Dear Marion,

Come to think of it, Gloria's behavior wasn't much
crazier than that of the rest of us. You must have
been in your early twenties when JFK had us designing
fall-out shelters in our basements. I remember doing
that when I was practicing medicine in Damascus, -
which is only 150 miles away from Oak Ridge.
I felt uncomfortably close to a major target.
Fifty years of Halloween games with the Russians, 
if nothing else made me question the sanity of the
society in which I was living. I'm reminded of a joke
from my childhood.  Hitler visits an insane asylum.
All the inmates jump up with their right arms raised
and shout Heil Hitler.  Only one remains seated and silent.
When challenged, he replies: "Ich bin hier nur der Waerter." 

The common reality in which you express such confidence
seems more than a little zany to me: lawmakers bought by
the wealthy, health care guided by fantasy, foreign policy
framed by illusion, a legal system rooted in mendacity.
I receive instructions from all sides that thinking for
oneself is incompatible with survival.

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

That's what I had written when your letter came.
I spent much of the weekend turning das siebte Kapitel
into Chapter Seven. Its now on the Internet at
http://home.earthlink.net/~ernstmeyer/andere/E07.html
I like the German much better, but I don't want to
spend any more time on the English version. I'm 
suspicious of my own ideology. If you think it's
worth your while, take it apart, and tell me what's
wrong with it. If you want to know what happened
to Albert and can't guess, take a look at the first
paragraph of:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ernstmeyer/andere/K11.TXT

Tomorrow I'll put in order some of my rooms, then
start working on chapyer 39. In the process I'll
find out what Katenus, Mengs, Joachim and not least,
Elly think of das siebte Kapitel.

Thank you particularly for your interest in Margrit.
I don't think my accounting of our relationship
would be helpful at all. It's called sibling rivalry.
Put yourself in Margrit's place and imagine how 
oppressive and dispiriting it must be to have a 
brother like me. When I was one or two and she was
three or four years old, she tried to solve her 
problem by wrapping the pull string from a curtain
around my neck. For some reason it didn't work as
intended, and she missed her chance. Let her tell
you what's wrong with me, pass it on, and I'll try
to improve.

Jochen