Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. Never mind the rudimentariness
of your German; you did very well with Rilke's poem "Der Schauende."
Rather it is I who has reason to be somewhat embarrassed to have
retrieved those lines from the dustbin of family tradition, -
it was one of my mother's favorites. - Only after I had copied it
into the text of my letter, I noticed the date of the poem's
composition: 1901, when Rilke was only 26 years old. I was struck
by its relative immaturity. But having quoted, I couldn't or wouldn't
undo the quotation. Like Pilate in the old adage: Was ich geschrieben
habe, das habe ich geschrieben.  Rilke's is a poem of passivity,
by one who has difficulty getting started in life, or getting life
started, - and is looking (schauen) at the storms of life safely
ensconced behind the windows of his own anxieties (aengstliche Fenster),
trapped in his loneliness, unable to come to terms with his sexuality
and therefore longing for a friend to help him bear (nicht ohne Freund
ertragen) or a "sister" (nicht ohne Schwester lieben kann) to help him
"love" the ominous sounds of the storm's destructiveness, - the rolling
thunder and the roar of hurricane winds. As spectator he acknowledges
the storm's transforming power - der Sturm , ein Umgestalter, - adding
a touch of contemporary physics, - durch den Raum und durch die Zeit  -
but poetry, literature, scripture withstand all transformation,
"die Landschaft wie ein Vers im Psalter, ist Ernst und Wucht und
Ewigkeit," severe, weighty and eternal as a psalmbook verse.
Reminiscent of Luther's "Das Wort sie sollen lassen stahn..."
Then, having established the permanence of (his) poetry, the
poet turns to the inequality of the contest. That which we (are able
to) conquer, makes us small; but that which overcomes us, shapes and
strengthens us. The metaphor of wrestling with the angel is, of course
from Genesis 32: 23-33; and I ask you to forgive the affectation of
my inserting here Luther's 1545 translation, of which I am inordinately
fond. If this translation gives you trouble, you can easily enough look
it up in a more modern text.

23 Vnd stund auff in der nacht / vnd nam seine zwey Weiber /
vnd die zwo Megde / vnd seine eilff Kinder / vnd zoch an den furt Jaboc /
24 nam sie vnd füret sie vber das Wasser / das hinüber kam was er hatte /
25 Vnd bleib allein. DA rang ein Man mit jm bis die morgenröte anbrach.
26 Vnd da er sahe / das er jn nicht vbermocht /
rüret er das Gelenck seiner hüfft an /
Vnd das gelenck seiner hüfft ward vber dem ringen mit jm / verrenckt.
27 Vnd er sprach / Las mich gehen / denn die morgenröte bricht an /
Aber er antwortet / Jch las dich nicht / du segenest mich denn.
28 Er sprach / Wie heissestu? Er antwortet / Jacob.
29 Er sprach / Du solt nicht mehr Jacob heissen / sondern JsraEl /
Denn du hast mit Gott vnd mit Menschen gekempfft / vnd bist obgelegen.
30 VND Jacob fraget jn / vnd sprach / Sage doch / wie heissestu?
Er aber sprach / Warumb fragestu / wie ich heisse?
Vnd er segenete jn daselbs.
31 Vnd Jacob hies die stet Pniel / Denn ich habe Gott von angesicht gesehen /
vnd meine Seele ist genesen.
32 Vnd als er fur Pnuel vber kam / gieng jm die Sonne auff /
Vnd er hincket an seiner Hüfft /
33 daher essen die kinder Jsrael keine spanader auff dem gelenck der hüfft /
bis auff den heutigen tag /
Darumb / das die spanader an dem gelenck der hüfft Jacob gerüret ward.

Rilke's angel is so powerful that he plucks Jacob's sinews, although of
metallic strength, as if they were the strings of a musical instrument.
The moral which Rilke draws from all this, that though vanquished by the
angel, Jacob - and all who emulate him - emerge from contests in which they
have been vanquished as stonger individuals. It's obviously not the survival
of the fittest that Darwin had in mind, and a puzzle which his disciples
are unable to solve.

Furthermore, I was mistaken when I cited the poem as apposite
to my potential defeat in the lawsuit. In one perspective this lawsuit
cannot be won, - because I cannot recover the years that Nantucket's
chicanery has cost me; in another perspective, if viewed as a laboratory
exercise in "applied justice" it cannot be lost, - because the validity
of no honest experiment is ever contingent on the outcome.

The legal issues, about which you ask are as follows:
When, 40 years ago I was the Nantucket eyedoctor, I bought
very cheaply a 3.5 acre piece of land half a mile from the ocean.
About five years ago, I decided to put a house on the land, because
houses on Nantucket are very valuable, because I believed I could build
so much less expensively than conventional contractors, and in the process
create capital such as my medical practice had never been able to generate.
The condition, of course, that I do as much of the work as I could myself.
(The building in the attached surveillance image which I recovered this
morning has been put up at a cost of $80 per sq.ft., or about 1/3 of the
minimum and 1/5 of the maximum that one would expect to pay on Nantucket.)
And so I proceeded pro se - do-it-yourself. I surveyed the land,
drew up plans, and submitted them as required for approval by the
Historic District Commission, the HDC.  Immediately there arose a
misunderstanding between the HDC and myself, because I expected the
HDC to comply with the law, while the HDC considered itself above the law,
and defaulted by not acting on my application within sixty days,
after which the HDC was required to issue the necessary Certificate
of Appropriateness. To support their refusal, the HDC fabricated
evidence to the effect that a junior administrator had made a telephone
call and received from my wife agreement to extend the 60 days' deadline.
When I appealed to the Board of Selectmen, the Town refused to examine its
telephone records to ascertain even the possibility of such a call. The very
dramatic and contentious Board of Selectmen's meeting was televised, the
minutes of the meeting were falsified, and the official electronic record
of the proceedings sold to me in the form of a DVD recording of the meeting
had been forged to eliminate the exchanges that were most damaging to the Town.
I appealed to the Superior Court, and after a year, when the local Clerk
of the Court could delay the proceedings no longer, the judge ordered the
Town to Issue the Certificate but he refused to adjudicate the fabrication
of evidence or the forgery. No judgment was ever entered, and the case was
ultimately dismissed as being moot.

A year later, another, the present controversy arose, when unable to find
a plumber who would obtain a permit for me to install the plumbing,
I did so without a permit. I installed the rough plumbing, a functioning
toilet, showerstall and laundry tub, making it possible for Margaret
and myself to live in the house while I continued to work on it.
The Town never inspected the plumbing, and so far as is known, there
is nothing wrong with it. However, when I asked to have the framing
inspected, the inspector discovered the unpermitted plumbing, and on
December 1, 2008, I was served with an order to cease desist and abate.
I appealed to the Board of State Examiners of Plumbers and Gas Fitters,
which held a sham hearing for which it invented testimony that was never
given by a witness whom I had no chance to cross-examine.
The Board then ruled against me.  Once more I appealed,
this time to Suffolk Superior Court. The Commonwealth's Attorney General
representing the Board of State Examiners made no opposition to my complaint,
but the Town of Nantucket, which failed to exercise its statutory right
to intervene, and was therefore not a party to the action,
filed an opposition. Justice MacDonald denied my motion that
Nantucket's opposition be stricken, ignored the circumstances that
Nantucket was not a party to the case and that the Attorney General
had filed no opposition, denied my motion for judgment on the pleadings,
affirmed Nantucket's oppositions as a cross motion, and stated,
although there is no evidence in the record to this effect,
that the Attorney General had joined Nantucket in opposing me.
It is this ruling which I am now appealing. I have drafted the necessary, -
very voluminous documents, - and am now waiting for the Superior Court Clerk
to "assemble the record." As of this morning this had not yet been done.

About your sex-discrimination lawsuit: did you bring it pro se? did you have
an attorney? Did you receive support from any Women's Lib organizations?
Did it hurt to lose it? - or was Rilke-Moses right after all?

This letter has become much too long, and I shall therefore stop now,
but not before appointing you as my ambassador plenipotentiary to the
Minnesota State Fair. Please give my best to all the horses, cows,
mules anmd donkeys. Never mind the humans.

Jochen