At Last: Separateness

On Tuesday, I observed that not only in Point Roberts but also in Bellingham, road workers were out painting yellow lines down the middle of all our roads.  They'd been getting fainter and fainter and we might have thought, reasonably, that the County no longer had enough money to buy paint to paint us into separate directions, given its budget difficulties.  Or we might have thought, less reasonably, that the County had figured out that we were all smart enough or not-British enough to know which half of the road we were supposed to be driving on (although knowing your half obviously isn't quite enough on a more than 2-lane road).  Or something else.

But what actually explained this lack of yellow lines and now this presence of yellow lines is that the national shortage of yellow-line street paint which began last spring has, at last, been reversed.

"Dow Construction Chemicals, one of the largest producers of the compounds that go into pavement-marking products, experienced plant breakdowns in April and May, according to the contractors group. Along with Dow's reduced production, shortages of other chemicals and rising demand from roadway projects in Asia have contributed to the problem. Industry experts also say the shortage has been heightened because of demand from street projects funded through American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus money."

(Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/08/12/20100812phoenix-road-paint.html#ixzz138mPD3YU).


Actually, if you Google "national shortage yellow street line paint" you will find the shortage cited even earlier than April of 2010, but whenever it began, at least seven months later, it has ended.  You might think that the free market and capitalism and supply and demand and all that would have permitted a more rapid recovery, but then you might have thought that big banks would have good and legal processes for mortgages and foreclosures of same.  I find myself, day after day, being astonished to discover things that I would have thought were obviously true to be absolutely NOT true.  I'm not sure that I can bear getting any older if the learning proceeds at this pace.


In any case, rejoice at those yellow lines.  Or stay on your own side, at least.