plus 4, Progress Was Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary - New York Times

Progress Was Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary - New York Times
From New Deal to New Hard Times, Eleanor Endures - Tuscaloosa News
Recycle yule into Christmas alt-fuel - CNN
Videos From the Web: Car Videos - San Francisco Chronicle
The real message of E-Cards - Juneau Empire

Progress Was Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary - New York Times

Posted: 25 Dec 2009 07:43 AM PST

BOSTON

It was once the mantra of the Red Sox fan: Wait till next year.

Certainly that old saw applies to the automotive class of 2009. While plenty of worthy, interesting cars were introduced this year, the advances were evolutionary rather than groundbreaking.

The Ford Fusion Hybrid gets better mileage than its predecessor. The new Audi S4 is quicker and more efficient than the last one. And the Camaro is more Camaro-y than ever. (It was easily the hottest car, stylistically, introduced this year.)

But my No. 1 pick is the BMW 335d. Why? While I respect the Fusion Hybrid's federal combined mileage rating of 39 m.p.g., I prefer my fuel-stinginess with a side order of rear-wheel-drive torque — and BMW's twin-turbo diesel delivers 425 pound feet of it. The 335d, to my mind, does the most to advance the green game in the United States, offering a sport-sedan driving experience along with 36 m.p.g. on the highway and a federal tax credit.

But even the 335d is a footnote compared with what's on the horizon for 2010. In 2009, the conventional internal-combustion car got a little faster and a little more efficient. As for the real revolution — plug-in hybrids and electrics — wait till next year.

1. BMW 335d

As I tell anyone who will listen, if this clean-diesel car said "hybrid" on the back and had a unique body, it would be everyone's car of the year.

2. Ford Fusion Hybrid

The best hybrid on the road, it can run up to 47 miles per hour in electric mode. The Prius is still the mileage champ, but the Fusion is a better drive.

3. Audi S4

An amazing transformation into a heretofore unseen breed: it's an Audi sedan that handles.

4. Chevrolet Camaro

Most writers seem to like the Mustang better. I don't. An independent rear suspension, up to 426 horsepower and concept-car styling make this my favorite meathead-mobile.

5. Mazda 3

A small, reasonably priced car that looks, feels and drives as if it belongs in a much more expensive class.

6. Jaguar XFR

One of these kept up with a Porsche Cayman S on a road course during testing for Automobile magazine's All-Stars. But it's a big, comfy Jag sedan. That's incredible.

7. Audi R8 5.2 V-10

Audi's version of the Lamborghini Gallardo is at the top of my list of things to buy when Goldman Sachs mistakenly sends me a bonus. How many exotics are fun in a snowstorm? This one was.

8. Nissan 370Z

The first car in recent memory to get smaller and lighter with a redesign.

9. Ford Flex with the EcoBoost V-6

The only entertaining crossover vehicle that doesn't cost 60 grand.

10. Dodge Ram

They figured out how to put coil springs on a pickup. Somebody send these guys to CERN to fix the Large Hadron Collider.

Beyond the Top 10

Some other thoughts on the cars and trucks of 2009:

Misplaced Expectations: The biggest problem with the Ford Taurus SHO is that it's called "SHO." If its name were "Taurus EcoBoost," nobody would be whining that it's not as hard-core as the 1989 original.

Abuse of the 911 System: I think the Porsche Panamera's rear three-quarter view could be improved by a severe rear-end collision. But I drove a Panamera for four days and the public had nothing but good things to say about it. I even loitered around and eavesdropped, and while some people noted the sedan's 911 cues — "It looks like a 911 limo" — they weren't negative about it. Maybe the Panamera will turn out like a movie that was panned by the critics but ends up being a box-office success.

Guilty Pleasure: After driving the new LR4, I have to say that sitting up there in a big Land Rover with a V-8 is a mighty nice feeling. Let's get some algae ethanol brewing.

Most Anticipated: The Fisker Karma. And I anticipate anticipating it for some while longer.

Evidence of Independence: I drove a Ford Raptor over to Jay Leno's garage for an interview. He took a look at the Raptor, with its flared fenders and 35-inch tires, and asked what its story was. I replied that it's basically Ford's take on a street-legal Baja prerunner truck. "Well," Mr. Leno replied, "They didn't take any bailout money, so they can build whatever they want."

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From New Deal to New Hard Times, Eleanor Endures - Tuscaloosa News

Posted: 25 Dec 2009 08:33 AM PST

Early spring, in the Depression year of 1935. A poor girl from coal-mine country, a dark-haired girl of 4, rocks beside her mother and two sisters in a car moving through the rain-swept night. Soon they will join her father, a Great War veteran who pads his shoes with cardboard. He has been working for months on some distant government relief project.

When the car finally stops, the sleepy girl can see only a blur of mud and midnight. Not until morning does she take in this government project: a new American town, raised from a field by her father and other men with families caught in the stalled gears of a broken economy.

The girl is told: You're home now, Marlane.

Late fall, in the Recession year of 2009. A dark-haired woman of 78 drives her Buick, a Rendezvous, slowly through the town she has always called home. "This is an Eleanor house, and this is an Eleanor house," Marlane Crockett Carr says, nodding toward oversize bungalows distinguished by the original pitched roofs. "And this, and this..."

The economic fallout of this annus horribilis, now drawing to a close, continues: 10 percent unemployment ; tens of millions without steady access to adequate food; wholesale industry shakeouts. It takes the collective American mind to another time, an even harder time, when federal stimulus programs meant more than just bridge repairs and weatherization; when the government jump-started the economy by building highways, schools, post offices — entire towns.

Dozens of New Deal "resettlement" communities dotted the country: the Penderlea Homestead Farms in North Carolina; the Phoenix Homesteads in Arizona; the Dyess Colony in Arkansas, where Johnny Cash grew up. And here: on fertile West Virginia land beside the Kanawha River, a community named after Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the New Deal.

Over the years, these New Deal towns have been praised as a sound response to paralyzing poverty and criticized as flawed, communism-tinted social experiments. But in this hard time, as half-built subdivisions stand as ghostly testaments to economic failure, a place like Eleanor reflects a government action that worked, and works.

Ms. Carr watched Eleanor grow, from a place planted in mud nearly 75 years ago — well before the Levittowns of post-World War II America — to a town that proclaims itself the cleanest in West Virginia; a town with a budget, a mayor, a library, a Dairy Queen. Its development has been bitter, sweet, messy, quiet, ugly and beautiful, not unlike the evolution of this country.

Driving her Rendezvous down roads intimately known, Ms. Carr says she fears that Eleanor's history is being pushed aside, that someday people will not know why the main street is called Roosevelt Boulevard, or even why the town is called Eleanor.

Then again, she says, maybe these are the protective fears of a woman who remembers how a dark-haired girl of 4 christened her new home long ago: by flushing the toilet in wondrous discovery, over and over, like a child of Steinbeck.

"Your eyes," she says, "look at some things through your heart."

'Eventual Self-Support'

In the desperate year of 1934, word spread through West Virginia's relief offices of another federal "subsistence homesteading" project. It would be similar to Arthurdale, a community recently created outside Morgantown for displaced mining families, many of whom had been living in shacks beside open sewers.

Detractors ridiculed Arthurdale as a wrong-headed and expensive pet project for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's activist wife. But as Blanche Wiesen Cook noted in her authoritative biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady had seen first-hand the scrawny children, eating scraps hardly worth a dog's time. She held her ground.

More than 1,000 families applied to live in this new homestead called Red House Farms, about 30 miles west of Charleston, on property once owned by George Washington. After a vetting process to identify the physically and morally strong, just 150 were accepted, including the family of Robert Crockett, who had lost his job loading coal cars in Boone County. A military veteran with three children, the youngest named Marlane, he was lucky enough to be chosen with dozens of other men on relief to build and live in the settlement.

Seventy-five years ago this month, Mrs. Roosevelt visited the nearly completed homestead with her good friend, the former journalist Lorena Hickok, whose cross-country reports as a kind of government scout had greatly influenced the first lady. "From long deprivation the health of the people is beginning to break down," Ms. Hickok had written. "Some of them have been starving for eight years. I was told there are children in West Virginia who have never tasted milk!"

Four months later, the Crocketts and dozens of other families moved into this community of opportunity, designed for "eventual self-support": 150 homes on one-acre lots, each slightly different, each with a chicken coop, a small garden and that most exotic amenity, indoor plumbing. There was a hosiery factory in the works, a dairy farm, a canning operation, a grocery store, even a pool hall. (Something it did not have: black residents.)

The families paid a modest rent to the government that could be applied to the purchase price. The government expected them to work, grow vegetables, learn home economics and engage in cultural pursuits, like joining the band. Their children were to keep clean, stay in school and take cod liver oil to ward against rickets.

If a family did not meet these expectations, it faced "house notice" — public scolding that could lead to eviction.

Not everything was idyllic. During another visit, Ms. Hickok heard complaints about cracks in the cinderblock walls, inadequate closet space, and a government that saw people as statistics. Mostly, the residents worried about finding employment beyond the homestead. A few, like Robert Crockett, worked for the community, in the dairy one day, on the farm the next.

Save for the cod liver oil, the girl named Marlane loved it all. Picking up mail from the kitchen table of the postmistress. Snapping beans with her mother to prepare them for canning. Receiving a doll with a pink bonnet from Santa, who made his rounds a few days before the first Christmas, in a government truck.

The first in the community to die was a little boy who had been struck in the head with a rock; the townspeople followed his light-colored coffin up a hill, where he was buried by the water tank. The first to be buried in the new cemetery, under some beech trees, was a woman who had cut herself while canning. Little Marlane liked to place dandelions on the sole tombstone; she would tell her mother the cemetery was so pretty that she hoped others would die.

The town called Red House Farms soon changed its name to Eleanor, after the tall, approachable first lady. During one of her visits, she gave a pack of Doublemint gum to a girl named Dymple Cockrell. "I thought I was the richest girl in town," recalls Ms. Cockrell, now 83 and living in the same homesteading house she moved into at the age of 8. "I shared it, of course."

Sidewalks and Memories

The Depression seeped into World War II. Three soldiers from Eleanor were killed and buried overseas. The community building called the Big Store burned down. After the war, the government got out of the controversial homesteading business, and essentially sold Eleanor to a corporation of its elders for $250,000.

One day Marlane jokingly told a friend she was going to marry that handsome sailor down the street. Two years later she did, eloping with Sandy Carr in 1947, when he was 21 and she was 16. Her father cried and said, You're going back and finishing high school. She did this, too.

Eleanor slowly evolved. Some residents complained that others had taken advantage, selling off property that had always been considered communal. One morning the town awoke to find on every doorstep an anonymous six-page letter that criticized various inside deals and concluded with several plaintive questions, including:

Why is hot-rodding allowed in Eleanor?

Marlane and Sandy, a high school teacher and coach, lived for a while above a chicken-and-gravy-style restaurant on Roosevelt Boulevard, then rented one of the original homes for about $25 a month. Finally, they built a house on the back end of his mother's property. They had three children: Sandra, Michael, and the baby, Rebekah, born with a congenital heart defect.

The communal dairy barn burned. The canning operation disappeared. Marlane's beloved Rebekah died in her arms on the first day of classes, right there in the George Washington Middle School. Just 13, she was buried in the cemetery where her mother once laid dandelions on a solitary tombstone.

To honor her daughter's memory, Marlane returned to school and became a surgical technician. All the while, little by little, Eleanor was changing: sidewalks, street lights, a community swimming pool. A Fruth's Pharmacy where the old Big Store once stood. Even a small shopping center at the end of town.

Sensing time's fast passage, Marlane and others saw the need to celebrate Eleanor's history while some homesteaders were still alive. She helped to organize a 60th anniversary party, and a 65th, and a 70th. She began visiting classrooms, usually around Oct. 11 — Eleanor Roosevelt's birthday — and talked about the disagreements over the worth of these New Deal communities, the lingering stigma of having been called welfare recipients, and the unabashed love she had for Eleanor.

She also served for a decade as a maverick member of the Town Council, one day unveiling another plan to beautify the town, and the next day tweaking the good old boys by questioning the large expenditures of the tiny police department. One thing about Marlane: she spoke her mind.

The Rub of Time

Eleanor government got ugly. In 1998, the police chief and two officers accused Marlane of sexual harassment, saying she had walked into their office, raised her shirt and exposed herself. She was 67, and the kind of woman who refused to wear shorts in public. The charge was nonsense, she says: clear retaliation.

But the accusations became fodder for national late-night talk shows; Marlane wanted to hide. When she and her husband reluctantly drove up to the next council meeting, the Town Hall parking lot was packed with cars and television news trucks. She told Sandy she couldn't go in.

In the years to come, the state's Human Rights Commission would find no merit to the harassment charges. The entire police force would be dismissed, amid findings of excessive pay raises and overtime. And Marlane would feel the democratic sting of being voted out of office.

But on this night, Sandy insisted that Marlane walk into that meeting. And when she did, townspeople embraced this daughter of Eleanor with shouts of support.

Marlane Crockett Carr ends her Rendezvous drive through the evolving American town of Eleanor. Its population has grown to 1,500 — a number that includes nearly 20 original homesteaders, like Marlane. Its $500,000 budget pays the salaries of a handful of employees who work in Town Hall, clean the streets, police the town. And unemployment in the county is below the national average, thanks in part to a Toyota plant and a large auto parts manufacturer, Diamond Electric.

Over all, things are good. When a business moves out, another usually moves in. When the town needed a library, students in the vocational school — based in the old hosiery factory building — did much of the labor, which helped to keep costs way down.

Still, Marlane senses the history of Eleanor being worn away by the rub of time. Original houses were knocked down for a bank, a credit union, a Rite Aid. A relative demolished the house Marlane grew up in to clear space for a more modern home.

A few months ago, town officials held a 75th anniversary celebration, even though it was only the 74th. Marlane's offer to give a historical talk was ignored, so she stayed home. In her darker moments, she wonders whether homesteaders like her parents are still seen as welfare recipients, unworthy of celebration.

But when she thinks of the struggles of Robert and Eva Crockett, both buried now in the cemetery, close to Rebekah, her eyes blur with tears. "They had come from nothing," she says. "They were told by Eleanor Roosevelt that it would be wonderful — and it was."

As for that little dark-haired girl, Marlane says: "I was so appreciative. I always loved knowing that I lived on George Washington's land."

Across from Town Hall, where portraits of Eleanor Roosevelt lie on the floor of a deserted room that is supposed to be a museum someday, the schools let out. As he does most afternoons, the police chief has parked his cruiser facing the Dairy Queen, in plain sight.

Its presence announces: Slow down for the children of Eleanor.

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Recycle yule into Christmas alt-fuel - CNN

Posted: 25 Dec 2009 06:17 AM PST

(WIRED) -- For all the joy of Christmas morning, there's certainly a lot of waste involved.

Reams of wrapping paper, forests of evergreens and piles of unwanted fruitcakes are discarded after the holidays.

That got us thinking: Wouldn't it be great if some of that trash could be repurposed as fuel?

Turns out it can.

We checked with Spencer Quong, an automotive engineer and alt-fuels expert with a sense of humor. He was with the Union of Concerned Scientists before launching his own consulting biz, Quong & Associates.

He assured us that family gatherings aren't the only sources of combustion during the holidays. Pretty much everything you discard at the holidays could, theoretically, be used as fuel, though Quong warns "it's hard to think of something that isn't South Park-ish."

We'll get to that in a moment.

But first on our list is fruitcake. They certainly aren't edible, and they'll take about a million years to biodegrade, so what the hell are we supposed to do with them?

The answer is simple. Biofuel.

"There is, in the fruitcake, sugar and grain," Quong told Autopia. "All of that can be converted to ethanol."

While Quong conceded that the refining process would be cost-prohibitive, the supply is nearly endless.

"There's probably a million fruitcakes that have been passed around for 20 years," he said.

We all spend too much time carefully wrapping gifts, only to have the recipients mindlessly rip all that paper and ribbon to shreds. Quong says you can turn it into cellulosic ethanol.

Got a diesel in the driveway? Increased consumption of Chinese food on Christmas Eve would inevitably yield waste cooking oil that could be used as biodiesel.

If you're really ambitious, convert the car to run on veggie oil.

Christmas trees and yule logs are ripe for gasification, a process that creates synthetic fuel from carbonaceous solids. Unfortunately, Santa and his reindeer might end up coughing from the resulting pollution.

"Gasification is a little bit out there because of the smog emissions that come with it, and carrying all that equipment is difficult," Quong said.

Speaking of reindeer, biomethane captured from Rudolph's refuse may be an ideal source of renewable energy.

"It's very similar to cow manure," Quong said. "You take the methane that comes off that, and then you can power vehicles from that."

While reindeer poo could power UPS trucks bearing gifts, we're still glad Gene Autry never got the chance to sing about it.

Subscribe to WIRED magazine for less than $1 an issue and get a FREE GIFT! Click here!

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Videos From the Web: Car Videos - San Francisco Chronicle

Posted: 25 Dec 2009 07:00 AM PST

http://www.strongvw.com/ Take a look at this pre-owned 2008 Chevrolet Silverado 1500, Stock: 49431a. Visit our website for more information on this vehicle and our full inventory. Strong Volkswagen 1070 South Main Street Salt Lake City Sandy Park UT, 84101 (866) 262-1996 Downtown Salt Lake Since 1955, Sales Hours 9-7:30 M-F 9-6:30 Saturday Service and Parts Department: 730-630 M-F Does it all!!!! All Around stud!!!! A winning value!!!! Confused about which vehicle to buy for you and your loved ones? Well look no further than this stout 2008 Chevrolet Silverado 1500. You, out blasting down the road in this Silverado 1500, would look so much better than it sitting here, all sad and lonely, on our lot. It's ready, come and get it!!!! New Car Test Drive said it was ...designed to continue its reputation among owners as the strongest, most dependable and longest lasting truck on the road... It is nicely equipped with features such as the Sun & Navigation Package, the Heavy-Duty Trailering Equipment, LTZ Equipment Group (which contains Dual Zone Automatic Climate Control, Bose Premium Audio Speaker System Feature, Rear Audio System Controls, Electronic Cruise Control w/Set & Resume Speed, Electric Rear-Window Defogger, Power Door Locks, Remote Vehicle Starter System, Leather-Wrapped Steering Wheel, Steering Wheel Mounted Audio Controls, Front Halogen Fog Lamps, Solar-Ray Deep-Tinted Glass, Chrome Grille Surround, Front Frame-Mounted Recovery Hooks, Heavy-Duty Rear Automatic Locking Differential, and the Heavy-Duty Trailering Equipment), Power Door Locks, Heavy-Duty Rear Automatic Locking Differential, Chrome Grille Surround, Heated door mirrors, Rear step bumper, Power door mirrors, Auto-dimming door mirrors, Auto-dimming rearview mirror, Rear window defroster, Remote keyless entry, Tilt steering wheel, Electronic stability, Bumpers: body-color, Variably intermittent wipers, Bodyside moldings, Turn signal indicator mirrors, Power Rear Sliding Window, Solar

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The real message of E-Cards - Juneau Empire

Posted: 25 Dec 2009 07:36 AM PST

OK, people, what is it with the electronic greeting cards this holiday? Why are you sending me jpegs of the Himalayas accompanied by phrases I recognize from yoga class ("Peace to you and all living things ...")? Why am I being asked to download elaborate animation videos featuring singing snowmen or a Nativity scene with a manger that looks alarmingly like a tiki cabana? Why have my otherwise intelligent and dignified friends Photoshopped their faces onto the bodies of dancing Santas? Why, if I don't open these cards right away, do I have to endure auto-generated reminders that I am a thoughtless and terrible person who does not care about my friend enough to sit through 60 seconds of flash animation sugarplum fairies?

Is it that you're all environmentalists? Have you gone green and therefore paperless? Do you refuse to send a regular, old-fashioned card because you don't want to waste the resources (the jet fuel to transport airmail, the gas used by the delivery truck, the calories expended by handwriting and addressing and licking an envelope) that are savagely pilfered whenever someone cares enough to send what is apparently no longer the very best?

Or is it that you're trying to show what an early adopter you are? How willing you are to try new things? How seamlessly you're able to combine traditional holiday cheer with error messages that say "You must install Adobe"?

Maybe. But considering the number of you who (still) drive tank-sized SUVs and are so computer-wary that you don't feel safe depositing a check into an ATM, I think there's something else going on. An insidious societal scourge is at work. I think you're sending e-cards instead of paper cards for the same reason that college students now bring laptops instead of spiral notebooks to class and some people have taken to writing shopping lists on their BlackBerrys and iPhones rather than the back of an old utility-bill envelope.

It's not that you're lazy. It's not even that, like those "note-taking" college students, you enjoy being able to look at Facebook or play online poker while you're supposedly attending to the task at hand. No, it's so much simpler - and sadder - than that.

You're sending e-cards because, thanks to the keyboard-driven communication of the last 15 years or so, your penmanship has deteriorated to the point where even you can no longer read it. You're sending e-cards because, left to your own devices (that is, without the help of Helvetica or some other easy-on-the-eyes sans serif font), "Merry Christmas" looks like "Hurry Chipmunk."

Take it from me. Each year, in my quaint efforts to send out paper holiday cards with personal messages, I probably discard one for every three I actually manage to put in the mail. The reason is that my handwriting is now less legible than it was when I was in the second grade. Since it's rare that I pick up a pen for any purpose other than writing checks (which more than occasionally I have to void because the recipient's name looks like a Paleolithic cave painting), the hand-eye coordination and motor skills necessary for decent penmanship have all but completely atrophied.

Given all that, you'd think I'd be an enthusiastic sender of e-cards. But you'd be wrong.

Handwriting challenges aside, I love paper cards. I love the endless stewing involved in picking them out at the store. I love buying holiday stamps at the post office, and I love that "whoosh" sound the cards make when I drop them into the mail slot. I love how stupid I feel when I have to e-mail old friends and ask for their street addresses so I can send them a card. I love the fact that my grandmother sent me a $5 bill in a card every Christmas until I was 30 (after that, times got tough and she lowered it to $1).

And guess what? It turns out that most Americans (in other words, technology-shunning plebeians like myself) still like the real thing as much as I do. Sure, Hallmark reports that nearly 300 million e-cards are sent out every year in the U.S. (and they now have a division for mobile-device greetings). And sure, some e-cards (like those featuring illustrator Jacquie Lawson's animated animals) are pretty great. But the Hallmark data also say that more than 20 paper cards are still sent out for every e-card (and who knows how many more were discarded before being sent because of handwriting malfunctions?).

I don't know about you, but I was glad to hear that. Because not only is it impossible to stick a dollar bill in an e-card, it's hard to find a template that includes the sentiment "Hurry Chipmunk." When you get that greeting from me, you know it's for real.

• Daum is an essayist and novelist in Los Angeles.

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