Dear Marion,

Albert Schweitzer would have insisted that you are indeed
your chickens' keeper, a concept which gets sticky in the
details, and occasions, if nothing else, more symptoms of
discombobulation, correctly spelled or otherwise.

It wasn't Klemens who accompanied me to Nantucket. It was
Margaret, once more demonstrating her innate heroism. She
and I were most conspicuously by far the oldest passengers on
that squat ungainly ferry incongruously christened the Eagle.

The junket to Nantucket was exhilarating and strenuous.
Up at 5 a.m. and back at 9:40 p.m. Hoelderlin's poetry
isn't exactly apposite, - no mountains on Nantucket
and no loved ones either, to put it mildly,
but the poem gives a perspective to all voyages,
and quoting it even where it's somewhat incongruous,
I consider an exercise of my poetic license:

Drum, da gehäuft sind rings
Die Gipfel der Zeit, und die Liebsten
Nah wohnen, ermattend auf
Getrenntesten Bergen,
So gib unschuldig Wasser,
O Fittige gib uns, treuesten Sinns
Hinüberzugehn und wiederzukehren.

It's from Hoelderlin's Ode "Patmos", which requires no
translation because I've quoted it to you before, and I'm
sure you've learned it by heart.

We started out in the dark. Initially, the transition from
the blackness of night to the indeterminate gray of early
morning, and then miraculous as always, rhododactylus eos,
the rosy fingered dawn, the most unforgettable - to me - of
Homer's epithets which weaves what I see this morning into
the tapestry of what mankind has perceived for thousands of
years. Driving at 60 miles per hour into, and being blinded
for minutes on end by the rising sun, is a reminder that even
the most glorious of experiences is attended by perplexities
and dangers. In time the highway once more emerged from the
golden glare, and I made mental note that we had just survived
another ordeal, not worth a further thought unless it had
ended in catastrophe.

The embarkation at Hyannis was uneventful. I had thought that 
some security wizard might challenge my placing on the
baggage cart an obviously heavy, disreputable looking package,
a box wrapped in a decommissioned mattress pad tied tightly
with multiple loops of rope. The outside gave no hint as to
what the inside might reveal.  But the baggage handler to whom
I handed the concealed computer, seemed not at all concerned,
After the 135 minute crossing, Margaret and I plodded down
the gangplank. The baggage cart reappeared from the freight deck,
and the packaged computer once more passed into my possession.

As predicted, the day was sunny, bright, cloudness and warm.
The taxi driver, a middle aged woman from the Pennsylvania 
Poconos confided that after five winters on the Island, this
was the last one she could tolerate. I entertained her with
a history of my scrimmages with the Town of Nantucket.
She seemed to welcome my account as confirmation of her
surmise that the idyllic perfection of Nantucket was only
as real as the vacationers' brochures.

Our house was, as I had expected, intact; I found its somber
dignity somewhat tarnished by the insolence of office and the
law's delay.  The ceiling joists were adorned with many delicate
cobwebs, which spanned also the rungs of the ladder into the
basement, reassuring evidence that for years now, as its sole
occupants, the spiders, and there must be very many of them,
have enjoyed an undisturbed tenancy in common.  No doubt about
it, 3 Red Barn Road has become a haunted house, but I make no
objection, so long as the ghost that haunts it is my own.

All other ghosts are kept at bay by the surveillance system:
that is its purpose. The refurbished computer functions
flawlessly. One of the cameras had succumbed to the salt air
that blows from the ocean, but a replacement was available.
A technical issue which I left unresolved is the corrosion of
the fittings of the long cables that extend from the computer
in the downstairs bedroom to the cameras outside in the scrub,
a problem apparently ignored by the manufacturers. In Konnarock
I've circumvented the corrosion by clipping the fittings and
making soldered connections. Yesterday I didn't have time for
such artwork. Instead I placed the fourth camera inside the house,
also potentially very informative. As you can see in Picture #4
of the attached series, an intruder passing though the wide
opening would need to move the wheel barrow, would certainly
want to look into the barrels, and in the process move them.
By comparing images from sequential days, I could infer the
burglar's visit. (Of the attached images, #1 is the southern
front of the house, #2 is the second floor, #3 and #4 are on
the first floor.)

I spent most of today reading the legal descriptions of some of
the many Section 529 College Tuition Plans, which the IRS says
must not be used as estate planning devices although when 
interpreted literally, and implemented with meticulous attention
to detail, they are admirably suited for just that purpose.
In this case I ask not "What would Jesus have done?" but
"What would Onkel Fritz have done?"  With its pious exhortation
to refrain from availing oneself of the benefits of the law 
for the unholy purpose of lowering ones estate taxes, the
Revenue Service violates the undeclared separation of anima
and civitas. As the folksong would have it:
"Ich denke was ich will, und was mich begluecket,
doch alles fein still, so wie es sich schicket."
If the government gives me a legal right to an action,
may it then scrutinize and presume to divine my intention
in exercising that right? And like my mother, punish me for
an inappropriate attitude, even when I keep my intentions
and my thoughts to myself?  Something more to think about.

Jochen