Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. I'm glad you're back home
safely, - but where is "home" ? As the great Romantic
poet Novalis wrote: "Wo gehn wir denn hin? Immer nach Hause."
I know all about driving in rainstorms. It's exhausting.

Thank you for your thoughtful comments about the draft
of my Reply Brief. I do have one patient who is a
communications lawyer with WGBH, who likes to discuss my
efforts with me. But he's not a trial lawyer, and has
no experience with the sort of project in which I am
engaged. I also hesitate to ask him, or anyone else for
advice, because I really don't want to pay any legal fees,
which, as you may know are horrendous. Nantucket's lawyer
charges them $185 per hour, and by this time they must 
have spent many thousands of dollars for the satisfaction
of seeing my plumbing ripped out. It'll be a Pyrrhic
victory for them, even if they win.

Yesterday I spent four hours in the Newton Public Library.
Since I can park there, it's much more convenient than
the Harvard Law Library, and actually, much more useful
since they provide without charge in-library access to a
very comprehensive Internet database. All I have to pay
for is 10 cents per page for the printout. Just to be
safe, I copied all the 24 cases which Nantucket had cited,
I spent a bit more than $20, - so it must have been more
than two hundred pages. I read only a few of them; I found
them so irrelevant that I soon gave up. Besides, the length
of my reply brief is limited to 20 pages, and I wouldn't
have had the space for a critical analysis, even if I 
had wanted to spend the time.

As I rewrote my draft, I streamlined many of the arguments.
I eliminated the provocative satirical metaphor of tort
lawyers feasting on the carcass of Home Depot. I also thought
it was better to keep to myself my thoughts on the Massachusetts
judiciary, whose emblem, in my mind, is still Sacco and Vanzetti.
I'm going to attach the file which I finally printed out. I
very much hope you feel no obligation to read it, not to speak
of commenting on it. The possibility of groundwater or beach
contamination which you mentioned has been addressed by a septic
system that has received the blessing of the Health Department.
I don't think the authorities know what they mean when they 
refer to health hazards. I think they're just talking.

I've finished the Reply Brief. This evening at about 8 p.m.
I fastened together the last of the thirteen volumes, only
24 pages each, not nearly as bulky as what I lugged in town
last month. I hope the rain that's forecast for tomorrow,
doesn't interfere with my taking them into the city, to
the Nantucket lawyers, to the Attorney General, and to the
court.

My next and most important project is to try to train my spirit
to learn to be indifferent to the outcome. If I succeed, I 
can't lose. Age is on my side. Forgetting is so easy, and
when your letter came, I had already started to forget the
legal matters, immersing myself in chapter 38 of my novel,
trying to pick up the threads where I dropped them a week ago.

I hope your stiff neck continues its improvement, and that
the real winter to which you can look forward in Minnesota
won't be too arduous.

Jochen