Dear Marion,

Thank you very much for your letter, especially for the
account of the film Footnote. Your description makes me 
want to compose Eliezer's acceptance speech for him. The
coincidence of outward and inward drama seems to me to
set the stage for pathos, irony and satire on a monumental
scale. I was reminded of the wedding chapter in Die Andere,
http://home.earthlink.net/~ernstmeyer/andere/k41.html

Thank you also for your comments on faith:
_
_    "I think of faith as a proffered antidote to the worry,
_    uncertainty, fear, dread, paralyzing feelings of inadequacy,
_    helplessness and despair that may afflict people
_    when they confront life's difficulties. 
_    If faith in a system, a force, a Being becomes a habit of mind,
_    it can be deployed as a psychological tool
_    to comfort and strengthen a person."
_     
obviously valid and persuasive, a blueprint, it seems to me, for
a species of Deism without the name. But then: What's in a name?
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

The comparison of "faith" with "Glaube" reminds seems to me to
corroborate my thesis that thought is the consequence of language.
Faith, to my hearing, has a much stronger component of trust,
which in German would be expressed by "Vertrauen". To be faithful
means "treu sein". "Jemandem glauben" is to believe that someone
speaks the truth, "Etwas glauben" means to believe that something
is true. I'm fascinated by the differences between the languages.

I've forgotten the considerations that led me to explore the
economics and procedures of self-publishing. I'm as reluctant
as ever to try to "promote" my writing (and myself); but I can't
deny that for years I cultivated relationships to optometrists
who referred patients to me by taking them to lunch.... It worked.
I succeeded in building and mainatining an ophthalmology practice.
Today, successful publication of some of what I have written
strikes me as an interesting political challenge, worth trying
if only for the excitement. As a result of contemporary technology
which makes it possible to duplicate "e-books" and the like at
minimal cost, and makes it feasible to manufacture printed books
"on demand", only when they have been ordered, the costs of
publishing are almost entirely those of my energy. I ask myself,
how should I apportion my time between additional writing, and
soliciting attention for what I've already written, as stimulating
dilemma. I've begun by converting some of the chapters of Die
Andere into html format, and replacing