The production and infrastracture for electric cars is a long time coming! And a wonderful Christmas present to Mother Earth!

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The U.S. Department of Energy has allocated $400 million to electric vehicle infrastructure. Several companies are working with cities to put in charging stations in the next year -- about 12,000 of them. Most of them are going in Western state cities where power is primarily from renewable resources and cheaper than other areas. For instance, in Oregon, 69 percent of electricity is generated by hydropower.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams said his city has learned from its experience with building one of the biggest bike networks in the country.

"We built a system that made people comfortable with going from Point A to Point B," he said, adding that bike ridership has doubled in the past 15 years. "The thing we know having introduced large-scale strategic changes in our transportation system here ... is you do your homework upfront, you figure out what it is, in this case that will address people's range anxiety, and then you watch it very, very closely in the first six to 12 months, and you make the necessary changes."

Therein lies the question or questions: How many charging stations do you need? For how many electric cars? Do you put in thousands of public charging points, and then watch as just a few cars use them? Will people even buy electric cars if they don't see places to get power around town?

At your house, plugging the car in overnight is not an issue. When you are out running errands during the day, it can become a concern.

Early buyers of electric vehicles are more likely to put up with the inconvenience of locating public charging, but large-scale sales will depend on the public's comfort with always being able to get fuel.

"The charge infrastructure is going to be something that people adapt to," said Ted Bohn, an electrical engineer at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois. "It's like you get used to charging your cell phone battery or your laptop battery, you know when you need to plug in."

He said it makes sense to put chargers in where people will spend a lot of time -- offices, coffee shops, shopping centers, movie theaters. On the street, charging will be a different story, similar to hunting for a public bathroom. It depends on how badly you need it.

Home chargers should be able to fill a car's batteries in a few hours. A fast charger outside a grocery store might be able to do the job in 30 minutes. But if all you can find is a 110-volt outlet, getting anything more than a few miles' worth of power will take more than half a day.

"If the public infrastructure is out there, it makes people feel more comfortable, particularly the people who aren't very familiar with electric cars," said Paul Scott, vice president of Plug In America, a coalition of electric car advocates and drivers. Scott lives in California and has driven an electric car for eight years. He said he trades with hybrid-owning friends when he goes on a long trip.

"That said, we feel there is going to be an awful lot of organic growth in public places," said Britta Gross, General Motors' director of global energy systems and infrastructure commercialization. "[Consumer demand] for public charging is the right way to do it because then it says you are going to do it in just the right spots [where people show they want to charge].

Determining the right spots is falling into the hands of companies that have tapped into the Department of Energy millions. One of those is ECOtality, which manages the EV Project, an initiative to get the electric car movement reborn.

Jonathan Read, chief executive officer of ECOtality, said that besides helping local governments, utilities and consumer groups set up charging networks, the primary goals are charging station projects that connect cities such as one planned for Interstate 5 along the West Coast.

"The objective is to show what's necessary to build these major corridors," he said. "What we're doing is rolling out the largest infrastructure program for electric cars in history, but we're also doing is, under the auspices of the DOE program, is we're collecting data -- where people charge, how often they charge, so that we can have hard data to share with other communities of what the consumer is looking for and what we need to do as an industry."

Nissan, makers of the Leaf, an all electric car which is scheduled to hit the roads in a few months, said the data collected from the initial rollout will be hugely beneficial to other parts of the country that will be a part of the second phase.

"Of course we're not going to be 100 percent perfect with every decision, every location," said Mark Perry, director of product planning at Nissan. "So the deliverable is how do people use it? What is the impact on the grid? What kind of support did drivers need? All that information will be important."

A closer look at Nissan's Leaf:

Lessons learned from the rollout of charging stations to support the General Motors EV1 more than a decade ago are helpful but "somewhat irrelevant," he said because the new charging stations are much more sophisticated as are the electronics in the car.

One of the people working on Ford's electric vehicles said it is vital not to repeat earlier mistakes of putting recharging spots where they weren't needed. The Ford Focus electric car will become available in late 2011.

"Some of the most premium parking spaces were used for EV charging, and there weren't the vehicles to support them, and you can imagine what the impact was for non-EV drives," said Mike Tinskey, manager of global electrification at Ford Motor Co. "The answer is not only putting them in the right spot but at the right time."

Another issue was the technology:

Mike McQuary, chief executive of Wheego electric vehicles in Atlanta, Georgia, said those charge points were built to varying standards and that one of the huge "breakthroughs" recently was an agreement reached between car companies and makers of recharging stations over international equipment standards.

"There's going to be one type of socket and one type of plug," McQuary said. "Before that I thought we were going to see a Beta vs. VHS sort of thing."

The standard was the last big hurdle before the new electric vehicles hit the road, he said.

General Electric is probably the biggest player now getting involved in the manufacture of charging stations. TV ads for its WattStation are already running during network primetime.

"When someone as large as GE comes into the space, you know they have done their research and they see a very big future," said Perry of Nissan, which is partnering with a company called AeroVironment for home charging stations.

While the general public may still look at the electric car as a novelty, its advocates see the coming wave of new models and stations as a big step toward eliminating this country's use of oil, especially foreign oil, and helping the planet. Stopping to get a charge away from home is a small price to pay, said Scott, the Plug In America vice president.

"If you care about the environment, if it bothers you that you are polluting everybody's air, if it bothers you that you are sending lots of money out of the country," he said, "then it's worth it to you to spend 20 minutes recharging."

NOTE: A hybrid uses both gasoline and a battery, so if you want an all electric, it should be clear that it is ALL ELECTRIC.

Leslie Nielsen (February 11, 1926-November 28, 2010)

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(CNN) -- Leslie Nielsen, whose longtime career as a square-jawed dramatic actor took a sudden turn into comedy with gut-busting spoofs like "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun," has died at age 84, his family said Sunday.

The Canadian-born Nielsen's career reached back into the early days of television, when he made frequent appearances on live drama series like "Goodyear Playhouse."

He played the earnest starship captain in the 1956 science-fiction classic "Forbidden Planet" and made regular appearances on a wide range of TV dramas into the 1970s, including "Hawaii Five-O."

He also played the captain of an overturned ocean liner in the 1972 disaster movie, "The Poseidon Adventure."

Much of that changed in 1980, when he was cast as a doctor aboard an endangered jetliner in the gag-a-minute disaster-movie parody "Airplane!"

Remembering Leslie Nielsen Nielsen's deadpan response to the question "Surely, you can't be serious?" with "I am serious -- and don't call me Shirley" helped launch a second career.

The film's producers went on to cast him in their short-lived television series "Police Squad!"

He reprised that show's bumbling lead character, Lt. Frank Drebin, a decade later in three "Naked Gun" movies, in which he shared the screen with O.J. Simpson and Priscilla Presley.

Nielsen appeared in several similar but less-acclaimed spoofs following those films.

Nielsen was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2003. The medal is awarded to "Canadian citizens for outstanding achievement and service to the country or to humanity at large."

Nielsen died of complications of pneumonia in a hospital near his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, surrounded by family and friends, a family statement said.

Doug Nielsen called his uncle's death a "great loss."

"He was extremely funny," the younger Nielsen said in an interview with CNN affiliate Global Network News in Vancouver.

"At all of our family get-togethers, he was always the life of the party and a great-natured guy," Nielsen said. He was a very good friend to me."

From Wikipedia:

Leslie William Nielsen, OC (February 11, 1926 – November 28, 2010) was a Canadian-American actor and comedian. Nielsen appeared in over 100 films and 1,500 television programs over the span of his career, portraying over 220 characters.

Born in Saskatchewan, Canada, Nielsen enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and worked as a disc jockey before receiving a scholarship to Neighborhood Playhouse. Beginning with a television role in 1948, he quickly expanded to over 50 television appearances two years later. Nielsen appeared in his first films in 1956 and began collecting roles in dramas, westerns, and romance films. Nielsen's lead roles in the science fiction film Forbidden Planet (1956) and disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure (1972) for which he received positive reviews as a serious actor.

Although his acting career crossed a variety of genres in both television and films, Nielsen's deadpan delivery as a doctor in 1980's Airplane! marked a turning point in his career, one that would make him, in the words of film critic Roger Ebert, "the Olivier of spoofs." Nielsen enjoyed further success with The Naked Gun and its sequels, based on a brief television series he starred in. His portrayal of serious characters seemingly oblivious to (and complicit in) their absurd surroundings gave him a reputation as a comedian.

In the last decades of his career, Nielsen appeared in multiple spoof and parody films, many of which were met poorly by critics but performed well in box office and home media releases. Nielsen was recognized with a variety of awards throughout his career and was inducted into both the Canada and Hollywood Walk of Fame. He married four times and had two daughters from his second marriage. On November 28, 2010, Nielsen died in his sleep of complications from pneumonia.

Barbara Walters on Gilda Radner's Baba Wawa

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Can never get enough of sweet Gilda Radner who was on the original cast of SNL. Enjoy her wonderful memory! :))

Stress and Meditation

Stress -- that out-of-control, reeling, and overwhelming feeling we've all dealt with can be debilitating and exhausting. Friends have asked how I cope with the stresses in my life. Among countless outlets, dancing, music, yoga, and meditating are extremely helpful to me. Meditation helps rid the clutter of thoughts and offers balance and peace of mind. A cd I cannot live without is Deepak Chopra's The Soul of Healing Meditations. It's a gem!

The following is a breakdown of its contents:

1. Breathing Meditation

2. Heart Meditation

3. Body Awareness

4. Heart Sutra Meditation

5. Envoking The Gods of Healing

6. Inviting the Spirit of Healing

7. Banishing Disease

8. Ode of Solomon

In closing, I'd like to quote Deepak: "Between a grievance and a miracle, choose the miracle." What has one got to lose? And remember to stop to breathe! :))

Since my father is in hospital...

will be away for now. Love, Petra xo

In honor of November 1st, and assist on a manic Monday. ;)

http://www.novareinna.com/constellation/scorpioluck.html

The lucky flower for Scorpio is the chrysanthemum, which counts the chamomile, the tansy, the marguerite and the common daisy among its relatives.

This flower has been known since before 500 B.C. in a small yellow form. It was named by Carl Linnaeus, derived from the Greek krus anthemom, which means "gold flower." The chrysanthemum originated in Japan and China, the latter...considering it to be the highest of all flowers...naming their royal throne in its honor. Indeed, this flower has been the focus of Oriental adulation for centuries. Believed to be one of the four Chinese "noble plants," the chrysanthemum was once the official badge of that country's army and since it was deemed to be the flower of the nobility, was prohibited from being grown in the garden of lower class individuals. According to Chinese tradition, a chrysanthemum given to one's beloved, after being used to wipe one's mouth after drinking wine, will ensure undyling love and fidelity. In Japan, where the chrysanthemum is known as kikus, it is that country's national flower and featured on the imperial coat of arms. It even has a special day in its honor...Chongyang, which is celebrated on September 9 every year.

In addition, the chrysanthemum was so loved by Japanese emperors that they had it carved upon their thrones...and the greatest honor for a Japanese citizen is to obtain the Order of the Chrysanthemum. This flower is still held to be symbolic of the Sun and the orderly unfolding of its petals considered to be indicative of perfection. In Japanese culture, it is also believed that a single chrysanthemum petal placed in the bottom of a wine glass will encourage a long and healthy life. Also know as the Flower of Happiness, Flower of the East and Flower of Life, the chrysanthemum may be found in a range of shapes and sizes and is available all year round. The blooms appear in every conceivable color, including bronze, lime green and brick red. The one exception to this is blue...blue chrysanthemums are artificially dyed for special events.

Chrysanthemums are native to Europe, Asia and North America and formerly known in England as the corn marigold.

Can you believe there's sixty days left to 2010!? Note to self. Stay in the moment! :))