Anita Hill, Daniel Ellsberg, and James Baldwin paid a price for telling a truth power wanted left unsaid. Orson Scott Card and J.K. Rowling paid a different one -- and so, in a smaller way I did not ask for, did I.

LeBron James, Edison, Rockefeller, Einstein, Tesla, and Morgan -- and a saxophone I took four years to get good at, while a friend seemed to get there in two. What actually produces mastery, and why none of it was ever promised to pay off.

Not a story about race. A story about what I bought for my own kids, and what a fifteen-minute drive actually costs everyone else when the destination is power instead of a grocery store.