Dear Cyndy,

Margaret has gone for her biweekly swim in the Higginbotham pool
at the Belmont High School, which invites "seniors" from 9 a.m.
to 10 a.m. on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I will retrieve her in 
40 minutes. This is a test: how much of a letter will I be able to 
compose in that short - or long a period of time.

My litigation euphoria was dampened a bit yesterday, when searching
the Internet for I don't remember what, I chanced on the Appeals 
Court report for the 2007 fiscal year. In that year they upheld
the lower court in 80% of the cases, reversed in about 15%, and
modified the lower court judgment in about 5%. Grim figures for
the litigant represented by the average lawyer. Hopeless, one should
assume for the presumptuous ignorant do-it-yourself pro se.

I console myself with the thought that the rate of judicial victory
is still higher than the immortality rate, which depending on your
religious persuasion is either zero or a hundred percent. From my
perspective, the mortality rate is 100% if disease and degenerative
processes are given enough time. Just as in the hospice the task
is to convince onself that one is immortal, because quite literally,
one cannot know subjectively ones own death, so in the courtroom, the
task is to convince oneself that "losing" the case is impossible,
because as long as one is able to think at all, one can always outthink
the judges, certainly the local ones and I suspect also those in 
Washington. Besides, we learn from Kierkegaard about the edification
in the thought that before God, one is always in the wrong. (Either/Or,
Part 2). It requires only a modicum of reduction to translate that
insight into the dictum, that there is edification in losing a lawsuit,
because it doesn't require much arrogance to convince oneself that
the loss was really a victory, of sorts.

I'm trying now to change the subject, because I feel I've been
importuning you with too lengthy a discussion of "victory" and 
defeat, - though what could be of greater significance? The characters
in my novel, - to change the subject, but only superficially, -
are returning to an Island whose inhabitants feel trapped. They
are demoralized by the pervasive corruption of their neighbors,
whom they know only too well, and ultimately also by the recognition
of each one of them, that he cannot escape into anonymity: that
what he sees in his neighbor is the mirror image of himself.

O.K., time's up, hand in your blue books. I have to go to fetch Margaret,
and when I get back, guess what I'll get to work on. 

Be good, stay healthy, don't fall, and be nice to Ned. Did I
forget anything else that Polonius had to say?

Jochen