Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. I'm relieved that your silence
was attributable to a cinema hangover. Please remember that
I'm never offended not to have a letter from you, though
sometimes a bit worried.

As you may infer from the forwarded e-mails, the 
court mandated appeal to the plumbing board seems to be
coming to fruition. After three weeks of silence, there is 
the coy and cryptic promise from Executive Director Peluso
that he would put "the letters" which he had just signed
into the mail today (May 10), without divulging what these
letters might contain. I'll have to wait until I get a
telephone call from Klemens or Laura who are emptying the
mail box for me from day to day.

I reflect with some curiosity on my own reactions, initially that
since he hadn't negotiated my 86.00 dollar check and has failed
to divulge the date of the hearing, - which was the specific
information I had requested, that maybe there was to be no hearing
at all, that maybe the Plumbing Board had thrown in the towel and
decided they couldn't face to be shown what they were doing, not
only on Nantucket but in fact all over the state. Then I sobered
up to the realization that I was indulging in wishful thinking, that
I had no reason to assume that the Board, or for that matter, the
courts had any intention of contemplating "the truth" or of complying
with "the law", what every they might be, that the charade was not yet
over, and that I must expect to be informed that the hearing will
take place on May 30, or June 6, or June 27.

On second thought, I understand that I must be careful in what I
wish for, because if ever I "win", I shall have to pack up myself,
and more awkwardly, Margaret, to head for the unheated unfurnished
house on Nantucket, there to install the insulation, the floors,
the spiral stairs, the inside doors, the finish carpentry, while
my right hip and my sciatic nerve are emphatically protesting the
indignities to which they are being subjected. In return, I should
have to forfeit my seat on this wonderful glassed-in porch, where
straight ahead are the hummingbirds fighting for feeder supremacy,
the maples with their fresh green leaves nodding against a background
of brilliant white cumulus clouds  sailing across a bright blue sky,
and to my right, looming through a gap in the out of control hemlock
hedge, the sharp outline of the summit of Mount Rogers, the highest
in the state. All this with, in front of me, on the computer screen
the text of "Die Andere" where I make sure that Ä Ü Ö ü ä ö and ß are
properly placed so as to reassure the hypothetical reader of my
unstinting allegiance to conventional spelling, while the text itself
serves as the pool in which a Narcissus drunk with grandiosity sees
the reflection of his spirit.

Thank you for your comments on fluid dynamics. You write:

"I interpret the phrase "normal frictional resistance to flow"
as alluding to what the frictional resistance to flow would be
BUT FOR your proposed intervention (e.g. substituting a 4 inch
closet bend for the more usual 3 inch)."

Implicit in your interpretation is the assumption that it is
possible to identify what is "more usual", i.e. what is "normal",
that there exists a "standard" other than the Inspector's arbitrary
claim, when no such standard is specified in the Code. Even more
problematic is the implicit comparison of apples with oranges, i.e.
"frictional resistance" to frictional plus non-frictional resistance,
and the implication that there is ever, in any plumbing installation,
pure frictional resistance without the transition if not indeed the
degradation to resistance that is non-frictional. The technical terms
are laminar vs. turbulent flow.

Laminar flow is inherently silent and inaudible. The sound of water
rushing through pipes, which can be heard in any basement, not only
from the flushing of toilets, but from the drainage of bathtubs, sinks,
and shower stalls, is indefeasible evidence of turbulent flow.
The flushing of the toilet entails the formation of a large vortex
which is clearly turbulent, and it is not at all certain at what
distance, if any, below the toilet flange, viscous forces succeed
in converting the vortices, eddies and cross-currents of turbulence
into laminar flow. Each plumbing fitting in vent and drainage pipes
entails a gap 1/8 to 1/4 inch deep and perhaps 3/8 inches long in the
wall of the pipe, such as will unavoidably produce eddies that
compromise any hypothetical laminar flow, not to mention the turbulence
unavoidably induced by bends as they deflect the direction and by wyes
as they alter the total cross sectional area of the pipe. Consider also
that with the vertical drainage mandated by Code, water plunges as
much as 18 feet under the acceleration of gravity, splashing onto the
sweep of a wye or ell, unavoidably dissipating into kinetic forces
the viscosity, if any, that constrained its precipitate fall. Consider
further that waste pipes partially filled as they must be with air,
constitute an "open channel" whose resistance to laminar flow is
a function of velocity, minute volume, cross-sectional area of flow,
wetted perimeter and temperature. The hypothesis that in the context of
such complexity a plumber should be able to divine any meaningful
"normal frictional resistance to flow" is an absurdity.  The
introduction into the Plumbing Code of fluid dynamic concepts which
according to the most august of physicists not even "God" is able to
explain, is the Plumbing Board's cheap pretext to justify the
Inspector's arbitrary prejudiced and oft times malicious decisions.
I'm not so naive as not to understand, that when presented with this
argument, the Appeals Court will have no choice but to dismiss the case.

Jochen