You misunderstood my meaning: When I wrote:

I had an unsolicited telephone call from an intelligent and responsive agent of 
"Big Brother and Big Sister" who told me that they would accept and remove 
unopened boxes of donations without prior inspection of the contents. 
I mention this for information only. The boxes are not in my way and 
can remain in the front hall indefinitely.

it never occurred to me that WE should not open the boxes. 
My thought was that you, Laura and Leah should open them, 
one at a time, remove what you wished to keep, and then 
reseal the boxes. What I wished to avoid was a scene 
where the donee's agents would open the boxes in our living room, 
pick out and take what they wanted and leave us to clean up 
and dispose of what they did not want. A condition of our gift should 
be that they would remove EVERYTHING that we did not wish to keep.

So far as the Woodbury Assets are concerned, my thoughts are as follow:
a) At present our Holdings with Schwab = 1.46, with Fidelity = 1.23 and 
with Morgan Stanley = 1.36 as compared to Woodbury = 1.00. 
Given Morgan Stanley's rapacious commission rates, I would choose between
Schwab and Fidelity, (unless you wanted to accept the additional headache
of having to keep track of yet a fourth broker). 

With Marion's death, the Trust in which these assets are presently held 
has terminated itself. The threshold issue, whether you wish to disclaim
any of the Woodbury Assets, in which case, by the terms of the Trust, they
would go equally to each of the four children; he next decision:
whether you want to transfer Woodbury Assets not disclaimed to an account 
in your name or whether you want to transfer the Woodbury Assets into 
another trust. In either case, before broaching the issue with Woodbury, 
I would ascertain whether the broker receiving the assets would require 
them to be sold, - which would generate commission fees, - or would accept 
the assets as Woodbury now holds them. I would start out with a telephone 
call to Schwab, identifying yourself with the account numbers, your IRA 
and the various trusts of which you are co-trustee, read them the list 
of the Woodbury Assets, and ask what you should do next. Depending on the 
reply of the Schwab representative, you might or might not want to talk 
to a Fidelity representative in the same manner. 

I agree that we should get broadband Internet service and have, of course,
no objection if you want to contract for it now. I myself would be inclined
to postpone that contract until the procedures by which the house will be
completed, - procedures, which at present still inscrutably hazy to me, have
been defined.

I agree that we should plan to leave the small blue car on the Island. 
Should I replace the rear wiper blade? Should we ask Chico's to assess
the muffler, which sounds noisy to me? To assess the funtioning of the car
otherwise, aside from the transmission, to change the oil? It's my impression 
that at this time of the year auto reservations readily available. No need 
to commit ourselves this early. January 14, seems to me a long time away. 
You (or I) could easily check availability of reservations on the Internet.