composite created by Patricia Lay-Dorsey from photos she took herself. Best viewed in "original" size.

"The Big 3 needs to make cars that people want to buy!"

"Management is threatening to go belly-up 'cause they just want to get out from under their union contracts."

"If people would buy American, we wouldn't have this problem."

"It's the union's fault for insisting on those impossible health and retirement benefits."

"What's going to happen to my brother-in-law's pension, my niece's job?"

"What's going to happen to Michigan? Our unemployment rate's already 9.3%, the highest in the country."

These are hard days in Detroit, the city I've lived in and loved for 43 years. Questions with no answers. Lots of opinions (see above) but no power to change the reality. And winter's coming on. We've already seen snow and it's going below freezing every night this week. I'm seeing more people standing at traffic lights with "Will work for food" signs. All anyone talks about is what's happening with the auto industry. White collar execs and blue collar workers alike. Everyone's scared. And you don't need to be employed by the Big 3 to worry about the future. We all know that what happens to the auto industry in this single-industry town affects everything and everybody. How many people will lose their jobs, their homes, their health? How many stores, companies, businesses, banks will fail if the Big 3 go under? Already the city of Detroit has announced that only the main streets will be salted and plowed this winter. It's not as if this city wasn't in big financial trouble anyway. And it's not as if tens of thousands of Michigan workers haven't already lost their jobs.

No wonder the sun refused to shine today.