This Substack newsletter from Blue Ear Books features occasional articles from authors of the books we publish. This newsletter is free, but consider supporting our work with a modest paid subscription. “Haiti is a place for big questions,” an intelligent American woman said to me nearly three decades ago, in Haiti. Paul Farmer, who died unexpectedly on Monday at age 62 in Rwanda, found his calling in Haiti. People talk a lot about how skilled a physician and public health innovator Farmer was. But his real importance lies in the fact that no one ever asked the big questions more incisively or stubbornly. What makes him an awkward hero for the rest of us is that he asked a lot from human beings, beginning with himself. As Tracy Kidder put it in his bestselling book about Farmer,