Dear Marion,

It's the second morning that I've set the timer to turn
on the radio at 7 a.m. and awoken to the garbled cosmetic
history of NPR's Morning Report, - or whatever they call it,
in order to be up in time to welcome the delivery man
when he comes for the vaccine to be returned to Iowa.
Yesterday the Fedex truck driver stood me up; telephoned
early in the afternoon to tell me he couldn't make it until
tommorow morning, i.e. this morning. After he's come, if he
comes, we'll drive to Chilhowie to stock up on groceries.
Meanwhile I'm sitting at the computer, churning out more text,
while the vaccines in their bulky styrofoam container
are hogging space in the refrigerator. Sooner or later
I'll get sleepy and nod off in the middle of what I'm doing.
If my sentences start to get incoherent, you know what's
going on.

Your catalogue of that make us melancholy is familiar enough,
and your explanations are very persuasive. Your letter prompted
a review of Hamlet's reasons for being depressed:

  To be, or not to be, that is the Question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the minde to suffer
The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune,
Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to dye, to sleepe
No more; and by a sleepe, to say we end
The Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall shockes
That Flesh is heyre too? 'Tis a consummation
Deuoutly to be wish'd. To dye to sleepe,
To sleepe, perchance to Dreame; I, there's the rub,
For in that sleepe of death, what dreames may come,
When we haue shuffel'd off this mortall coile,
Must giue vs pawse. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would beare the Whips and Scornes of time,
The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans Contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd Loue, the Lawes delay,
The insolence of Office, and the Spurnes
That patient merit of the vnworthy takes,
When he himselfe might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would these Fardles beare
To grunt and sweat vnder a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne
No Traueller returnes, Puzels the will,
And makes vs rather beare those illes we haue,
Then flye to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of vs all,
And thus the Natiue hew of Resolution
Is sicklied o're, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprizes of great pith and moment,
With this regard their Currants turne away,
And loose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The faire Ophelia. Nimph, in thy Orizons
Be all my sinnes remembred

Considering the causes of what makes us - you and/or me - depressed,
I turn to a Google-Wikipedia search to refresh my memory about Aristotle's
famous four causes: the efficient, the formal, the material and
the final cause, - and another search into Schopenhauer's
"Ueber die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde"
(About the fourfold root of the sentence about sufficient cause.)
It was his doctoral thesis (1813), which he regurgitated in a much
improved version, so he thought, in 1847, and stuffed shirt that he
was, he claimed I couldn't understand his Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung (world as will and representation), until I had first
excavated the ground in which reason was rooted.

My mistranslation is deliberate. Schopenhauer didn't mean ground,
he meant cause, and the root to which he refers is the logical-
mathematical root. And he didn't perceive the irony of the 
implicit contradiction already of the title he had chosen for
his opus: the fourfold cause of the sufficient cause. What
sort of "sufficient cause", I ask, is it, that requires a fourfold
root. The entire production doesn't make sense except as a
language game, albeit very sophisticated.

Aristotle seems to have been perplexed by the ambiguities of
the term "aition" (etiology) which he sought to clarify.
The Latin translation is "causa", a word of unknown origin.
St. Thomas Aquinas, the mediaeval theologian who popularized
Aristotle as the classical basis (Grund, cause, (material) aition)
of Roman-Catholic thought, did not, to the best of my knowledge,
know Greek, but relied on translations from Greek to Arabic
to Latin. (When I was in graduate school in Comparative Literature,
I flirted with the notion of tracing the misconceptions that arose
from those serial translations, but the project was linguistically
far beyond me, and I never even got started learning Arabic or Hebrew.)

The German term for cause, of course, is Grund as in Grundbesitz
(real estate). The other German term for aition (cause) is Ursache,
(original thing). Grund also means dregs, as in the Bach,
Matthaeuspassion Aria "Gerne will ich mich bequemen", of which
I have been particularly fond, perhaps because it has the simplest
imaginable violin obbligato which even I was able to play, and
which, when I was in college, often served me as a tether useful in
extracting myself from pits of depression:

Gerne will ich mich bequemen,
Kreuz und Becher anzunehmen,
Trink ich doch dem Heiland nach.
Denn sein Mund,
Der mit Milch und Honig fließet,
Hat den Grund
Und des Leidens herbe Schmach
Durch den ersten Trunk versüßet.

The text, endearing to me in its naive Baroque sensuousness,
purports to describe the willingness of the believer
(Gerne will ich mich bequemen,)
to accept the the cross (as the symbol of suffering)
and the cup (as the cup of woe).
(Kreuz und Becher anzunehmen,)
inasmuch as he drinks out of it after the Savior,
(Trink ich doch dem Heiland nach.)
The reason being that the Savior's mouth,
(Denn sein Mund,)
Flowing with milk and honey
(Der mit Milch und Honig fließet,)
======================
11 Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb:
honey and milk are under thy tongue;
and the smell of thy garments
is like the smell of Lebanon.
_        Song of Solomon 4
======================
Has by his taking the first draught, sweetened
(Durch den ersten Trunk versüßet.)
the grounds
(Hat den Grund)
of the bitter shame of suffering.
(Und des Leidens herbe Schmach)

Unavoidably therefore, the German word "Grund"
brings to my palate the aroma of coffee grounds,
which, after all, don't taste all that bad.

_             * * * * *

Sofar as my Theses concerning health care reform are concerned,
they are, of course in a very preliminary stage requiring much
additional thought. Here are a few more:

Thesis #33:
Quality of life is a cultural issue, to be defined not by plebiscite.
but by the essence of aggregate human experience as summarized in the
history of literature and of art.

Thesis 34:
Provide basic, essential health care to all persons free of charge
on the same basis as the services of fire departments and police 
departments.

Thesis 35:
Define basic, essential health care as provision of pure food,
water, and air; immunization; (effective) treatment of acute
illness and accidents, with no limit to available funding,
barring economic, social or political catastrophe.

Thesis 36:
Define supplemental health care as provision of effective ameliorative
treatment for chronic conditions where such treatment may reasonably
be expected to preserve or improve quality of life.  Total expenditures
for supplemental health care benefits shall have budgetary limitations. 
asand an adjustable but limited fraction of tax revenues shall be
appropriated to defray supplemental health care costs. Individuals
have the right to refuse supplemental health care and to receive cash
payments equivalent to the value of of the expenditures they forego.

Thesis 37:
Define superfluous health care as health care which is neither basic
nor supplemental. Everyone shall have the right to purchase superfluous
health care or insurance to reimburse for superfluous health care at
his/her own expense. Excise taxes on superfluous health care shall be
applied to defray costs of essential and supplemental health care.

Thesis 38:
No person shall be permitted to teach the practice of clinical medicine
who has not him or herself spent ten years, full time, taking care of
patients.

Much of all this is avowedly provocative, the ideas themselves,
their expression as (95) Theses, their hypothetical application
to the doors of some hospital. "Megalomaniac" is my middle name,
and I can't help but reminisce about the situation in which
Martin Luther found himself when as an unknown monk, and a
renegade one at that, he confronted the Roman Catholic behemoth
by nailing 95 controversial theological theses to the cathedral
door in Wittenberg. I also see him standing alone in Worms,
at the Imperial Convention, (the customary designation, "Diet of
Worms" sounds too unappetizing,) refusing to retract his heresies
and telling the Holy Roman Emperor, Hier stehe ich, ich kann
nicht anders, Gott helfe mir, Amen.

Jochen