Johnny Cash’s song is a tour through every two-bit town from Reno to Kalamazoo. My version is equally jam-packed but spans continents, almost all of them. Let me explain:

Amy lived across the hall from me in Houston, in the early 1990s. We were graduate students at the writing programs at the University of Houston. I was a poet. Amy wrote fiction and spectacular personal essays. I moved to LA after I got my degree and tumbled into public radio. Amy taught and wrote for a few years after graduation, but the poverty was grinding, so she took the Foreign Service exam, passed and joined the State Department. By 2015, she was the Director of Alumni Affairs, which meant she nurtured The U.S.’s long game in soft diplomacy by providing opportunities to those who had ever participated in a State Department funded cultural or educational exchange program.  

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