Barring some additional 2020 disaster, the Vol. 135, Issue 50 of the Rio Blanco Herald Times will come out on my 50th birthday. Lord willing, we won’t have any random pages from last year supplanting this week’s pages (that was last week), but given the way this year is going is anything off the table?
Times are tough. I think we can all agree on that even if we disagree on why, or who is to blame, or how to fix it. Besides facing a virus that seems to arbitrarily kill its victims — Tuesday I heard about a 103-year-old who survived COVID-19 and got word last weekend that a friend’s daughter lost her 13-year-old best friend to the virus — we are teetering on the edge of a social and economic crisis the likes of which few have seen in their lifetimes.
We’re all uncertain and afraid right now. And that is making most of us cranky. For some, comfort is found in little things — baking bread, growing tomatoes, making masks, getting outside, meditation, etc. For others, comfort seems to be found in the land of denial and avoidance, kind of like hiding and hoping the monster won’t find you if it can’t see you.
It doesn’t help that we’re all drowning in a sea of misinformation and disinformation, and that concrete answers are hard to come by. Today’s recommendation could either be tomorrow’s mandated requirement or next week’s never-mind we made a mistake. The best we can do is try to be kind, try not to lose our tempers, and try to give people space — masked or unmasked (give the unmasked even more space).
Meanwhile, thank you to the Town of Meeker for putting in vertical parking on our block. Hopefully, those extra spaces will be a benefit when we have events and festivals downtown.
If you haven’t checked out the new banners on the Main Street light poles yet, you need to do that. The new banners were designed by our Meeker High School artists and are impressive. Our high school art program is something of which we should be proud. Congratulations to the artists and to art instructor Ben Quinn.
By NIKI TURNER | [email protected]
