Dear Marion,

In the process of preparing my mind for the June 18th hearing,
I composed the paragraphs below which may or may not be of 
interest to you. In any event, they require no specific reply,
keine Stellungnahme Deinerseits.

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. 

We might also want to return to Belmont simply for the pleasure
of having you spend time with us on your return trip from France.
To be candid, there are so many variables as yet unknown that I
can't anticipate what I should want to do. Last year we, you and I,
considered the possibility of your driving from Belmont to Konnarock
with us. That possibility still seems very real to me, though less
imperative since the trip down on April 27, turned out to be easy
and effortless. If you did decide to come, my main concern would be
providing you with a comfortable and enjoyable vacation. Beside the
double bed occupied by Margaret and myself, there are - count them -
six other beds and two couches on which you might sleep, none of 
which I've occupied and none of which I would vouch for. But the
ambience, let's face it, is that of a somewhat run-down nursing home 
for the aged, sem-senile and incontinent. No functioning television.
A large but spotty library of esoteric books, English and German,
no newspapers, specifically no NYT, an Internet connection so slow
as to be virtually useless, dead bugs on the floors, and behind
the shredded curtains, wasps of various degrees of vitality and
aggressiveness on the window panes. I don't leave Margaret at
the house by herself. Every Tuesday we take the trash to the local 
transfer station 2 miles down the road; once a week we drive 15 miles
across the mountain to buy groceries. Driving through the countryside,
through the mountains and perhaps on the Blue Ridge Parkway which
extends hundreds of miles north and south, might be a very pleasant
diversion, from which I have refrained because of the extraordinary
logistics which an emergency as simple as a flat tire would precipitate. 
Both Margaret and I are crippled to an extent that hiking is out of
the question.  We don't even make the gesture of taking a walk, not
even circling the house as of old. Both of us fall asleep for varying
periods in the middle of the day while gazing into a book or onto
the computer screen. Margaret spends much of her time looking at books,
I spend almost all my time writing, - although if you were here
I could - and might - talk your ears off.  Meals of utmost simplicity
at unpredictable hours. Breakfast: oatmeal or dry cereal with fresh
strawberries; Lunch: microwaved canned tomatoes with melted cheddar
cheese, or Hormel "Compleat" prepared dinners, or fried eggs, or
turkey and cheese sandwiches, Supper: the same. Unlimited amounts
of cookies, frozen chocolate cake, ice cream at any time.

Much as we would like to have you, I can't imagine that you would
enjoy being here. One of my concerns is that if you did come to Konnarock,
say on August 9 or 10, and on August 11, I learned from the Trial Court
Web Site that the record had been assembled, I would be required to
pay the Appeals Court docketing fee within 10 days, and would want
to turn around to go back to Belmont within a day or two, an imposition
on you for which no apologies could atone.

If you did choose to come nonetheless, I would like to make
the entire trip (850 miles, 17 hours) in one day. You could escape
via the Tri-Cities (Bristol, Johnson City, Kingsport TN) Airport
(50 miles) or conceivably, the Charlotte NC airport (175 miles)
whenever you had had enough.

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 required experts such as the Board of
State Examiners of Plumbers and Gasfitters to interpret the code. 

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 Vier Freunde I, p 98, having
fun is the bottom line of existence.

My best wishes, as always.

Jochen