February 5, 2022

Dear Nikola,

I hope that you have caught up on sleep. Thank you for your letter and for the poem. I was reminded of Picasso's protest painting Guernica, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso) and then I thought about the calculated destruction on October 14, 1944 of the medieval city where I was born and where I lived until I was 8 3/4 years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Braunschweig_(October_1944) I reminded myself of what the Germans had done to Warsaw and Kiev, to Minsk and to Lidice, I thought about the Wall between Texas and Mexico and the barbed wire fences which even today, the Poles are building on their border with Belarus in order to keep out the Syrian refugees. I feel helpless.  There's nothing I can do. I don't even know what I should say or write.

I read what Dr. Rainer Maria Kohler wrote about himself on the Internet.  His birthpace, Krefeld, is 45 miles west of Witten, the town where the Rosenthals, the family of my paternal grandmother, operated a network of successful department stores until the Nazis drove them out or murdered them.  Krefeld is also 120 miles west of Oerlinghausen, the town where my father was born and spent the first 18 years of his life. Rainer Maria is not a conventional German first name. I suppose his parents gave it to Dr. Kohler because (like my parents) they were enchanted by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and foisted his first name on their son as an emblem of inwardness.  Ultimately he complied with their vision and became a psychoanalyst.  As for me, I want you to be healthy, creative and productive.  I'm too ignorant even to venture an opinion as to what Dr. Kohler's Jungian psychotherapy might do for - or to - you.  

Much of today I spent fiddling with my cell phone, which had begun to interrupt charging its battery, until by late afternoon, the flow of current had stopped entirely.  I made the correct diagnosis. The USB cable was broken. From a jumble of wires in a storage box, I extracted a temporary replacement which now recharges the cell phone battery, albeit at a very slow speed, promising to restore the remaining 27% of full charge in 11 hours. At that rate recharging an empty battery would take 40 hours! By next Thursday I expect to have received a replacement for the old fast charging cable which was broken. In any case, the breakdown should not stand in the way of telephone conversations between us, if you wished to talk.

My very best wishes! Please give my regards to your patents.

EJM