Dear Nikola,

As you can tell, I haven't changed. I can't stop writing, just as I can't stop talking when you visit me. Last evening, I was too tired to continue.  The URL to the Riefenstahl diving movie which you e-mailed me had changed the course of my afternoon. Youtube, as you may have noted, doesn't want its viewer to go away and tries to retain him by programming its computers to send other similar material "selected for him." The diving sequence was followed by interviews with Leni in which she discussed her movie-making techniques, specifically, I remember, her technique for allaying the boredom of looking at films of long-distance running by trying to convey to the viewer the anguish of the runner's exhaustion as he approached the finish line. Leni achieved the by slowing the camera to suggest tiredness and weakening at the end of the race.  It occurs to me that Riefenstahl in her own way re-invented moving pictures as poetry, to the extent that it is the function of poetry to reconcile the individual with the historical world, and to make that world bearable for him.

Next, youtube successfully retained my attention with a 75 minute long interview, perhaps 30 years old, because he died in 1994, with Prinz Louis Ferdinand von Preußen, one of the grandsons of Wilhelm II, König von Preußen, whom his Minister Bismarck persuaded to call himself der deutsche Kaiser, rather than Kaiser von Deutschland, so as not to offend his Bavarian counterpart in München. As a young man, Louis Ferdinand fell in love with a movie star, moved to Los Angeles, obtained an entry-level job in an automobile factory as a protegee of Henry Ford, came to consider Franklin Roosevelt, whom he liked very much, as of a member of his royal family, was summoned to return to Germany as heir apparent, married a Russian princess as required by protocol, had encounters with Hitler, was aware of but ordered by his father to stay out of the July 10, 1944 assassination plot ... The interview provided me with many insights into the turbulent 20th century which I also survived. Much to think about.

My very best wishes to you. Please keep me informed about your life.

EJM