Let me publicly wish a very Happy Birthday and much love to my wonderful grandmother, Dora Jaffe, born 99 years ago today in Shepetovka, then Russia, now Ukraine, on the eve of the First World War. Moving to New York City just after the war, she has outlasted the century, mothering my father and his two brothers and, especially, doting on her seven grandchildren. After a few decades in the obligatory Florida sun, she is back in New York, only a few miles from most of her brood. I am far away, but proud to be counted among them.

(Somehow I never realized that this date is doubly auspicious, with my grandmother sharing a birthday with Albert Einstein.)