These are challenging times. Uncertain and troubling times. (Fill in your favorite adjective here) times.

More than a quarter of a million people across our planet, including nearly a thousand in our state as of press time, have died from COVID-19, the deadly disease caused by the coronavirus.

Our national, state and local economies are taking a beating after stay-at-home orders forced many companies to close their doors to slow the spread of this highly contagious virus.

But trying times can bring out the best in people as they strive to find meaning or make peace with a situation beyond their control.

We see Tri-Citians doing amazing things.

Our local businesses continue to come up with creative ways to serve their customers while shifting their business models: restaurants delivering rolls of toilet paper along with meal deliveries, or giving the option for customers to pay forward meals to feed first responders and medical professionals; others are offering curbside and contactless pickups, bottling hand sanitizers instead of alcohol, and offering online ordering or meetings.

Our generous business community has organized drives to raise money for nonprofits or to collect donations of personal protection equipment. They’ve sponsored graduating seniors, senior citizens and nonprofits.

Their ingenuity and compassion are astounding and inspirational.

Tri-City entrepreneurs are scrappy folks who love our community and are determined to see it thrive.

We’re no different here at the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business. We’re a small, locally owned company with six employees.

As hundreds of newspapers around the nation lay off staff, furlough workers and reduce print production, we’re happy to report we’re all still working hard from our homes.

Our 19-year-old paper survived the 2008 Great Recession.

It’ll survive a COVID-19 downturn, too.

We know our publication matters to our business community because we hear from you all that time that it does.

Our advertisers—our fellow business community members—continue to support the local news we provide as you can tell by flipping through this month’s edition or clicking through our website.

And if you look on pages A28, A38, B4 and B14 in our online e-edition you’ll see tangible signs of this support with logos of companies that have advertised with us this year. They didn’t pay to be included. We simply wanted to thank them and to encourage you, dear readers, to support them in turn.

Community connection is more important than ever, and newspapers play a vital role in helping to establish and maintain these relationships.

Thank you, advertisers. Thank you, subscribers.

No matter when or where we return or resume our “normal” work, let’s all pledge to do it safely.

Be well. Be safe. We’ll continue to be here for you.

#ReadLocal #ShopLocal #StayConnected