Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter. I hope the Thanksgiving Dinner
and its sequel were as satisfactory as the preparations 
which you described.

Margaret and I drove about 45 miles south to Sharon MA,
to have Thanksgiving Dinner with her sister Janet, a very
intelligent and articulate woman, two years younger than
Margaret, who moved to Sharon some time ago to live with
her daughter Ann. Ann, who is a struggling environmental
lawyer, was away for the holiday, having taken her two college-
aged sons to have turkey with the father of her ex-husband,
whom she divorced because she decided after some 15 years of
marriage that she didn't like him after all. It's a sad and
difficult story, but then, so is life itself.

Janet has now been widowed for about thirty years. Her husband,
Robert Bingham, a journalist who started out working for "Time",
then moved on to become managing editor of Max Ascoli's "Reporter",
and when that magazine expired, found his niche as managing editor
of The New Yorker. Being extraordinarily good humored, Robert was
able to put up with, and perhaps compensate for, William Shawn's
eccentricities. Unfortunately, in the prime of life, Robert
developed a glioblastoma of the brain and died. Janet carried on
valiantly without him.

After dinner, while Margaret and Janet talked about family and 
childhood, I remained at the dinner table with one of Robert's
many books from the bookcase behind me. Not surprisingly, Robert
was very literate, much interested in contemporary American history,
and an admirer of Franklin Roosevelt. The volume I chose was one
from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr's Roosevelt biography, fascinating to
me for Schlesinger's vivid description of the atmosphere of those
dramatic days of the nascent New Deal, and particularly of the
persons, with names so very familiar, Francis Biddle, Frances Perkins,
Henry Wallace, Rexford Tugwell, Henry Morgenthau - whom Roosevelt
enlisted to help him govern the country. I'm left with the impression
that Schlesinger was a frustrated novelist, the teller of a story that
competes with history. I've often been struck by the truth and the
irony, that the Germans have only one word: Geschichte, to designate
both story and history, both fiction and fact, as if the two were
indistinguishable.

Your question about vasculitis and macular disease is properly
addressed not to a hematologist such as my brother-in-law Peter,
but to an ophthalmologist, pardon the presumption, such as myself.
Hematologists know little about retinas, and retina specialists
as you've found out, know little about vasculitis. But if you
google "retinal vasculitis", you will be rewarded with 72,800 
citations. The retinal blood vessels are unique in that they
are accessible to inspection with the ophthalmoscope. When the
vessels are "inflamed" their walls become thicked and appear as
white strands radiating from the optic disc. The resulting
visual disturbance may be indistinguishable from "age-related
macular degeneration." The fluorescein angiograms which you
sent me showed no signs of "vasculitis", and there's no reason
to think that treatment other than that which you received 
would have been of benefit.  From what you have written me,
I have no reason to think that the Avastin injections into the
vitreous had any effect on the recurrent extraocular vasculitis;
but inasmuch as Avastin inhibits the growth and repair of blood
vessels it's reasonable to anticipate that Avastin might have an
effect on vasculitis.  If you have other questions, please don't
hesitate to ask, although I can't promise that I will have useful
answers.

Stay well and give my best to Ned.
Jochen