"By and large, you have to believe people’s stories," says David Hilfiker, who blogs about the unfolding of his own Alzheimer's disease but also draws on the insights of his service work with impoverished people. Doing this work, he saw the lack of direct experience, the layers of ignorance and myth, that prevented more fortunate people from understanding the experience of others.

An ethic emerges from his service: "One of the things I've learned is that you have to listen to them." No wonder, then, that he chooses to blog as long as he can and that he values the "testaments" of other Alzheimer's patients who do the same. People are not needy; they need to be heard.

People's chances for a better life are bound up in their chances to speak and be heard, to write and be read, to break down the ignorance and distance of the comfortable who go about their business not having to know much about the lives of others.