By: Lonnie Adamson
Managing Editor

You don't know what you've got till it's gone.

That is a familiar phrase used most commonly in my experience to refer to a significant other who is no longer around.

I have a significant other who lives a couple of hours away, so I am familiar with leaving South Carolina after an enjoyable weekend of working and hanging around in the comfort of her presence.

One minute we are laughing or talking over common interests, enjoying great simple meals or photographing a wedding together.

Then BAM, cold coffee and "Prairie Home Companion" on the radio ... if the reception is good on the drive home.

The subject of not knowing what you've got till it's gone extends even farther for many of us at The Tribune this week, leaving us all more than a little unsettled.

The Internet died on us here over the weekend.

My technical description is that some form of electronic wizardry in the back room went kaflooey.

Now unfamiliar people are marching through the building and mumbling about technical things that go beyond me. Thank heaven for these guys.

Still at this writing, however, I can't do a quick Google of the spelling of a name.

That is just one of the ways that I use the Internet to speed along through the day.

The missing link of the Internet is one reason this column uses the reference to "Prairie Home Companion."

I had wanted to use the name of the radio variety show's chief writer and performer. I just can't remember how to spell Garrison Keellor ... or is it Kellor, or Keilor.

Pre-Internet, I may have remembered things like that better, or called my brother, who introduced me to "Prairie Home Companion." I may have also spent an hour going to the library.

This time I'll write around the issue using "Prairie Home Companion."

Mrs. Meade, my fifth grade teacher, would be disappointed to know it, but I had to use Webster's Dictionary to check the spelling of Prairie. Maybe this problem lies with me and not the lack of the Internet.

I know that a newspaper can survive without email, Web site research and ftp sites. I have worked in an era of this business that employed the use of manual Royal typewriters and Linotype machines that used molten lead to form letters for news stories and advertising.

We have grown accustomed to the pace and procedures needed to produce a paper with all the electronic aids.

That you are reading this column is evidence that we have found a way around our inability to surf the Web this weekend and a way to deal with all our losses.

That's what we do. Find solutions where we can, through experience and the grace of God. We don't enjoy the loss, however.