What the certifications doesn’t buy you

In the Appalachians, people set stones into a streambed so the water would break over them and sing. The sound carried further than the water could be seen, and anyone walking the hills could hear where the stream ran and follow it out.

The stones did not move the river. They made it audible, and they were placed by people who had already walked that ground, for the benefit of whoever came next.

That is what this is. The law is the stream: it runs whether or not you can follow it. Every row here is a stone set deliberately — a provision, what a certification does under it, who checked, when, and when the claim expires — so the next person can hear where the law actually runs, and take the right path through it.