This is NO joke

This comes from the Environmental Defense Fund newsletter.

Today, April 1, 2011, President Obama is visiting a UPS facility in Landover, MD, to highlight the Department of Energy’s National Clean Fleets Partnership program, which promotes environmentally friendly and fuel efficient delivery trucks.

EDF played an important role in inspiring this national program. In 2003, we partnered with FedEx Express and Eaton Corporation to develop and deploy the first ever “street-ready” low-emission, hybrid electric powered delivery vehicle, which:

• Improved fuel efficiency by 50%,
• Reduced smog-causing emissions by 75%, and
• Decreased particulate emissions by 90%.

Today, hybrids appear in hundreds of corporate fleets, sporting logos like UPS, Coca-Cola and the U.S. Postal Service, and our partnership has paved the way for a new generation of even cleaner trucks that will bear little resemblance to the fossil-fuel-dependent behemoths of the past.

This is important for our clean air and climate future. Large diesel trucks and buses release 7% of America’s global warming pollution, a third of the pollution that causes smog, and a quarter of the soot emissions that contribute to diseases like asthma and cancer.

Now the “Clean Fleet” movement is taking hold.

We helped shape EPA’s National Clean Diesel Campaign—funded in 2010 to the tune of $60 million a year—which enables fleet owners to offset 25% of the cost of new hybrids. And we put our efforts behind incentive programs in 15 states, including a $25 million program in California that will help the state meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals.

Thanks in part to these incentives, thousands of hybrid trucks now travel America’s roads, with more coming off the assembly line all the time. All of this is revolutionizing the industry, bringing the scale of production to levels that are erasing the cost differential for hybrid trucks.

http://support.edf.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=14661.0&dlv_id=26773

Victory for Manatees

Title: Victory for Manatees

This is from the Save the Manatee September 2010 newsletter: article, with pictures, entitled “Three Sisters Springs Is Saved”

“Three Sisters Springs is safe from development. . . . The Three Sisters Springs property, which abuts two manatee sanctuaries, is now owned by the city of Crystal River and the South Florida Water Management District. The property will be managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service . . . and included as part of the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge. The agency plans to provide observation decks for manatee viewing, as well as other educational opportunities. . . .”

Save the Manatee Club offers other opportunities to manatee lovers, including manatee adoption and manatee gifts. Among the various animal gifts I have given my grandchildren, one was a manatee to Brandon. The family loves going to visit Arial at Homosassa Springs.

Three Sisters Springs provide one of the most important warm water refuges for endangered manatees on Florida’s west coast. To see the whole article go to:

http://www.savethemanatee.org/news_feature_three_sisters_7-10.html.

Manatee photo by Pat Rose

Hello and Welcome to my Blog

Hello and Welcome to my blog! Two important things here at the start: first, thanks to my crit buddy, Gayle Martin, for helping me set up this blog. And second: Happy Birthday to Me. We’ll keep the number a deep, dark secret.

As many of you know, I write stories for children—articles, too. The articles have some soft science, nothing overwhelming for young children. I like to share the fun stuff that will pique the interest for more in-depth study later. Several of the magazines I write for cater to home schoolers, but my writing is not for home schoolers exclusively. I have two novels in progress, also.

There are other people I want to thank for helping me to move my writing career along. I belong to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and participate in an SCBWI critique group. Another group I belong to, the GradingPens, was organized by Lea Schizas, the Mother Hen of the Muse Conference. If only I had the amount of energy Lea has in her little finger, I could fly to the moon! Both the Hoggetowne Scribblers and Doodlers (i.e. SCBWI local) and the GradingPens have helped me with their honest assessment of my work. And I thank my family for being very encouraging.

The best news of all is that I have signed a contract with Lynda S. Burch, the editor of Guardian Angel Publishing, for the publication of a picture book. Besides being an editor, Lynda is also a prolific writer. I met her at the 2008 Muse Online Conference—a cyber meeting, that is.

My plan for this blog is to introduce you to some of my writing friends, perhaps my family, too (and don’t forget the pets), and to some of my writing experiences.

I hope to see you on Facebook and Twitter.