Odds & Ends

• I had breakfast Friday morning with the Muslim chaplain of a prestigious private university and a Catholic campus minister of a midwestern Catholic university. They were willing to devote a solid thirty minutes to conversation about how they and their universities do and could best support students, largely around mental health and emotional support as their primary fields. I'm pretty much always happy when people are willing to take time for my questions about how they think we could make American higher education the best possible version of itself; this was no exception.

• I've begun significant preparations for travel to Peru in just under two weeks (including arranging to borrow Dad's camera for amazing photographic opportunities). Today, I found a quote which gives one angle on why I travel:
• "Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living." - Miriam Beard

• Now that I've had a break from running, my body is back to being very happy erging and not feeling the need to run all that often. It's amazing how quickly it readapts to its (natural?) happy erg state.

I leave you with this picture unrelated to anything I've just said. It captures a beach on an island off the northeast coast of Australia just after sunrise. I dragged my travel companion out of bed very early for this moment.