• The library bathroom sink with a thick streak of blood down the middle, heading toward the drain.
  • Attending a convocation lecture by Kathy Cramer, author of The Politics of Resentment.
    • Agreeing with and feeling grateful for her message that we ought to be more patient with one another.
    • Wishing that she had more explicitly addressed whether listening to (without challenging) misguided or even dangerous people makes us complicit in whatever they do as a result of their being misguided.
    • The professor of government who, while introducing Cramer, offered to walk anyone who wanted to vote early to the city hall after the talk.
  • The comparison of Daoist ethics, which say righteous behavior ought to be an automatic, intuitive, unconscious response to life, to Kantian ethics, which say righteous behavior can only be an intentional, reflective, conscious response to life, in Bryan Van Norden’s Introduction to Chinese Philosophy.
  • Finding a huge beetle partly crushed and struggling to move on the sidewalk.
    • Always doubting my spelling of “beetle” because of The Beatles.
  • Mustering up enough confidence to put my pencil behind my ear, carpenter-style, while measuring and cutting wood in sculpture class.