Read the news for ten minutes and you will feel it. That small flash of contempt for whoever signed off on the obvious mistake. A bridge collapses. A policy meant to feed a region starves it. An invasion promised to take six weeks limps into its third year. The implication of our headshake, never quite…

I was well into my twenties before I understood that anyone held an opinion about my worth. Where I grew up, this had never come up. A child in those towns is many things to many people, a son, a nuisance, a future, a mouth, but the one thing he is never asked to do…