"The sky is falling, the sky is falling".... perhaps.  It is concerning that a sense of alarm grips the nation from sea to sea and Fox to CNBC.  A million foreclosures a year, double digit unemployment, record high school drop out rates, $4 a pound for tomatoes, etc.  Those who are wandering up and down Main Street anxious about where we might be next year, sense that Chase and Walmart and Empire Electric will prevail, but as for their neighbors, the butchers, the bakers and the candle stick makers....well they're much less confident. Here in Branson, the defacto Ozarks Capitol, we have weathered 3 years of backpeddelering, board-ups and cheap boots. At its best, the tacky "strip" now seems just north of "hospice".  Woe to We.....but wait, perhaps Ozarkians may have a secret weapon. Our "just local" perspective, our tendency to shun academia and our celebrated "make it from scratch" instinct, may well promote action when those more discerning would pass.  Dubiously justified optimism may well be as contageous as  factually validated pessimism.  This week a symbolic tribute to this sensibility took roost on the weary "strip".  It is as though, some guy who, without a clue about econometric projections,  woke up one morning and said, "I think I will open a new restaurant on "the strip", where countless others have failed, but mine won't, because my entry door will be a "30 FOOT CHICKEN".   I hope he succeeds and others join  "Chicken Big" and "Hollywood Kong" in maintaing the Branson vitality in spite of the forecasts.