Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. Whether nothing has happened,
little has happened or much has happened in the four days
since my last letter, is a matter of perspective.
Objectively it's a very placid existence that Margaret and
I are leading; but my mind keeps busy with memories of the
past and anticipations of the future, and the inveterate
compulsion to try to understand - everything. Much of the
day I spend writing, essays, letters, fiction. I also spend
much time reading what I have recently written: the literary
recapitulation of my experience - Erfahrung und Erleben -
gives stability to my thought and provides much needed support
to the fragility and feebleness of the senile memory.
Here are my notes concerning my encounter with the stray dog:

Yesterday (9-11-2009) was a long complicated day which I wanted
to describe before I forgot all that happened. When no letter is
due to any of my correspondents, I write to myself. My writing
is my world.  Ultimately literature is the only reality.

Yesterday was the day the rabies vaccine for the miniature pinscher
was to be delivered. The Internet routing table showed that
the vaccine had arrived at Kingsport TN at 6:39 a.m. By 7 a.m.
it was on the truck for local delivery. Since I didn't know
when the delivery would be made, I kept an eye on the driveway,
easy to do from the computer where I was working. About 10 a.m.
a white pickup truck pulled up to the mailbox. Not the vaccine
as I had thought, but my grade school classmate, Buck Sheets,
who greeted me on the lawn to explain with much satisfaction
that in Chilhowie, he had found a family with 5 children that
badly wanted a dog. The little black miniature pinscher agreed.
He greeted Buck with the same enthusiasm with which he had accosted me,
and readily jumped into the pickup truck. I watched with relief
as the two of them drove down the hill on their way to Chilhowie
and the little dog's new home.

The Internet Routing table shows that at 12:46 p.m. the package
supposedly containing the vaccine was left at the side door of
20287 Coolgreen Road, Damascus VA 24236. That's not exactly true.
The Fedex driver, a lady, handed it to me, and I opened it 
immediately. The rather large cardboard box contained a styrofoam
container packed with plastic bags of cold water, and in their midst,
not only a single small 10 ml. vial of Rabvac -3, but taped together
two plastic shells each with 50 small vials, sufficient for
25 doses of distemper vaccine, which of course I hadn't ordered,
and which Revival Animal Health, which sold me the Rabvac-3,
lists for 62.98 each. The distemper vaccine appears on none of the
invoices or packing slips.  Inasmuch as the charge for the rabies
vaccine has not yet appeared on my credit card account (neither
has the charge for the washing machine), it remains to be seen how
much I will be charged.

The departure of the dog was a relief. For the first time in six days,
Margaret could walk around the house without having the creature jump
up to her. I was pleased to be able to forget about fashioning out of
a trash barrel an electrically heated doghouse in which the animal could
survive the winter. But life is not simple: all was not well. 
In mid-afternoon there appeared at the door of the porch where
I was working on my novel, a youngish, rather disreputable looking woman
with brightly painted lips and fingernails, a soft drink bottle in her
right hand, and unkempt strands of brunette hair waving about her
shoulders, asking for the whereabouts of a small black miniature pinscher
which had been lost for several days. She had arrived in a very large,
Lincoln sedan, so rusted and dilapidated as to make my old blue '95 minivan
appear a paragon of elegance. The old Lincoln was now parked in the driveway
just behind my four year old Dodge. Accompanying the younger one, sitting
in the Lincoln, was a white-haired woman, much older, disheveled and
distraught, lamenting and bemoaning the loss of her dog. I explained
the circumstances of its relocation and led the younger of the two to
the front lawn from where I could point out to her Buck Sheets' house
below us on the slope of the hill.  I assured the two that Buck would know
and would tell them to whom he had taken the dog. I invited them to return
if they had trouble finding Buck. I felt sorry for the old, and obviously
very poor woman, and a little bit guilty that I had been so eager to get
rid of the dog and had not held onto it longer so as to be able to give it
back to her. I returned to my writing. When I failed to see the large old
Lincoln Town Car make its way down the driveway, I went out to look,
and found that the Lincoln was stuck on the lawn, at an angle, just a foot
in front of the garage door, its wheels spinning ineffectively in the mud.
A sudden surge of traction forward would propel it through the garage door,
and perhaps even bring down the brick column that supports the rear of the
house.  The older woman was behind the wheel. The young woman attempting to
dislodge the very large and heavy car by pushing. I tried to help, but in vain.
I opened the garage door to protect it from accidental damage, and suggested
to the older woman that she permit me to try to get the car unstuck.
She gratefully accepted. I slipped behind the wheel, and by rocking the car
back and forth, I managed to put it back on the graveled driveway.
After perfunctory apologies for the considerable damage to the lawn,
the two disappointed visitors finally drove off, the grass deeply rutted,
but the house still standing.

This evening Jeane telephoned and described the scene at Buck's house.
Jeane didn't know the name of the woman to whom the dog belonged, but
identified her as the daughter or daughter-in-law of Lloyd or Lewis MacDaniel,
brothers who had lived years ago by the side of the Iron Mountain Road
two and a half miles from Konnarock.  I remember the MacDaniels with whom I
had gone to school. They were surly and hostile; one of them had once
threatened to beat me up. I don't remember the details. It turned out that
the MacDaniel woman, who had been deferential when she spoke with me,
had a very unsatisfactory interview with Buck.  It's not clear to me
whether Buck didn't know to whom he had given the dog, whether he was
embarrassed to have it retrieved from its new owners, or whether he
simply didn't like the old woman (who reminded me somewhat of his mother)
and wished to hurt her by refusing to tell to whom he had given her dog.
The woman was not to be intimidated; she upbraided Buck, and threatened
to have him arrested for stealing her dog, Finally, according to
Jeane's report, Buck persuaded the women to leave by threatening
to call the police. He justified his refusal to help the woman
retrieve her dog with the explanation that within recent memory
the old woman's relatives had arranged to have some of her dogs
taken away because for days she had failed to feed them. Buck
was confident that he had done the "right" thing, and that the
dog was now much better off than he would have been with his
original owner. I was struck also by the disparity of the woman's
obvious poverty, and Buck's earlier considered judgment that the dog
appeared to have been well taken care of. Could it be that the old
woman had kidnapped the pooch, that he had escaped from her maltreatment,
and that Buck had in fact proved to be the dog's liberator and
savior? How should I know?  The world is more complex than we tend
to imagine.  We're clearly in need of a deity to adjudicate the fate
of wandering dogs, their owners, and their Samaritans.  God help them
all: it's far beyond me.

==================

I've also given thought to your concerns about the contemporary 
political scene and the prevalent rejection of government which
troubles you. Perhaps one might consider it as a more general
zoological problem. All animals (Aristotle notwithstanding) are
dependent on community with their fellows; but all animals are
also threatened by such community. Consider as the simplest,
the universal conflicts about space, territoriality, Lebensraum.
That's what immigrant-phobias are all about. Consider also the
many ways in which modern transportation, communication and
data processing impinge on privacy and individuality, especially
among populations unable to understand and exploit the new
technologies. Consider the millions of people out of work,
confused and disoriented in the contemporary social and political
atmosphere. They're not very bright. Isn't it to be expected that
they should be angry?

It seems to me that all governments are alike. George Bush
and Dick Cheney are stark reminders that the difference between
their government and Nazi Germany is not as great as we would
like it to be. Their government was and is our government.
I try to understand it as an issue that should be approached,
if possible, without preconceptions, and that deserves
dispassionate description and analysis.
Let's start with you. Do you trust the government? If so,
then, would you trust the government if you were an American-Arab,
or an American-Muslim, or an American-African? An if not, how
can you justify the difference? If, as our pious Declaration
states "all men are created equal", how can you trust the 
government, if the American-Indian can't?
Do you really believe that the US Government is fundamentally
different from the government of England, France, Germany, Poland,
Rumania, Hungary, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel,
Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, India, China, Thailand? 
Do you really believe that today's US Government is different from
what it was eight or eighty years ago, or for that matter a hundred
eighty years ago when it countenanced the enslavement of Africans
and the genocide of American Indians?
How many Guantanomo's, how many Abu Graib's, how many instances
of Buchenwald, Dachau, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Theresienstadt,
does it take for you to begin to distrust the government, or do
you really believe that "we" are holier than "they"?

I begin with Aristotle's dictum that only a god or an animal
is capable of solitary existence. I think about that statement
and conclude that it is incorrect. Most animals also live
in societies of sorts, and certainly the Olympians were anything
but solitary creatures. I don't think Aristotle could have had
Jehovah in mind. Even so, I would argue that he dwelled in
the company of angels, and even if, hypothetically, Jehovah
was capable of being solitary, he chose otherwise.  He created
Adam and Eve to keep him company.

It's useful I believe to approach issues of human society and its
organization empirically, by observing how human beings in fact live.
How they assist and protect, and how they harrass and destroy each other.
Every society reflects a spectrum between anarchy and tyranny,
between the absence of government and totalitarianism. There are
few situations where in one perspective the spectre of anarchy,
and in another perspective, the spectre of totalitarianism does
not intrude. The golden mean, if it exists at all, is ephemeral
and evanescent.

It's quite possible to support the government and yet not to trust it.
Indeed that would seem to me an optimal position. To trust government
is to permit oneself to be deceived and disappointed. To distrust
government is to place ones own interests in the scales against
the government, against community and communal action. It is neither
necessary nor desirable that the individual be wholly integrated
into the community. Survival as an individual depends on ones
willingness and ones ability to accept and to manage the insoluble
conflict between ones own interests and those of the community.

I can't expect that what I've written makes you feel any better;
I hope it doesn't make you feel much worse.

Jochen