My father would look at an empty building and sometimes he'd see a store, his store, filled with the stuff of other people's lives, waiting to be sold to those who now needed it.

My vision never extended in that direction. It's just that there's always at least two ways of looking at a thing.

As I turned on the computer a few minutes ago, I was thinking that there are very few things in life that can't be ignored and it's impossible to plan ahead for everything that could happen in the next five years or five minutes.

Some time in the past a group of men looked at an empty lot of land and decided that here was the space for the Jefferson County Workforce building. This would be a couple of million dollar building that would help people get jobs or get job they liked better. A place where people could enrich their life. Where jobs would be created and then distributed. Instead, there are rows of computers, out-of-date computer training disks, and lectures for those entering the work force. Anyone whose been around the block once has heard all this stuff before.

People who I know that are hunting for and getting jobs today are using Craigslist.

The Great Depression, the only one that we've know until now, was easy to discern. Known as Black Tuesday, it happened on October 29, 1929. Now we are arguing whether we're in a recession or just a slowdown.

And I look at the empty electronics store and empty grocery store and empty dollar store and I just see empty buildings.