Our Favorite Quotes

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
Henry Ford

 

When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I'm sure it made the work seem that much more urgent.
George Carlin

 

I'm just old enough to have experienced gas lighting, and of course propane gas lamps are still readily available for camping. The light is actually quite decent with adequate illumination for most things and a pleasant color in the range that electric light bulb manufacturers would likely call cool white or warm white. The worst problem was occasional rapid light fluctuation - probably caused by worn pressure regulators, and of course the incessant hissing.

The early carbon filament light bulbs had incredibly long lifetimes but were inferior to gaslight in color. Once tungsten was introduced as the element that was much improved. A persistent rumor claims that considerable research was required to get the life of a typical tungsten electric light bulb up to a reasonable time, followed by more research to get it down again so that it was profitable to continue making them . . .

 

When I was growing up my grandparents lived in a cabin facing the Palo Verde Lagoon, with the desert at its back. They were miles from any utilities, so they used gas wall lamps for lighting.

I always liked the gas lamps; they seemed to put out a warm, friendly light. And if someone needed more light where the gas lamps didn't reach, they fired up old-fashioned kerosene table lamps -- which can also put out a surprising amount of light if the globes are clean, and the wicks properly trimmed and adjusted.

 

kerosene lamp is a good heater too.

throw a floor dragger quilt over a table, put an xtra wooden table top on top the quilt.

A kerosene lamp under the table.
chair up to the table and toast your legs and feet underneath. quilt seals around your waist. loose clothing allows heat to flow up through your clothes.

Ancient "CENTRAL" heat. Dining table again becomes family central gathering place.

 

I was in Southern MO, with Kerosine lamps.
My grandmother made me read the short serials in the Collier magazine by those damn Kerosine lamps. My eyes strained so bad tears ran down on the magazine.
I thought she couldn't read. Turns out she was teaching me to read.

There was Electricity a half mile from the house but she'd have to pay to get it from the road into the house.
Finally in 1948 some of her boys (my uncles) brought poles in, wired the house, barn, and the well with Knob & Tube. Put in a water pump so she'd have water up at the house instead of carrying buckets from the well down by the Creek.
Imagine her 'future shock' when she could have lights with a flip of the switch. Listen to a Radio without worrying about Batteries. She loved those soaps!

And we cannot go back in space nor time to glean some logic from those old folks.
Our great grandchildren would sure like to be able to read about us and what we did.
So start now, writing about your life so those kids a Hunderd years from now, can re-live our history.

 

haven't you heard?
100 years from now, the earth will be barren of life...according to some folks.

and if there are folks around, they'll watch our taped tv shows.

 

I wondered if any of the media in use, will be able to read anything we've written on any kind of Media.

 

- sounds cosy. Did you forget the fire extinguisher?

 

I caught that too Kayaker.
We'd never have put a lamp under anything!

It's against our nature to grab the lamp globe down at that flame. But that's the coolest part. Up the flue a bit it's hot enough to make a believer out of you.

 

Priorities gentlemen.
When you're freezing and desperate to get warm, a lamp under the table is less risky than a campfire in the living room!

 

About priorities

 

Some years back I worked with an old carpenter who had seen many of the landings through the pacific in WWII.

L. Serk.
He was a tough old marine and had bunches of stories- one began with standing at attention with his men somewhere in the Pacific just after the war had ended.
It seems men were needed to police up Japanese soldiers who were still in China.
His superior told the men the situation and that volunteers were needed.
He followed with "Serk- stand forward".

"Serk- stand forward"
Men were needed and men such as L. Serk were needed to lead them.
Leonard ended up spending a additional year of duty as most men were returning home to their families and lives.

That simple statement strikes me to this day of how responsibility is demanded and met by us all as we stand in our lives to meet the challenges thrust upon us.

Volunteers are need- stand forward.

 

One of the VFW guys was a contractor on an island in the Pacific when the war started.
Suddenly one afternoon he was a POW.
He spent three years somewhere in Japan. As a POW he was a slave. By the end of the war he was ANGRY!
So when they needed Japanese speaking people to heard the Jap POW's around in Australia, he was first to step forward.
He thought it would be an opportunity to work some of those little guys to death.
But no...he wound up getting back to America in 47. Never left since!
Somebody else will stand forward!

 

from #961 above

from here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic

I'd didn't know Henry was a Buddhist