ISawArkansas

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Much of what we love about our lives has been halted, and that made us wonder what is more important now than it was six weeks ago?

All of us have had to change our routine. Isn’t it strange that now that we have more to be uncertain about, we actually feel more driven and our lives seem simpler and more elegant?

Maybe because so much psychological sewage has been flushed and we’re adjusting to living cleaner. We shook off the invisible heavy beams of doubt we’ve been carrying around in favor of watching out for our health.

We’ve had to think harder about work, but not work harder. That’s a fair trade.

Last Friday we went hunting for morels in the Mark Twain National Forest. The closest we got to anybody was when a guy on an ATV, with his dog, drove by on a logging road while we were eating biscuits and oranges.

We went mushroom stalking so we wouldn’t have to talk about the Jumbo in the room – whether to close the ESI and Fun Guide doors until this pernicious virus is behind us, or plod through it as though we were double Virgos making daily adjustments.

How does a newspaper stay open without advertising? Ads are our sole source of income. But we really can’t blame advertisers for not supporting us when they’re closed. The governor himself insisted many of them shut down.

Do we keep working at our desks but lock the front door so no one gets too close?

How about covering non-existent meetings? Canceled or postponed events don’t help us all that much, either.

If we close, do we disconnect the phone? Split up the plants and take them home? Clean the refrigerator?

It was heavy last week. What are we going to do?

That’s when we decided to scout for mushrooms in the quiet, shady, secret armpits of fallen trees. Even if we would have to crouch down low to even see them, then try to straighten up without falling over.

The tendency of life is against disease, yet disease happens. Dutch Elm disease was brought to the United States in the 1920s on a shipment of logs to be used for furniture made in Ohio. It wiped out elm trees all over America.

Colony Collapse Disorder, a phenomenon that kills worker bees but leaves the queen, put honeybees on the endangered species list in 2016. Was it cell towers? Pesticides? GMOs? Climate change?

How about angry tornadoes? Seems like there are more than ever developing faster and blowing harder. Why?

Flooding? Well, we might want to look carefully at where we locate cities. Seasides might not be our best bet on that. But sheesh, seasides! They’re gorgeous and the air is rich. What could possibly go wrong?

Air pollution? Los Angeles and Denver are built in natural saucers, ideal for blankets of smog.

Famine? That one can be laid squarely at the feet of government policies –war, inflation and greed.

But we, all of us everywhere, learn because we have intelligence, resilience and an aversion to giving up.

So we kept looking for morels. Yes, we did not find any. Not one.

And when I got home, what do you suppose? One morel mushroom was poking up in my front yard. Unbelievable. Three asparagus had popped up in the back yard. One omelet for dinner. Sublime.

And all of the sudden, publishing the Independent and the Fun Guide seemed like a no-brainer. Neither of us is interested in going broke, but now we’re looking at it differently. We even had a special Sunday meeting to tell each other we wanted to keep going, adjusting as needed.

That’s when we knew this whole coronavirus ordeal isn’t about what we should do, it’s about how we should live.

1 COMMENT

  1. Thank you for your continuing commitment to this community. The Independent is essential. It is essential to this community in much the same way that City Hall, Public Works, and the churches are community keystones.

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