If there’s anything that embodies the United States, it’s today. The problem is that many people seem to be celebrating the wrong holiday.
Since this is a day when everyone’s supposed to be doing something else than work, I’ll keep this short. My beef is that, with all the barbecues, parades, rodeos, baseball games and fireworks displays, people are going out and having a good time on the Fourth of July … and that’s not the holiday.
When it comes to political intrigue and natural resources, the main suspects are easy to spot. Oil. Coal. Gold. Rubber. Travertine.
Travertine?
Stone imports seem to be hitting some constant levels on a month-to-month basis, with some small increases from January and February. The bad news: Value and tonnage totals for this April are down by 30%-50% from the same time last year.
Random observations from Germany and its big stone show last month:
• It’s way too easy to say that a show’s gone to the dogs, but Stone+tec allows the four-legged friends of fabricators to attend the show. And we’re not talking service dogs, either – just plain ol’ dogs on leashes.
Anyone checking the Latest News section of Stone Business Online last week came across something that’s definitely not about stone … but the subject might tell us a lot about the rest of 2009.
Fair warning: There’s going to be one article in the April issue of Stone Business that many fabricators will hate. And, as editor, I don’t mind if you do.
Radon popped up again on the online radar this week, with a small-but-constant blip when Web surfers looked for granite-countertop topics.
From the day I saw a slab of Baltic Brown sitting at the entrance to the local Home Depot, I knew it would come to this: Granite countertops as a weekend project.
In a down economy, it’s easy to pick on journalists for being too negative. I’ve done it myself recently, and I’m one of ‘em.
A few months ago, I made a comment in my monthly “Spall” column about a credit story that’s, well, rather personal. However, it’s one that might help fabricators understand that business will continue to remain as unusual and uneven.