My neighbor calls. “Are you all right?” she asks.

“As far as I know,” I reply. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, it’s ten in the morning, and your back light is still on.”

I laugh. “We’re fine. Ben got into the news on his iPad, and we haven’t been down for the paper yet.”

I hang up. Comforting to know, in a age when images of a meter falling to the ground in Russia are instantly beamed to our iPads, that folks still keep track of a neighbor’s porch light.