Hope is the thing with feathers — and a glue gun

The headline here is from an Emily Dickinson poem. She's one of my favorites, and her work has been on my mind a lot lately.

You know what else the poem says about hope? It sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.

I'm seeing a lot of that, here lately.

I like hope. Even though my title here at the Southeast Missourian is Culture and Events reporter, the unspoken third word in there is Hope. Culture, Events, Hope. I'm a pretty cynical person, as you might expect in a reporter. I'm also pretty upbeat. I expect the absolute worst at all times, but by golly I'm out there looking for a silver lining. I usually find it, too.

I grew up watching "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," and Fred Rogers famously said, "In times of crisis, look for the helpers."

That line gets me. Right in the emotions. Every time. Because there are a lot of helpers out there. This self-quarantine has brought that home to me in a big way.

A few weeks ago, I put out a call on my social media asking artists, musicians, creators and keepers of this region's culture, to get in touch with me because I want to profile what people are doing to help. The response was overwhelming, and I still haven't made it through that first wave of responses.

There are so many people keeping the arts alive in our region. Some are taking their music online. Cape Girardeau native Jessie Ritter, a country music songwriter now based in Nashville, had a new song out this week on her Instagram page, and Maggie Thorn, native of Bloomfield, Missouri, is doing a Facebook Live concert every week until the quarantine ends. Those are just the two I've heard about this week, along with Brodrick Twiggs and Andy Chronister, mentioned in the article on this page.

Even in the face of untold dread and grief, visual artists are still creating. Writers are still writing. Songwriters are still drafting lyrics. Homebrewers are still crafting beers and ales. Home chefs are learning their range is wider than they may have thought. Even those of us wielding glue guns in sometimes ill-advised projects are still creating.

All of this is to say, I predict a massive outpouring of the arts when the self-quarantine begins the slow process of ending.

I am so excited.

I am beginning to see blips on my radar and hear murmurings of events and performances and gallery openings to come. They're still distant, they're still several months off, and how we meet and gather and interact in the future is still not exactly sorted out, but we're all doing what we can.

That's all any of us can do, by definition.

Keep fighting the good fight.