Dear Cyndy,

If I were you, I'd be glad to be back home. I hope that's
how you feel, and that the winter ahead won't be too
arduous and dispiriting. Maybe one should learn to
hibernate until spring. When I reflect on my own situation,
I observe with appropriate gratitude how much better my
arthritis is than it was a year ago. If Margaret were able
to come a long, I would be tempted to try to go cross-country
skiing.

Meanwhile, as usual, I've been busy writing, adding to my
novel, and rereading some of my letters of the past twelve
months asking myself whether when stripped of personal
references, some of the ideas are worth including in the
"Tagebuecher" that I have been issuing on my website for
the past several years. Since no one reads them, it's not
a matter of great import.

When I find my literary energy flagging, I turn to making
this inappropriately large house more orderly. I'm reminded,
with a tinge of irony, of Goethe's dictum: Ich will lieber
ein Unrecht begehen, als Unordnung ertragen. (I would rather
commit injustice than tolerate disorder.) He said it,
I believe, referring to the French Revolution. The neatness
of the domestic environment gives me much satisfaction, but
I'm aware that the price is productivity. I can either get
work done or put the workplace in order. The two are mutually
exclusive.

My sister has left. Her departure was very dramatic. For reasons
only her psychoanalyst would know, if she had one, Margrit is very
secretive. Her plan was to arrange to spend a night with a friend,
a former student of hers, - she was, as I may have told you, a
professor of social work at the University of Windsor, Ontario, -
but then, instead of returning to Belmont, hire a taxi to take
her directly to the airport without having told us in advance.
However the taxi fare from Framingham to Logan would have come
to eighty dollars, - and knowing that I will drive her wherever
she wants for nothing, - she decided the secrecy wasn't worth the cost,
came back to Belmont and let me take her to her plane. That was on
December 8, a week ago.

She flew to Tri-Cities Airport in Tennessee, arranged for one Roald
Kirby, the son of a childhood schoolmate to meet her at the airport,
and then had a distant acquaintance of Roald's, a woman whom I know
only as "Sandy", a single mother and sometime army mechanic, drive her
in her Miata sportscar from Konnarock to Detroit. In Detroit she stayed
for only one day before taking a flight to Fort Lauderdale, FL, where
she had booked a one week cruise to Puerto Rico, organized for Liberals
like herself by "The Nation" magazine. All this even though she hadn't
recovered from the lingering post-surgical diarrhea. I haven't heard
from her since, and hope she's o.k., as she almost always is, since
she seems to have a guardian angel of her own, whose services she
requires full time.

I was much pleased that this last, seven and one half week visit
devolved without unpleasantness or altercation of any sort. Margrit
understands that we will welcome her back, whenever she wishes to
return,  but she has promised herself and us to stay away for one year
and then to be here for no more than ten to fourteen days. She acts
on the assumption that she will always be able to live alone and will
always be able to drive. She is eighty-one years old. Clearly the
coming catastrophe is only a matter of time, though none of us knows
when or where it will befalls us.  

By April or May I should know whether or not the court will permit
me to spend the summer working at the completion of the Nantucket
house. If not, Margaret and I will spend as much of the time from
April to October as seems feasible in Virginia. The summers in 
Konnarock are incomparably beautiful, and I often reflect on the irony
that I owe my chance to enjoy those idyllic weeks and months to the
malice of the Nantucket authorities. If we're here in Belmont,
I have vague plans for replacing with zoned baseboard heating
units some of the radiators in the old part of the house. These
I have kept drained for the past two years, because they can't be
zoned, and heating the entirety of the large drafty structure seems
unduly extravangant. I also have visions of starting to replace
some of the drafty windows. There's no possibility of getting
everything done, but the prospect of working on the house, however
slowly and inefficiently, seems far preferable to spending my days
in a "retirement community" with an "activities coordinator"
planning my days for me.

And on that cheerful note I send Ned and yourself my greetings
and my best wishes for the holidays, which by my standards means
that they should pass by you unnoticed and leave you unscathed.

Jochen