The Here and Now

Well, the average price of gas is $4.

I read two interesting articles this morning --

Truckers are striking in Spain and France. Gas there is $9 a gallon or so.

"In the latest show of distress, Spanish truckers Monday began a blockade of their country’s border with France, lining up their rigs and slowing them to a crawl to protest the cost of diesel fuel. The strike blocked the highway in both directions in southwestern France. The protest turned ugly when would-be strike-breakers in Spain found their windshields and headlights smashed and their tires slashed.

But the Spanish drivers were not the only ones feeling the pinch. French drivers slowed traffic near Bordeaux to demand lower fuel prices, offering a foretaste of a planned national strike by truckers next Monday. Portuguese drivers blocked roads and in Belgium thousands of labor union members demonstrated in Liege to protest the rising cost of living as a result of fuel costs."

NY Times

The price of oil is starting to effect people who use oil to produce other goods.

"The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company is trying to adapt. Its raw material of choice now is natural rubber rather than synthetic rubber, made from oil. To sustain profits, it is making more high-end tires for consumers willing to pay upwards of $100 to replace each tire on their cars ... Goodyear has kept its head above water in part by passing along some of the higher prices to dealers. The dealers, however, have not been able to pass along all of those increases to consumers and are absorbing the difference in lower profits.

Since last spring, the average profits of the nation’s corporations — from behemoths like Goodyear to small neighborhood retailers — have declined at an annual rate of nearly 6 percent, government data show."

NY Times

It's so hard when the way that you have constructed your life is clearly not going to work in the future.

We try to stave it off... see how little we can do with how much we can do without --

I remember that feeling before I got divorced. I feel the same way now.

Still, I for one turned on the A/C today. I thought I would try to go the summer... and I'm thinking about some international travel...

It's here, now, right?