By: Forrest R. Church, Publisher
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
Two hundred and fifty years. Say it slowly and let it sit for a second. That is how long this American experiment has been running — and this week, our country marks the milestone. When the team and I sat down to plan this edition, we knew right away that a birthday this big could not be treated like just another week on the calendar. So we did something different. We gave the whole paper the red, white, and blue treatment, top to bottom, in honor of America turning 250.
Longtime readers will notice this does not look like your average issue. We changed the theme colors. We changed the design. You will see the stars and stripes woven through these pages in a way we do not normally do — and that is on purpose. A community newspaper marking the nation’s 250th ought to feel like a celebration, not just another week, and we wanted the look of the paper to match the weight of the moment.
All across the Tri-State Area and the country as a whole, communities are gearing up to mark this milestone in their own way. There is a real spirit in the air right now — close to home and on the national stage alike — and that energy is a big part of what this edition is about.
Here is something I have noticed firsthand. I have spent time this season talking with the folks who sell fireworks, who run our campgrounds, who make their living off a busy holiday weekend — and every one of them is telling me the interest coming down the pipeline for this Fourth is like nothing they have seen before. Normally a little interest trickles in ahead of our annual celebrations. This year it is a flood. People want to gather. People want to celebrate. And I do not think that is an accident.
Maybe we are still shaking off the years COVID had us hiding indoors, keeping our distance, and canceling the very things that bring us together. Maybe that is part of it. Whatever the cause, folks seem ready to get back out and celebrate, and there is simply more energy in the air than I can remember feeling in a long while. You can sense it.
Maybe we are simply far enough between election cycles — not really, I know — that we can set the megaphones down for a minute, stop yelling at one another, and celebrate this country alongside the very folks we disagree with. A guy can hope.
Here is the reality, and longtime readers know I have written it before: I believe most of America is not living out on the extremes. The mainstream media would have you believe every last one of us is either far to the left or far to the right, with nothing in between. I do not buy it. I think most of us are somewhere in the middle, and we have a whole lot more in common than we are led to believe. My honest opinion is that too many politicians and too much of the media want it the other way — divide and conquer. They would rather we not notice that two neighbors with slightly different opinions can still sit down over eggs, talk through their differences, and walk away glued together by the simple fact that they both love this country. Throughout our nation’s wars, our soldiers did not all agree with one another either — but they stood shoulder to shoulder and protected us all the same. Imagine the shape this country would be in if our military defended us the way too many of us citizens carry on with our opinions today — the nasty comments fired off from behind a smartphone, the keyboard warriors who would never in a hundred years say to your face what they so freely post and comment online.
I will let you in on something from this chair. As a newspaper publisher, I get hit hard — and regularly — by individuals and organizations who live way out on the extreme ends of both sides of the aisle. They are loud, they are relentless, and they are quick to let me know exactly where I have gone wrong. And here is the part that bothers me most: it is not their viewpoint, which I may or may not share. It is that so many of them want to shut down everyone else’s voice so their own comes through louder. You see more and more of that in our nation, and it ought to concern all of us. Meanwhile, the folks in the middle tend to stay quiet. Not because they do not care, but because they are worn out — tired from long work weeks, busy raising families, simply trying to get by. So let me say it plainly: the loudest voice in the room is not always the majority. More often than not, it is not even close.
I lean on a biblical principle here, one I have come back to many times over the years: we are stronger united than we are divided. Scripture puts it plainly in Ecclesiastes — two are better than one, and a cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Jesus said it from the other direction: a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that with my whole heart, and I do not think it is a coincidence that it rings just as true for a family, a small town, or an entire nation.
Here is what gets me — and I will admit, I did not have this one committed to memory; I came across it while researching for this very edition. Our founding fathers believed it too. I read how they chose E Pluribus Unum, Latin for “out of many, one,” and placed it on the Great Seal of the United States back in 1782. Here is a detail I love: that phrase has exactly thirteen letters — one for each of the original thirteen colonies that bound themselves together. And years earlier, in 1768, a founding father named John Dickinson penned a tune called “The Liberty Song,” and it gave us a line you have heard your whole life — by uniting we stand, by dividing we fall. These were men who disagreed fiercely, argued late into the night, and held very different visions for what this place ought to be — and yet they understood that the whole experiment only worked if they bound themselves together. Two and a half centuries later, that wisdom has not aged a single day.
I will share something personal. Over the last few years I have spent more time in Washington, D.C., than I ever imagined I would get the chance to. I have sat down with House members to talk about postal reform — an issue that hits a community newspaper like ours right where we live. I have prayed with Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I have bowed my head with congressmen. I have shared with them, for whatever my two cents is worth, the very real struggles community newspapers like ours are facing — and the struggles small businesses are wrestling with all across the country. I have held media credentials to cover Presidential Inaugurations. And I will tell you, standing in those historic places, you can simply sense the awe of it all — and the 250th celebration has lifted that feeling to a level I have not felt before. Do not let the divide of politics, fueled by corporate media, fool you. There are some amazing things brewing in this country.
As powerful as those moments were, the one that sticks with me most is harder to put into words — and folks who are not people of faith may not quite understand it. Last year I had half a day to myself in D.C., and I simply prayer-walked, slow and unhurried, through our nation’s capital. I cannot explain it in a human mindset. There is just a lot at work in that city, and frankly, I believe, in this nation. And like every chapter since our founding, we can go one of two ways.
Some folks refuse to celebrate at all simply because of who is sitting in the Oval Office at the moment, and I will be honest, that is one I cannot wrap my head around. I have lived under presidents I voted for, and more than a few I did not, but I will celebrate this nation every single time, no matter whose name is on the door.
Now, I am not naive. Not everyone is excited about the 250th, and as a newspaper publisher I am not ignorant to that. Some folks do not celebrate for religious reasons. Others have serious, heartfelt grievances with the United States and its government. I hear them, and I am not here to talk anyone out of how they feel. As I have always said, here at our paper we will stand for all voices — it does not matter one bit whether you believe the way I believe. If you are peaceful and you are not threatening harm on anyone else, you can hold views as strong as you want. You may not even consider them extreme; they are simply yours.
And here is the thing — that is just another reason America is great. We have the freedom to dislike, too. The freedom to disagree, to dissent, to grumble about our own government out loud and in print. The world seems to be drifting further and further from that. Great Britain — the very nation we won our independence from — has arrested people over what they posted on social media, which is a bitter irony when you remember our freedom was born by breaking away from that very crown. So even if you have no interest in celebrating this week, know this: your freedom to express yourself the way you see fit is a rare and precious thing on this planet. Do not take it for granted.
I will admit, putting together an issue like this gets a guy thinking. I often find myself reflecting on our own newspaper’s rich history — roots that reach all the way back to the 1870s, through a long line of papers that evolved, merged, changed their names, and changed hands more times than I can keep straight before they finally became The Village Reporter. That history is amazing to me, and honestly hard to wrap my head around. And yet, as deep as those roots run, we are barely a drop in the ocean next to the history of the country we are celebrating this week. Two and a half centuries. It is humbling.
This special edition does not happen without the advertisers and local sponsors who stepped up to make it possible. I want to thank every one of them — they did not have to back a project like this, and they did anyway. Here is a truth longtime readers have heard from me before: we still often sell our newspapers for less than it costs to print and distribute them. Advertising is the only reason a project like this special edition is possible at all. Because of their support, this edition will not only reach our normal large weekly audience in print and online, but anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 free E-Editions — depending on how far they travel across social media — will be released online this week at no charge to anyone who wants to read it. That is a lot of eyes on our community, on the businesses that support us, and on this once-in-a-lifetime milestone — and I could not be more grateful. And I would ask one thing of you in return: please go out of your way to support these local businesses. Our small Tri-State communities would not survive without them — they are the backbone of our local economy.
And make no mistake about why they did it. These sponsors did not simply buy space — they wanted to tell our communities how appreciative they are of how blessed we are to live in this great country. She is not perfect. She has her flaws. But if you stop and think about it, we are among the most blessed people ever to walk this rock — and that is worth pausing to be thankful for.
Here is what I know as we celebrate: there will always be struggles ahead. There always have been. If someone stumbles across this very column a hundred years from now, I suspect they will get to read about a long list of highs and lows we have not even reached yet. History has a way of repeating itself — and in a lot of ways I hope that is not true, even as I know in my bones that it is. But here is the other half of that truth, and it is the half I choose to stand on: this nation is every bit as capable of flying higher than it ever has, of rising up and remaining a shining example to the rest of the world. I believe that. I really do.
Happy birthday, America!
——&m