Dear David,

I've been thinking of you as I have been reading, somewhat to my surprise, quite a bit about World War I, in particular, its origins. I’ve done: THE GUNS OF AUGUST; the atmospheric TWELVE DAYS; Theodore Wolff’s equally evocative EVE OF 1914; the sober THE LONG FUSE and, now, THE COMING OF THE WAR 1914 by Schmitt. It’s wierdly addictive reading, as different writers with differing agendas describe the same people making the same catastrophic decisions, leading to the same disasterous outcome, the slaughter of millions. I’m also reading THE FALL OF THE HAPSBURG EMPIRE—which is also well done, at least in its prose style, which is sympathetic to the Hapsburgs without being fawning. I’m learning a good deal of course about THE WAY THINGS ARE NOW that were obscure before. I don’t know if you know of my very narrow education—nearly everything I know is largely filtered through literature. I often feel more an idiot than a savant. On the other hand, it’s enjoyable to have a vast area of human experience to explore. Reading history is not jading. I wonder why “jade” has that meaning? Happily, the OXFORD DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH ETYMOLOGY is to hand and it indicates that it is not related to the word for the mineral, but is a word that appears in Chaucer, meaning a “tired horse,” then, two hundred years later, “a reprehensible woman or girl.”

I’m afraid to say not much is going on with me outside of work and the upkeep of the house and yard. Last Sunday, I woke to find that a large limb fallen from a black locust stree in my backyard and across the sidewalk on the south side of my house. Suddenly, I became aware of this locust tree (and I must admit I did not know it was a locust tree at the time) in a way I had not before. Before I had taken the tree for granted as, I’m afraid, I have been want to take all trees for granted for my very nearly 41 (on July 4th) years. What was a tree to me before last Sunday? A challenge to climb when young; a source of shade and some, nearly unconscious, aesthetic pleasure when older, but now trees are fluid and engaged beings, and this particularly fluid and engaged being is my responsibility. Looking up that morning I saw to my surprise and horror a number of large and obviously rotten limbs overhanging the sidewalk, down which public thoroughfare every one of the seven ages of man, from babe at the breast to senior with walker, regularly makes their way. That afternoon, I climbed into the tree (the first time I had done that in, I think, decades—and which gave me mortal pause) and cut what limbs I could reach, which feel with dramatic and terrifying crashes to earth. Two large limbs were out of my reach. I had to call in professionals. They came on Tuesday and for $115.00 dollars cut the remaining two “widow makers,” as my father telephonically called them. They’re going to return in a few weeks and work the tree over, cutting every dead limb, every limb overhanging the roof, every sickening limb, etc. It turns out that the tree is slowly dying. Locust trees live about 50 years. This one is 35 to 40 years old and has a fungus (typical of the breed) that is slowly killing it from the middle out—and causing the limbs to die. It’s not entirely desperate—a number of saplings are growing up at its edges. Locusts are fecund. Hence, the allegory. The old dying off. The young clamoring for light. My job is to prune the old, to let the light in for the young...you get the picture. As Amy Ludwig said, “Write it up and send it to Harpers.” But that’s not all, there was the toilet episode earlier in the summer (the flotation device had to be completely replaced by a very postmodern device); the basement flood (150 or so gallons seeping in from our monsoons) and, yesterday, the doornknob to the room in which I keep my clothes (one of the rewards of living alone in a house is that you can devote entire rooms to your clothing—which in my case consists in large part of a collection of various solid colored tee-shirts) refused to engage the bolt, a mischance I have seen coming a long way off. I had to climb in a window on the north side of my house. Luckilly, since I never lock any window or door (because if I did I would lock myself out), it wasn’t too much trouble getting in the room. Only, now the cats have unimpeded access to that room since I had to tape the door open Watergate-style. Such, such are the joys.

I won’t maunder on any longer. .

All my best,