We are still configuring his setup so that he can handle his email in Outlook rather than having to use the web interface, not that there’s anything wrong with that. (Some problems never die; they merely recede temporarily.) We’ll eventually get it to work I’m sure, because I’ve been able to configure my own Outlook 2003/Gmail connection without any problems.

So for the moment Paul will be using Gmail’s web interface to deal with email. Though it may be a bit less convenient than Outlook, on the upside it does contain the addresses he had accumulated up until his recent medical problems. So for now I won’t make any promises about how quickly he’ll reply, but he should be able to receive your messages and read them without any problem at the Gmail website.

Now then, at long last, you may resume your previous direct relationship with Paul and I’ll tip my hat and step back into the shadow. Thanks for all of your help and for your kind words during this interlude. It has been a pleasure for me to get to know you and to add you to those whom I think of as friends.

Perry

And yes, in answer to the many inquires you have made about Maxe’s whereabouts and whether he and Paule were together again, they are.

There have been some delays in getting Paul’s TV service restarted and during his recovery his T-Online.de account was closed, but Paul told me that Dr. Moeller who visited him yesterday assures him those things are in the works. When he gets a new ISP therefore, he will have a new email address. However, he still has a Gmail account and can at least receive email at Texas dot Paule at Gmail dot com. Be patient if you write him however, since it may be a while before he’s able to answer your messages, and I find it a major challenge to keep up with his email and my own.

I’m cross-posting portions of this entry from my own personal blog to this one because this one has many more readers than mine and because you, the readers of this blog, are the audience that the new FriendsofPaule Twitter feed is intended to reach and inform. So if you are on Twitter and want to receive progress reports about Paul by all means begin following that feed.

I chose the name “Paul’s amanuensis” for that feed because that is the role I intend to play. I will attempt to relate what Paul wants me to convey to the group so that he isn’t burdened with having to learn the technology in order to communicate with you. The following screen shot shows the first few “tweets” in the window of Twhirl, an application I use for logging into and managing multiple Twitter accounts at the same time.

If you don’t know what Twitter is, this short video will help to remedy that.

If you have any questions or comments, please ask or make them in the comments section.

Update: If you’ll notice in the sidebar at the right, you can see the last five tweeted messages from the FriendsofPaule feed here on the blog. Therefore you don’t have to join Twitter, if you haven’t already, just to be able to see this microblogging feed about Paul. Every time you load this page, you’ll see the five most recent tweets displayed right here.

Paul seems to be recovering nicely from the stroke. I spoke with him as recently as earlier today and his speech has definitely improved, though his problem with balancing himself with which he was troubled even before the stroke resulted in his taking a nasty fall backwards down some stairs. He has, fortunately, almost fully recovered from that mishap. Though still unsteady, he does seem to be improving as time goes on.

Here are a few of Dr. McClelland’s comments.

As promised, here’s a little report on Paul and the dinner in his honor last Wednesday (17 June).

To my surprise Paul himself appeared in the Restaurant Entrecote, a nice French place that happens to be just around the corner from where I live in Mitte. There were over a dozen people present, and the meal (and Paul) lasted about 3 hours. I am attaching a few photos I took.

Paul’s friends at the dinner ran the gamut from people who had only recently met him and were looking after his dog Max to old fraternity brothers. One of these, Gert Dyckerhoff (who lives in Bavaria and travels a lot on business), hosted the dinner. I gather he, Dr. Moeller and the lawyer Ms. Salein (who were not present) had gone out to visit Paul earlier in the day and decided to work toward getting Paul back into his apartment, with appropriate look-in help, in maybe 6 weeks. I think that tells you a lot about the visible progress Paul has been making.

I learned a few tidbits about Paul’s biography I had not known. When he was a student in Munich (long before I was!) he had been one of the first Americans to be invited to join one of the exclusive duelling fraternities! As a university historian I am aware how important these are, but I had no idea (as one of them explained over dinner) that theirs has a fund to help out “brothers” in difficulties. There were in all four of his “brothers” at the dinner. That is very reassuring to me.

Charles, I know I speak for everyone who depends on this blog for news of Paul when I say how much I appreciate your report and your sending me the pictures.

Stefan mentioned that Paul “still has a weakness in his right hand and leg.” This is the first time I recall his mentioning Paul’s right side weakness, though it is normal for stroke patients who have significant aphasia to also have such a weakness on that side of the body. I had said to Stefan that if Paul’s hospital had an Internet connection we could arrange to supply him a laptop so that he could get back in touch with his friends worldwide. Stefan commented, “We will see whether he can type on his computer keyboard.”

He closed his message by saying that on April 6, Paul will be moved to a short term care institution for three or four weeks and after that a decision will have to be made about whether he can go home or whether he must go into a nursing home. He gave Paul’s next address as Sozialstation Biedermann, Iranische Strasse 2-4, 13347 Berlin. He also noted that it is located on the property of the “Juedisches Krankenhaus.”

On Sunday, Birgitte Grimstad left a comment on one of the previous posts that you may not have noticed if you don’t go through the comments regularly. She visited with Paul recently, and I encourage you to read her comment for a recent report on his current condition.

Dr. Kempinski had planned on possibly taking Paul out of the hospital for while today for lunch, but when I emailed him yesterday and asked if that were still going to happen, he replied that he thought it was still a bit too soon for him to go out just yet. He did report earlier in the week that he had seen some improvement in Paul’s ability to speak in short sentences. Progress in recovering from a stroke is frequently a long uphill battle so even little achievements must be celebrated.

Tuesday updated information:

I received an email this morning stating that Paul has suffered a stroke. He doesn’t have paralysis at the moment but he has lost his ability to speak. No further information is available at this time, but as I learn more I will update this post or make another giving more detail.

I spoke with him on Saturday morning by Skype and found him in good spirits and apparently without pain. He hopes to return to his home this coming Monday or Tuesday where he will begin a regimen of rehabilitation.

If you would care to send him greetings or offer your wishes for a speedy recovery, feel free to leave a comment to this post. I’m sure his frequent emails will resume almost immediately upon his release from the hospital and he will relate this experience as only he can.

Yesterday, from my borough’s mayor and her city councilor for various things, came the invitation to the next one – no mention of food and drink but promising a “kulturelle Umrahmung und Gelegenheit zu Gesprächen in zwangloser Umgebung” (cultural [probably musical] framework with occasion for conversations in an informal setting – actually in the (so to speak) Borough Hall for the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf part of Berlin that again became my home after returning to Berlin for good twelve years ago).

The form for faxing my response makes it clear they expect me to bring a maximum of one (1) person, but I plan to ask whether they’ll make an exception in my case because of the prominence of the two I’d most like to bring, who’ve provided the most important help and support during this long procedure: the one-time Berlin Senator for Cultural Affairs Anke Martiny and the former Berlin Kulturdezernent (departmental head for all Berlin’s opulent cultural activities) Peter Nestler.

I just thought some of you might like to know what I have to look forward to three weeks from yesterday, on November 29th.

Mit NEUdeutschem Gruss!

The Berlin Philharmonic, billed by Carnegie Hall for four concerts with its conductor Sir Simon Rattle as the main attraction in its lavish November salute to this wonderful city I’ve adopted as my own home town of choice, has no less than three (3) world-class violin virtuosos who all bear the supreme title “Erster Konzertmeister” (First – sic – Concert Master), rotating in coördination with the orchestra’s conductors.  My source this morning tells me that the priceless instrument owned by one of them (I feel 99.44% certain that during our brief encounter he identified it as a Guarnerius, in value right next to the unique Stradivarius instruments, customarily worth well over $1,000,000) attracted the professional attention of the evident ruffian giving him a going-over as part of ascertaining whether he merited admittance to the USA along with the rest of his fellow Berliner Philharmoniker.

That heavy-handed worthy reportedly handled the literally priceless instrument the same way he might have handled a cigar-box, and when the violinist took exception to that, one thing understandably led to another, and his examiners wound up – believe it or not – clapping handcuffs on him and leading him away.

I fully realize that account strains credulity to the limit; I can say only that I’ve known my source long and thoroughly enough to regard that account – especially from someone definitely in a position to know – as totally responsible and reliable.

To my earlier posting here (headed “Why did Abbado really cancel?” – i.e., his scheduled Carnegie Hall appearance as conductor of his own Lucerne Festival Orchestra), some craven reader reacted with an anonymous comment, immediately zapped, that accused me of generalized anti-American “ranting”.  Damned right I’ll rant – and continue to rant – over such inexcusable redneck outrages, especially when everyone else I’ve tried both here and in the USA to enlist in protesting this anti-cultural barbarism immediately turns tail and runs rather than risk ruffling any official Washington feathers that might possibly jeopardize any future stateside engagements or tours, understandably so highly prized by all such foreign ensembles.