Dear Marion,

This afternoon, as I was scurrying up and down the ladder with a brush
and a bucket of paint, my thoughts more than once made a detour to
the pulmonologist's office, wondering what noteworthy considerations,
if any, he imparted to you, wondering more fundamentally in my sceptical
mode, over what secrets the pulmonologist presides to which an internist
or even a humble general practitioner would not also have access if they
made the effort to think. So tell me, if you would, not only about 
the status of your respiration, but also about the status of pulmonology
as science and as capitalist enterprise.

As I wrote to you recently, my days are spent house-painting, and my
mind has correspondingly degenerated into a lower-middle class organ
which is preoccupied with going to bed and getting  eight hours of
sound sleep. I keep re-reading snatches of chapters 46 and 47 of my
novel, deleting a repetition, adding a paragraph with a new idea,
but without the urgency and passion of times past.

From time to time, the Nantucket litigation comes to mind. I ask 
myself without daring to venture an answer, how the Superior Court
will construe the plumbing inspector's report. Will they be impressed,
perhaps even persuaded by his undisciplined criticism, of will they
interpret it as "inadmissible" on account of its failure to provide
the detailed exposition of facts and reasoning required by the
appeals court's Footnote 13?

That footnote, incidentally, seems to me to entail a broad spectrum
of potential consequences. If the Nantucket inspector is required
to provide detailed facts and reasoning for his criticisms of my
installation, why only to mine? Isn't the appeals court in effect
setting a standard applicable to _all_ plumbing inspections,-
if not, why not, and if so, should Footnote 13 be integrated
into the plumbing code itself? What role, if any, should concepts
such as "inferior workmanship" or "deviation from standard
plumbing practice" have in a plumbing inspection? How should
they be defined? What use may be made of them in the absence
of unambiguously applicable definitions? Maybe if I didn't spend
my time house-painting, I would know the answer.

I hope you continue to be and to remain well, unfazed by the
doctors' sophistcated and high-priced guesswork.

Jochen