Dear Cyndy,

It was 73 years ago today that my mother, Margrit and I stepped onto
the gangplank in Bremerhaven to board the steamship Hamburg. I remember
the steamer's moving majestically out of the Weser estuary, the receeding
coastline, the fading of daylight, the sumptuous dinner in the first
class dining room - some refugees we were! - and I remember then standing
on deck, speculating whether the twinkling lights in the barely
discernable distance were remnants of the Germany that we were leaving
behind or already signals in the Netherlands pointing our way to the
New World. When we awoke the next morning, the Hamburg had docked at
Southampton. The attached pdf file is a photograph that Helmut gave
me seven years ago.

Thank you for your letters. Your comments on my various literary efforts
are of obvious value. They are, pursuant to my theory of knowledge,
"assimilated" into my thoughts, where they linger to contribute albeit
unconsciously to the spontaenous evolution of experience. I am mindful
of the relative incommunicability of abstract notions. The mimesis 
demanded by mathematicians I find unsatisfactory, - because I'm obviously
not mathematically minded. I wish I could learn to express experience in
narrative and literary imagery, but I admit that presumptuousness does
not readily translate into competence, if at all.

Charlotte is obviously a problem for you, but not only for you, also
for me, for Mengs, more poignantly for Joachim, and especially for
herself. How to deal constructively, creatively, charitably with the
resulting emotional - and if you will, spiritual turmoil seems to
me one of the crucial challenges of ars vivendi, or, if you like the
abstract, of ethics. Permitting an adversary relationship to arise,
criticising, blaming, punishing her, accomplishes nothing but to splatter
the (self)-righteous adversary with the intrinsic imperfections of 
human existence.  I may well accede to your suggestion to provide for
Joachim a more engaging partner. But I can't make Charlotte disappear.
She will still be there, and Joachim will feel guilty for having
abandoned her in favor of someone else. If he is as serious a person
as I believe him to be, he will consider himself a failure for his
deficiency of love.  It's easy to love a saint. The real test of
character is the ability to love a witch. Let's be patient and see
what happens.

I am forwarding separately Jeff Garmel's reply. He is much too gentle
a person to be a lawyer; in fact he is not a trial lawyer, but advises
WGBH on adminstrative law, copyright and such. Unlike myself, he does
not relish legal controversy. My latest formula, with which I intend if
necessary to try to appeal to the Massachusetts, perhaps even the Federal
Supreme Court, is the argument: a) Nantucket is a municipality that as a
matter of municipal policy fabricates legal evidence. b) the Courts are in
a quandary because i) they cannot function where evidence is systematically
fabricated, and ii) the Constitutional separation of powers precludes their
imposing sanctions on a municipality. c) the fundamental imperative of the
Courts is the maintenance of their authority. d) the only recourse of the
Courts to preserve their authority is to punish the municipality by
assessing substantial damages against the municipality in favor of the
private party that has been injured by the municipality's misconduct.
It will be interesting to see whether the Court will hear this argument,
and if so, how it responds.  

Please give my best to Ned.
Jochen