Dear Cyndy,

Since by this time you are presumably already on your way east,
it seems likely that you will receive my wishes for a safe and
enjoyable, and not too strenuous trip, only after the fact, when 
you return next weekend. I'm sorry not to have the opportunity
to see you while you are in Cambridge.

Part of this morning I spent on the telephone changing patients'
appointments from August to the week preceding the June 18th
hearing. Three of the patients were out and have yet to be
heard from. My plans for the summer are very murky. Conceivably
the trip back, now planned for June 9, will be so arduous that
we won't want to leave Belmont ever again. Conceivably it will
be so smooth that two or three days after the hearing, we'll be
ready to turn around and go back. After the hearing there will
presumably be a judgment and an order of dismissal. I have no
expectations of prevailing in the lower court. The standard term
within which a Notice of Appeal must be filed with the trial
court is thirty days; if a governmental agency is involved that
term is extended to sixty days. The benefits of that provision
presumably designed to accommodate slothful government lawyers
nominally extend also to the non-governmental party. But I'll
take no chances; both the trial and the appeals court have twisted
procedural rules to my disadvantage on so many occasions that
I don't trust them. I've already prepared a notice of appeal.
All that's required is the date of the judgment and my signature.
If I were in Konnarock when the judgment is entered, I would have 
my notice of appeal certified at the Chilhowie post offices and
mail it from there within a few days. Upon receipt, the clerk of
the lower court "assembles the record", a process which required
two months the last time around. Once I receive notification that
the record "has been assembled," I will return to Belmont to pay
the docketing fee and to prepare my briefs and appendices.

It's probably unavoidable that I should have spent many hours in 
the past few days reflecting on the impending hearing, pondering
what I should say and what I should not say to the judge. The 
spectrum of plausible arguments is very broad, ranging from silence,
(like Jesus before Pilate) i.e. letting the written documentation
speak for itself, to a pretentious disquisition about the dialectical
consequences of the separation of powers, pointing out the limitations
in the power of the court to enjoin the executive, or for that matter,
the legislature to comply with "the law", and arguing that the
separation of powers entails unavoidable contradictions which
are customarily papered over with compromises of one sort or
another; and that since the Town insists on the death penalty
for my plumbing, and since it is impossible to compromise with
the death penalty, it will be incumbent on the Court to impose
such compromise as it sees fit.

Another fascinating corollary to the separation of powers is the
implicit intelligibility of the work-products of the three branches
of government. In order to function, the executive, the legislature
and the judiciary must share a common administrative language by
means of which they interact. Furthermore, the traditional imperative
of "due process of law" implies that this administrative law be
intelligible to a jury of commoners. History, however, has outpaced
the imperatives of communality of administrative language; the
intellectual structure of our society is so complex that the
understanding which cements it has become very shallow. In the cases,
for example, of medicine, engineering, or of theoretical science,
the cognitive discontinuities are much greater, but even with respect
to a primitive discipline such as plumbing, the courts presume
themselves ignorant and to be required to defer to experts, such as
the Board of State Examiners of Plumbers and Gasfitters.

In consequence there has arisen the anomaly of a governmental agency
which since it makes its own rules, incorporates the legislative
function; which since it enforces the rules which it has made,
incorporates the executive function; and which, since it adjudicates
disputes arising under those rules, incorporates also the judicial
function. The Board now appears as an incestuous mini-monstrosity
whose members are unable even to explicate the rules they have adopted,
and whose primary function is to serve as a vehicle for the exhibition
of vanity and the exercise of power.  Society adapts to the anomaly by
ignoring it. Its regulations are unenforced by the Attorney General,
and are ignored not only by the public and by the plumbers, but by its
own inspectors, while a sociopathic oddity such as the Town of Nantucket
seeks to exploit the plumbing regulations to satisfy its own sadistic
cravings. Of course, such arguments will have to be translated into
inoffensive legalese before being submitted to the Appeals Court.

As you may infer from the foregoing, I'm having fun, and according
to one of the physician characters in one of my novels, having fun
is the bottom line of existence.

My best wishes, as always, to you and Ned.

Jochen