Final Thoughts from an Old Year: Oh well, 2006 is almost over. Too bad, as it wasn’t the worst of years. For me, anyway.

About the only thing on my mind right now is soda ash. The stuff they use to make glass and a whole lot of other stuff. Here in the USA, we used to manufacture most of our soda ash from limestone. Now, we get most of it from mines out in Wyoming. A guy I know who talks with people who actually make stuff like glass tells me that the old manufactured soda ash was better, in that it was always the same. The natural soda ash from the ground varies from lot to lot, in terms of moisture and impurities. That’s a pain for people who have to make stuff from soda ash – they have to keep adjusting their processes to whatever kind of soda ash they get.

That’s a side of America that no one much notices or cares about anymore, the stuff that we’ve mostly lost to China and India and Brazil. We live in a world of consumer electronics and financial services and management consulting and entertainment and information technology. We hardly get our hands dirty anymore in making stuff from the raw elements of the earth (like wood, iron ore, petroleum, sand, minerals, etc.). I really wonder sometimes if that’s a bad thing for us here in America. We really don’t have a good sense anymore of what it takes to keep things going. We’re getting kind-of disconnected from reality. Kids today see nothing but shopping malls, internet cafes, theme restaurants and movie theaters. The rest of it is shipped in from somewhere over the horizon, by UPS and FedEx.

But, whatever. That’s America in 2006, soon to be 2007. I hope that your soda ash will be pure for 2007.