Dear Anna,

Happy New Year to you and your family!

Thank you for your letter. Thank you especially for the anecdote of your 
mother's "lame turtle" comment. Sounds just like her! - and most likely 
referred to that lengthy elegiac aria for alto and violin solo "Erbarme Dich",
my mother's favorite, a pathetic style which Bach considered his signature 
and with which he was particularly satisfied. Such is my inference from the 
adjudication in secular Cantata 201, the Contest between Phoebus and Pan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV_0Z_hXkTQ

I infer that you and your family are well.  The same can, and I believe
should, be said about my family. Margaret and I are comfortable. About two
months ago, Margaret had another light stroke, from which she has made a
gratifying recovery. She is again climing stairs without difficulty and is
once more washing dishes. Doing the rest of the house work gives me
considerable satisfaction. We are much pleased to be managing without help.

My ophthalmology practice has dwindled almost to the point of extinction.
I have only one appointment in January, three in February. The patients
for whom I cared for decades have almost all died; I have not tried to
recruit replacements, because I consider such efforts impractical. New
patients who did not know me would be offended by my deafness and by my
arthritic gait, and made insecure by the lack of gleaming (and expensive)
diagnostic equipment, by the absence of white coats, secretaries and 
receptionists as hallmarks of professional success.  I am in no mood to
try to ingratiate myself with prospective patients who do not know me.

Instead I spend my time adding to and editing texts, most of them in German, 
that I have written over the years, with no concern that what I write should
ever be read by anyone other than myself. I construe these efforts of mine
as emblems of senility. It's common experience that old people like to talk,
and often talk incessantly oblivious of the circumstance that no one is
listening. With writing, it's no different.

My son Klemens and his wife Laura, both of whom you have met, are both well
and working very hard. So are out four grandchildren. Rebekah, the oldest,
who will be 24 next Monday is in her first year of Veterinary School. Nathaniel,
two years younger, is finishing college this year. He is interested in conducting 
and has assembled from among his musical friends what he likes to call the
Belmont Festival Orchestra which for the past two years, has been giving free 
semi-annual concerts in the local civic center. Last week he led a group of 48 
players in what at least to my ears sounded like an accomplished perfomance of 
Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony. Nathaniel's younger brother, Benjamin, who is in
his second year in college, played first trumpet, and the younger sister Leah
who is still in high school, played the French Horn solo in the second movement.

While there's no question about the distant future, the events of coming weeks
and months, of course, appear uncertain for each of us in his/her own way. 
We have no choice but to proceed as way opens. Best wishes for the New Year!

Jochen