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A Study of Laser-Induced Fluorescence Back-scattered Amplified Stimulated Emission of Bulk Vapors
No full textA method for the stand-off detection of vapors based on the observation of laser-induced fluorescence back-scattered amplified stimulated emission (LIF-BASE) is described. LIF-BASE generates uniaxial intensity distributions of the observed fluorescence with the majority of intensity propagating along the excitation axis in both the forward and backward directions. The detection of bulk vapor at significant stand-off distances is readily achieved. Molecules of differing vapor pressures, quantum yields of fluorescence, and fluorescence lifetimes were examined under adjustable experimental conditions. Excitation energy, laser fluence, analyte concentration, detection angle, and stand-off distance were among the factors studied in order to determine optimal parameters for ASE generation from aromatic hydrocarbon, ketone, nitrogen oxide, and nitroaromatic vapors. Materials of environmental, health, and security importance have been identified with a stand-off LIF-BASE detection technique developed in our laboratory. LIF-BASE has been shown to detect selectively naphthalene, benzene, acetone, nitric oxide (NO), and NO photofragmentation products of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitrotoluene, and nitrobenzene in the vapor phase with sensitivity in the part per million (ppm) to part per billion (ppb) concentration range. It was determined in this study that a high powered pulsed laser system can generate ASE from low concentration vapors for detection at stand-off distances in the back-scattered direction. The major motivation of this work was to develop and optimize a remote optical-detection method for energetic and hazardous vapors from stand-off distances. The intrinsically low vapor pressure of most primary explosives is a significant challenge, but our new strategy increases the intensity of the back-scattered signal. Trace detection of explosives has been accomplished using photofragmentation (PF)-LIF detection schemes using a single UV laser pulse to fragment the analyte and subsequently identify and quantify NO fragments via emission intensity measurements. Due to the short excited-state lifetime of NO in the presence of oxygen, detection of nitric oxide under ambient conditions is difficult but possible with LIF-BASE. The detection of nitrated-toluene and -benzene vapors via fluorescent NO and NO2 photofragments has been demonstrated in the ppb range. Photofragmentation of nitroaromatic vapors generate vibrationally hot NO and results in emission spectra that differ from thermally relaxed NO vapor. In addition, the NO fragmentation products exist in an environment consisting of the parent nitroaromatic molecule and additional organic photofragments. Collisions between NO and surrounding molecules result in vibrational deactivation of excited vibrational states. Collisional deactivation kinetics was measured by monitoring the emission of NO fragments as a function of time. Identification of energetic and explosive materials can be monitored by observing the emission of NO* alone. The LIF-BASE technique can therefore be used to distinguish among the different nitro-aromatic precursors in the presence of ambient NO and facilitate the identification of the bulk vapor of these analytes
Beyond the Southern Border: Immigration Policies and U.S.-Mexican Relations, 1942-1996
No full textThis work covers the relationship between U.S. foreign relations and immigration policy with Mexico from the start of the Bracero Program in 1942 until the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. Using records of congressional hearings from the Committee on the Judiciary and other government documents it is argued that in order to produce effective immigration policy the United States needs to once again view immigration as a foreign policy, and not a domestic, issue. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 attempted to serve as a course corrector for the past failures in U.S. immigration policy toward Mexico, but the IRCA failed to achieve its primary goal of reducing and controlling the flow of illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. The failure of the IRCA can be traced back to the delinkage of immigration and foreign policy during the Bracero and Reform eras by both Mexico and the United States. This delinkage caused the U.S. immigration debate from 1971 to 1986 to focus on compromising among varied and competing domestic interests, ultimately producing a version of the IRCA that was unable to account for the transnational nature of Mexican immigrant social/family networks, border security concerns, and the increasing level of economic integration between the United States and Mexico
Synthesis and Design Automation of Rigid Body and Compliant Mechanisms
No full textThis dissertation presents a set of design tools and approaches for synthesis of both rigid body and compliant mechanisms. The research goal is to achieve design automation for articulated mechanical systems. It is comprised of two parts. The focus of the first part is on synthesis and design of planar rigid body linkages for path generation problems. The solution approach includes an off-line linkage library and the on-line computer aided design framework. The former introduces curve characterization, type-P Fourier descriptor normalization that a digital library that characterizes the motion curves of variety of planar linkages. And the latter brings a new computer-aided linkage design and simulation system that integrates a curve matching algorithm and design optimization routines. This computer-aided design system is built to achieve design automation and interactive design. To enable the design automation framework, first a pre-built library of open and closed planar curves is generated according to commonly used planar linkages. Then the classical linkage path generation problem is translated into a database-searching problem together with a local optimization problem, which embeds a rapid search algorithm that compares the Fourier descriptors of the task path against those of the linkage samples in the library, and retrieves a design candidate from them. To enable the interactive design framework, a set of design interfaces are implemented that facilitate designers intervene and steer the design process. The second part of this dissertation focuses on type synthesis of compliant mechanisms with screw theory. Here a systematic synthesis procedure for flexure elements and general compliant mechanisms is proposed. In this approach, we first categorize a list of commonly used atomic flexure primitives, and through which, basic R-joints and P-joints that allow a single rotation or a single translation are defined. By using parallel structures of these flexure primitives, eleven designs of R-joints and eight designs of P-joints are systematically synthesized. In contract to freedom elements, we synthesize serial chains of flexure primitives and obtained six designs of P-constraints and three designs of R-constraints. These freedom and constraint elements are basic building blocks for designing more complex flexure mechanisms. To demonstrate our theory, hybrid structures with a serial and parallel combination of compliant elements are designed, and also parallel compliant mechanisms with three translational degrees of freedom are synthesized
Ghost Imaging with Sunlight
No full textThe main result of this dissertation is the first successful experimental demonstration of ghost imaging using the sun as a light source. This result supports the quantum theory of near-field thermal light ghost imaging and also clarifies the physics of near-field thermal light ghost imaging from the fundamental level. The quantum theory of two-photon interference is the key to understanding the nonlocal ghost imaging with thermal light sources. Two-photon interference occurs between two different yet indistinguishable probability two-photon amplitudes, nonclassical entities produced by the joint-detection between two distant photodetectors. An experimental study of nontrivial spatial correlation and nontrivial anti-correlation from a pulsed chaotic-thermal source is also reported briefly in this dissertation to understand the two-photon interference phenomenon in case of classical thermal light. On the other hand, the classical theory considers thermal light ghost imaging to be the result of intensity fluctuation correlation. Interestingly, the physicists who believe in intensity fluctuation correlation was misled by the speckle-to-speckle picture. The successful experimental demonstration of ghost imaging with sunlight suggests that the nonlocal ghost-imaging effect of thermal light is caused by quantum-mechanical two-photon interference and it also proves that the idea of speckles is unnecessary in near-field thermal light ghost imaging. Most importantly, sunlight does not have any speckle and the sun is a near-field source. The experimental studies on sunlight-based ghost imaging are discussed in two steps: (1) an experimental demonstration as well as a quantum mechanical explanation of the nontrivial intensity correlation with the sun, a natural thermal source, as a light source and (2) the demonstration of the experimental observation of ghost imaging with sunlight with its quantum-mechanical explanation. These observations with their theoretical explanation are very helpful to understanding the physics of ghost imaging from a fundamental level. From the application point of view, sunlight-based ghost imaging may achieve a spatial resolution equivalent to that of a classical imaging system taking pictures at a distance of 10 km with a lens of 92 m size. This dissertation also reports an experimental demonstration on two-color, biphoton ghost imaging which reproduced a ghost image with enhanced angular resolving power by means of a greater field of view compared with that of classical imaging. With the same imaging magnification, the enhanced angular resolving power and field of view compared with that of classical imaging are 1.25 : 1 and 1.16 : 1 respectively. The enhancement of angular resolving power depends on the ratio between the idler and the signal photon frequencies and the enhancement of the field of view depends mainly on the same ratio and also on the distances of the object plane and the imaging lens from the two-photon source. A greater field of view under the enhanced resolving power of an imaging system is a useful and important feature in certain applications. We also report the possibility of reproducing a ghost image with the enhancement of the angular resolving power by means of a greater imaging amplification compared with that of classical imaging. In certain applications, a greater imaging amplification with enhanced resolving power of an imaging system is a useful and important feature. Until now ghost imaging using thermal light with only one color is experimentally demonstrated. A way to achieve sunlight-based ghost imaging with real colors (i.e., multiple colors) is proposed in this dissertation. The experience gained in two-color ghost imaging experiment with entangled photon pairs will be helpful to get a real color ghost image with sunlight. Potential real color sunlight-based ghost imaging with its nonlocal behavior and turbulence-free nature gives us a promise for its applications in distant imaging
The Breast health of church-going African American Women: Do culture and religiosity play important roles in achieving optimal breast health decisions
No full textNearly 40,000 women died of breast cancer last year in the United States each year. Even though the incidence of breast cancer is lower in African American women than Caucasian women, the mortality is 30% higher. There are a number of factors which have been discussed in the literature that often attribute this statistic to factors such as access, religiosity, and biology; while these factors are valid, much of the literature has examined African American woman in comparatively small numbers as well as of lower socioeconomic and educational status. Further, the theoretical framework in the majority of the literature has been solely the Health Belief Model. I contend that experiences with health care professionals, cultural influences, and religiosity play an important role in the breast health decisions that African American women make. In recognition of the complexity of the lives of African American women, this research includes Black Feminist theory framework to highlight the narrative of 44 African American women; age 30-50 that are highly educated, have access to health care and screening, and are religious. The findings of this research were as follows: women were influenced by their experiences with health care professionals; in addition, cultural factors also played an important role in the breast health decisions. In spite of the potentially negative impact noted in literature, generally these women have increased their level of knowledge relating to their breast health. At the same time, they have positioned their religiosity/spirituality as a useful resource, used in conjunction with science based recommendations. These women have exhibited a high level of agency and independence in making their optimal breast health decisions. While the church continues to be a valuable source of strength in the African American community, women must seek strong and transparent relationships with their primary physicians so that accurate medical information can be acquired. Though myths and misinformation continue as well as the fact that there are too many failures in the management of the breast health of African American women, there are many successes, survivors and healings to be celebrated. These stories must be told as well
Analyzing Trajectory Populations Through Clustering and Visualization
No full textAnalyzing large trajectory sets enables deeper insights into multiple real-world problems. For example, animal migration data, multi-agent analysis, and virtual entertainment can all benefit from deriving conclusions from large sets of trajectory data. However, the analysis is complicated by several factors when using traditional analytic techniques. For example, directly visualizing the trajectory set results in a multitude of lines that cannot be easily understood. Statistical analysis methods and non-direct visualization techniques (e.g., parallel coordinates) produce conclusions that are non-intuitive and difficult to understand. By using two complementary processes---clustering and visualization---a new approach is developed to analyzing large trajectory sets. First, clustering techniques are developed and refined to group related trajectories together. From these similar sets, a trajectory composition visualization is created and implemented that clearly depicts the cluster characteristics including application-specific attributes. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated on two separate and distinct types of data sets resulting in actionable conclusions. The first application, multi-agent analysis, represents a rich, spatial data set. When analyzed using this approach, deficiencies in the underlying artificial intelligence algorithms can be determined leading to improved agent performance. Student course-grade history analysis, the second application, requires adapting the approach for a non-spatial data set. However, the results enable a clear understanding of which courses are most critical in a student's career and which student groups require assistance to succeed. This research contributes to methods for trajectory clustering, techniques for large-scale visualization of trajectory data, and processes for analyzing student data
Density Based Spatial Anomalous Window Discovery
No full textThe focus of this thesis is to identifyanomalous spatial windows using clustering based methods. Spatial Anomalous windows are the contiguousgroupings of spatial nodes which are unusual with respect to the rest of thedata. Many scan statistics based approaches have been proposed for theidentification of spatial anomalous windows. To identify similarly behavinggroups of points, clustering techniques have been proposed. There are parallelsbetween both types of approaches but these approaches have not been usedinterchangeably. Thus the focus of our work is to bridge this gap and identify anomalous spatial windows usingclustering based methods. Specifically, we use the circular scan statisticbased approach and DBSCAN to bridge the gap between clustering and scanstatistics based approach. Our approach consists of the following steps: (a)Use the parameters proposed by DBSCAN to find core spatial nodes and its neighbors(b) Take combinations of nodes within a neighborhood to find smaller sub-setsof potentially anomalous windows (c) Take unions of all the combinations toexplore bigger sub-sets of potentially anomalous windows. (d) Computetest-statistic for each of the window to identify its degree of unusualness.The window with the highest value of test statistic is the most unusual ascompared to the rest of the data. We present extensive experimental results inUS crime data set for various regions. Our results show that our approach is effectivein identifying spatial anomalous windows and generally performs equal or betterthan existing scan statistic techniques and does better than a pure clusteringmethod
Making English Grammar Meaningful and Useful Mini Lesson #2
No full textSubject-Verb Combination, English GrammarThis lesson was developed by John Nelson and Tymofey Wowk, 2012
Making English Grammar Meaningful and Useful
Mini Lesson #2
Subject – Verb Combinations: They Need Each Other
The purpose of this lesson is to examine the importance of the Subject-Verb Combination in English Grammar.
The words SUBJECT and VERB are fundamental to English grammar. They are presented as grammatical terms in nearly every book of English grammar. In this lesson, we will explore why the two terms need to be considered together.
Taken separately, a SUBJECT usually refers to a noun with supporting words or a pronoun that stands for the noun. Subjects can be singular or plural. They can be specific, collective or generic. They can be proper or common. A VERB usually refers to an action or a state of being. It can be a single word or a group of words. The words can be in various forms.
Together the SUBJECT and VERB form a unit, and the unit becomes the basis of nearly every English sentence. With and only with a subject-verb combination, the verb has TENSE. The tense provides information about the time of the subject-verb combination. In English every sentence must have a subject-verb combination, and every subject-verb combination must have a tense. When verbs are used without a subject, there is no tense. This is illustrated in the following four examples:
1. The students are walking to school.
2. It started to snow while the students were walking to school.
3. While walking to school, the students met their friends.
4. The students always enjoy walking to school
All four sentences have the words ‘students’ and ‘walking’. Notice that in sentences 1 and 2 these words form subject-verb combinations. In these sentences, the verb walking is used in the present continuing and past continuing tenses respectively. ‘Students’ and ‘walking’ do not form subject-verb combinations in sentences 3 and 4. In sentence 3 the subject-verb combination is ‘students met’, and in sentence 4 the subject-verb combination is ‘students enjoy’. Sentence 3 is in past tense and sentence 4 is in present tense. But notice ‘walking’ in sentences 3 and 4. It is part of a phrase in these sentences, not part of a subject-verb combination. Therefore, ‘walking’ in these sentences has no tense. If you change the tenses of sentences 3 and 4, the form of ‘walking’ will not change.
Several aspects of English grammar are determined by the subject-verb combination.
This lesson was developed by John Nelson and Tymofey Wowk, 2012
First: Subject-verb agreement is a very significant aspect of English grammar. Singular subjects and plural subjects often require different verb forms to achieve agreement. Often agreement is established by a helping verb rather than by the main verb. Subject verb agreement is demonstrated in these sentences.
5. She walks to school They walk to school.
6. She is walking to school. They are walking to school.
7. She has walked to school. They have walked to school.
8. She was walking to school They were walking to school.
Second: Subject-verb relationships differentiate active voice expressions from passive voice expressions. When the subject is the DOER of the action of the verb, the sentence is active voice. When the subject is the RECEIVER of the action of the verb, the sentence is passive voice. This is demonstrated in sentences 9 through 11. Active voice sentences are in the left column, and passive voice sentences are in the right column. The subject-verb combinations in these sentences are in bold.
9. He sent the letter. The letter was sent.
10. He served the meal. The meal was served.
11. He read the announcement. The announcement was read.
Third: Groups of words with subjects-verb combinations are called clauses. Groups of words without subject-verb combinations are called phrases. The distinction between clauses and phrases is demonstrated in sentences 12 through 15. The word groups on the left are clauses, and those on the right are phrases. The subject-verb combinations in the clauses are in bold.
12. After we left the party….. After leaving the party…
13. Although we left early….. In spite of leaving early…
14. ….the man who drove home. …..the man driving home.
15. Because they were late, they... By being late, they…….
In summary, subject-verb combinations are required in all English sentences. Tense is required with all subject-verb combinations. In many cases of subject-verb combinations, agreement between the subject and verb is required. The use of active or passive voice is determined by the nature of the relationship between the subject and the verb in subject verb combinations. Clauses are word groups that have subject-verb combinations; phrases are word groups that do not have subject-verb combinations
Liminal Leo: Mourning Leo Steinberg
No full textLiminal Leo: Mourning Leo Steinberg
by Ellen Handler Spitz
Earlier this year artcritical carried tributes to the great art historian Leo Steinberg, who passed away in March at the age of ninety, by Laurie Schneider Adams, David Carrier and David Cohen. We are delighted to augment the record with this personal essay in remembrance by the distinguished scholar of art and psychoanalysis, Dr. ELLEN HANDLER SPITZ, whose tribute, very appropriately for artcritical, touches on Steinberg the maker.
Evenings, before his last debilitating fall, Leo would wait for me standing, posed nonchalantly—oxymoron fully in force—at, not quite in, the open doorway of his seventeenth-floor New York City apartment in an architecturally undistinguished modern skyscraper across from Lincoln Center. Normally, I would arrive at around seven, and when I was late, he would sometimes say he had begun to worry that I had forgotten. Which hurt and puzzled me because of its sublime incongruity. As if I could forget! There was no iconic cigarette any more (they were forbidden finally by a doctor who threatened him into compliance). Just the well-published knowing look, mischievous and boyish, despite his nearly ninety years. His contrapposto, like so much else about him, exuded complexity—message and mystery enmeshed. Standing at his open doorway, he occupied a liminal space, and Leo seemed to me in so many ways a liminal figure. He was waiting expectantly and, as I emerged from the elevator each time, the sight of him sent an electric current through my body. Partly reverence, partly pleasure, partly amazement. My awe of him never abated, and it returns even as I write these words.
Leo Steinberg (1920-2011) will be remembered as one of the most learned, eloquent, and original thinkers who ever graced the discipline of art history. His erudition and revolutionary ways of seeing art are, like his scholarly range, nonpareil, for he wrote luminously not only on the Italian Renaissance masters of his principal training, such as Borromini, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo, but delectably and perspicaciously on Velasquez, Rodin, Picasso, and on a host of twentieth-century painters including De Kooning, Pollock, and Johns. He famously said: “It is naïve to imagine that you avoid the risk of projecting merely by not interpreting. In desisting from interpretation, you do not cease to project. You merely project unwittingly. For there is no escape from oneself . . . ” (Other Criteria, 1972).
At first, I wanted to bring him tokens—of esteem and affection—especially because he was largely shut in, confined to his apartment, and I once essayed a delicate bouquet of peach-colored scented lilies. He was not pleased. Do not bring me flowers, he said, for they simply die and must be thrown out, and that makes me sad. But why can’t you simply enjoy them while they are alive? I queried in surprise. He remained adamant. Reluctantly, I gave up my floral offerings. He told me that at his time of life he wanted no presents of any kind. He reminded me of a colleague whose mansion near London’s Hampstead Heath is filled with bric-a-brac and objets d’art amassed over decades and who now, rather than allow guests to arrive with gifts, encourages them to take away something every time they pay a visit. Leo gave me something every time I paid him a visit. He gave me words—intangible and priceless. I do not know in turn what I gave him, as he refused almost everything.
“The gloom of the mind and the light of the body” (1972, 93), he once wrote. Enunciating syllables with care, he would sometimes apologize that he was “not in good voice.” I knew what he meant, but to me that slight quaver cast an incantatory spell. On one occasion, he told me an anecdote about his psychoanalysis with, as it happens, a former teacher of mine at Columbia, a fact that, not wishing to interrupt him (he did not like being interrupted), I forbore to mention. He started by referring to an article he wrote for Life Magazine. That was in 1968, and its opening gambit concerns a haunting watercolor by Picasso, painted during the Blue Period in 1904. The artist, in profile, then twenty-three years old, sits at a table gravely watching a girl sleep, her left arm bent to cradle her head. Clad in melting blue with a white scarf, the painter appears to be daydreaming, while the girl herself actually dreams. Discussing this picture with his analyst, Leo mentioned that he detected in it an inversion of aggression. He made no further comment. But I quickly knew. For, although the gaze of a male artist at an immobilized female figure tends to be conventionally seen as aggressive (male toward helpless female), Leo was constitutionally attuned to the less obvious. He detected in the scene an element of counter-aggression. Leo’s analyst responded to his intuition with an empathic elaboration: What about the aggression that lies latent in a kept secret? He asked. The response impelled Leo to rise and begin pacing the room. With his inimitable brand of calm fervor, he described the encounter as an epiphany. Gazing into the distance, he explained the immensely liberating insight: within the throes of this exchange, he had grasped the wondrously empowering idea that his unconscious was actually working with him in his creative endeavors. The scene took on the aspect of a revelation, and I in turn reveled in the heightened intonation of his speech as he relived the dramatic story.
The two of us are seated face to face at a small table, only slightly unstable, located just outside his cramped, typically windowless city kitchen. We are surrounded by a sepia mise-en-scène of prints, statuettes, antiquarian books, papers, journals, and letters and equipped with tiny inverted bell-shaped etched glasses of a liqueur Leo has poured from a delicately tinted bottle, or, perhaps it is only I who sip the liqueur, as he often prefers a tumbler of apple juice. He urges me to eat. But in his presence I am never hungry. His incessant flow of words, associations, ideas, and images fills me to brimming so that I am unable to take in much food or drink and want for nothing except to be able to concentrate fully, to be absolutely present to this extraordinary intellect, which billows out far beyond the confines of the frail body it now inhabits. If only I could catch fast, grasp tight, hold on! But the elegant sentences flutter by on gossamer wings and vanish in the ether only to be replenished by others equally alluring. How can I embrace and preserve all this? He cannot live forever. His blue eyes smolder with an amber glow, his tapered fingers occasionally gesture to emphasize a point. His still thick grey locks curl tightly. Burning to reach out my arms in a hopeless gesture, I bring them in closer, self-consciously, toward my own body.
We move over to the couch, where Leo has taken out a portfolio to show me his life drawings, which he deprecates, some made when he was an art student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, and also a strange little childhood sculpture of a horse he has kept since he was a boy. He talks about the value of a sure line and the problems students have with drawing extremities—feet and hands. Sternly, he deplores a hesitant line, one that staggers at the edges, lurching, limping, redirecting and correcting itself. He wants me to take note that he had no fears about completing the human form. Nor did his hand limp. I sigh, shyly recalling a moldering black portfolio filled with my own youthful life drawings on newsprint done at the Art Students League in New York and in Boston at the Museum School, but I do not speak of them. Leo’s drawings appear skillful and beautiful to me, but to him they are merely academic, devoid of spark or originality. I had, he insists, nothing new to say as an artist; on the contrary, I realized that when I gazed at art, I could see what others failed to find. Thus, Leo Steinberg left the studio forever and turned exclusively to the study of art—to gazing intently for years—and to the alchemy of written words.
One evening in a conversation on education, I am lamenting that children no longer memorize poetry. Leo leans back, and in a voice made soft only by lack of strength starts reciting to me, line-by-line, Milton’s Paradise Lost. My eyes fill with tears as I listen. Here was a man whose mother tongue was Russian, who learned Hebrew, Latin, also German, English, Italian, and I do not know what others and who sits calmly before me at the end of his life declaiming these glorious lines of seventeenth-century blank verse, and he goes on until I beg him to stop because I cannot bear it. Will there ever again be anyone in the world who can do this? Now that people depend on Google and such. Furthermore, Leo knows the Hebrew Bible chapter and verse; citing passages when we talk, he refines my understanding and teaches me. His family, having moved to Germany from Russia, went on to England to escape the Nazis and thence he came to New York. One of Leo’s best stories involves the renowned art historian and distinguished immigrant European scholar of the era, Erwin Panofsky.
In answer to a question I pose, Leo tells me that one morning he had been studying in the library of the Institute of Fine Arts. Emerging in the company of a fellow student, he enters a nearby café where they are astonished to find Panofsky and his wife occupying the next booth. Leo goes over to the great man, introduces himself as an Institute student, says he has been reading all morning, and quips that it is most unusual to come out of the library and encounter in person the very author whose work one has been studying for hours! Panofsky asks him what he has been reading, and when Leo hands him the used book, Panofsky spies, written inside in small letters, a name he knows. Startled, Panofsky tells Leo that this was his first student. He recalls how concerned he had been for the young man, who was a Jew. Panofsky feared that, because of rampant anti-Semitism in Germany, there was a chance the student would not be allowed to pass his doctoral exams. To help him, expressly to sit on his committee and assure his success, Panofsky returned to Germany. Afterwards, he helped the young scholar obtain a teaching post in America. Leo now gets up slowly to find the book as he wants to show me Panofsky’s inscription, for on that serendipitous occasion Panofsky had signed the book to Leo: To Leo Steinberg from Erwin Panofsky in the Apostolic Succession, or words to that effect. Needless to say, Leo relishes the bittersweet irony of this. For, whereas “Apostolic Succession” denotes an ecclesiastical doctrine of inheritance of spiritual and sacramental authority which passes from early Christianity to the present—from the twelve Apostles to present day Catholic bishops worldwide— in Panofsky’s inscription the term refers to the successive waves of disenfranchised Jews who fled from a dangerous Europe to America, Jewish students, that is, of art history like himself and his student and Leo: a very different laying on of hands.
I am brooding now. On other stories that lurk untold in the pockets of this protean mind, this intensely lived life, this congested psychic space. Leo picks up Other Criteria, his acclaimed magnum opus in which the original Picasso essay was republished, and reads to me from it. He mentions brief remarks on Jeanne Claude he must deliver at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He turns to his unfinished, never-to-be completed work on Michelangelo’s Doni tondo, a propped print of which has adorned his worktable for as long as I can remember. In one of the bookcases under the windows on which a long row of small bright plastic cigarette lighters supply the only kitsch and spark of saturated color, he searches for and reads to me a Tennyson poem, in which the poetic speaker cannot tolerate the carefree joy of a young girl and suffers murderous impulses towards her. Leo knows why, for he has experienced this himself. The room seems suffused with russet; it has grown late. Melancholy descends. I glance furtively at the row of darkened windows facing southeast over the unvarnished city. Awkwardly, I find my wrap, and Leo insists on going downstairs with me, a practice that will cease as his strength ebbs. After he has said goodbye and I am safely in the taxi, I feel blank. He will die, scream the speeding traffic and indifferent strobe lights that flash across my strained face.
Yet, the months pass, and especially after his fall and enforced restriction to a single chair even for sleeping, Leo seems to relax into a mode of resignation. I have saved several of his voice messages on my cell phone so that I can still listen to the timbre of his modulated voice and meticulously chosen words. But, as with my father, it happened in March and caught me by surprise. In spite of everything. He was also ninety: a grand age. Now Leo Steinberg has become, for the world, as Wallace Stevens titled one of his poems, a man made out of words. He was never merely that. He lived fully, as again per Stevens (from “Esthétique du Mal”), in a physical world, and yet he knew that desire could be difficult to tell from despair