some facts about hybrid vehicles

The picture is of some coral bells that bloomed last month.

We drive Toyota hybrids, a Prius and a Highlander. They do get better mileage than most cars of their size and weight. The Prius regularly gets between 40 and 50 miles per gallon. The hybrid highlander usually gives me between 25 and 30 mpg.

But there are some things that affect the mileage.
1. Wind can either boost or drop the efficiency.
2. Wet pavement makes the mileage drop.
3. Hilly terrain in the city lowers mileage, but at highway speeds can increase it.
4. Mountains: for some reason, we get up to 60 mpg when driving through the mountains.
5. Speed: the faster you go over 60 mph, the lower the gas mileage.
6. Traffic: stop and go traffic can raise the efficiency.
7. Air conditioning will drop between 2 and 8 miles per gallon on both cars. This one is a "Catch 22". If you drive at highway speeds with the AC off and the windows open, your mileage is worse than with the windows closed and the AC on.

All in all, we are pretty happy with the cars. They do save us quite a bit of gasoline. And all the gages and dials are fun to watch.

a note from July 22

Even with the oppressive heat, I find time to get out in the garden. Our first surprise lily has bloomed next to the gardenia bush. I was pleasantly surprised to find that we still had a gardenia blossom, a new one. I had been sure that the heat would have stopped its flowering.

My only tomato plant has some fruit on it too. This is the "mystery mater" that was forced on my wife as she left a greenhouse sale at which she had been volunteering. Not only does it have fruit, but it has set three fresh blossoms. I may yet get home grown tomatoes from my garden this year. Even if not, Mr. Vang's are delicious.

Our new cat (Spooky) seems to be starting to get along with the old. But I am surprised by the increase in dominance activities of the old cat (Little Kitty). Not only will he stalk her, but he will try to jump my feet when my back is turned. Happily, I worked with tigers for five years. This is their favorite hunting behavior and they think its funny to jump on the backs of their friends. When they were younger and weighed less than 250 pounds, they would hit my back and slide off. When they were mature and rising twice that weight, they just rode me down, got off and laughed. Yes tigers can laugh.



Little Kitty appears above and Spooky, below.



Looking carefully at the photos, neither appears terribly happy. Perhaps it is because I disturbed them at their favorite cool spots on the floor. One will try another time.

More authors who have had an effect

In no particular order (so what else is new?), here are some more of the writers whose works are memorable:

Leo Tolstoy - I may have mentioned that I read "War and Peace" while I was in Vietnam.

Percy Bysshe Shelley - Any reasonably modern poet who can write epics is worthy of regard.

Charles Dickens - Gone from required reading in high school to old friend.

Sir Walter Scott - I love adventure. He writes it well.

Robert Lewis Stevenson - Like I said, I love adventure... as long as it's somebody else's adventure.

Rudyard Kipling - His adventure stories hold me and his poetry is almost something you could put to music.

e. e. cummins - He's just cool.

Walt Whitman - Stirring verse from a point of view I hadn't considered until I read him.

Jules Verne - one of my first SF authors. An amazing number of his predictions were right.

H. G. Wells - another of my first SF authors.

Homer - Two classic epics that have been rewritten under various guises for thousands of years.

Julius Caesar - (not in Latin) If you want to know about military tactics and army movements, this is on of the first masters.

Did I mention Damon Runyan? He's funny. I like funny.

William Faulkner - was the quintessential writer of the 1930's, a good storyteller and a neat view of the South.

Christopher Marlowe - whose plays were every bit as neat as Shakespeare's.

Robert Herrick - a really cool, dirty, old man.

John Milton - You read and read and read and still don't come to the end.

Andrew Marvell - His images come to life in his words.

Lord Byron - If only because his life was so interesting and he was so passionate that it came through the words.

Robert Browning - Only some of his stuff caught at me. But it stuck.

Saki (H. H. Munro) - very different stories and a wicked sense of humor.

Jane Austen - stories of an interesting period told with gentle, subtle humor.

And that's all I can think of today.

Summer has come to Arkansas and we are getting body heat temperatures an high humidity. These combined with almost calm winds make the out of doors oppressive. When it cools a little in the evening, there are enthusiastic mosquitos who come to dine on me. But the blackberries are in season and that is a bit plus

Fifth of July

Yesterday was Independence Day. The first news of independence I received yesterday was from an old Army buddy. He had an eye problem that was threatening him with blindness. His ophthalmologist worked out a way to save his sight. So my good friend won't need a white cane or seeing eye dog. He'll be able to walk and drive, even ride his Harley. That's good news about independence.

My family went to the Fourth of July celebration on the river. It was lovely. Toward evening, the temperature dropped and a light breeze sprang up. We listened to the music and were comfortable. My two sons-in-law explored the breweries here in Little Rock and found some beers that were very much to their taste. They were noisily happy on the ride home.

But there were other things that I did not like so well. They were nice gestures, well meaning and they put me ill at ease. When the Little Rock Symphony began their part of the concert, the conductor asked all members of the armed forces, past and present, to stand. My daughters urged me to stand and I did. But as I stood, I could not help but remember the friends I left in Vietnam. The memories were not just of the dead (my company was remarkably fortunate during my tour; they were very few) but of the people I spent a year with who did not answer the letters or wrote back that writing to a buddy brought back too many harsh memories. Those friends were lost to me as were the ones whose addresses I never managed to obtain.

At the end of the concert, during the 1812 Overture, the fireworks started. They were magnificent, the best I have seen in Little Rock. The pyrotechicians fired them from the Main Street Bridge, over the Arkansas River. But as I watched, I remembered what they had been originally. The black red air bursts that showered shrapnel down on soldiers, the white smoke that meant white phosphorus had been used. The horrible burns that it inflicted, how they would not stop burning unless the doctors put the soldier into some oxygen free medium and removed the glowing particles in the dark. Those were not good memories.

What I experienced was not the flat panic of a flash back. I just was remembering the purpose of those explosions originally. What we and others have turned into beauty are deadly serious in war. They can injure or kill inexperienced people who try to fire them without the precautions on all their labels. Never-the-less, I enjoyed my day and the evening. It was good to be with so many people I love and so many others whose sole purpose was celebration.

More about authors

The image of this post is a ceramic dragon made by Trent Talley of Arkansas. He is also working on a small statue of the Egyptian goddess Bast. Most of the authors in this post are fantasy writers. I truly love fantasy and always look for wonder.

In my last post, I noted some of the authors who had made deep impressions on me and promised more. Here is some more of the list:

Terry Pratchett - his humor and fantasy transport me to another world.
Connie Willis - uses her themes to both tell about fascinating characters and make me smile.
Roald Dahl - is a master of the short story. Both his memoires and stories hold me and twist surprisingly.
L. Frank Baum - brought me to Oz.
Dorothy Sayers - showed me mysteries between the two world wars.
Ellis Peters - made the middle ages come alive.
Ruth Plumly Thompson - continued my journeys through Oz with humor and delight.
Howard Pyle - brought the first real adventure into my life.
The Brothers Grimm - gave me fairy magic and monsters.
Hans Christian Andersen - went behind the fairy tales to the characters.

People are coming to visit. But there are more, lots more.

Books and authors

I suspect that everyone has a different list of books and authors that should be read, either for education or to be a cultured member of society. Since I learned to read, my chief interest has been in science fiction and fantasy, often to the exclusion of subjects I was supposed to learn.

Here, in no particular order is a partial list of the books and/or authors whose effect on me has been remembered and why:

Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein - both of these authors were among the first and most memorable of my teenaged years. They "hooked" me on science fiction. By the way, most science fiction fans refer to it as "SF", not "sci-fi".

William Shakespeare - He was required reading and showed me the power of words.

David Drake - took classic military history, turned it into SF or fantasy and gave it personality. Besides, I like military science fiction.

Barbara Rogan - has an incredible feel for character and situation. Her range is large, from unabashed romance to tense mystery thrillers. Each book has the power of a whirlpool to suck the reader inextricably into the story.

Charles de Lint - has grabbed my imagination by both eyes and tossed into worlds.

Mercedes Lackey - got my attention first with her books about dragons that had been genetically made to help people solve a problem on a forgotten colony world. Her other stories, romances and fantasies are beautifully told and engaging.

Patricia McKillip - can add humor into the mix when it doesn't seem possible. She goes from dreamy to taut easily.

Leon Tolstoy - When I was forced to read "Anna Karenina", I thought it dull. But as I got a little older, his work came back to my attention, primarily through the medium of a copy of "War and Peace" delivered by the Red Cross when I was in Vietnam. Suddenly, he became the person who could give humanity to a huge, alien country.

Neil Gaiman - his fantasy just blew me away. His writing is awesome and brilliantly researched.

Diana Gabaldon - has the ability to drag me into the 18th century without a minute's hesitation.

Glen Cook - was the first published author with whom I ever spoke. He was kind and encouraging to a novice. His stories, both fantastic mysteries and military science fiction have a grittiness that seems real to this veteran.

Lois McMaster Bujold - first came to my attention through her military SF. But her fantasies are engrossing.

Will Shetterly - wrote one of the best novels of magic realism I ever read. It was so intriguing that I had trouble putting it down.

Diana Wynne Jones - has the ability to take an everyday situation and make it magical or vice versa.

Rick Riordan - has written novels in which the old gods are still here and doing many of the same things they did in classical times, including fighting the return of the Titans. He is an excellent story teller with just the right amount of humor and irreverence.

Sharon Shinn - writes fantasy that pulls me into the story and usually has a pleasing ending.

P. G. Wodehouse - is perhaps the most gentle and amusing of all writers of the English language. His stories of a slightly bygone era always make me laugh.

Thorne Smith - wrote too few novels. His fantasies about everyday life during prohibition always contain a touch of magic that just might happen. Certainly after reading "Nightlife of the Gods," I never approached a woodland path without a slight hope of something extraordinary.

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It's getting late. I'll try to add some more later.

My favorite things

Are animals, cats, dogs, horses, in fact anything that has fur and moves.
This is a short post so the typing noise won't wake my wife. But I am adding pictures pictures of my favorite cats.
Most of the animals I like are predators (though horses, donkeys and camels certainly are not). I like the way their heads work and how some of them are "hard wired" for social groups and others survive best alone. There is a good feeling of trust that develops when I work and play with creatures who can hurt me if I get out of line. My courtesy improves.
Another thing, tigers are so full of energy. Sometimes it seems as if I can get an "energy recharge" just by touching them and hugging them.