Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter, for your account of your New Year's
weekend at the Farm, and especially for the re-emergence of your
good humor. It's been a busy week. On December 30, I functioned
as the recording technician for Nathaniel's symphony concert,
using high quality microphones which Klemens had previously acquired.
Apparently the computer which stored the sound track disapproved of
Wagner. In any event, it stalled in the middle of the performance
of the Siegfried Idyll. Beethoven's Fourth Symphony and Rossini's
Overture to William Tell I managed to record without incident.

In anticipation of yesterday's trip to Nantucket, I bought an
inexpensive laptop computer which I then reprogrammed with the
Ubuntu-Demian-Linux operating system with a very satisfactory
result. I played with the machine for two hours on each leg of
the round trip. Before leaving Belmont, I had managed to
download from the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
voluminous texts of Max Weber's Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft and
Ferdinand Toennies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Of course
I had time only to read snatches. I thought it would be constructive
to try to understand the social and legal issues that have been
perplexing me through the minds of authors who literally devoted
their lives to writing and thinking about the questions I was asking.

What I learned was, however, different from my expectations. I
discovered logical and rhetorical constructs which relied on
historical accounts of human behavior remote from my own experience
and remote, I believe, also from the experiences of the authors,
who relied largely on chronicles of past events as distinct from their
own "Erleben". I concluded that both authors, Weber and Toennies,
and the uncounted academic writers who emulated them, were in effect
constructing a virtual reality grounded not in experience but in
language, and that "understanding" such texts was not so much
correlating the words with with ones own life, as familiarizing
oneself with a self-contained conceptual structure, rehearsing the
proffered definitions and dynamics until one can no longer
distinguish them from the reality which is is to substance of the
individual's life and which must be of primary concern to him or her.

Once we arrived on the Island, I soon becames very much immersed
in that reality. The initial appointment with a plumber, one Mr.
Chris M. Gordon had been scheduled for 12 noon, but no Mr. Gordon
appeared. I distracted myself by making many digital photos, 96
to be exact, of all the fittings in my plumbing installation, from
all possible angles. I thought then that I had no choice but to
abandon my attempts to corral a local plumber. Instead I would
prepare an album of photos, which, criss-crossing southeastern
Massachusetts, I might show to candidates in various towns and hamlets
on the mainland, avoiding the need to pay a day's wages and a fast-
ferry ride to Nantucket to someone who would turn out to be not at
all interested. That the second plumber, a Mr. Dave Kinney, scheduled
for 1:30, who had missed an appointment on the previous trip, again
failed to appear, confirmed my conclusion that I must look for help
off-island.

Then, unexpectedly, at 2:30, the turning point, the peripateia, a white
unmarked van pulled up to the house and from it there emerged a tall,
broad-shouldered man perhaps in his late fifties. He wore knee protectors
as if he'd just come from a job at which he needed to kneel. He did not
introduce himself, - I assumed him to be David Kinney.  He started
carefully and methodically to inspect the plumbing, taciturn, without
comment or explanation, on the first floor, on the second floor, in the
basement. He opened the bulkhead, went to his truck to retrieve an air
compressor, with which he injected air into to the supply pipes, the
pressure and the hot water tanks. "It seems to be tight he said."  "The
code is a vague thing, but I think this should pass.  I'd like to help you. 
I'll get the inspector out here to have a look and hear what he says."
"Let me give you a key," I said. "To whom shall I make out the check."
"G.M. Gordon Plumbing and Heating," was his reply. At last I knew with
whom I was dealing. I didn't ask "how much?" I gave him a substantial
check which he pocketed without acknowledgement or thank you.  "If it
turns out to have been too much, you can give me back the difference;
if it's not enough, tell me how much more you need." He didn't commit
himself, but seemed satisfied.

Apparently comfortable with my style, Chris Gordon started to talk.
I also like to do everything myself also, he said; and the professionals
are sometimes not as good as the amateurs. We have horses, he said,
they chew on grass and their teeth become rough and need to be ground
down. To do that you got to put your arm in their mouth, - and then
suddenly the mouth seems very large and the teeth awfully sharp.
So the veterinarians do a lot of maneuvering to get the horse to calm
down. They give 'em tranquilizers. But the fellow that does mine,
he's no veterinarian, but he's done it for 25 years, he takes a
leather strap, ties it in a loop, slips it into the horses' mouth
and holds the other end of the loop to the ground with his foot.
Has the teeth ground in no time; never gets into trouble; and the
vets hearing about this have fits. I told Mr Gordon that I know all
about putting my arm in the horse's mouth. I do it all the time.
I haven't been bitten, at least not yet.

As to what will happen next, I have no idea. Extrapolation from my
three encounters with Nantucket plumbers suggests that (at least)
two thirds of them are prepared to charge me thousands of dollars
for plumbing work that doesn't need to be done. What Mr. Gordon
will do besides cashing my check, remains to be seen. One of his
most telling comments was that the litigation with me had caused
political problems on the Island. What these problems are, I don't
know, but I wouldn't be surprised if the building department has
come under pressure for the legal fees they incurred in the
unsuccessful attempt to have my plumbing destroyed, and it is 
possible that the plumbing inspector is almost as eager to
get the plumbing inspected as am I. We'll find out what happens.

Jochen