BUSINESS NEWS
2 • August 2020
Coast River Business Journal
Publisher’s Notebook
August 2020 Matt Winters
Congratulations for staying well as covidtime wears on
I
’ve taken to calling this the “covidtime.” Although we
aren’t ordered to shelter in place by health officials —
at least not as I write this — the necessity of staying out
of circulation as much as possible makes this feel like
an eddy in the course of life, a swirling pool in which
forward progress is stalled.
The novels “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and
“Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez cross
my mind as capturing some essence similar to today’s — of time
trapped in amber, still rich in experience but somehow removed
from reality.
I read “One Hundred Years” in a rough encampment below
Cerro Aconcagua in Argentina — the highest mountain outside
Asia. Between altitude sickness and dysentery, I was on the edge
of hallucinating anyway, and Garcia Marquez’s tale of a faraway
culture in the Columbian backwaters really burrowed into my
imagination.
Having the luxury of a job that can mostly be conducted by
computer and internet, many of my covidtime days are spent at
home, with lots of them blending into another — kind of like I
experienced in that alternately sweltering and freezing tent
by a rushing glacial stream. This time’s not all bad — sort of
convalescence without, so far, getting sick. A recorded version of
“Magic Mountain,” Thomas Mann’s meditative look at life in an
Alpine tuberculosis sanitarium, sometimes plays in the background.
A rich book that cinched Mann the Nobel Prize, it isn’t gloomy
despite its setting. The patients carry on rich intellectual lives and
sometimes manage to get up to mischief.
Unlike Mann’s privileged protagonist, Hans Castorp, most
of us still have to make our mortgage, rent, car, credit card and
utility payments. Covidtime may seem to have relatively few
similarities to Castorp’s extended retreat in the Swiss Alps. But
like Hans, we can choose to use some of this weird time exploring
our area’s world-class scenery, enjoying its outdoor recreational
opportunities, having low-key fun with loved ones and meditating
on the slow march of time.
It’s encouraging to read stories in this month’s Coast River
Business Journal, learning more about our neighbors who remain
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running hotels, stores, restaurants and charter-fishing operations.
The new coronavirus is just latest in many challenges our area’s
economy has survived. As in the past, a great majority of businesses
will come out the other side. Worry is natural but despair gets us
nowhere.
Having the luxury of a job that can
mostly be conducted by computer
and internet, many of my covidtime
days are spent at home.
Like swimmers in a riptide, sometimes the best thing to do in
an economic downturn is to stay afloat, intelligently conserving
energy while keeping an eye open for chances to angle shoreward.
In such circumstances, staying alive is a kind of profound progress,
and something to be proud of. This goes for businesses and families
alike.
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