That weekend Julie and I take the kids on a trip to visit our friends Ruti and Andrew in Rhode Island. Ruti is an international relations professor at Providence College. I tell her about Project Gratitude. “Are you serious?” she asks. “You know I just taught a course in the economics of coffee?” I did not know that. I don’t believe in fate, but I can still be grateful for life’s little serendipities, and this is a wonderful one. Ruti spends the weekend talking to me about the supply chain. “One thing to remember: Don’t whitewash the process,” she says. “Some of these plantations are barely
...more
