Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letters. This morning, at 4:45 a.m. I drove
with Klemens to the airport. It was for him another professional 
trip to the Nashville headquarters of his dialysis company. On 
the way I asked him whether we should try at this time to find 
domestic help of some sort, so that when the time comes as it 
inevitably will, and I am no longer able to do the necessary work, 
we would have established relationships which would make it possible 
for us to stay at home. Klemens was very thoughtful; he said that he
could take off as much as three months from work to help us, a
period of time presumably sufficient for him to make permanent
arrangements; he thought that the attempt to anticipate such a
situation would be economically inefficient, because one can't
anticipate what will happen or what help one will need. I think
he's correct.  It's obviously very important for me to stick
around to take care of Margaret; when that's no longer necessary
I should hope I can manage to close the shop without delay.
Life gets more and more interesting as I get older.

With respect to the URL's I've been giving you pointing to
various items I've written, I'm reminded of the story of the
English gentleman who would hide his macaroons behind the
books on the shelf, because they tasted better when he then
came upon them unawares. My brother-in-law Alex thought it
was a very funny story, but to me it served only as a reminder
of my congenital humor deficiency. My reason for providing 
you with pointers to those various items rather than appending
them to the e-mail is, of course, that I want to make them
accessible without inflicting them on you. What I've been
doing most recently is rewriting Chapters 49 and 50 in English.
If you wish to look at them:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ej1meyer/freunde/e049.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~ej1meyer/freunde/e050.html
is where they may be found. However, I don't think that you
will like them. You'll probably be annoyed and regret the
time you spent reading them. So be warned! If you don't take
my adviced, please feel free to chastise me with any criticism
that comes to mind. I thrive on criticism. I've probably given
you the pointers to two other chapters which I rewrote in
English some years ago, but for the record:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ernstmeyer/andere/E07.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~ernstmeyer/freunde/appendix.html
is where you may find them.

Tomorrow, I think, I'll start out by sorting and filing mail,
putting in order and cleaning various rooms that I neglected
while on my latest writing binge. Then decide whether to
proceed with Chapter 51, or whether to busy myself with
translations. I calculate that there are about 1660 pages
to be rewritten in English, about two or three years' work
if I did nothing else.

Please stay well and happy, and give my best to Ned.
Jochen