 Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. There's this WH Auden poem called September 1st, 1939 that begins, I sit in one of the dives on 52nd Street, uncertain and afraid, as the clever hopes expire of a low dishonest decade. I've always read that poem as a kind of relic, like a fragment of what life felt like in 1939, as the war in Europe began. In a different poem written around the same time, Auden writes about all the dogs of Europe barking and each nation being sequestered in its hate. And those sentiments always felt distant to me, even historical. But as we approached September 1st, 2019, 80 years since that poem was set, I confessed to feeling uncertain and afraid, and like the clever hopes are expiring of a low dishonest decade. I certainly don't think we're at imminent risk of the kind of global war that Auden lived through, but in the 41 years I've been around, I've never experienced a now that felt so precarious and fraught and weird. Hatred, which has always coursed through the human story, does feel ascendant at the moment, and polarization is worsening, and with it the dangerous dehumanization of others. When we call people trash or vermin or monsters, we edge toward the great abyss, the abyss where we treat people as trash or vermin or monsters. And I guess I should stop here and acknowledge that I am hopeful, and I think the data supports my hope. Like homicides and violent crime in general declined in the US in 2018, and in fact are both lower than they have been in 42 of the last 45 years. Even after adjusting for inflation, average household income has risen consistently over the last decade in the US, while unemployment has consistently declined, but I don't think any of that invalidates the contemporary horrors. I mean, for one thing, in the US both violent crime and unemployment were also falling during the late 1930s, but also like something is wrong. Even as humans are living healthier lives and have better technologies to connect us, we report on average feeling lonelier than we did 10 years ago, and also less happy. And life expectancy in the US is going down for the first time in decades, primarily due to substance abuse disorders and mental health conditions. Something is clearly wrong, and maybe part of what makes me feel so uncertain and afraid is that I don't know quite what. That odd and poem goes on, waves of anger and fear circulate over the bright and darkened lands of the earth, obsessing our private lives. And I don't know if this is just me, but these days I do sometimes feel like the waves of anger and fear wash over me with such force that I am powerless before them and overwhelmed by them. Whether it's the death of a friend or climate change or mass murder, I sometimes feel like I'm an actor in a play I cannot rewrite, lost in a haunted wood, as Auden put it. I don't want you to worry about me. I'm fine, I promise. I just don't know how we unwind from this. How do we get out of this strange labyrinth of terrors and outrages? I don't know, but I do believe we will. I believe that one day I will try to explain to my children why this moment felt so strange and scary, and to them it will feel like history. The most famous line in that poem is, we must love one another or die. And to me that is gospel truth. We must love one another or die. Now I know that I'm going to die, but I truly believe that we are not going to die. I don't know how to move through this world. I don't know. All I know is the last stanza of that poem. Defenseless under the night, our world in stupor lies, yet dotted everywhere, ironic points of light flash out wherever the just exchanged their messages. May I, composed like them of eros and dust, beleaguered by the same negation and despair, show an affirming flame. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.