I work in a law school. Every day I use words to build articles, web stories, press releases and emails. The work I do is achieved with a click, a flick of the wrist.

Meanwhile, a block away, guys are roofing a major highway. For more than a year they’ve been moving utility lines and driving pillars into the ground. Now they’re using a giant crane to hoist huge  steel beams. Eventually, they will entunnel this stretch of I-395 and build a small neighborhood on top of it.

And I — I will continue building towers of words, the sometime dwelling place of ideas but often just ephemeral constructs that vanish the moment they’re sent.