The question of something being one’s business or not held a central position in the ethics of Ethel Klayman, whose major tenet was the supreme importance of minding one’s own. Gossips, busybodies, and kibitzers were the fiends of her personal demonology. She was universally at odds with the neighbors, and suspicious, to the point of paranoia, of all visiting doctors, salesmen, municipal employees, synagogue committee-men, and tradespeople.
