Exam review

The March 3 exam will feature objective-format questions about Be Mine, drawn from the questions I've posted each week. The answers will all be provided, you'll just need to match them to the right questions. You get a point for each correct answer, up to a possible 25... so there's no harm in guessing. But with adequate review, you shouldn't have to guess.

Here are some topics and relevant accompanying texts to review:

JAN 27

1. Frank's opening statement about happiness, and on happiness and aging on  p.11 ...
2. Frank on the remoteness of neighbors in America 5
3. Frank's characterization of "white southerners," Pug, etc. 17, 18
4. Frank on fearing death, suffering,  a "good death," denial... 24, 26
5. Frank on understanding, making sense, and meaning, and how to "make living steal a march on dying" 37

FEB 3

1. Frank on making plans for merely-possible contingencies in life 47
2. Frank's thoughts on scattering his ex's ashes 53-5
3. Frank on what you need to do, to be happy 56
4. Frank's remarks on Heidegger 73
5. Frank on having specific life-goals for one's children 77

FEB 10

1. Paul's attitude, and "full awareness of death": "Dying is the last of [Paul's] life's great escapades and the last he would want to undertake with ill-fitting spirits. In this way he aspires to be full of life more than anyone I know..." 89-90; 97
2. Winter 95
3. Optimists 103
4. Nietzsche's view of discourse and happiness 134
5. "Spiritual insulation" and aging 157-9

FEB 17

1. The Mayo Clinic's culture of sickness, and celebration 173, 182-3
2. Paul as escape artist 190
3. What Krista says she explains to people, and her variety of spiritualuity. 195, 199
4. Mount Rushmore as  "most notional... most American," and "how much lighter on its feet the world would be" etc. 216
5. The "key to happiness" 243

FEB 24

1. "Cashing in," "awful places" 267f.
2. Paul's epitaph choices 281
3. On "looking toward deepest space" 283
4. Why Paul likes Mount Rushmore 324
5. How Paul died "fundamentally unchanged" 331

There will also be a few bonus questions, so you can afford to miss a few and still earn 25 points. Your suggestions for those, in the comments space below, are welcome.

Music

"The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body." —Richard Powers

https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/02/24/richard-powers-music/

Is Frank a kind of epicurean?

Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus argues death is absolutely nothing to fear, "because as long as we exist, death is not here. And once it does come, we no longer exist."

From this doctrine arose the popular epitaph, engraved on tombs throughout the Roman Empire: Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo (I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care)...

https://www.threads.com/@philosophybreak/post/DVJkXt5jBec?xmt=AQF0wUCdOklXn4QhbPaBSRGUG50ydkp2NY4yjTqbjIXtrquCDgiiLkdhnG7RbhZYomqbzbtp&slof=1

Memento mori: Steve Jobs & authenticity

Today is the birthday of Steve Jobs, born in San Francisco (1955) to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who placed him for adoption. Clara and Paul Jobs, an accountant and a machinist, adopted him when he was still a baby. Growing up, Jobs and his father would tinker with electronics in the garage...

...Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003. He opted for a variety of alternative treatments, but eventually — in 2004 — he underwent surgery to remove the tumor. His health began to decline in 2009. He was 56.Jobs once said, "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-from-tuesday-13e?selection=5b9402a9-2dd5-4b31-b8d4-717fe23492f3&r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Astonishing

"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years."

— Carl Sagan

“aching urge”

"If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader." — John Steinbeck

No story is big enough to capture life

(That's his story, anyway.)

"In his famous 2004 paper Against Narrativity, the philosopher Galen Strawson challenges the popular idea that living well requires a coherent life story.

Human life far exceeds the narratives we construct, Strawson argues, and some of us don't experience ourselves narratively at all."

https://philosophybreak.com/articles/galen-strawson-our-lives-are-not-stories/?utm_source=threads&utm_medium=social