I started the week by facilitating what has now become a run-of-the-mill meeting during this anything-but-ordinary time: A Zoom (video conferencing) call with 15-20 participants digitally raising their hands and helping each other trouble-shoot internet connection issues. We were wrapping up, and I started to ask the group to encourage folks to subscribe to the digital edition of the Northside News, as we don’t know when we’ll be able to print the next issue, with so many businesses in distress and advertising revenue plummeting. Suddenly, my voice cracked and my eyes teared up.  On any day, at any moment, these little poignant losses catch me off-guard. 

Indeed, in 25 years, the Northside News has always been delivered —through staff illness, computer crashes, polar vortexes, financial crises (ours or the world’s). This little newspaper is a stalwart companion and has been a part of my life for far longer than I’d like to admit.  And now it is in danger. So, please subscribe. Go to
northsidenews.org and fill out the little form with your name and email address. We will continue to write stories for our digital issue whenever we are unable to publish a print version.

Of course, as much as I am fond of this newspaper and am concerned about its future, my moment of vulnerability was bigger than the Northside News. We are all caught up in a collective free fall, like nothing we have ever experienced. We are experiencing grief — so many lives at risk, so much of our daily existence upended,  and we don’t know when or if any of it will be rebuilt. “Experts” try to chart out the path, but, really, when the enemy is invisible and still largely unknown and unidentified (bring on the tests already!), how can we trust the ever-changing map? 

I have discovered my coping mechanisms, and I share them here, not because I am an expert (who is?), but because maybe they will help you: 

I go outside and walk to help myself get clear of the stress and anxiety, 6 feet away from strangers, of course. The trees are a conduit of release, rooted in the earth, with their fingers raised to the sky. Thank goodness for the more-than-human world in times like these. 

I try to find ways to be helpful. Through my role with NPC and the resources and relationships we’ve built, this path is a little more straightforward for me, but, right now, even from home, there are countless ways for everyone to be helpful. Spread the word about the census and help make sure everyone gets counted. Call vulnerable or older friends and family who may be experiencing loneliness or anxiety. If you feel safe venturing out to provide support for essential services, help us drop off meals for FEED To Go. Check out the Dane County Neighbors Helping Neighbors group on Facebook to learn how you can help someone in need. Sign up for our text broadcasting service to stay in the loop.

Finally, I find immense hope in the countless individual and grassroots gestures of solidarity, mutual aid and collective action that have arisen so quickly and so efficiently, even in the first days of this crisis. I am so moved and inspired by the countless people I have had the pleasure to meet (via teleconference, of course), people who are diligently, intelligently, safely and bravely organizing resources and mobilizing people to make sure everyone’s humanity is honored. Their crowd-sourcing efforts and ingenuity made the many pages of coronavirus resources in this issue possible.

There’s no doubt that what we are all experiencing is a collective trauma, but I find hope in the “collective.” Whether we come out of this in three weeks or three months or longer, we will have gone through this together. Maybe the empathy borne of shared experience will mean that we will learn to be better to one another, that we will take better care of the natural world in gratitude for the way it cared for us, and that we will hold more precious the things that were taken away from us. Can you imagine the celebrations we will have when we are allowed to be together again? I look forward to seeing you all again in person.