Ë®¹ûÅÉAV

As I'm sure most of you can tell from the volume of stories, photos and video we've been publishing in the print edition and at , our journalists have not let the logistical challenges slow down their efforts. They've also been working while managing two weeks worth of furloughs for each employee this quarter, because just like almost every business out there, we've been hurt financially by the economic collapse.

But as well as this team has performed, I'd be lying if I said we were doing fine. Just about anyone would be lying, whether they are out of work and coping with the struggles that brings, or still employed but dealing with unprecedented challenges and stress.

I bring this up because I got an email a few days ago from a leader in our community with a simple question: "Just checking in to see if you and your staff are doing okay during these challenging times?"

It was such a nice gesture, one that I will try to make for other people going forward. I encourage us all to take some time to just ask people we know if they are OK. It just might make a big difference for that person's day.

After this email arrived, we had a nice exchange about how each of our teams are doing and how we've been fortunate to be relatively healthy. And we both shared the sentiment that stress and fatigue are some of our biggest worries.

He also shared a nice compliment: "I appreciate all of your coverage, especially the stories about all of the positive things being done by members in our community for others. I think that section of the paper is helping many of us get through these crazy times."

For those not familiar, for more than a month now, we've been publishing a weekly roundup of community good deeds, something that our features editor, David Wilcox, puts together each week. He calls it "Ë®¹ûÅÉAV's COVID-19 community bulletin board," and fills it with snippets and photos of kind gestures people are doing for one another.

In addition to that feature, we've covered a bunch of socially distanced drive-by birthday parades and appreciation events for essential workers. These have been popular on our website. We also have a gallery of images online that are just submissions from readers showing people spreading kindness and cheer.

Unfortunately, because of the volume of stories we need to cover, especially related to the pandemic and its local impact, we just can't physically get to all of the events that readers bring to our attention.

I've said this in the past about coverage requests for community events, and it applies now to the terrific ways people are creatively helping each other with these drive-by parades and similar efforts: Let us know about it, we'll try to get there and do some coverage ... but if we can't, we'd love to publish a submitted photo and a little information.

Much of David's weekly bulletin board and almost the entire "Messages of Kindness" photo gallery come directly from the community. We have terrific platforms to bring these positive moments some attention, and our readers are great at helping us do that.