In Blue Island, seeing the recession's toll

"If south suburban Blue Island long ago was a geological mix of boulders and other debris dropped by a glacier, the Illinois Department of Human Services office there now is a moraine of human travail deposited by the recession," writes Jim Warren in a column on the Chicago News Cooperative.

"A parking lot the size of a football field was jammed Tuesday, and caseworkers laughed about my three-minute search for a space. This was a slow day, they informed me; show up on the first of the month, when various benefits are due, and you would think the Rolling Stones were in town. Lines form outside shortly after sunrise.

"By 10 a.m., about 150 people of diverse economic strata were applying for, or seeking urgent counsel about, welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid and disability payments, among other matters. They were in financial, social, mental and physical distress, and this office — whose budget-stressed staff deals with 81,000 cases in a suburban area up to the Will County border — is a lifeline."

With all the talk of a recovering stock market and the beginnings of an upswing in the economy, this is what the Great Recession still looks like in the Southland.