A short excerpt from my forthcoming book about regaining communication skills after a stroke and rebuilding life at 55.

I’ve been taking pictures along the river in Grand Rapids. The photographs bring together water, autumn trees, the city, and places where work is still underway. I like having all of that in the same set of pictures. A city doesn’t have to be finished for there to be something…

You can see a car, a watch, or a beautiful vacation picture. You can’t see the whole financial picture behind it. Appearances leave a lot out. That’s worth remembering before I use somebody else’s photograph to decide I’m falling behind. My years in banking and my own experience rebuilding after…

A photograph can show you a worker, a construction site, or somebody walking down the street. It can’t give you that person’s entire history. The camera records what’s in front of it. The rest of the story can come from our own assumptions, sometimes before we notice we’ve supplied them.…

I’ve been taking pictures of construction on my walks around Grand Rapids. Buildings in progress, barriers, equipment, and signs telling you that the route you expected to take is closed. Some days, that feels like an unnecessarily accurate portrait of starting over. I’ve survived AIDS and a stroke. I’ve returned…

I’ve worked in banking, and I’ve had to rebuild after bankruptcy. Those experiences give me a personal reason to ask: when did the size of someone’s bank account become a measure of their importance? An application can ask for income and credit history. It leaves out much of the life…

“Follow the money” is a useful place to start. It also needs a second question: what does the evidence actually show? Otherwise, a good question can become an excuse to believe whatever story already suits us. Put an ominous soundtrack behind a few screenshots and suddenly everybody is an investigator.…