Dear Anne,

Thank you for your letter, and forgive my prompt reply, attributable not
to virtuous diligence, but to the circumstance that my mind functions
most efficiently in "real time." Blame it on the senile 86 years old
sive-like memory. It's when I read your letter, that your experience 
become vivid and demands an immediate answer. I like very much to write; 
it helps to have a tolerant and forbearing reader. None of the stuff 
I publish is ever read by anyone, except for the briefs I file in court. 
The real reason and reward for litigating. (Please don't tell!)

Klemens, Nathaniel and I are acclimatizing ourselves to the election
results. Idealism is fragile and needs continuing protection. I learned
the lesson in 1952, when Eisenhower started Nixon on his nefarious career 
by elevating the crook to the vice-presidency so that Adlai Stevenson 
would lose the election. For me, politics has never been the same. 
I reminded Nathaniel about how Goethe, who had been assigned as literary 
chaplain to minister to the troops of the Duke of Weimar at the battle of Valmy, (1792) consoled his charges with sour grapes after their defeat: 
„Von hier und heute geht eine neue Epoche der Weltgeschichte aus 
und ihr könnt sagen, ihr seid dabei gewesen." 
(From here and now, a new epoch of world history begins, 
and you can say that you were part of it.) 
Like standing on the deck of the Titanic and explaining to your fellow 
passenger the sublimity of that experience, if only it be properly 
contemplated sub specie aeternitatis. If Arthur Sulzberger really loved 
his country, he would rechristen his newspaper "The Trump Times", 
placing its editorial board in a position to fill the policy vacuums 
of the new administration.

Much of yesterday I spent assembling into book format for hypothetical
future publication, correspondence from 1949 with my parents and with 
my future wife, letters, some in German but most in English, which would
mean virtually nothing even to that part of the public which is still 
capable of reading, but which means almost everything to me, to whom 
memories are all that is left of life. Another compelling example of 
the incongruity of the subjective world in which each one of us lives, 
with the obejctive world in which we all live together. Obviously, the 
letters we exchange are bridges to link what we mean to ourselves with
what we mean to each other.

I continue to be mindful of the predicament which Dan shares with you;
send both of you my best wishes, and wish I could do more.

Jochen