Dear Cyndy,

It seems to me that my thanks for your letter are somewhat overdue.
If I remember correctly, you reported being at home, and walking,
"ambulatory" as they say. I very much hope you're  continuing to improve.

I've been distracted in diverse directions. At Klemens' urging, Margaret has
had two sessions of physical therapy at Tufts Medical Center from an engaging
young Irish-American physical therapist named Megan Whitmore, who prescribes
home-work in the form of daily exercises which meet with some resistance from
the patient and consume about 45 minutes each day. I deem it a worthwhile effort
both for Margaret's health and for reassurance to Klemens that his father takes
him seriously.

The work on the estate tax planning has continued, but, I believe will be
completed in short order with directives to Schwab to "roll-over" Margaret's
and my IRA's into our respective retirement plans of which the three of us,
Klemens, Margaret and myself are "co-trustees", who can upon the death of
whoever is fated to die, arrange the necessary "roll-over" into inherited IRA's
and forestall the massive income tax payments "up front."

I've been distracted also by the visit, albeit an only 2 1/2 hour long tea party,
by Herr und Frau Niels Holger Nielsen of Heidelberg, the parents of our new next door
neighbors. Both of them are well educated retired "Gymnasiallehrer" (high school
teachers) of English and French. Herr Nielsen had been much taken with an e-mail that
I sent to his son in which I reported that when I cleared their front walk, - dass meine
Schneeschleuder ein im Schnee begrabenes Telephonadressbuch unbarmherzig
angegriffen  und verschlungen hat - (that my snowblower had mercilessly attacked
and devoured a telephone book buried in the snow.) The elder Herr Nielsen professed
much interest in my writing and took with him, back to Heidelberg,  as a present,
the two volumes of "Doehring", with my affirmative recommendations not to spend
time reading them.

Last night Klemens took Margaret and myself together with Laura and Nathaniel
to Jordan Hall to listen to a technically competent but less than inspired performance  of
the Mass in B Minor. Helping Margaret up and down the steep flight of stairs and through
the narrow aisles of the concert hall was an adventure, but we did it! And I for my part
- after seventy years of intermittent meditation - arrived at the understanding, correct or
otherwise - that the text of the Mass is a set of prosaic "guidelines" prescribed by committee,
devoid of the enchantment of poetry; and that for Bach, setting it to music an appalling "must
be done" project with which he came to terms by treating the voices of the chorus and of the soloists
to the extent that he found their message unpersuasive, as musical instruments, composing
in effect a monumental "symphony" whose melodies exhibit only a contingent relationship to
the dogmatic themes  they purport to illuminate. This stricture is not entirely valid: the drums
and trumpets of the Gloria in excelsis, the lamentation of "crucifixus etiam pro nobis", the
resurgence of the strings when playing "et resurrexit tertia die" belie my argument. On the
other hand, "laudamus te" is a grammatical plural sung by a solo alto; "credo in unum Deum"
is grammatically singular sung by a chorus; and "gratias agimus tibi" does not mean the same
as "dona nobis pacem" but is nonetheless sung to the same notes.

My next project is to print out insurance claim forms for the few patients that I have had in the
past few months. This task must be completed prior to March 31, when the long established
HCFA-1500 insurance forms become obsolete, making it necessary for me to rewrite the computer
programs with which they are printed. Then on October 31, a new set of diagnostic codes (ICD-10)
supersedes the old ones (ICD-9), and once more requires extensive reprogramming. There are
approximately 91000 - ninety-one thousand - ICD-10 codes - a project hatched in an insane asylum,
a tyrannical bureaucratic imposition which if they were not such barbarians, would drive me into
the arms of the Tea Party.

Please don't tell any one, but give my best to Ned, and enjoy the coming of spring as best you can.
In our back yard, the snow drops are out in full force.

Jochen