Dear Cyndy,

Your question about how I entertain my guests reflects a misunderstanding.
Klemens, Laura and Leah who are here from late Monday evening until
early Saturday morning are not guests but family, and as such require
no formal - or informal - entertainment. The word which explains
everything is "memory"; even more dramatically in German, "Erinnerung",
for which there is no exact English equivalent.  The meaning of the core
"inner" is the same in both languages. The suffix "ung" which is analogous
to the English suffix "ing", substantiates the function of the verb.
e.g. thinking is what happens when I think, hearing is what happens
when I hear, etc. The word "Innerung", if it existed, might suggest
an English word "innering", coarsely equivalent to introjection.
It is the prefix "Er" which supplies the word "Erinnerung" with its
peculiar poignancy. Grimm's Woerterbuch explains: "in diesem er liegt
die von innen auf einen äuszern gegenstand gehende wirkung."
(This "er" implies an effect proceeding from within onto an
external object.) Erinnerung, in other words, is a cognition "from
within" which coalesces onto external objects: the house itself,
the furniture, the carpets, the books, the trees, the giant silver
maple to the southwest, the dogwood on the lawn, fractured by
ice storms, the Chinese chestnut almost decrepit from disease and
or old age, and encircling, enclosing all the mysteries as in
a fairy tale, the enormous hemlock hedge, long since grown out of
control. All of them memories revived, reformed, and sometimes laid
to rest: all the entertainment that the family needs, Klemens' for
fifty-five years, Laura's for twenty-six, and Leah's for almost
sixteen.  For what more could they ask?

It's now eleven p.m., too late to begin my answer to your question
about Margaret's and my health. Something for another letter,
another day. Please give my best to Ned, and to yourself, Good Night.
Jochen