6 . Shane Grammer’s artwork can be found in cities in Mexico, South Korea, Dubai and beyond.In the past years, it’s the murals (壁画) he painted on damaged walls throughout the town of Paradise, California that have gained attention and touched viewers.

In 2018, the Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, swept through Paradise, flattening entire communities, killing scores of people, and displacing tens of thousands. Grammer,whose hometown was just 15 miles from Paradise, was living with his family and working in the Los Angeles area when he saw accounts of the destruction on his friends’ social media pages. A single mother he knew shared a photo of ash and rubble where her home once stood. A childhood friend’s post showed her burned-down house. After he saw a photo of a friend Shane Edwards’ home, which had been reduced to a brick wall with only a chimney standing, he was driven to paint it.

With Edward’s permission, Grammer then used spray paint to transform Edwards’ burnt chimney into a strikingly black-and-white portrait of a woman, a piece he called “Beauty Among the Ashes.” Once the image was posted on Instagram, the victims of the fire, especially, could not contain themselves. “You bring beauty and hope.” one posted. Over three months, the 47-year-old created a series of more than a dozen spray-painted murals on the remains of buildings and vehicles rendered useless by the flames. The images included a victim of the fire, a young girl who survived but lost her house, and a series of religious characters.

As a street artist, Grammer has committed his life to creating more art installations (装置艺术) all over the world that connect people through tragic life events. He has started a foundation called the Art Through Hope Foundation where he intends to bring peace through his art to those affected by tragedy. “I want to do something powerful and make art that emotionally influences people,” said Grammer in an interview with KRCR. “I think any artist would consider that as their ultimate goal. And to me, that is the biggest miracle I feel like.”

7 . When authoring his epitaph (墓志铭), Thomas Jefferson omitted his two terms as the nation’s third president yet included “Father of the University of Virginia.” The Founding Father spent the last years of his life not in the _____ but instead pursuing one of his most treasured missions: it was creating the University of Virginia. As mastermind of the university’s architecture and curriculum, Jefferson assured that what he _____ was sound.

Jefferson personally designed and oversaw the _____ of what he would regard as an “academic village.” At the front and center of a tree-lined lawn area, Jefferson _____ positioned the Rotunda, a round brick building featuring classical Greek columns in front. The domed (圆顶的) top of the Rotunda contained a library stocked with 7,000 books _____ by Jefferson himself, while the area beneath included two floors of classrooms. At that time, such noticeable placement of the Rotunda was a marked _____ from other universities’ designs, which generally featured chapels (小教堂) for the training of clergy (牧师).

_____ use of the grassy area in front of the Rotunda, Jefferson added ten two-story houses for teachers’ housing and connected them to student dormitories with colonnades, column- lined covered walkways. To keep teachers _____ while they were talking heated, Jefferson included dining halls in his design, referring to them as “hotels.”

In the spirit of his new nation, Jefferson introduced the notion of what we now call electives. Instead of a strictly dictated curriculum, students could _____ from ten academic disciplines. These disciplines were subject areas that _____ from ancient and modern languages to certain branches of science. To support the _____ components of the university’s curriculum, Jefferson included a botanical garden, an experimental farm, and an observatory. (Not one to _____ the slightest detail, Jefferson showcased the ten categories by placing a carefully chosen Roman symbol on each of the ten house.)

Although he didn’t live to see the full completion of the university’s construction, or _____ the graduation of the first senior class, Jefferson ensured that the university, which would later be named a World Heritage site, _____ free choice in classes, respect for classical routes, and curiosity about the sciences.

Those principles are forever remembered in the last part of his epitaph, which, if stated differently, could easily have read “____visionary for all Americans.”

9 . The Japanese animation (动漫) director Hayao Miyazaki, a workaholic auteur generally considered to be one of the art form’s most accomplished masters, has been trying to retire since 1997. “I know I’ve mentioned I’m retiring many times in the past,” he told a press conference, “So I know that many of you might think, ‘oh again’. This time is for real.” Cut to 2023: The release of Hayao Miyazaki’s final “final” film, The Boy and the Heron.

With The Boy and the Heron, Miyazaki wanted to go back even further to his childhood. Indeed, the film’s opening scene is inspired by Miyazaki’s experience of growing up during World War Two. Much like an infant Miyazaki, Mahito is evacuated from Tokyo to live in the relative safety of the countryside. It is here, tormented (折磨) by grief, living miserably with his father and his father’s new wife, that he meets the nominal Heron: a half-man, half-bird creature who mockingly tells Mahito that his mother is still alive. It is around this point, as the fish chant for Mahito to “join us”, as the frogs climb over his face, that The Boy and the Heron takes a turn for the strange. Having followed the Heron, Mahito finds himself stranded somewhere between life and death.

How do we live? It is a question that has haunted Miyazaki, a director always torn between optimism and despair, for most of his career: How do you live—as one character in The Boy and the Heron describes it—in “a foolish world filled with murder and thievery”? Perhaps, without getting into specifics, the film’s ending suggests another interpretation: Legacies, successors, even art itself, none of it actually matters. All that matters is that people—Miyazaki’s family, his friends, even the audience—continue to live on, to engage with the real world rather than retreat into fantasy.