More Wham-O

Wham-O weighs heavy on my mind right now because I am looking for a job. I'm thinking about the economy and trying to see where I can fit in, where I can do something for someone that makes money for them and money for me and, at the end of the day, everyone goes home happy like small children with water balloons and squirt guns.

So I read the papers. I read the blogs. I'm nosing what financial winds blow across the prairie, waiting for good news.

I've been thinking about manufacturing lately, partly because I just read Philip Roth's American Pastoral, but mostly because US manufacturing, I think, is a solid indicator of where the economy is going. I didn't study this in school or anything, but I feel it in my spleen. In this global economy, we must export US manufactured goods to bring in foreign capital. We need to make and sell things that people in other countries want to buy. It's one of the engines of economic growth that gets us moving in a positive direction, towards a job for me and the millions of other capable, hard-working, intelligent, good-looking unemployed people in this nation. This particular engine of economic growth, manufacturing, has been sputtering and choking and, apparently, dying since the 1960s.

So all that could make a fellow or a gal feel discouraged. But then Wham-O comes along and announces that they are bringing back one-half of their Frisbee manufacturing capacity to the United States.

This, I think, is the financial smell I have been waiting for.