Our fellow Midwesterners, less than a day’s drive from here, are suffering incredible tragedy after a massive tornado destroyed much of Moore, Okla., and claimed two dozen lives.
Television news and the internet are filled with the inhumanity of the destruction. Homes totally ripped away as families huddle for safety in storm cellars. Other homes and buildings flattened like so many Tinker Toys. Cars and trucks tossed and smashed as if they were, well, toys too. The landscape simply flattened and devoid of trees or buildings, anything much above ground level.
At the Kimball Business Expo in March, we took a 4-page survey. We learned a lot about what our readers read, and how they read it.
There were some surprises, and some things we pretty much knew.
Many of our readers read from cover to cover, often in one sitting. Some save it for weekend reading.
What do our readers read most? Weddings and anniversaries and birth announcements. Not a surprise that lots of people read them, but a pleasant surprise that they’re top for readers.
Another set of horrific images are now emblazoned in my brain. The raw video and photos of carnage and human misery.
We don’t yet know if this was the act of international terrorism, or of a single deranged individual seeking fame by causing terror and human misery.
Thank God. Literally. Seriously. Thank God it’s done. And thank God we all survived.
We’ve grown accustomed to the weekly glitches and bumps along our path to getting out this weekly paper. Every week it’s something. Last week, we had about a year’s worth of those “somethings.” From computer freezes to septic freezes, and illness, accidents and hospitalizations. Both the newspaper and the Progress Issue itself had to be reprinted. The final bunch go out this week, with this paper.