A cup half full of hope:

Here's a story telling how one woman's dream of opening a coffee shop brings hope to the entire community. Is there community without a coffee shop at the center of it all? A coffee shop should be the modern gathering place for the community. Next time you rush in and out of Starbucks with your take-out paper cup, consider stopping, asking for your drink to be made "for here" (which I'm told by a friend who works at Starbucks signals to the barista that you want it to be served in a real ceramic cup - fancy that!), and stay and enjoy a few moments of community. Perhaps at first you won't talk to anyone, but do it a few times, and start to notice the regulars. After a while you just can't help but acknowledge someone that you see day after day. Your sense of community can grow from there. Or learn how to make your coffee at home and invite your friends over. Build friendships and civility around your cup of coffee.

Mary Petrella-Williams cracks a cold bottle of water, sweating from hacking plaster off an old store's walls. For two years now, that's what she has been doing, scrubbing and cleaning, tearing down and painting up her Midland Avenue building, trying to turn it from a long-defunct butcher shop into a gourmet coffee shop named the Karma Kafe.

The coffee shop will be the first of its kind in Midland. And, while it's Petrella-Williams' dream, in some ways, it represents the whole borough's hopes as well.There's a sort of joke about knowing a town has "made it" when a fancy coffee shop sets up, as such cafes seem to exist for the prosperous yuppie set. So, for a place that's moved from rusting steel mills to shiny-new educational enterprise, could the promise of quality lattes also signal a good economy on the horizon.