If you're connected to the wind energy business or are looking to get your foot in the door, you're probably thinking about two things:

1. You're tired of cheesy puns in article headlines (like the one above).

2. You are hoping investors start embracing the business again.

For the former, I'm a culprit among all the other business reporters using excessive verbal window dressing to write about this sector. As for the latter, investment trends are blowing in a new direction. (Apologies, again.)

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This has been a busy few weeks for Eric Isbister.

The chief executive at General MetalWorks in Mequon, Wis., north of Milwaukee, held an open house Friday to celebrate 10 years since he and his wife, Mary, took over the fabrication business. Late last month he braved the halls of Hannover Messe, the giant industrial tradeshow with hundreds of exhibitors in the wind industry. And this week he's attending the WindPower 2009 expo, put on by the American Wind Energy Association.

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Two machines sitting on a porch facing New Hampshire’s Merrimack River may well change the world. And at the FABTECH International & AWS Welding Show last week, I got a glimpse of them.

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This week the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) holds its Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, Mich. After reading event news trickling onto the Internet, news that includes automotive execs opining away about industry troubles, I’ve come to a conclusion.

They should listen to Eric Borman.

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Reading the campaign news this week, I was reminded of a “West Wing” episode years back when the president’s personal aide, Charlie Young, asks what President Bartlet was doing. The president replied, “I’m doing basically what the president does: Asking people for things, and then thanking them.”

He was, in fact, signing notes to key legislators thanking them for support, but his comment implied much more. The president can propose ideas and ask Congress to support them, but thanks to checks and balances, he can’t implement them on his own.

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Reading news of the campaign trail last week, I recalled a park cookout I attended years ago while visiting a friend in West Lafayette, Ind. The conversations there weren’t normal, and not your typical neighborhood get-together talk. These people, including my friend, were nuclear engineering majors at Purdue University, and they were talking about the benefits of, well, their major—and France.

The conversations covered a lot of the same stuff as Sen. John McCain did on the stump last week (albeit with a bit more technical jargon). “The French are able to generate 80 percent of their electricity with nuclear power,” McCain said, providing the lead for a BusinessWeek report. “There’s no reason why America shouldn’t.”

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Last week media reported long gas station lines, with motorists grumbling over record prices. That sounded like 1970s oil-crisis America, but that’s not what reporters were writing about on Friday.

They were reporting from Beijing.

There, The Times of London gave reports of long lines outside petrol stations as Chinese motorists attempted to fill up before the government removed fuel subsidies. That action jacked up gas prices by 18 percent. This came on the heels of other Asian countries reducing their own subsidies, including India and Malaysia.

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I fess up. Yes, I’m an overgrown band geek. I played trombone during high school, on through college, and I continue to do so (very badly, actually) in a local community band. Every Thursday, driving into the rehearsal hall parking lot, I see yet another blast from the past, that preferred transportation method for us geeks and nerds: A motor scooter.

The driver, who happens to be quite the clarinetist, has driven his scooter to band practice for years, but within the past few months he’s been getting a lot more attention. During breaks we gather around his Vespa ®, admiring not so much its sleek design, but its miles per gallon: 72.

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The weather's warm, and my dormant Bermuda grass that appeared brown and dead all winter now is green and growing. Here in the Southeast, we've been mowing for weeks. We have a John Deere riding mower (for which we paid way too much) that requires annual service (which is also costly) and gas (also costly). It's too large for some narrow sections of our lawn, which means we also need a push mower.

Because we've been through three gas-powered push mowers in the last six years—all have given up the ghost—I persuaded my husband to buy a reel mower this year. It took some arm twisting, sharing some childhood memories, and the price of gas to convince him that the reel mower was worth a try.

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These days, wherever I go … whomever I talk to … the conversation usually turns to high gas prices. When I shake my head at the ever-increasing cost of produce at the market, my first thought after "Should I buy these blueberries at this price?" is “It’s those high fuel costs!”

It's not just the food we eat and the products we buy that are affected by high fuel/transportation costs. A young man near and dear to my heart had to round up his change and visit a nearby Coinstar® machine to turn change into dollars for the gas to visit his mother for a Memorial Day picnic (sans blueberries). Even then, he was watching the fuel gauge closely.

With the price of crude oil escalating and the price at the pump following suit, could there possibly be a silver lining to high energy costs? Maybe.

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