My upstairs neighbors are very noisy. I know this because they are loud enough to bother me tonight, and I'm hard of hearing. My kids have mentioned the noise to me when they've visited, but usually it isn't a problem. Tonight that TV is really roaring.

Apartment living puts us in each other's faces (or ears) sometimes. Usually I think of that as a bad thing, although tonight I had some other thoughts about it. I remember when I was home-hunting in the summer of 2003, and a friend suggested to me that there was a sweet little house to rent in a great neighborhood. I was categorically not interested -- and a lot of it was that I feel safer in an apartment. As annoying as the upstairs TV can be, it's also a sign that folks are around. The walls are not paper (they're very nice plaster -- it's an old building) but they are thin enough for us to be aware of each other. I like that.

We human beings are social beings; most of us would rather have neighbors to fuss with than no neighbors at all.

Oh, and since it's St. Patrick's Day, a proverb that works for Israel, too: Ní tír gan teanga. [No nation without a language.]