Electric Vehicles

 They Have Been Around a Long Time

   Recently I happened upon some advertisements for electric vehicles from early in the last century. A few are presented below and they are followed by a link to the U.S. Department of Energy's Timeline History of the Electric Car.

Even Trucks

   The U.S. Department of Energy provides a,  Timeline History of the Electric Car, from which the image below is taken.

There Soon Will Be More Electric Vehicles

   A recent Consumer Reports devotes much of an issue to a consideration of the EV market (hybrids are typically referred to as PHEVs - plug-in hybrid.)

"Automakers Are Adding Electric Vehicles to Their Lineups. Here's What's Coming."

By Ben Preston and Jeff S. Bartlett

Consumer Reports, July 22, 2021

"Plug into this: 100+ new EVs by 2024

The electric vehicle (EV) market is exploding, with almost 100 pure battery electric cars planned to debut by 2024. “These more affordable models have the potential to sway a significant percentage of the car-buying public toward buying an EV with their efficiency, performance, and lower ownership costs,” says Gabe Shenhar, associate director of Consumer Reports’ Auto Test Center. Take a look at our rundown of electric cars on the horizon."

In the Market?

   Recently a friend stayed over and mentioned that she needed a new car and was considering an e-one, or hybrid. It was clear that none of us in the room new much about cars that run only on electricity. 

   Questions about charging them were answered recently in this good article: "If I Buy an Electric Car, Do I Need to Install a 240-volt Outlet?" Jason Tchir, The Globe and Mail, July 20, 2021. Here are some of the answers:

That 120-volt plug-in will charge every electric car. But if you drive long distances every day, it might become an outlet for frustration....

Charging can seem confusing, but it’s basically pretty simple. There are three levels of charging, from slowest to fastest...

Level 1 is a standard 120-volt outlet. That’s the standard voltage in North America. It takes the longest of all three.

Level 2 uses a 240-volt outlet. Depending on the car, you can get back about 30 to 40 km per hour.... If you’re installing a Level 2 charger at home, you’d need an electrician to install a 240-volt outlet, the kind used for dryers. Then you’d buy a dedicated Level 2 charger that you’d mount on the wall or a cheaper plug-in adapter.

“I’d say think about a $2,000 budget just in case there’s extra electrical work on the house that needs to be done,” Stanyer said. “Some manufacturers are starting to include a home charging package 

Level 3 is also called Direct Current Fast Charge. These are public chargers that can, generally, get your battery up to 80 per cent full in 30 to 40 minutes....

   Apparently EVs today have a range of about 400 km and the author notes that if you plug a 2021 Chevy Bolt, which has a 417 km range, into a 120-volt outlet, it’ll gain about 8 km in range per hour. [The Bolt EV has just been recalled again because of more battery fires.]

In an earlier article Mr. Tchir described in detail the planning required to drive a Bolt 415 kms from Vancouver to Kelowna (one has to factor in the temperature, since the batteries are affected by both cooler and hotter weather.) See: "Testing an EV's Cold-Weather Range on B.C.'s 'Highway Thru Hell'," G&M, April 29, 2021.

Where Can You Get a Charge?

   One good place to get the information is here:

Electric Charging and Alternative Fuelling Stations Locator

Enter a location to find a station where you can recharge or refuel your vehicle in Canada. This map will also show alternative fuel stations by using the drop-down menu.

Where Can You Learn More?

   You can do some basic searching, as I did. Mr. Tchir seems to be the go-to man for EV information and he notes that often even the dealers' aren't good in providing it: "In Order to Increase Electric Vehicle Sales, Fill the Education Gap in Dealership Staff," G&M, July 22, 2021.

But even though Canada is finally seeing electric SUVs and trucks that would look at home in most driveways, there are plenty of potential buyers who wonder what it’s like to actually live with one.

Where and how do they charge? How much will their power bills go up? Will they still be able to go away for the weekend?

They’re not always getting answers at traditional dealerships.

In Toronto, you can learn more and take test drives at PLUG 'N DRIVE ELECTRIC VEHICLE CENTRE

What About the Tesla? 

   One now sees Teslas fairly often in London, but there is no Tesla Dealership. Where does one get them serviced? There are dealers in Ontario, but apparently these EVs don't need much servicing and some of it is done via the Internet. See TESLA. 

Post Script:

   This was prepared for the visiting friend, who says she is a reader of this blog. We will see.  If she comments, I will help her purchase one of those used, burned-out Chevy Bolts.

   Although gas prices are very high right now, gas stations are disappearing. For an old post about that, see: Gasoline Stations. 

Happy Birthday - Mick Jagger

    As of today, Mr. Jagger has spent 28,490 days on this planet,  a couple of hundred more than President Joe Biden. The President is only eight months older than the singer, but I think you will agree that he looks more elderly. Although the office of the presidency has a way of aging quickly those within it, Mick has always looked much, much younger than those of us who are about the same age as he is. 

   Proof of that is found in this cartoon from almost forty years ago. It was sent to me back then by a friend who was, by the way, at the LSE about the same time as Jagger. That was long ago when baseball hats were worn frontwards by baseball players and Fedoras or Homburgs were worn by those more mature. Even though in the early '80s we were all only in our late '30s, most of us had already begun to look more like the gentleman in the cartoon and less like Jagger. The cartoon has aged well, don't you think?

 

Man About the Same Age as Mick Jagger

   The Stones are about to begin their NO FILTER tour and Mick will probably be glad to have a break from domestic life. His youngest child is only four and he has seven others. It is surprising that he hasn't aged more than has.

The Bonus:

  I doubt if the Stones are touring because they are broke. One of Jagger's ex-lady friends was L'Wren Scott. She committed suicide in 2001 and left $9 million (US) to Mick.

 The cartoon appeared in The New Yorker, Dec. 14, 1981. 

Canadian Content:

   In the same issue of the 1981 New Yorker, this advertisement appears. 

Unfortunately, the Stones have decided not to play in Vancouver.

Professor Bloom's Memory

 

   It has been too nice outside to stay inside blogging, so I imagine that my imaginary readers are growing restless. Some of them may remember that the subject of "memory" is one of the few themes found in this blog, which is produced by someone with a poor one, and they may yearn for another profile of someone who has one that was very good. Well, here it is.

   Harold Bloom is a well-known literary critic and professor who died in 2019. Apparently he will not be bored, wherever he is, since he took with him to the coffin an entire canon which was stored in his memory. In the obituary it is noted that "Bloom claimed he could recite "the whole of Shakespeare, Milton's Paradise Lost, all of William Blake, the Hebraic Bible and Edmund Spenser's The Fairie Queen." He apparently could read four hundred pages in an hour and remember what he read.
 
   With some irony it should be noted that attempts are being made to erase Bloom so he will not be remembered by those who study literature in the future. He was, after all, the Dean of the DWEMs, who thought that those included in his The Western Canon, were the ones who really counted. Additional support for his cancellation is offered by those who learned that he also courted some of the coeds he taught at Yale and NYU. 

   I know about Bloom's memory because I read this recent piece: "Poetry and the Art of Memory," by Stephen Miller, The Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2021.  It was Mr. Miller who read the Bloom obituary and thought if Bloom could remember that much, he could attempt, at age 79, to improve his own memory by memorizing 30 poems in five languages. "I made my task relatively easy by choosing to memorize poems with no more than four stanzas. So far I've learned poems in English, French, Spanish and German. I'm working on a poem in Italian." In passing, he mentions that he recently recited, while waiting at a red light, Wallace Steven's "The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand-Man."

Sources:
I did look at the obituary, but it is difficult to quickly learn more about Bloom's memory since most search results lead to another book he wrote, Possessed by Memory, which I have not read and would not remember. Mr. Miller does mention "The Book of Memory: A Study Of Memory in Medieval Culture," by Mary Carruthers, but I haven't read that either. 

The Bonus:

If, like me, you don't think you are up to the task of remembering 30 poems in five languages, you could start with the short one in English that Mr. Miller already remembers.

"The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man," 
One's grand flights, one's Sunday baths,
One's tootings at the weddings of the soul
Occur as they occur. So bluish clouds
Occurred above the empty house and the leaves
Of the rhododendrons rattled their gold,
As if someone lived there. Such floods of white
Came bursting from the clouds. So the wind
Threw its contorted strength around the sky.

Could you have said the bluejay suddenly
Would swoop to earth? It is a wheel, the rays
Around the sun. The wheel survives the myths.
The fire eye in the clouds survives the gods.
To think of a dove with an eye of grenadine
And pines that are cornets, so it occurs,
And a little island full of geese and stars:
It may be the ignorant man, alone,
Has any chance to mate his life with life
That is the sensual, pearly spuse, the life
That is fluent in even the wintriest bronze.

For other guys with good memories, see the following. I promise I will continue to search for some  women with big memories.  In alphabetical order:
Chimen Abramsky.
Professor Chomsky
William Empson (includes C.S. Lewis)
Professor Porson 

Fruits & Nuts

 

   It is an odd thing that I am posting anything related to pomology. I rarely eat fruit, except for strawberries at this time of year. I don't think I have had an apple or banana over the last decade. Now that I think about it, my consumption of fruits is mainly in liquid form.  Fruits are attractive, however, and that is perhaps one reason why they often appear in paintings. That gets me to our subject for today.

  Just as I would have thought it unlikely that I would be writing about fruit, I would have thought it even less likely that I would recommend to you a collection found in the U.S. Department of Agriculture - a collection of watercolors of fruits and nuts.  It is well worth a look. You will no longer have to rely on pinterest for pictures of pomegranates. Here is what you need. 

 The link is found here: U.S. Department of Agriculture - Pomological Watercolor Collection. Wikipedia provides a good description: Pomological Watercolor Collection. 

   A book based on the collection has just been published by Atelier Editions: An Illustrated Catalog of American Fruits & Nuts....   I learned about it from a review which, as you will see from the title, is ecstatic: "These U.S. Agriculture Department Paintings of Fruits and Nuts Are Actually Stunning," Jacqueline Landy, Washington Post, May 25, 2021. 
"Published by Atelier Editions in Los Angeles, it has an orange cover with handsome black typography. It has a fascinating introduction, a good index and glossary; it even smells nice. But the best thing about it, undoubtedly, is the pictures. They’re pictures of fruit. And nuts. Made by hand. In watercolor. Hundreds of them have been selected from more than 7,500 paintings, drawings and lithographs from the Agriculture Department’s Pomological Watercolor Collection....And oh my goodness! They’re beautiful.... On a technical level, the pictures are virtuosic. What I especially like is that, despite the scientific approach, aspects of personal style sneak into each illustration. Sometimes the artist focuses exclusively on the shape and color of the fruit itself, which can produce striking results. For instance, two vertical rows of bright red Coletto plums by an unknown artist in 1888 have an intensely abstract aura."

  For a good article that explains the importance of such botanical illustrations see: "How to Trademark a Fruit: To Protect the Fruits of Their Labor and Thwart “Plant Thieves,” Early American Growers Enlisted Artists," Daniel J. Kevles, Smithsonian Magazine, August 2011. 

The Canadian Angle

   I happened to notice that the introduction to An Illustrated Catalog... is provided by Adam Leith Gollner, "the Canadian musician and author of The Fruit Hunters." According to the Wikipedia entry, Gollner played in the bands, We Are Molecules, Dessert and Hot Pickles. 

   The USDA Pomological collection is searchable and there appear to be 144 images relating to Canada.  Most of them were done by three women, but none of them turned out to be Canadian. To learn more about these female botanical illustrators see:

Debora Griscom Passmore (1840-1911)

https://specialcollections.nal.usda.gov/guide-collections/deborah-griscom-passmore-watercolors

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Griscom_Passmore

Amand Almira Newton, (1860-1943) (granddaughter of Isaac Newton)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Newton_(illustrator)

Ellen Isham Schutt, (1875-1955)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Isham_Schutt

To read an Ontario pamphlet on the subject from the late 19th century see:

Orchards and Vineyards of Ontario:The Premier Province of Canada, 1897