I had camera in hand while wandering around Scranton Sunday afternoon, and I stumbled across this scene-- railroad tracks with the old Erie Lackawanna passenger station, now a hotel, in the distance. You can also see the General Dynamics plant back there, formerly a locomotive shop. You have to marvel at the hundreds of thousands of people who witnessed this view over the decades.
Scranton was a prosperous, thriving city at one time. Industrial. Jobs. You wonder what it would take to return to those days. The answer is simple: a miracle.
Our industrial past is gone for good. We are a service economy. Scranton has to embrace what it can do-- jobs in health care, education. Taxes not withstanding, a reasonable cost of living and it's relatively safe to live here.
As noted earlier, there is no magic wand. Scranton is in deep trouble. Deep, deep trouble. On the other hand, as Ronald Reagan used to say, there's such a huge pile of manure, there has to be a pony in there somewhere.
