Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter.

A copy of the driving directions and the five associated maps
are aestivating (as opposed to hibernating) in the mailbox
at the corner of School Street and Locust Street. That box
will be emptied at 1 p.m. (nominally) on July 6, and by the
9th or 10th you should have a chance to open my letter
in Hilliard, and say to youself, under your breath, even though
I won't be there to hear it, "How unnecessary, how silly."

I've reread my recent letters to you. I don't find them "grumpy"
at all. What's been going on with me is that the correspondence
with my cousin has precipitated for me another recherche du temps
perdu, and another bout of affection and longing for my parents,
emotions especially poignant there in Konnarock, where I have
preserved in their memory the museum they built for themselves.

I'm forwarding a concatenated file of all the correspondence between
my cousin and myself which is on the Konnarock computer. I believe
it to be complete except for the scanned images (of which I can
also send you copies from here, if they matter to you). Also, 
you'll find some untranslated German. It turns out that either
Marion can read German, or if she can't, she doesn't let on.
Any request from you for specific translations would flatter me.
In one of the letters, where, if I remember correctly, I was 
exploring the distinction between Erlebnis (subjective experience)
and Erfahren (objective experience) - there is no such distinction
in English - I lapsed into German to try to explain to myself
how Spinoza came to treat as subjective, so presumably objective
a phenomenon as "Substance". Marion didn't understand, there's 
no reason why you should make the effort, paricularly since it's
probably all just a figment of my pretentious imagination.

As for the question, whether Marion would want me to "share" her
letters with you, I haven't asked her. Obviously, she didn't object
when I forwarded them to Klemens, who then involved himself in the
discussion. Internet e-mail being what it is, you also shouldn't
be shy about addressing the issues discussed, either in letters to
me, to Marion, or to both of us. For me, all writing becomes
"literature", a sublimation of Erleben, or more accurately, a
transformation of Erleben into Erfahrung, which is no longer private.
In consequence, whoever writes to me must be prepared - later
rather than sooner - to find his or her compositions, if necessary
suitably edited, if not in print then on the Internet; much as a
person who marries a painter should do so only with the understanding
that his - or more likely her - natural image, suitably framed, might
some day grace the walls of a museum.  I think that's what
Hendrikje Stoeffels expected, and I bet she didn't mind at all.

There's one more important matter on my mind: a request. It would
make life much easier for (Margaret and) me, if you would give me
specific instructions, item by item, as if in a restaurant, about
the food that you and Elizabeth and Joanna would like to be offered
when you visit us. Neither Margaret nor I understand about cooking
and diets, but we are very good at following instructions. So please
let us have them.

Now I have to get on with my legal work, and if I seem gruff,
here's why:

Massachusetts Appellate Procedure
Rule 20: Form of Briefs, Appendices and Other Papers

(a) Form of Briefs and the Appendix. Except on order of the appellate court or a single justice, or if filed on behalf of a party allowed to proceed in forma pauperis, all briefs and appendices shall be produced by any duplicating or copying process which produces a clear black image on white paper. However produced, the page shall be eight and one-half inches in width and eleven inches in height. Pages shall be firmly bound at the left by saddle-wiring, side-wiring, stapling, or sewing. If side-wired or sewn, a strong paper cover shall be used. A transcript of testimony or a report of evidence may be included as part of the appendix and may be reproduced by Xerography or a similar process. No single volume of the appendix shall be more than one and one-half inches thick. The text of appendices may appear on both sides of the page.

The following rules shall govern the format of text on a page for all briefs:

(1) The top and bottom margins shall be at least one inch. The left and right margins shall be at least one and one-half inches. Thus, the text area should not be more than five and one-half inches in width no more than nine inches in height. Page numbers may appear in the margin.

(2) The typeface shall be a monospaced font (such as pica type produced by a typewriter or a Courier font produced by a computer word processor) of 12 point or larger size and not exceeding 10.5 characters per inch.

(3) Text shall be double-spaced, except that argument headings, footnotes and indented quotations may be single-spaced. For purposes of this rule, single spacing means not more than six lines of text per vertical inch; double spacing means not more than three lines of text per vertical inch and not more than twenty-seven double-spaced lines on a page.

(4) The text may appear on both sides of the page.

Briefs or appendices not in substantial compliance with these rules shall not be received unless the appellate court or a single justice shall otherwise order. The cover of the brief of the appellant shall be blue; that of the appellee, red; that of an intervenor or amicus curiae, green; that of any reply brief, gray. The cover of the appendix, if separately bound, shall be white. The front covers of the briefs and appendices, if separately produced, shall contain: (1) the name of the court and the number of the case; (2) the title of the case (see Rule 10(a)); (3) the nature of the proceeding in the court (e.g., Appeal; Application for Review) and the name of the court, agency, or board below; (4) the title of the document (e.g., Brief for Appellant, Appendix); and (5) the names, Board of Bar Overseers (BBO) numbers, addresses, and telephone numbers of counsel representing the party on whose behalf the document is filed, and, if an individual counsel is affiliated with a firm, the firm name.

========================
The brief will be fifty typewritten pages, the appendix at least
a hundred. For the Appeals Court, 12 copies are required; if the case
is remanded to the Supreme Judicial Court, which is always a possibility,
21 copies are required. That means I'll have to get into the printing
and binding business and produce at minimum 1800, but possibly as many
as 3150 pages bound into volumes no thicker than 1 1/2 inches. Don't
I have reason to be gruff?

You stay well, and give my best to Ned.

Jochen