Edmonds Beacon - Your Hometown News Source

I suppose my fears and anxieties pretty much mirror yours.

No one has dealt with such a menace as the coronavirus, a rampant, widespread disease for which no cure exists – yet. My fears and anxieties hang around a lot, whether I am in the mode of "Stay Home, Stay Safe" or making an infrequent but necessary trip for food or meds.

My daily walks ease my tension. I wish I could protect everybody. I wish I could protect anybody. I wish I could sleep all night. Anyway, all that's normal and predictable. It's what we face now, knowing we will become strong again.

When I learned that the Beacon needed to cut back to two issues a month, I felt sad. My belief in an Edmonds newspaper goes back to my Edmonds High School years, when the paper was the Edmonds Tribune-Review and journalism was my favorite high school subject.

I enjoyed several quarters as a writer, columnist, and editor of the Wireless school newspaper. The Tribune- Review, owned and published by the family of my classmate and friend Ed Clark, printed the Wireless.

It was a pleasure to hang out at the Clark home and at the newspaper office. For a time, I was paid 20 cents an inch for a Tribune-Review column about high school events, at the same time earning 85 cents an hour to work at the Carnegie library, now the Edmonds Historical Museum.

While young, I learned to value and honor the significant presence of a small-town paper. So when I came home to Edmonds 15 years ago, I found my way back into the local paper, thanks to then-editor Al Hooper.

Now, 677 columns later, I still value the Beacon and am hopeful that when this terrible crisis ends, the paper will resume weekly publication.

Although I'll always choose an ink-on-newsprint paper, here's what I did today – and what I hope you'll do. I went to the Beacon website, http://www.edmondsbeacon.com, and subscribed to 12 months of the online paper for $2.95 per month. That's where you can read the entire paper – as well as past issues – exactly how they appear in the paper version.

Hopefully, it won't take 12 months for the Beacon to resume publication on a weekly basis. I could have paid for fewer months. I just want to help the paper along during this time when some owners of closed businesses focus on paying their rent, not on advertising in the local paper.

I'm sure I'll appreciate quick access to back issues. If you prefer, simply click on the upper right hand corner of the first page, "Support Your Local Newspaper" (https://donorbox.org/support-local-journalism-3) and donate. Our Edmonds Beacon needs to get back to weekly publication, ASAP.

My heart aches for every business in town.

I remind myself that if the coronavirus had come to town when my dad was an Edmonds merchant, he'd be in the same terrible financial predicament. Please do whatever you can to help the Beacon and other businesses in this wonderful town.

We're in this together.