I've gotta tell you: I have been sitting here all afternoon, not wanting to write this newsletter.

It's not because I am reluctant to tell a great truth, or anything so profound. It's just that I simply didn't feel like it, and I have a headache, and work was busy today. (You may notice that this newsletter is coming out Tuesday evening instead of Tuesday morning because I was dealing with similar things last night.)

Let me tell you a story…

When I was young, I had an intense wanderlust. There wasn't anything in particular that I wanted to do--I wasn't obsessing about going to Spain or hiking the Appalachia Trail or working on a crab boat in the Bering Sea--but I had a real need to get out and do something. I remember vividly a conversation I had with my wife where I quoted to her some lyrics from one of our favorite songs, "What A Good Boy" by the Barenaked Ladies:

I wake up scared, I wake up strange

I wake up wondering if anything in my life is ever gonna change

This will be a bit of a different newsletter. Normally, there's some thoughts up front, and then there's some interesting science facts, and then there's some distractions and diversions. But this week it's gonna be all jumbled up.

How This Story Starts…

I know you've heard that line before--that hope is a thing with feathers. It's possibly Emily Dickinson's most famous poem. But I didn't understand what it meant for most of my life. (Why does hope have feathers? What's hopeful about feathers?)

Let's look at the full poem. (Don't worry! It's short!)

"Hope" is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

But’s It’s Alright. It’s Alright.

I'm a fan of protest music, and with gestures broadly all of this stuff going on, I've been thinking about it a lot. And while there are certainly times for the more overt ones (Eve of Destruction, Ohio, or Fortunate Son, for example) the one that I've been listening to is a lot more mellow. Tired.

American Tune, by Paul Simon, is a song that is haunting in its defeatedness. But--that's not it. It's not defeatist. It's just tired….