Did you wake this morning still breathing?

Years ago, when I was in the hospital in India getting a new knee, I walked the corridors as part of my therapy. At the end of the hallway I stood at the window and watched the construction activity across an empty lot. A new building was going up the old-fashioned way, with men’s muscles, not machinery.

The empty lot was not really empty. The men’s families were camped in the lot. I’m making an assumption here. Perhaps they were homeless people, but as I watched, they seemed to be the families of the construction workers.

Pieces of cardboard, plastic, canvas, any flat surface, we...