Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter of Jan 31, and for your two letters
of comment and criticism of the obituary.

Margaret Walden, the clerk of the Quaker Meeting replied:
"This is so lovely that I do not really want to cut it."
but she will nonetheless shorten what I wrote and will have
the opportunity to eliminate what she deems most likely to
be misunderstood. Mrs. Walden had asked for the obituary
some weeks ago, but I resisted the distraction until we
had completed dissolving Margrit's apartment. The process
was not easy, because with each item that I thought I had
to give away, - or throw away, - and there were a large 
number, I felt I was insulting my memory of Margrit. The
task, though complete so far as emptying the apartment and
avoiding further rental payments ($985/month), leaves me
with 55 framed pictures, 3 boxes of photographs, 5 boxes
of letters, 25 boxes of books, 3 boxes of vinyl 33 rpm
phonographs records, perhaps 8 boxes of dishes,  five
oriental carpets of various sizes and in various degrees
of disintegration. The carpets, the papers, the photographs
we have already transferred to Belmont. The remaining boxes
are in two storage cubicles in the Detroit apartment house.
These boxes we will begin to transfer to Konnarock in late
February after Klemens and his family return from their
annual 4 day skiing vacation. I expect to make at least two
and perhaps three or more trips from Detroit to Konnarock.
The distance from Detroit to Konnarock (579 miles) is much
less than to Belmont (850 miles).

The two introductory paragraphs to my obituary you must
accept as Rilke-lite, an echo of his conviction that not
only our understanding of each other but also our experience
of physical objects precludes verbal accounting. It was only
on the basis of this disclaimer that I was able to proceed
to give Mrs. Walden the factual details that she had asked
for but which seem to me so frivolous. The calculated
concealment of my own person, referring for example to
Margrit's parents rather than to "our" parents has
three-fold stylistic significance: In the first place
it is the story of Margrit's life that I tell rather than my own;
in the second place, I need to distract from what is obvious,
once you think about it, that what I present is NOT Margrit's
emotional-spiritual experience of her life, but MY spiritual-
emotional semi-rhetorical construction of Margrit's life
and of her death, - and in the third place my consistent
referring to Margrit alone rather than to "us" is the stylistic
acknowledgement of her reluctance to have anything to do with
me except in extremis.

In the past month, I've had numerous opportunities to talk
with Margrit's friends about their friendship with her,
leaving me with the impression that there was much reciprocal
need: Margrit needed her friends, and in much the same way,
Margrit's friends needed her. They provided each other with
support essential to both parties. My mother often knowingly
said of Margrit: Die braucht Menschen. (She needs people.)
On other occasions my mother articulated her own experience
in the words of Paul Heyse: Wer sich an andre haelt, dem wankt
die Welt.  Wer auf sich selber ruht, steht gut. (Who clings to
others, his world sways; who rests on himself, stands firm.) No
wonder that Margrit wasn't comfortable in her parents' home.

Thank you for trusting me with the question about the reliability
and safety of brokerage firms. I'm not sure my answers will be
correct: but here's how I think about it. I don't trust any official
rating or endorsement. Remember that Bernard Madoff had an
excellent reputation. Remember that Standard and Poor's and Moody's
rated potentially worthless securities AAA.  Your risk of the 
brokerage firm's going bankrupt is limited a) by the SIPC
(Securities Investors Protection Corporation). I don't understand
exactly what they promise, but I surmise there are many loopholes.
(You can find out more about the SIPC on the Internet.)
b) by the circumstance that securities held by your broker in
your account are deemed to be held in trust for you and as
corpus of the trust are not attachable by the brokerage firm's
creditors. Such is my understanding, but I haven't researched
the topic, and I have, fortunately, no personal practical
experience.

The most serious risk, as I understand it, is not that the
brokerage firm would go bankrupt, but that an individual
employee of the brokerage firm might misallocate your funds, by
purchasing securities contrary to your instructions, by having
securities or cash held in your account disappear or partially
disappear. Such losses when not associated with the collapse
of the firm, might be difficult to prove, might slip through
one of the loopholes of the SIPC rules, and in particular,
would be expensive to correct, since the loss is limited to
your account, about which no one cares, other than yourself.
It's my intuition that such risks are minimized by dealing
with larger firms whose employees are under tighter control
of their associates and superiors.

Even so, I diversify. Half of my assets are held by Morgan Stanley,
the other half by Charles Schwab. I keep reasonably close tabs 
with Internet access to both accounts. There are also substantial
funds for the grandchildren and for Klemens in U.S. Government
Securities mutual funds under the auspices of what was once
Scudder and is now an affiliate of Deutsche Bank. For the past
two years I've kept virtually all assets in 3 mos US Treasury
bills, an investment which lost nothing in last year's crash,
but which is presently earning no interest at all. Given the
political climate, I consider it unavoidable that sooner or
later the dollar will become severely devalued by inflation.
I have tried to diversify into German or Swiss government bonds,
but the brokers won't cooperate. Maybe I should try again. I've
shunned inflation protected government bonds because they sell
at such a premium that if there is no inflation, especially if
interest rates rise in the absence of inflation, one must expect
to lose principal. Please share with me any investment insights
which you might have.  That's enough for tonight about the filthy
lucre, - or maybe even too much.

Thank you for your willingness to wade through Die Andere. I
have long considered Chapter 2 the weakest of them all. Its
redeeming feature: that it was inadvertently appropriate
for my own mind to start going around in circles in its attempt
to describe Doehring going around in circles, unable to make up
his mind about his trip to the Rockies.  It's late, and with
vertigo impending, it's time to stop.

Jochen