As I stood in line to pay for my bagel and coffee this morning the woman in front of me, unknown to me, turned and said “I don’t know what to do, I am so worried about the news I can’t function and it’s just getting worse.”  I said I deal with that by not looking at or listening to the news on those days when I think it would drag me down a dark hole which, these days, is lots of them. That I am no use to anybody if I let the news make me feel helpless and hopeless. Then she said “So I have to be either stupid or happy? [reminding me of a scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall where he asks the happy couple how they can be so happy and they reply in essence because they don’t think…] But I was just listening to NPR and all the horrible things happening in Aleppo and if nobody listens to it who is going to fix it?”  Well, she’s got me there.