Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letters and the description of the movies.
You give me an inkling of what I am missing, but I'm too old
to venture looking for new experiences.

Several weeks ago, while sorting books on one of the shelves
that line the waals of our garage, I found an old small thin,
fragile and intensely yellowed copy of a short biography of
Spinoza. The few paragraphs that I read seemed unusally well
written. I remembered, the author Carl Gebhardt, to be the
editor of my Latin edition of Spinozas works, which I confess
I have never undertaken to try to decipher. On Internet research
I found Gebhardt to be the author of an essay in Kant Studien
about Rembrandt and Spinoza, an association which I thought
far-fetched, but interesting from a cultural perspective.
The local library network, not unexpectedly was unhelpful.
My search for "Kant Studien" yielded only the computer
generated query: "Did you mean Kant Student?" Well, no,
I didn't. The Concord library produced another "Rembrandt
and Spinoza" opus by a German author (whose name I've forgotten)
written in English and insubstantial to a degree that I gave
up after a few chapters. One author leads to another. I was
reminded of a book I had always wanted to read about Rembrandt
by Jakob Rosenberg, who taught at Harvard while I was a student.
"Rembrandt Rosenberg" he was called. This work was available
through the Brookline library, and on impulse, I asked that it
be obtained for me. I read about a hundred of its three hundred
pages, fascinated by the intersection - albeit unrecognized by
the author, - of poetry, literature and visual art. Much to think
about and grist for my mill. Yesterday, I took the borrowed book
back to the library, to clear the deck, so to speak for our
trip to Konnarock, where I plan to order a copy from Amazon.com.
Meanwhile I've taken time out to collect from the Internet
my own gallery of Rembrandt paintings which I store in my 
computer, images of much better quality than those reproduced
in Rosenberg's book. I'll copy them to a CD to take to Konnarock,
and will probably have more to write, as I think about them.

If I find myself in a predicament at all, - and I'm not sure I do, -
it's because I may be over-extended. My appetite for work exceeds
certainly my physical strength and possibly my intellectual
capacity as well. I don't know where or how to put limits on my
undertakings.  Sooner or later I will fail, and my projects will
come to their natural end. Meanwhile I try hard to maintain as
ordered a technical, economic and legal environment as I am able,
so as to leave my survivors in the best possible position to cope
with the complexities that my activities continue to generate.

The past few days have been mild and sunny. I have taken advantage
of the good weather to start painting the house, applying yet another
layer to the numerous coats that have been brushed onto the ship-lap
siding over the 95 years of its existence. I keep reminding myself
that next month I will be 80. The house and I: reciprocal examples
of the decomposition of old age. Today, although the weather was
again warm and sunny, I found no time for painting. The entire day
was taken up by tax matters. First for the IRS which requires an
accounting of my retirement plan on something they call Form 5500-EZ,
a form that the IRS is unable to provide and which has been on back-order
for months. Meanwhile, failure to file on time is punished with fines
up to $15000.  Speaking of bureaucratic incompetence and tyranny,  -
I finally extracted telephone instructions to file 2009 data on a
2008 Form of which, fortunately I had kept a blank duplicate.
Quite possibly they will now try to fine me for following their
instructions and using the outdated form.

The other entertainment came from the Virginia tax authorities,
who refused to acknowledge that in support of the amended income tax
returns I had sent them documentation for the taxes my sister paid
to Canada in 2002, 2003 and 2005. I mailed them the duplicates for
which they asked.  Their demand for duplicate documentation is
an example of imposing arbitrary and meaningless burdens on the
taxpayer.  I shall argue on appeal, if necessary, that their demand for
duplicate documentation constitutes a waiver of any statute of limitations
which they might otherwise have invoked. That's something they won't
have thought of. (The refunds involved for the three years aggregate
about $3500.)

Margaret and I plan tentatively to leave for Konnarock on Monday
morning, just 36 hours from now. Whether we will be able to get
ready remains to be seen. The Konnarock computer is functioning
flawlessly, sending surveillance images day after day. E-mail
should be no problem. Stay well and happy, and write to me about
the movies that you see.

Jochen