My friend Jane sings in Tallinn with the Smith College Alumnae Choir and Estonian Performers

I do have a wonderful neighborhood, and truly wonderful neighbors. One of my very favorites is a lady named Jane—an educator, an amazing mother and grandmother, a woman engaged with the world.

This morning she sent me this clip in an email that contained the word "joy." You'll feel precisely that as you watch the Smith College Alumnae Choir perform an excerpt of Beethoven's Choral Fantasy in Tallinn with the Estonian Male Choir and the Estonian National Youth Orchestra. The woman in the front row who, at the end, closes her black book and presses it to her cheek—with joy— (the woman whose laugh of pleasure you can almost hear): that is my friend Jane.

It is the gesture that defines her. And it is thrilling music to hear at the end of this independence week.