Dear Cyndy,

As you may imagine, I've been pre-occupied plying with information about
my family, real and fictitious, Jürgen Hartmann, the German historian and 
journalist who has just discovered me. For the time he is startled, he
writes me, by the quickness with which I replied, and overwhelmed by the 
volume of the material which I have sent him. As I keep emphasizing, my
memory is short. I'm ready to turn to something else such as rewiring
the telephone connections so that I can drop one of my $47/month telephone
lines without forfeiting my DSL computer connection, rewriting Chapter 50
(as yet unpublished) of my novel or starting to pack to go to Virginia.
As to the last, I'm quite diffident; Margaret has so much trouble walking 
that I can't imagin her visiting the toilets at the rest areas without assistance
or negotiating her way through the labyrinth of a motel except in a wheel chair.
I don't know what to do. My medical judgment says don't go, but my homing 
instinct refuses to be stifled.

I haven't had any message from Elizabeth or Jill. My inference, if you excuse
my unvarnished candor, is that it wasn't their idea in the first place and they 
would be just as happy in a less private accommodation if it were available 
and didn't cost too much. I'm not at all offended to be the last choice. 
I understand they weren't coming to see me or Margaret;
but I am very much concerned about their comfort and safety if they came,
embarrassed and somewhat guilty for not having hired "professionals"
to tend to the plumbing and wiring and carpentry for the fifty years
that we and the termites have been competing for this hundred year old structure. 
If one of the seventeen smoke alarms triggered pandemonium, what would they do?
If a circuit breaker tripped or a fuse blew, how would they know
where to find the four scattered electrical distribution boxes I've installed,
or how to identify the haphazardly marked circuit that was defective, 
how would they find the replacement fuse? How would they cope with a front
door that doesn't latch properly and swings open?  What would they do,
if the water supply to the third floor toilet failed to turn itself off -
it's recently been balky - ? How would they answer the telephone call -
or the knock on the door - of a patient who demanded to see an eye 
doctor immediately? Problems awkward enough to deal with if I were here,
but potentially impossible with guests who don't communicate with me
in my absence. There is no plumber, no electrician familiar with the house
who could be summoned in my absence. - I'm bemused, because these were just
the problems that I had with my sister in the Virginia house when she insisted
on relying on her "friends" for minor and not so minor repairs.
You taught me the answer: "We shall see."

The answer to your question about Metropolitan Transit Authority bus fares is that
they are preferentially payable by an electronic device frivolously called a
"Charlie Card" which one purchases at subway stations and from which portions 
of an in initially deposited amount are sequentially electronically deducted
with each trip. I've never seen a bus driver sell a "Charlie Card"; I've never
observed a passenger boarding a bus without one, though it must occur. If I had
no card, I would provision myself with some one dollar bills, quarters, nickels
and dimes and test the system. Find out what the bus driver will do. Might even
get a free ride.

Meanwhile I think of you and your impending radiation treatments in Hamlet terms,
whether it's better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not
of. I don't have the answer, except to get back to work, and to make myself some work
if I haven't any.`I wish you well. Please give my regards to Ned.

Jochen