Happy New Year! 2010

Brave Thinkers from the Decade that 'Was': The All Electric Car and Shai Agassi

Shai Agassi introducing Renault's Electric Vehicle

to the media on May 11, 2008 in Tel Aviv

His name is Shai Agassi and The Atlantic Monthly has singled him out as one of 27 Brave Thinkers as the decade ends. A former software company executive, theIsraeli-American has raised nearly $500 Million to start his venture, A Better Place.

His company has forged an alliance with Renault/Nissan in which the latter has agreed to build a fully functional electrical car by 2011. Shai's plan is to develop 'filling' stations across the globe where drivers of the new vehicles such as the Chevy Volt will be able to charge their batteries or be able to swap batteries in seconds with the aid of a robot . These stations are needed because current battery charging allows vehicles to travel only about 60 miles after a 5 hour charge.

He has signed agreements with Canada, Denmark, Israel, Japan and the US to start testing the roadside stations. Perhaps one day, the familiar logos of Shell, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, BP, Amoco and Citgo will be replaced by A Better Place

Good luck, Shai, your venture surely has the potential to wean us from our dependence on a depleting fossil fuel and help clean up our polluted atmosphere!

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Reviving the Jamaica High School Hilltopper Newspaper

Jamaica High School located in south Queens, New York

We all have special times and moments that have helped define the decade that 'was' for us. Here's the first of mine.

Jamaica High School was established in 1892 in Queens New York. Its alumni include Francis Ford Coppola of Godfather fame and Art Buchwald the humorist and cartoonist journalist.

Its journalism department was perhaps the best of any U. S. High School. And its' student newspaper, The Hilltopper, garnered more prestigious Columbia University Scholastic Press annual awards for excellence in journalism than any other school in the country. To graduate from JHS as a member of the Hilltopper staff guaranteed admission to any Ivy League School.

What an honor to be invited in September 2002 to join the English Department as an instructor of ESL, English and Faculty Advisor to the Newspaper. The AP English made sure that reviving his baby, The Hilltopper, was a priority for me. You see the paper had not been published for three years.

I felt it was payback time for me and I shared with the students my passion for fine writing and meeting deadlines which I learned while publishing Brooklyn's Community Magazine.. This meant for me meeting editors at 7:30 AM and staying often to 6:30 PM. It meant energizing and pushing the sometime lazy students to their limits.

Together, we got the job done. We were able to publish two issues!

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Miles Davis Kind of Blue Turns 50

Side one of the Kind of Blue was recorded on March 2, 1959 and side two 51 days later. Jimmy Cobb, the drummer, says he did not expect the album to be the top selling jazz album of all time. "How do you go in to the studio with a minimum of stuff and come out with eternity," commented Carlos Santana. And Dave Leibman the musician says, "If there's one record--we will say it, but it's true--that captures the essence of jazz for a variety of reasons it is Kind of Blue." The accolades go on and on as I watch the DVD that accompanies the Columbia Record Collector's Edition of the historic album released earlier this year.

Miles Davis came to New York in 1944 to study music at Julliard School of Music "with his charm his good looks and his unique if not fully formed approach to the trumpet."

The amazing thing is that the whole album was recorded with one take.

CNN's Heroes: Jorge Munoz, Guardian Angel for the Hungry

This is Jorge Munoz in the kitchen of his home with his sister to his left

and his mom behind her. Courtesy of CNN

He feeds up to 150 every night on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens New York. He drives a school bus all day in New York City and then comes home to cook with his family pots of rice, beans and chicken At 9:30 at night he hand out meals--one by one-- to the people who are always waiting. He is called the Angel of Queens, the Superman of Roosevelt Avenue.

He gets up at 5:15 AM to get ready for the first job and starts driving at 6AM. He finishes at at 5 PM, gets home at 6 PM to start his second job.

It all started because as he drove his bus, he saw people lingering on corners for day jobs--and asked them "Are You Hungry?"

He has handed out over 70, 000 meals free of charge since 2004

Earning my Pilot's License: Part II: The Time Machine

                                 My destination: Trinity Center Airport along Trinity Lake

                                 with the Trinity Alps in the background

My pilot's logbook records my second flight with my instructor on May 27th, 3 days after my maiden flight on my birthday (see my blog for November 19, 2009). Before pre-flighting Cherokee N33570, the other trainer in Chico Aviation's fleet of planes, he tells me we are doing a dual cross country to Trinity Center Airport in the beautiful Shasta/Trinity Wilderness Area in far Northern California.

I quickly learned what a time machine even my entry level trainer could be!

I made a half dozen car trips to Trinity County either to do business in Weaverville or in passing through on Route 299 on my way to Eureka and Arcata along the California coast. I had also been to Coffee Creek to visit Michael and Cora Sue Swords, who ran a Trinity Alps Camping business that employed mules for packing in. Each trip from Chico to Weaverville (about 18 miles south of our airport destination) took me no less than two and a half hours. My logbook records total time for the air trip is 2 hours.

We did one touch and go at the airport and then returned to Chico airport. Timed saved each way was an hour and a half or a total of three hours for the round trip. In addition, I had the opportunity to get a bird's eye view of scenic rugged Northern California landmarks: Mount Shasta, the Trinity River, the Siskiyou Mountains into Oregon, etc.

Hail to my newly discovered time machine. This discovery would come in handy less than 2 years later when I would fly my own time machine, Cherokee N1029h, a Piper Archer II.

By the way, the British author James Hilton claimed that visiting Weaverville had inspired the remote Eden of Shangri-la in his novel Lost Horizon.

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Jimmy Doolittle

Today we celebrate Jimmy Doolittle's birthday. He was born in Alameida , California in 1895 With a PHD earned at MIT in aeronautical engineering, he gained fame as a daring aviator who restored US military morale after the devastating bombing of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941. He convinced his US Army Air Corps boss General Henry 'Hap" Arnold that he could successfully lead a squadron of B-25 Mitchell bombers on a surprise air raid over Tokyo.

So, in April 1942, 16 bombers, each with a crew of 5 took off from the carrier Hornet with Doolittle the pilot of the lead plane. He and his fellow pilots bombed factories in Tokyo and then headed for neutral China, but had to bail out to safety when they encountered fog and clouds.

None of the planes were recovered intact and all but 2 crews found safety as they all headed for China and Russia. The pilot of the #2 plane was able to land safely in a rice patty.

Doolittle earned The Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery and went on to lead the 8th Air Force from England on bombing raids over Berlin, oil depots, munitions factories, etc.

Among his favorite quotes are:

"The Mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a lamp to be lighted."

(see Carolyn Murphy at http:// www. wikitree.com/wiki/Doolittle-1)

"If we should have to fight, we should be prepared to do so from the neck up instead of from the neck down."

"The first lesson is that you can't lose a war if you have command of the air, and you can't win a war if you haven't."