Dear Cyndy,

This letter comes to you courtesy of Jupiter Pluvius
who is drenching the streets and the sidewalks this morning,
when I had intended to take bus and subway to the Appeals Court
Clerk's office to show the teacher my homework and ask him
whether he will accept it in its present form. That seems a wise
precaution before proceeding to bind the three thousand sheets
of paper into the 48 volumes, (one for the Brief, one for the
Exhibits, two for the Record Appendix,  times 12)  that I will
ultimately be required to submit. So I'll wait 'till the skies
clear, maybe this afternoon, maybe Monday or Tuesday.

It wasn't as easy to escape legalistic ruminations as I had hoped.
Yesterday I started putting our house in order by collating the
250 stacks of 13 pages each. I thought it prudent also, before
committing myself to a decision not to seek direct appellate review,
to obtain a bit more information about the Supreme Judicial Court.
What I found out, changed my mind.  If I read correctly the tables
published on the Internet, there is perhaps a forty percent chance
that an application to the Supreme Judicial Court would be accepted,
then another forty percent chance of a favorable decision, giving
an overall probability of success of 16 percent, which is in fact
quite close to the 15.6 percent reversal rate of the Appeals Court.
However, while the Appeals Court issues opinions in only 23 percent
of its cases, the rate for the Supreme Judicial Court is close to
one hundred percent.  My reasoning: if the Supreme Judicial Court
feels it must render a written decision, it won't be so easy to sweep
the issues I raise under the rug, and I'm much more likely to prevail. 
The Appeals Court considers six times as many cases as the Supreme
Judicial Court. Therefore, vain as I am, I infer that my chances are
much better in the latter.  So I'll apply, if I'm accepted, I'll be
ahead; if I'm refused, nothing will be lost.

From the foregoing you will correctly infer thats it's not simple
to expel the legalism which infest it from the abditory of the mind.
But then, I'm not sure that such cleansing is necessarily desirable.
What else is there to think, or to write about?  Surely not the weather
nor the burdens of ageing, nor the vicissitudes of private fortune,
nor the absurdities of the political scene.  I must face it: building
or trying to build a house on Nantucket for the love of ocean and moors
and sky, entails the risk of contracting a very special and unique
venereal disease; one inevitably pays for one passion.  I'm reminded
of the poem that Haendel set to music in Acis and Galatea: (c. 1718)
A Serenata; or Pastoral Entertainment; Words by John Gay, Alexander
Pope and John Hughes:

21. Air
Damon
Consider, fond shepherd,
How fleeting's the pleasure,
That flatters our hopes
In pursuit of the fair!
The joys that attend it,
By moments we measure,
But life is too little
To measure our care.
Consider. . . da capo

There's more to it, of course than that, but the rain has stopped,
the sky has turned blue, and just a moment ago the sun was shining.
So I'll get to go into the city after all.

Stay well, don't fall, and tell Ned to be nice to you.
Whether you tell him I said so, is a matter for your discretion.

Jochen