I find it fascinating to read about the battles between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I chortle at the plight of disgraced New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Honest to God, I even follow the exploits of Paris Hilton. But, honestly, my life isn 't going to be greatly changed by how any of these stories play out. I 've lived through Democrat and Republican presidents. I don 't really care about New York all that much and Paris will soon be replaced by another pampered celeb.

On the other hand, nothing makes my eyes droop faster than a learned explanation of the strength of the American dollar and how it plays out against the Euro and the yen.

At least, nothing makes my eyes droop faster until I stop to fill my wife 's SUV at the gas station and discover the better part of a $50 bill disappears down the tank.

Why is gas headed toward $4 a gallon? There are a number of reasons, but a major one is that our dollar buys far less overseas today than it did a few months ago and that includes gasoline.

We need to break our addiction to foreign oil, that 's for sure. The politicians tell me so and I believe it.

At least until I go to the store to buy some doughnuts and discover they cost a dollar more than they did a few weeks ago.

Why is the price of doughnuts increasing?

The price of donuts is increasing because the price of wheat is increasing. One reason the price of wheat is increasing is that farmers are now planting corn on fields that once grew wheat. They are planting corn on fields that once grew wheat because the price of corn is increasing. The price of corn is increasing because we are using more and more corn to make ethanol. We use the ethanol to burn in our autos as a substitute for gasoline.

I can tell you that, for decades, I have skipped over any business page stories that talk about the price of corn and of wheat per bushel. I know farmers care. But I don 't.

Nevertheless, the price of a bushel of corn vis-a-vis a bushel of wheat has more impact on my real existence than does anything going on between Hillary and Barack.

Gasoline at $4 a gallon does catch my attention and I 'm pretty sure that predicted price has something to do with the headlines that scream the price of a barrel of oil has now exceeded $110. It was about $10 in the 1990s.

Until recently, however, I would have skipped over reports on the price of sawdust.

That was a mistake. The price of sawdust, it seems, has increased from about $25 a ton in 2006 to about $100 a ton today.

It seems the price of sawdust rises and falls along with the demand for housing. Houses are made of wood. In order to make a wood house, you have to cut down trees and shave lumber. When the demand for new houses drops -- and it has -- there is less demand for wood and, therefore, fewer trees are felled and fewer boards are trimmed and the supply of sawdust and wood shavings drops.

The Wall Street Journal reports the Pacific Northwest lumberjacks will harvest about 3 billion fewer board feet of lumber this year than they did in 2006 -- and it turns out sawdust is used for lots of things. The Wall Street Journal reports that wine-makers use it to flavor some wines. Perdue Farms, a chicken grower, uses 7 million tons of sawdust a year for chicken bedding. Stables buy it as bedding for horses. Auto makers use a wood flour to make a material to cover steering wheels and dashboards.

The front-page news is often exciting. But it 's what 's on the back pages that may most affect our lives.

Read Bill Wineke's blog at www.madison.com/wsj/blogs.