Glimmers.

When I've been on coasters at Cedar Point, there are times when you feel like the drop is never going to stop.

It's felt like that for the last few months in our community...and nation. Elkhart County has, as we long said, led the nation into financial recessions and we lead the way out to recovery. So things started to go bad in the middle of 2008, and now we are struggling with an actual unemployment rate of more than 20% in the city.

President Obama was sworn into the office, the government made some attempts to turn around the financial drop by solving the credit crisis, and the stock market kept heading south. In a series of spectacular dives.

All of this is going to take time.

Last week I told a friend that I thought it might be a good time to start buying stocks. This week the markets began heading in a positive direction. There have been a couple of articles in the paper about companies hiring...expanding. Retail numbers were up recently, and the supply of houses is down as existing units have been bought up.

Then, yesterday, I pulled into our front driveway, looked down, and saw crocuses beginning to poke through the soil.

Small things. Little slivers of light in a room that has been pretty dark. That is what I am seeing.