Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter. It's wonderful that your spirits have
recovered so quickly. Never mind about anything else.

With us little has changed. Benjamin and Nathaniel are home for the
spring vacation. Margaret and I stagger through this cavernous house
as awkwardly as ever, if not more so.  Outside there is the roar of
a chainsaw cutting down a tree, not on our porperty, I trust.

My writing is proceeding a bit more smoothly. Having packed Katenuses
philosophical screed into an appendix, I made space for Murphy to re-appear
and relate to my two protagonists, Joachim and Mengs, an unvarnished and
unflattering but nominally truthful biography of Katenus and his "housekeeper"
Elly. All this surrounded by boxes of paper begging to be put in storage,
monumentally dusty floors demanding to be swept clean, and a nagging 
uncertainty about our summer plans.

Last evening at 11:38 p.m. I met Klemens at the airport, returning from a
nephrology meeting in Seattle, seven hours cramped in an airplane, - both
heoric and appalling. As we trotted across the terminal concourse, I explained 
that I couldn't keep up with his sportsmanlike gait, because my walking was 
getting worse. Klemens, who can't contemplate me as a cripple, keeps suggesting 
total hip replacement as a possibility. I, however, intend to deal with this 
problem by changing my name to FDR, when and if it should become necessary.

My thoughts will continue their searches in your direction. Please give my best
to Ned.

Jochen