I have almost always lived in houses that were at least 100 years old, and sometimes much older. Here, in a craft Victorian built ~1880, my heat is supplied by baseboard water pipes heated by an oil burner (which also gives me an essentially limitless supply of household hot water). Yesterday I did something modern-convenience-age dumb: I let the oil tank run dry. So overnight we heated by fireplace and blanket and ‘negotiated’ over who got to have the dog at the foot of the bed. This morning, very early, Jack ran to the gas station to get 20 gallons of diesel, which can be used in an emergency in place of #2 fuel oil. There was air in the fuel lines by this time of course, so they had to be bled before the burner would restart.
We could have considered this a massive self-inflicted pain in the butt (which it was) but it was also an opportunity to gather around the fireplace, watch the flames, coddle and cosset a Very Good Boy, and slow down a little. That said, I think I’m going to look into getting a couple of those center draft lamps!
So, you do consulting for lamps too? I have just inherited some oil lamps from my parents and grandparents' passing. When I get a bit more oriented to my new life can I book a session and you tell me what I have and what to do with them?
Absolutely! I'd be delighted to. I'll consult for an hour on pretty much any topic, and lamp talk is fun. Get your stuff sorted out and ready to go in front of a camera for me, and I'll get you fixed up when you're ready.
I enjoyed reading this. I've always preferred old Victorians to modern boxes. I've made part of my living restoring them.
I have modern gas furnaces (yes, TWO of them) in my house, but ordinally there was a fireplace or flu connection in every room. That makes for ten flues in three chimneys, and they all burned coal, back in the day. And every home in the city had the same set-up. If people think we have pollution today, they should think about the 1800s, when every home was spewing coal smoke from a multitude of flus!
Beautifully written. I, too, enjoy old fashioned or traditional living. Inclusive of all the inconveniences that come with it. I do not mind keeping my house clean and occasionally going on my knees to clean baseboards or get a stain out of a carpet. I have started investing in better quality area rugs to change the texture under my feet and to keep the house looking cozy and feeling warm. And also to get away from any cold and too plain concrete surfaces for better mental states and eye health.
There are many modern conveniences that I enjoy that I cannot really live without just yet. Primarily, because I am not living in a one or two person household, yet (working on it) and I do not want to become the person cleaning for everyone else. So dishwasher is a must at this point in time. With my pets a robot vacuum is also something I currently would not miss.
Yard work I do myself (or my husband). I once read if you allow too many conveniences to enter your life or outsource too many tasks, you age more quickly. I fully believe that. Since I see maintaining and cleaning the house and yard as part of my health routine, it feels much better to do it. A work out that trains functional muscles so to speak.
There are other things I do. I do not wear shoes in the house and basically force others to do the same. I have slippers for guests (simple felt slippers if they complain about cold feet). While this is somewhat cultural driven by me being German, I think it is something that will make a home feel better when you know that you do not carry street dirt into it all the time. I happily eat a piece of food off the floor if it falls down.
Thank you for writing. I am a person that got really quickly tired reading AI generated texts and looking at AI pictures. I like original content. And appreciate the effort put in.
Good morning, Josh, just barely LOL it's 11:40 your time as I write. That is a beautiful stove. I actually thought it was a wood stove before reading your essay. Lovely read. Between your oil lamps, your iron stove and Shredder I'm imagining you having a relaxing evening before retiring, and a cozy next morning as you prepare for the day.
The house I grew up in had gas heat and a floor furnace that I adored standing on with the hot air billowing my dress or skirt like a balloon of comfort surrounding me. After growing up and leaving home I've never lived in another place with a floor furnace, much to my chagrin.
Ah you've just explained why everyone here in the UK loves cosy pubs with open fireplaces this time of year. The heat and the ambient lighting produced by such fires are magnetic and comforting.
It also reminds me of feeling a sense of magic and also yearning when I visited a place in London called Denis Severs' house about a month ago. Tucked away in a side street of the area called Spitalfields, once home to the city's textile industry, it's a house that an American man named Denis Severs bought, restored and furnished so that it would be frozen in time as if a family in the late 1700s were still living there. The homely clutter within each space, the lack of electricity and modern gadgetry, the communal living evoked by the domestic layouts of the era... it made me wonder about what we've lost.
Don’t get me started on the lamps of today. The on/off switch is most surely hidden as though it’s a product defect. As far as heat, I miss the steam radiators in my first SoHo and then Village apartments. That hissing sound was great to sleep to. The days of clubbing until 6AM, coming home on a cloudy winter day, hot shower and then falling under the quilts for 14 hours of sleep to the hissing noise.
Baseboard heat is one of the worst things you can have in your home. They’re expensive to operate, you can’t have things placed too close to the heating units, and homes equipped with them are virtually impossible to retrofit for duct-based heating and cooling.
This kind of technology is what Gavin Newsom... a Getty heir... plans to outlaw (for example, by making the sale or import of fossil fuels like kerosene unlawful). Forcing everyone to use electricity for everything is their way to earn "monopoly rents"... obscenely large profits. If there's only one source of baseline energy and cronies have it locked up, they'll all be Caesars and we'll all be serfs. Yes, solar panels might help sometimes, but baseline energy is what they can lock up. They could also carry out raids on private property and arrest residents for use of illegal technology.
Newsom represents the nadir of governance. Our once-wonderful state will be well rid of him next year, but chances are he'll just be replaced by someone as bad or worse (if that's possible).
Karen Bass, who was trained as a professional terrorist and is now a Los Angeles politician, is one such example. I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny or reformed terrorists (including violent street punks like Bernie, of whom there's a famous photo of his violently resisting being hauled away by the police back in the 1960's). Bernie Sanders is completely untrustworthy... he doesn't even pretend to forswear violence by his supporters to carry out his goals. I don't know how long it will take to clean out the voter rolls or misuse of them (e.g., collecting gratuitously issued ballots for real people that have moved away and using them to cast illegal votes), but it won't be overnight unless they start opening new prison wings for electoral officials. Not bloody likely.
You are SOOOO right about this--another barrier, too, between you and getting it shut off because you "used too much". Hmmm. Maybe these things will be all the rage soon enough!
Just a comment on your "postscript" concerning technology....Unfortunately, I only have time today to barely touch on what I consider some very critical points, which could and ought to be explored further, and which, of course, have been plumbed by many greater minds than my own....
This is a question with which most people, "conservative" or "progressive," refuse to engage. Progressives, because the very fundament of their worldview demands that ever-proliferating technology be allowed full rein, lest it turn out that we are, in fact, NOT our own Saviors. Anyone recall this image that's been circulating for a few years now (scroll down and look for the graphic)?
Conservatives' refusal, on the other hand, is, I think, based largely on a completely outdated and irrelevant controversy between "capitalism" and "communism" - or other, similarly ill-defined bugbears. Both of the ideologies typically represented by these words are anti-human, and the fruits thereof have borne that out historically. We Americans are living in our particular version of that Materialist dichotomy (despite all the good that persists around us at the same time, none of which I deny).
There are many points at which technology ceases to serve the human, and many possible inroads into that pestilent morass. And I would say that one of the universally observable consequences of this phenomenon is the collective and individual weakening of a people who live through it. This weakening happens on the physical and the more "psychical" planes of existence. Part of the "way out" for us has to be a critical mass of people deciding, in a million different ways, some large and some small, to refuse the entry or persistence of certain technologies within their lives and their families.
Whilst sitting by our campfire last weekend I remarked to my husband how amazing it is that humans still function primarily on the heat of simple fire.
I have almost always lived in houses that were at least 100 years old, and sometimes much older. Here, in a craft Victorian built ~1880, my heat is supplied by baseboard water pipes heated by an oil burner (which also gives me an essentially limitless supply of household hot water). Yesterday I did something modern-convenience-age dumb: I let the oil tank run dry. So overnight we heated by fireplace and blanket and ‘negotiated’ over who got to have the dog at the foot of the bed. This morning, very early, Jack ran to the gas station to get 20 gallons of diesel, which can be used in an emergency in place of #2 fuel oil. There was air in the fuel lines by this time of course, so they had to be bled before the burner would restart.
We could have considered this a massive self-inflicted pain in the butt (which it was) but it was also an opportunity to gather around the fireplace, watch the flames, coddle and cosset a Very Good Boy, and slow down a little. That said, I think I’m going to look into getting a couple of those center draft lamps!
When you want the lamps, consult me. I can tell you what's a good buy, what's not functional and should be left "on the shelf," etc.
So, you do consulting for lamps too? I have just inherited some oil lamps from my parents and grandparents' passing. When I get a bit more oriented to my new life can I book a session and you tell me what I have and what to do with them?
Absolutely! I'd be delighted to. I'll consult for an hour on pretty much any topic, and lamp talk is fun. Get your stuff sorted out and ready to go in front of a camera for me, and I'll get you fixed up when you're ready.
Wonderful.
What a wonderful essay this Saturday morning. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
I enjoyed reading this. I've always preferred old Victorians to modern boxes. I've made part of my living restoring them.
I have modern gas furnaces (yes, TWO of them) in my house, but ordinally there was a fireplace or flu connection in every room. That makes for ten flues in three chimneys, and they all burned coal, back in the day. And every home in the city had the same set-up. If people think we have pollution today, they should think about the 1800s, when every home was spewing coal smoke from a multitude of flus!
Beautifully written. I, too, enjoy old fashioned or traditional living. Inclusive of all the inconveniences that come with it. I do not mind keeping my house clean and occasionally going on my knees to clean baseboards or get a stain out of a carpet. I have started investing in better quality area rugs to change the texture under my feet and to keep the house looking cozy and feeling warm. And also to get away from any cold and too plain concrete surfaces for better mental states and eye health.
There are many modern conveniences that I enjoy that I cannot really live without just yet. Primarily, because I am not living in a one or two person household, yet (working on it) and I do not want to become the person cleaning for everyone else. So dishwasher is a must at this point in time. With my pets a robot vacuum is also something I currently would not miss.
Yard work I do myself (or my husband). I once read if you allow too many conveniences to enter your life or outsource too many tasks, you age more quickly. I fully believe that. Since I see maintaining and cleaning the house and yard as part of my health routine, it feels much better to do it. A work out that trains functional muscles so to speak.
There are other things I do. I do not wear shoes in the house and basically force others to do the same. I have slippers for guests (simple felt slippers if they complain about cold feet). While this is somewhat cultural driven by me being German, I think it is something that will make a home feel better when you know that you do not carry street dirt into it all the time. I happily eat a piece of food off the floor if it falls down.
Thank you for writing. I am a person that got really quickly tired reading AI generated texts and looking at AI pictures. I like original content. And appreciate the effort put in.
Good morning, Josh, just barely LOL it's 11:40 your time as I write. That is a beautiful stove. I actually thought it was a wood stove before reading your essay. Lovely read. Between your oil lamps, your iron stove and Shredder I'm imagining you having a relaxing evening before retiring, and a cozy next morning as you prepare for the day.
The house I grew up in had gas heat and a floor furnace that I adored standing on with the hot air billowing my dress or skirt like a balloon of comfort surrounding me. After growing up and leaving home I've never lived in another place with a floor furnace, much to my chagrin.
Ah you've just explained why everyone here in the UK loves cosy pubs with open fireplaces this time of year. The heat and the ambient lighting produced by such fires are magnetic and comforting.
It also reminds me of feeling a sense of magic and also yearning when I visited a place in London called Denis Severs' house about a month ago. Tucked away in a side street of the area called Spitalfields, once home to the city's textile industry, it's a house that an American man named Denis Severs bought, restored and furnished so that it would be frozen in time as if a family in the late 1700s were still living there. The homely clutter within each space, the lack of electricity and modern gadgetry, the communal living evoked by the domestic layouts of the era... it made me wonder about what we've lost.
Don’t get me started on the lamps of today. The on/off switch is most surely hidden as though it’s a product defect. As far as heat, I miss the steam radiators in my first SoHo and then Village apartments. That hissing sound was great to sleep to. The days of clubbing until 6AM, coming home on a cloudy winter day, hot shower and then falling under the quilts for 14 hours of sleep to the hissing noise.
Love my wood stove. A lot of work, but worth it.
Baseboard heat is one of the worst things you can have in your home. They’re expensive to operate, you can’t have things placed too close to the heating units, and homes equipped with them are virtually impossible to retrofit for duct-based heating and cooling.
This kind of technology is what Gavin Newsom... a Getty heir... plans to outlaw (for example, by making the sale or import of fossil fuels like kerosene unlawful). Forcing everyone to use electricity for everything is their way to earn "monopoly rents"... obscenely large profits. If there's only one source of baseline energy and cronies have it locked up, they'll all be Caesars and we'll all be serfs. Yes, solar panels might help sometimes, but baseline energy is what they can lock up. They could also carry out raids on private property and arrest residents for use of illegal technology.
Newsom represents the nadir of governance. Our once-wonderful state will be well rid of him next year, but chances are he'll just be replaced by someone as bad or worse (if that's possible).
Karen Bass, who was trained as a professional terrorist and is now a Los Angeles politician, is one such example. I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny or reformed terrorists (including violent street punks like Bernie, of whom there's a famous photo of his violently resisting being hauled away by the police back in the 1960's). Bernie Sanders is completely untrustworthy... he doesn't even pretend to forswear violence by his supporters to carry out his goals. I don't know how long it will take to clean out the voter rolls or misuse of them (e.g., collecting gratuitously issued ballots for real people that have moved away and using them to cast illegal votes), but it won't be overnight unless they start opening new prison wings for electoral officials. Not bloody likely.
I'll gladly donate to help fund one of those new prison wings.
You are SOOOO right about this--another barrier, too, between you and getting it shut off because you "used too much". Hmmm. Maybe these things will be all the rage soon enough!
Just a comment on your "postscript" concerning technology....Unfortunately, I only have time today to barely touch on what I consider some very critical points, which could and ought to be explored further, and which, of course, have been plumbed by many greater minds than my own....
This is a question with which most people, "conservative" or "progressive," refuse to engage. Progressives, because the very fundament of their worldview demands that ever-proliferating technology be allowed full rein, lest it turn out that we are, in fact, NOT our own Saviors. Anyone recall this image that's been circulating for a few years now (scroll down and look for the graphic)?
https://www.sott.net/article/490367-Internet-of-Bodies-may-lead-to-Internet-of-Brains-by-2050-RAND
Conservatives' refusal, on the other hand, is, I think, based largely on a completely outdated and irrelevant controversy between "capitalism" and "communism" - or other, similarly ill-defined bugbears. Both of the ideologies typically represented by these words are anti-human, and the fruits thereof have borne that out historically. We Americans are living in our particular version of that Materialist dichotomy (despite all the good that persists around us at the same time, none of which I deny).
There are many points at which technology ceases to serve the human, and many possible inroads into that pestilent morass. And I would say that one of the universally observable consequences of this phenomenon is the collective and individual weakening of a people who live through it. This weakening happens on the physical and the more "psychical" planes of existence. Part of the "way out" for us has to be a critical mass of people deciding, in a million different ways, some large and some small, to refuse the entry or persistence of certain technologies within their lives and their families.
Whilst sitting by our campfire last weekend I remarked to my husband how amazing it is that humans still function primarily on the heat of simple fire.
There’s nothing that warms the bones like a wood stove.