Dear Marion,

This shouldn't need to become too long a letter.
I have in mind first of all to wish you a safe trip
and an edifying - do you object to that pietistic term? - 
weekend on the Farm.

The second item on my mind, with respect to Das Reiterlied,
which is the name that has been given to the verses from
Wallensteins Lager, is the remarkable obtuseness to the
horrors of war and the guilt of those who willingly or
otherwise participate in war. I'm no historian, but I see
in (modern) history a chain of calamities: the Peasants' Revolt,
the Thirty Years' War, the Seven Years' War, the French Revolution,
The Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the Franco Prussian War,
the two World Wars, - with worse to come and no end in sight.
No matter how inspiring the poetry, I can't reconcile myself to
its denial of the truth.

The third item is clarification of your understanding about
Margrit and myself. When you imply that Klemens or Margaret
may help me to a more balanced and dispassionate view of my
sister's problems, you have it backward; and you have it
backward because Margrit has over the years consistently
characterized me as the bete noire; whereas, especially of
late, it has been myself who has articulated and defended her
interests and has argued with other family members on her
behalf. Perhaps I am the target, because ultimately it is I
who is "the decider" in our family.

Margrit has talked with various friends about entering the
Friends Home in Guilford NC. In the nurses' noted at Tufts
Medical Center, she is characterized as "pleasant but crafty".
She has told some of her "friends" that she has already been
accepted, she has told others that she plans to go in a year
or two or three. She has been informed, and she understands,
that she doesn't have the financial assets to qualify for
admission, yet she keeps pretending that she does and she
continues misleading others like you, and perhaps herself,
with fantasies of some day retiring there, reassuring her
audience that "they" will take care of you even if you don't
have the money; although the stark facts are that "they"
don't have the money either.  The fact is that Margrit
hasn't made any arrangements, and she has only vague
intentions of possibly making such arrangements in the future.

What is going to happen instead is that she will strive to persist 
in her present irresponsible - that's the proper term, although
you will object to my use of it as an index of my lack of affection, -
life style as long as she can, until there is another breakdown,
and when that occurs she will expect Klemens and myself to extricate
her from her difficulties, and we will always try to do so as best
we can. Ultimately there may come a situation where it's too late,
and she's dead; that was almost the case three weeks ago, or her
rehabilitation may be so incomplete that she is no longer able to
resume her preferred lifestyle. Indeed such a status of permanent
incapacity may already have supervened. As of today she has recovered
dramatically, but far from completely, and seems to acknowledge that
she cannot manage by herself. How much, if any, additional recovery
will occur is anybody's guess.

So far as Friends Homes at Guilford are concerned, her reaction to
Tufts Medical Center strongly suggests that she would stay there only
while she was capable of independent living, and the retirement home
left her to her own devices. However they reserve the right to assess
her health status and to eject her from the independent living quarters
into assisted living and even into their less than perfect nursing home
as they deem it advisable.  Margrit, who has always wanted to reserve
for herself the decision of what she was and was not able to do, would
tolerate such control by the retirement home administration poorly if
at all, and would turn to Klemens and myself for help, - as always.
So you had better keep on working toward redirecting her to Belmont.

Have a good weekend.

Jochen