama described as “a new era of responsibility, a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.” I hope you will join me in the difficult task of making a difference for adolescents whose lives intersect with the justice system

Shedding New Light on a Pennsylvania Painter: Finding R. Fibich and His Graveyard

The painting that would become known as the “York Springs Graveyard” (see cover illustration) was sold to Connecticut folk-art collectors Jean and Howard Lipman in about 1939 by Joe Kindig, an antiques dealer from York, PA. The 18” x 24” oil painting on canvas, of mid-nineteenth-century people and carriages at a cemetery, with cattle in the middle distance, is signed “R. Fibich.” The New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, NY, subsequently acquired the painting from the Lipmans. It was cleaned, documented, studied, and then exhibited at various venues including the Primitives Gallery of Harry Stone (1942); the Union College of Art Gallery, Schenectady (1951); the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, Texas (1956); the M. Knoedler Gallery, NYC (1956); the Roberson Gallery, Binghamton NY (1966-67); the New York State Fair at Syracuse (1970); the DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA (1972); the Whitney Museum, NYC (1974), and Smith College Museum of Art Collection ((1975). In addition to inclusion in The Flowering of American Folk Art: 1776-1976, which was published in conjunction with the 1974 Whitney Bicentennial Exhibit, it also appeared in American Primitive Painting (Metropolitan Miniature Series, 1953) and in Life magazine, where readers were solicited for any information about the artist. The Flowering of American Folk Art: 1776-1976 index of artists’ biographies states “R. Fibich (active c. 1850). Known for a single oil landscape of a York Springs, Pa., graveyard.” [excerpt

The U.S Constitution: The Original American Dream

Adapted from Remarks delivered at Law Day ceremonies May 1, 1996, at Court of Appeals Hall, Albany, New York

A New Beginning For Adolescents in Our Criminal Justice System

As I step away from the bench, I am feeling more than ever what Dr. Martin Luther King called “the fierce urgency of now.” Now is the time for all of us who care about justice in this country to roll up our sleeves and get to work. We may be in a moment of crisis, but as the saying goes, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. We urgently need to change our focus from jails and prisons to treatment, education, job training. So where is the “new beginning”? The “new beginning” is not a search for new ideas. We do not need new ideas. We know what works, and we sure do know what does not work. The “new beginning” is with each of us—new resolve, new enthusiasm, new dedication to the return of America. It is what President Obama described as “a new era of responsibility, a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.” I hope you will join me in the difficult task of making a difference for adolescents whose lives intersect with the justice system

A Tribute to Hon. George Bundy Smith -- Colleague, Teacher, and Friend

A tribute to Judge George Bundy Smith, discussing his work ethic both as a judge, professor, and mentor, his principles as a jurist, and his personal qualities

CO observations of nearby galaxies and the efficiency of star formation

The CO distributions and total molecular content of 160 galaxies were observed using the 14 meter millimeter telescope of the FCRAO. For the luminous, relatively face-on Sc galaxies, the azimuthally averaged CO distributions are centrally peaked, while for the Sb and Sa galaxies the Co distributions often exhibit central CO holes up to 5 kpc across. None of the Sc galaxies have CO distributions which resemble the Milky Way. A general correlation was found between total CO and IR luminosities in galaxies. The scatter in this relation is highly correlated with dust temperature. No strong correlation of IR luminosities was found with HI masses, and it was thereby concluded that the infrared emission is more directly tied to the molecular content of galaxies. It is suggested that galaxies which have high Star Formation Effiencies (SFEs) produce more stars per unit molecular mass, thereby increasing the average temperature of the dust in the star forming regions. Irregular galaxies and galaxies previously identified as mergers have the highest observed star formation efficiencies. For the mergers, evidence was found that the IR/CO luminosity ratio increases with the merger age estimated by Joseph and Wright (1985)

Reimann's "Habitual Hyperthermia" Responding to Hormone Therapy.

A 25-year-old woman presented with fever of unknown origin, exhibiting malaise and low-grade fevers in evenings. These fevers exhibited a pattern of starting mid-menstrual cycle with resolution around the onset of menses, matching a pattern of "habitual hyperthermia" reported by H. Reimann in the 1930s. Extensive workup was unremarkable, and the fevers improved on oral synthetic estrogen and progesterone therapy