Dear Mr. Strangio,

Thank you very much for your letter. I have fond, vivid memories
of your mother and I am grateful and relieved that she sustained
useful vision in her operated eye for the years that remained to 
her.

The care of the elderly is obviously a challenge of increasing
public importance as the population ages, a challenge of increasing
personal import as each of us grows inexorably older. I myself
had my 85th birthday six weeks ago. I have maintained my medical
license but my old patients have died and I have sought no new ones. 
As a result my ophthalmology practice has dwindled to nothing. I
have no regrets. I enjoyed my medical work for sixty years, but
now I have other projects.

One of which is to develop a more cogent understanding of myself
and of the world in which I live. I do so by writing down my thoughts
as they occur to me, albeit in the format of novels which, but for
the pretentiousness of that term, I would call philosophical. I've
published six volumes, all of them in German, with Amazon.com 
CreateSpace, not a single copy of which has been sold. I'm proof-
reading a seventh volume and have started compiling material for
the eighth. To find all this on the Internet, you must google my
full name, Ernst Jochen Meyer.

Taking care of my wife remains as my most important and rewarding 
task. She turned 91 two weeks ago, and at this juncture it's not 
at all certain which of us will survive the other. We have no choice
but, as the Quakers say, to proceed as way opens.

Thank you again for your e-mail. It is good that we should remain
in touch.

Sincerely,
Ernst Meyer