The numbers are going down, the chances of a medication that will render Ezi immune are going up, and his shingles are disappearing

.  This makes me more able to cope with the crises in the IAWE, in my family and my health.  I will finally be able to look at the m

aterial for my talk next week about my book (to which you’re all invited, by the way) 

zoom in on February 7 here

But the subject for today is ‘found’ – and today in the middle of an attempt to make peace in a feud, one of the guys asked, “But how can I speak to him?  He’s totally mad!”  And I started to tell a story.  When my father was in the ward for brain-damaged patients, my mother spent every day with him.  One of the first times I went to visit him,when I got out of the elevator to his floor, I was confronted by a man in his underwear who began screaming at me in Yiddish, “You took my trousers!  Where did you put them?  Give me back my trousers?”  My stuttering attempts to assure him that I had no idea what he was talking about did no good, only angered him more.  Then my mother appeared suddenly, turned him away from me, and said, “A platoon of soldiers came and took them away.”  This – he accepted, and he disappeared back into his room.”  When someone is mad, I added, go with it.  This, I’ve decided, is the only way to go.