Don’t bet against human ingenuity.

What is going on now is a prime example. Humans have lasted this long because we adapt, create and innovate.

Our ancestors weren’t the fastest or the strongest animals on the planet but they used their brains to survive and thrive.

We may even figure out one of these days how to fix our economy.

Humanity has faced challenges before. But we have adapted and responded.

AT THE CHRONICLE we meet with colleagues on Zoom. We even have a Friday evening happy half hour online. Families and friends host live parties on Instagram.

Our children download lessons on YouTube.

Doctors use telemedicine to make house calls.

Musicians live-stream concerts online. A recent concert benefited Mission Lexington.

I feel good about these innovations because what you’re telling me is they using our adaptability and creativity we will endure..

The new normal will be a changed world. Our Generation Z future leaders must be prepared.

They grew up post-9/11 in a Great Recession world. Covid-19 will influence their behavior and decisions. That could be great for all of us.

They may be the next Greatest Generation.

A READER WROTE the other day to question why we were offering the Chronicle for use as toilet paper.

We were joking with the offer, too. But with the shortage of toilet paper, we thought we might as well encourage readers to use it anyway they saw fit.

He wasn’t the only one who noticed our red banner across the top of the front page with the toilet paper offer.

Congressman Joe Wilson, home in Springdale from Washington on the Nancy Pelosi forced House vacation program, called to say he would never despoil the Chronicle that way. If short on toilet paper, he would just use the Washington Post.

I MUST CONFESS I share his opinion.

Personally, I always thought the Post was rather stodgy and somewhat self-important, like the New York Times.

The Washington Star was far more lively, well written and made me feel that it cared about me as a reader. And it was edited by Jim Bellows, one of my journalistic heroes.

I had the same feeling about the late New York Herald Tribune where Bellows went after the Washington Star folded.

I took a job on a suburban New York newspaper in hopes of eventually working for the Herald Trib. I wasn’t alone.

Many journalists craved a job writing for a scrappy paper like the Herald Trib that proclaimed – its thumb defiantly planted in The NY Times’s eye – that a good newspaper didn’t have to be dull.

I wanted to work for an editor like Bellows and work with writers such as Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, Dick Schaap, Red Smith and Pete Hamill.

MY WIFE SHARED my admiration for the Herald Trib. We used to pick up the Sunday paper and playfully argue over who got to read which section first.

As far as we were concerned, reading the Herald Trib was an exciting experience.

Reading the Times was a task.

I hope you don’t feel that reading the Chronicle or The Lake Murray Fish Wrapper is a task. That would break my heart. But do keep in touch. Let me know how you feel at JerryBellune@yahoo.com