1. It’s Tuesday, September 5, 2017.

2. It’s the 226th birthday of Anton Diabelli, an Austrian composer who probably would have been forgotten had it not been for the 33 variations of his waltz that Ludwig von Beethoven came up with.

3. In some ways, today is a lot like January 2.

The day after Labor Day seems like the working start of a new year. Vacations are done. The kids are back in school. The town pool closes. The museum’s winter hours kick in.

It’s always a little sad when summer ends. But the world goes on, and I suppose the darker months have their charms. Leaves turn, and apples and pumpkins are pretty OK. Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming into sight. There might finally be a decent movie in a theater.

So it’s not all gloom. It’s just going to take a few days to shake it off.

4. I understand that not very many people got into “Twin Peaks: The Return” on Showtime this summer.

And that might be fortunate for the nation’s productivity. Because those of us who got into it have spent the day and a-half since the final two parts aired trying to figure it all out.

Explaining it only makes things more complicated.

So let me celebrate the most important thing about the show: The idea that some work of entertainment can make its viewers think about life itself and how we look at the world we live in.

You don’t have to agree with it. You don’t have to completely comprehend it. You just have to think a little bit about the vision of the creators, David Lynch and Mark Frost, and admire the craft involved in immersing viewers in this altered reality.

And to understand that the altered reality doesn’t forsake the one we share. It’s a world of real problems, but it’s also a world of real love and caring. Not to mention cherry pie (sorry, I’m not into the coffee fanaticism of the show).

It’s 18 hours long, and it helps to have watched the original 1990-91 series and its 1992 prequel. But it’s a worthwhile investment in art. I feel all the richer for it – if still a little befuddled.

5. Does anybody know what the crisis is that is precipitating Trump and his dolts to push this thing with the Dreamers?

Is there some havoc that these children are wreaking on society? It sounds like most of them are going to school, or working and paying taxes. Some of them serve in the military.

They came into this country, some fairly soon after birth, with their parents. So, no, they didn’t apply for immigrant status.

But they were kids. And, to be fair, this country has seemed perfectly happy for a long time letting their parents do jobs others don’t want – landscape work, field hands, elder care and so on.

That so many of these Dreamer kids have achieved or are on the path to achieving success should, for anyone who believes in this country’s promise, validate those beliefs.

We’re supposed to be a meritocracy, a place where those who work hard can get ahead. That is our national mantra, how we sell ourselves to the rest of the world as the greatest nation on earth.

The people who voted for Trump, who wrap themselves in the American flag and get upset when some quarterback kneels during the National Anthem, betrayed this country profoundly. You have to hand it to Putin that he understood this better than we did ourselves when he did everything he could to rig the 2016 election.

If Trump supporters want to throw these Dreamers out, their place in the annals of American treason is secure. Even Trump seems to have some inkling of that – he’s so afraid to actually do end DACA that he wants to stick Congress with the blame.

Showing, again, that he’s a coward as well as a demagogue.

The majority of people in this country will fight this. Or at least it should. This gets to our moral core.

If we don’t have the guts to stand for what’s right – and give these kids the freedom they deserve – we have given up on what made our country great. Shame on us if we let that happen.