Dear Cyndy,

This morning (Friday) I drove to the elegant, recently gentrified
area on the East Boston waterfront, where the Nantucket lawyers
maintain offices of impressive elegance. My purpose: to deliver
the nine volumes of documents that I am required to "serve" on
them in the context of my appeal. Kimberly Saillant, Esquire,
herself was not in evidence, but her paralegal sidekick accepted
the papers, even though as she said they were "premature", only
two days having elapsed since the appeal was docketed and the
time allowed for filing them was forty, - no forty-five days.
By 11:30, I was back in Belmont. The documents for the Appeals
Court, the Supreme Judicial Court and the Attorney General were
much more numerous and much heavier. I think there were forty-nine
in all, and they must have weighed close to 50 lbs. I managed to
pack them into a bright red canvas bag on wheels, with an extension
handle that made it possible for me to pull the load  behind me,
first to the Concord Avenue bus stop, then through the underground 
station beneath Harvard Square into the subway, at Park Street
up the flight of stairs to the trolley cars of the Green Line
to the Government Center terminal, and with the assistance of
two escalators, finally into the elegant John Adams Courthouse
at One Pemberton Square. There, the bulky suitcase on wheels just
fitted into the conveyor aperture of the metal detector. My
unconventional, seditious sentiments went undetected, and we
were allowed to pass. I lugged the heavy crate up the final
flight of marble stairs and wheeled it into the Appeals Court
Clerk's office, where I unpacked, literally and figuratively,
what has been on my mind these many months, placing the sorted
volumes, seven volumes of Brief and fourteen volumes of Record
Appendix, two Motions, and one copy of the Application for
Direct Review, neatly on the counter, and the attending clerk
blessed them and stamped them with his imprimatur.....

(Saturday)
Perhaps it was the recapitulation last evening of my document delivery
odyssey which made me feel so tired that I had no choice but to stop
writing and go to bed. This morning the air is much cooler; it's raining
under low clouds. Obviously, the summer is over, and as Jeremiah said,
we are not saved. The first electronic echos of yesterday's efforts were
faintly favorable. Last night already I received two e-mails from the
clerk notifying me that the Court has not summarily denied the two
motions which I had filed, but has relegated their consideration to
the panel that will decide the Appeal, (unless the Supreme Judicial
Court (SJC) grants my application for direct appellate review, 
in which case the motions would be ajudicated by the SJC.)
I'll forward the clerk's e-mail notifications as well as the
texts, - though not the exhibits - of the motions themselves,
so that, to the extent you wish, you can follow the proceedings.

The purpose of the two motions was to bring to the attention of
the appellate judges the ubiquity of do-it-yourself plumbing
in Massachusetts, and Nantucket's malicious contempt not only for
me but for the legal process itself. With that purpose, obviously,
I have succeeded, because even if the motions are rejected,
in the process of denial the judges will have perused the exhibits 
I wanted to bring to their attention. And so it goes.

On to the next topic: Elizabeth's visit(s). Margaret and I are unanimous
in inviting her to stay here when she visits Joanna. Two caveats:
our big barnlike house is cold in winter. The six (potential) bedrooms
and the three bathrooms in the addition, the kitchen, a small bedroom,
and a bathroom in the old part of the house are individually zoned for
heating through oil-fired forced hot water baseboards and can be made
reasonably comfortable.  From the radiators in the other parts of the
house, I drained the water years ago. The old part of the house is very
drafty. Margaret and I dress warmly, and the winter temperature in even
the heated rooms is usually 55 plus or minus 3 degrees. We would, of course,
try to make Elizabeth as comfortable as possible, - but nonetheless,
I ask you: could Elizabeth survive such a semi-arctic environment?

My second consideration addresses my fantasies of an autumn - or winter
trip to Konnarock, - a dream most unlikely to be fulfilled, - but
if we did plan to be away at the time of Elizabeth's visit, would it be
acceptable to invite Joanna to make a short preliminary trip to
Belmont to receive instructions about the management of the premises,
to give her a key, and to invite her to act as her mother's hostess
in our house during our absence?

My third question seeks your intuitive judgment, whether it would
annoy or embarrass Elizabeth if I showed my considerable interest
and my deplorable ignorance about her research in neural network
theory, which I discovered on the Internet. I'm aware how
presumptuous of me to take an interest in what is so far beyond my
intellectual capacity. But that's an expression of my (existentialist)
orientation to "knowledge". What good is knowledge to _me_ if I don't
possess it _myself_? That is the animus in which I've blundered
through 79 years, and it's too late now to stop. Would Elizabeth
cancel her plans to stay with us if I asked her in advance for some
reprints of her research publications and tried to subvert at least
a few minutes (or hours) of her stay into a one-on-one seminar?

The next topic: your comments on memory, a term so rich in meaning.
The private memory often intersects the public memory at so many
points that the two are difficult to disentangle, as for example,
in the inscription on the grave stone. When waiting for access
to a concert in Sanders Theatre, I've often pondered the lists
of fallen Civil War soldiers in the Memorial Hall entrance,
and tested my knowledge of Latin trying to translate the
inspirational sentiments inscribed under the vaulted ceilings.
Your program to recount your childhood at Heyshott addresses
analogous issues: the intersection of what you remember, of the
experience that has become part of you, and the objective
representation intended to convey (some of) that memory to
your reader. My own mind is most productive when it addresses
a hearer or a reader, imaginary or real. Hence the passion with
which I devote myself to writing letters; hence my indebtedness
to you for giving me the occasion to write them.

Please give my best to Ned, and perhaps also to Victoria, if
you consider it appropriate.

Jochen