Captain’s Log – Full Moons, Comets, and Other Wonders of the World

“My life is rich and full.”  

It’s been the mantra around the shop the past few weeks. Instead of complaining or running wide-eyed into the woods, we just look at each other and, with a tight lip and resolute tilt of the head, repeat, “Life is rich and full.”  

Or the ever useful, “They can’t eat us.”  

The beautiful fall supermoon will be full on Thursday when this paper hits the newsstands, and there’s a comet in the western sky that no one has seen in the past 60,000 years, they tell us. And while the cyclical beauty of nature continues to amaze, we learn from the constant ebb and flow that there is always beauty and wonder.

Magnificence. It’s modeled for us every day. 

What we’ve learned in the past nearly six years of small, local newspapering is that it ebbs and flows just as well. We’re up, and then we’re down, and then we’re tossed on a rock, and a vulture comes by. And then a helicopter swoops in and a Navy SEAL peels us from the boulders and delivers us to an island paradise, complete with coconut oil and pineapple drinks decorated with cute little umbrellas.

Wait, wait… my nightmare got entangled with the daydreams again, and you’re witnessing evidence of the reality of what it is to push so hard against the prevailing myth that “Print is Dead.” Sometimes we get a little loopy. 

Some of us are super stubborn, and we refuse to accept what may or may not be the inevitable. Across this country right now, there are some hearty little souls, the modern-day pioneers of newspapering, who are focused, determined, dedicated, and quite possibly delusional. Forging ahead, bloodying their knuckles to build little news oases in what has come to be termed “News Deserts” across rural America. 

I’ve said it before on these pages: we are not alone. 

Here is the hope—the thing we have learned—and it has been a slow dawning. Print will live as long as it is strapped to the digital oxygen hose. 

We’re learning that we will have to maximize the world of online news, entertainment, TikTok, and Facebook Reels to keep this thing alive. Print is the passion project, on life support, beholden to new technology, and yet, a luxury we cannot afford to lose. 

To make this work, we have to step up and practice being magnificent, just like the universe shows us, and in our humble attempt to be the best we can be, believe we can make it happen. And if this is going to work, we have learned we have to rely on all the people who have believed in us and are counting on us. We are really, really grateful for you. Don’t you give up either. 

So while we learn all we can about technology, continue to build our little island oasis in Lovelock, and push to get The Pershing Post in print, along with our island oasis in Fernley, we’ll still be right here…

… Keeping you Posted. 

Rach