To paraphrase my grandmother, if I had a dime for every time I heard somebody use the word "unprecedented" when describing 2020, I'd have ... well, not much. But then, a dime went a lot further in Grandma's day.

So did precedents. Grandma was raising a toddler in a prairie town while the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic ripped across the globe. She also saw two World Wars, several land wars in Asia, the Great Depression (with a "D"), the introduction of indoor plumbing, electricity, phone service and television to the average American family home, the transition from buckboards to automobiles, and college educations for both her daughters (which she paid for herself).

Were she still with us in 2020, I think Grandma would be more impressed by the avalanche of information, and misinformation, available about the pandemic than by the pandemic itself. Having passed away in 1987, she never had to contend with the internet.

But the woman knew from her precedents, and I think she would have been confused by the upheavals that COVID-19 has brought about in how people live and work. The closest parallel in her lifetime to the massive redeployment of assets and the changes in how we eat would probably have been Rosie the Riveter and the ration books of WWII. Perhaps a handful of folks reading this essay have any first-hand memory of those days, but we as a nation survived.

In fact, it seems to me that the country's been here before, several times, and prevailed.

I was put on this thought train on Monday, with the coverage of the 33rd anniversary of Black Monday, when the stock market dropped 508 points in a single day, losing 22.6% of its value. I was covering business then, too, and it was a catastrophe.

Consider, then, that last Sept. 23, a Wednesday, the market closed down 525 points from the day before. Remember that? Vaguely, I bet, if at all. And the market has more than made up for that blip since, closing yesterday in New York at 28,308.

It's a different world, now, than in 1987. Different stock market, different economy, different demographics. Still, what seemed catastrophic 33 years ago, wasn't. What seems catastrophic now, won't be, I'm sure of that.

Whether that future coming at us from over the horizon will bring a rising tide and lift all the boats, or a tsunami that will make 2020 look like a cakewalk, I have no clue. But I believe we will do as our grandparents did, and grit our teeth and make the hard choices. The meat industry, among other sectors, will look different on the other side. But it's not unprecedented, and it won't be a catastrophe.

The "U" word

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