She's right. Our stories are reflecting hard times for everyone: schools, cities, nonprofits, businesses, people. The VTA is even cutting back its bus routes.

What's striking to me is that just a short time ago, we were writing stories about Silicon Valley dot-com multimillionaires who were in bidding wars over gazillion-dollar homes. It was a time when those dot-commers were on the fast track to a new American dream—extraordinary wealth and early retirement. The old idea of working hard until you retire on a modest income was becoming passé.

There was magic in Silicon Valley then. The whole world knew about this place, and lots of people were coming here to cash in. Places like Ireland were coming to life again because of high-tech business, and Silicon Valley was the source. I, for one, bragged a little about living here. I felt a sense of being in the center of the universe.

Dot-com start-ups achieved mythical stature. There was an aura of genius around the people working in them. After all these people, many of them quite young, were giving us the Internet, something most of us couldn't quite comprehend. I recall the excitement when I was teaching at Mission College in the mid-1990s and we logged onto the website of a museum in Finland and browsed through fabulous art.

The focus for those working in start-ups was singular, obsessed. People slept under their desks, brought their kids to work. It was a frenzied time. But there was so much promise. People who worked in start-ups say it was exciting, exhilarating, creative, all-consuming, insane, something akin to being in love.

Many worked for small salaries because they were given stock options. This was a new work ethic. Work your rear-end off 24 hours a day till you are 35, cash in your stock options and retire a multimillionaire. Then you can do whatever you want.

Venture capitalists were pumping money into start-up businesses. We were encouraging our kids to go the way of high tech so they could cash in.

But many of us around the Silicon Valley were on the outside of the dream looking in. Many successful professional people in the valley actually felt like losers during that time because they might only be earning a paltry $150,000 a year, while some 24-year-old dot-commer was well into the millions.

My husband and I wanted in on that fast track but couldn't quite figure out how to do it. Like others new at the stock market thing, we invested but very conservatively.

Some friends said, "There's no reality to these stock prices anyway." But even they began day trading to at least cash in on the freaky jumps in the stock market. A photographer I know was trying to leap on the track, too. He began day trading and lost money.

But then in just a matter of a few months, the dream came to a screeching halt. Some very bright people, many of them quite young, were left holding worthless stock options that they'd given several good years of their life for. They were also hit with the alternative minimum tax, which means these former dot-commers are paying tax debts in the hundreds of thousands, even millions, for money they never saw. The entire economy has fallen drastically. The dream is over now—really over.

But there's still that memory of the dot-com era, a magical time that will go down in Silicon Valley history. That era literally gave us the world at our fingertips through the Internet. I connect with relatives and friends around the world in an instant. At Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, which publishes The Sun, we now lay our newspaper out from start to finish on the computer and send the entire layout via the Internet to the printer.

I don't know if there will ever be such a magic time again. I feel for those who had to take the hardest financial fall. But that seems to be the way the economy goes: boom and bust, boom and bust. So for a time now we will be writing about the struggle everyone is having with tough budget cuts. We'll be writing those stories on our computers and logging them on the Internet.

Sandy Sims is the editor of The Sun. Contact her at 408.200.1055 or via email, ssims@svcn.com.