Author: hollyfrostgoldportpress

From Holly the Assistant

Well, it’s been that sort of day all around these parts. Everyone’s fine. There were checkups and shipments and pollen and just . . . it was very much a Friday. (Ok, with the pollen, fine might be pushing it, but everyone’s alive and breathing, which is not Nature’s fault: she tried.)

So, please amuse yourselves, or not, with what might be on the other side of that door. And there will be memes tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar there’ll be meming.

First off, Sarah’s fine, taking a brief break from the blog while editing No Man’s Land while supervised by the kitty crew. So she tossed me the keys and said “Post something.” Something follows.

This morning, we woke up to a thundersnow. Not uncommon in April, up in these parts. I went to check on the chicks, which we moved out of the dining room to outside this last week, and the heat lamp was on and they were physically fine, just unhappy. I found that the young adults had not closed the windows last night, but had closed the blinds, and fixed that, and checked the thermometer, and sighed, and turned the furnace on.

Went downstairs for more milk and found Quicksilver kitty in the ceiling. It’s an old house, and the cats are welcome to walk through the walls and hunt mice. Silver told me about her exploits, I asked if she wanted a hand down, she declined, and I came upstairs to find the percolator had finally started boiling while I was talking to Silver. At least there’s coffee, but the rest of the carrots and the beets are not going in the garden today. Perhaps Saturday will be dry enough again.

Spring is slow up here, with fits of warm weather–yesterday hit seventy–and cold. As I type the snow is horizontal, blowing north to south.

It occurs to me that a lot of us are prone to wanting politics to come on like summer right now. But it’s much more like spring. Spats of snow, setting back the work, days of warm weather when you can’t get things done fast enough ahead of the next cold snap which will come, but you don’t know how soon or how hard it will be.

And it feels like it was summer for the other side for a very long time, yet was it really, or are our feelings deceiving us? My family is a second generation home school family. Forty years of legally home schooling. Was that a win for the statists? How about gun rights? How many wins did we get in gun rights over those decades? And abortion, returned to the states to decide as it should be under our Constitution, even in the depths of one of those nastier cold snaps. What about the end of regulatory rule?

I don’t have a crystal ball, none of us do. We don’t know which way the arrows of future history point: which countries are going to have themselves wars and which will dodge wars this year. We do know the general trend over the millennia is away from involuntary collectivism, from belonging to the tribe, the state, the religion, that you are born under or conquered by. The USA is and has been at the forefront of this trend, and most of our citizens are pretty good at finding groups to belong to, even when we side-eye their choices. But we do know that when the world is unpredictable, as it always has been, steadfastness is our key to success. Today we plant the seeds. Tomorrow we hunker down against the next cold snap. Then we pull the weeds when it warms again. In the end, the harvest of liberty and justice will overflow.

P.S. Saturday happens to be the 250th Anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War. Do something to celebrate. (Preferably something that keeps you solidly away from the crazies who want another violent Revolution-it’s my birthday, too and I’m sick and tired of their nonsense on that day.) Hang two lights in your window–the Brits came by sea. Have a cake. Have two cakes. Why not party? 250 years of the best thing going for humanity so far is worth a party.

By Holly the Assistant

Some of us really enjoy the snow and cold, and such outdoor activities as are available this time of year.

Rocket, living her best life.

Others prefer to find a warm spot and glare balefully at the world.

Gertrude, on top the microwave. (You explain to her that you need to wipe the top of the microwave. I’ll watch from way over here.)

Humans being humans, and fairly stubborn and defiant at that, when it’s 2 F out (that’s -16.67 C), and hasn’t been above freezing for a month, tend to start planning gardens and thinking about what trees to try in the orchard and generally trying to rush summer along.

This is NOT the planned planting!

Quicksilver (orange and white) and the Wolf (all white, except for dirt) doing their best imitation of house plants. That is a jalapeno pepper Wolf is sleeping on, and Silver has a couple struggling green onions getting smushed.

(Sarah told me to post something silly, she’s exhausted. I said, Ok, I have Silver and Wolf in pots, that’s silly enough. I could have shared Wolf ‘helping’ me with electrical problems, but honestly that’s just scary, the electrical, not the Wolf. Yes, the Wolf and Silver are Indy, Circe, and Muse’s younger siblings, and the Wolf is very similar to Indy.)

Hope you all enjoy the four-footed crew here!

By Holly the Assistant

As you can probably infer, there will be no meme post today: Sarah has gone with family and friends to celebrate having triumphed over her enemies (mainly pneumonia, bronchitis, high altitude, city sewer backups, and stress, but not excluding a leaking washing machine hose and an oven) for another year of life.

Wish the party well, please, and if you must food fight with cake in the comments, I expect YOU to clean it up. Especially the fan housing! And please don’t allow the kitties any sugar: they’re quite hyper enough, thank you!

By Holly the Assistant

So when I woke up this morning, I had a message sent at three am my time letting me know that as Sarah is in transit and certain EU airports provide insufficient working conditions to access the blog, please to let you all know that the meme and promo posts will be delayed by a day.

You are all now informed, and I hope your plans for autumn are going well!

By Holly the Assistant

Yes, there’s a Presidential Election.

But who and what else is on your ballot? Have you looked yet? Figured out who is running for those down-ballot races and how crooked they are? What that deceptively worded proposition actually means? This is where a lot of the shaping of how this country runs happens: if you liked your governor stepping up to support Texas, your Attorney General filing that lawsuit or amicus curiae brief, your county commissioners telling that federal agency to shove it . . . this is where it happens, and this matters, quite possibly, more than the national votes, because of how our country runs.

A lot of these are local or state matters, so I can’t give you a brief overview of what you’ll see on yours. But please, don’t wait until Election Day to figure it out. I know at least one of you has an Anyone Would Be Better Candidate for something because someone always does. Probably more than half of you, honestly. Sometimes just getting a different crook who isn’t part of the current scheme in is enough to upset the rotten apple basket.

And, while we’re at it, here’s my most useful emotions based anti-mail-in voting argument, if you should happen to have anyone you need to talk to about it:

County Sheriff is an elected position. Prosecutor, too, here. So if you have mail-in ballots, and you’ve got an abuser who is getting away with it because he’s got a buddy in power who declines to charge or fumbles the investigation on purpose, you’re giving him his victim’s vote, as well as his own. Someone who will beat his wife for other things will beat her to make her vote right, and if he can watch her vote, she has no chance against his buddies in power. Some of these rural county votes will swing on a handful of people: I’ve seen votes as tight as three here. If you support mail-in ballots, you support abusers getting to keep their buddies who protect them in power.

From the Assistant, since apparently WordPress doesn’t show y’all who made the post.

We were very glad to hear from RES yesterday in comments, and would like very much to hear from the other Huns and Hoydens that everyone is all right, as time, and internet and electricity access permit.

Well, hold onto your hats, Huns and Hoydens.

First off, a brief housekeeping note. Some of y’all are really tasty according to WordPress, and it keeps tossing you in spam, or scary and it throws you in trash. If I am sure I recognize the handle, I’ll fish you out. If I am not sure I recognize the handle, the usual procedure is to ping our hostess with “Hey is so-n-so okay?” and she goes and looks. Since she’s a bit away right now, newcomers or very occasional posters will be languishing a bit longer: it’s not because you aren’t wanted: it’s because I respect this isn’t my blog and the hostess is gone. If you’re a regular and you know how to ping me about a strayed comment, please feel free to do so, but realize that I may be away from a computer for quite a while at a stretch and WordPress and smartphone do not play well together, so I can’t get you out til I’m back at a computer. I have a medium size and fairly busy family, so it’s really not you, it’s having to get kids to stuff in town.

Here locally up in the high desert mountains, we’ve had a long and warm summer. It’s now early October, and we’ve had no frosts (should have happened in late August) and no snows. In some ways this is good: a friend gave me all her extra peaches (which is most of what I’m doing this week, canning peaches, by all I mean nine boxes), but of course we didn’t know we’d have two months extra of growing season so didn’t plant for it. The garden in general didn’t do so well, but my husband has now put up deer fence which will help in the future. I’d guess in milder climates, that is, most of the USA, various harvests are underway. Potato is going on out on the plains below here. May you all have a good season and fill your root cellars and pantries, because looking at current news, we’re going to need it.

I urge you to check your snow shovels and winter prep, if you are so fortunate as to have battery operated fire and CO alarms check those, etc. If you’re on the other side of the world I guess you’re swapping to summer emergency gear. Do you have what you need, do you need to restock anything? Check your medicine cabinet, too. We can’t do all that much about a Hurricane Helene, but we can do quite a lot about a tire blow-out at -20F. Remember you are your own first responder.

And now, back to canning peaches by the quart jars. Things I have learned: Children cannot recognize a wide-mouthed jar in the dark of the pantry, the kittens think they are peaches or would like to be peaches or would like to eat peaches or possibly be canned, they do not like sugar syrup spills on the floor and are very, very funny when their paws stick. I have done forty-nine quarts with only two failures to seal, I have as many more peaches to go, and I’m racing spoilage. Also I’m down to one remaining wide-mouth quart so the rest will have to be quartered, or get more jars. And if you hear me yell “Get out of my kitchen!” scoot now, ask questions later, because everything’s boiling right now.

See you all in a few hours in the comments, if the internet stays up and the creek don’t rise.

A Guest Post by Orvan Taurus of https://elegantungulate.wordpress.com/

Alternative/Kerosene Lighting
Chances are a good many already know all this, but not everybody does. Also, a reminder
won’t hurt. And it’s not like I know everything, so maybe comments will provide some (pardon) enlightenment.

First, yes, electric light is superior when available. There’s no fuel that can spill, no vapors
that can explode, and the convenience of switches. Even backup, for dealing with a blackout, electric is superior at least as long as the batteries last. Add a photovoltaic (“solar”) panel and you can even recharge in daylight. Also, there won’t be the risk of a mess or fire from Fluffy or Fido or Timmy getting rambunctious and knocking a lamp or lantern over.

So why bother with anything else? There are a few possibilities. The trivial one is a desire for a particular atmosphere, much like the candlelight dinner or bath. More seriously, if you do have backup power in a blackout, especially if it’s quiet, you might not want to advertise to neighbors or passersby that you have power. Let them see the yellow of lantern flame and assume you don’t have a battery bank or a quiet generator somewhere. In the colder months, the heat they produce can be useful. It won’t be enough to heat the house, but a couple might be enough to keep a smaller room closer to livable. And a lantern can warm (not actually cook, just warm) food and drink. Warmer coffee or tea, or warm soup would be welcome if the furnace fan isn’t running.

Lamp and lantern seem to be used almost interchangeably, but a lamp is generally something set in place and left there rather than moved around and a lantern is made to be carried so it can be readily moved. Lamps can fit in as décor, Lanterns… well, the most practical have been called “barn lanterns” as they were considered more suited for use outside the outside where looks were not important.

Here’s a simple lamp:

It’s fairly obvious that this is not something practical to carry around. Its use is fairly simple, but not quite as straightforward as someone new to it might expect. To prepare for use, it is
filled to with kerosene (or Klean Heat, or an equivalent kerosene-alike).[1] The lamp is then
left for at least 20 minutes to let the fuel soak into the wick.

To light it, the glass chimney is removed and set aside. Then the wick is adjusted to have
some wick exposed just above the burner. This is lit, and the chimney put back into place.
The wick is then turned down into the burner (paradoxically, the flame will grow for a moment as this is done) until there is a low yellow flame. The lamp is left running low for several minutes to let the chimney slowly heat up. If the flame is brought high right away, there is risk of thermal shock cracking the glass. Then, after several minutes the wick can be turned up. It might be wise to do this in steps, just to be sure of slow heating. The flame will soot if it’s too high – and as things heat up the flame will grow a bit as things flow more easily. It’s best to not go for the brightest (tallest) flame, but a bit below that where the lamp can run without sooting.

To put it out, turn the wick down to get a minimal yellow flame and carefully cup a hand
behind, but NOT TOUCHING, the chimney and blow a puff across the top of the chimney. The turbulence will do the job of blowing out the low flame. Then, let the lamp cool before doing anything more with it.

If the lamp had been sooting, the chimney might need cleaning and thorough drying. Take
things slow, it is glass after all, not as thick as most drinking glasses. This is a time for hand washing, and drying, with the final drying in a drying rack or on a towel.
The flame will take the shape of the wick. That is, if the wick is cut flat, the flame will be
generally flat. If the wick is cut to a peak, the flame will have a peak. Wicks are usually cut as flat as possible or with a gentle ‘crown’ curve. Some do like the peak cut. I would say to avoid a V-cut as then the flame edges very easily become sooting peaks at surprisingly low flame.

There is a range of useful light levels. A yellow flame can be low to high. Higher is brighter, of course. It also makes for more heat and uses more fuel. It is possible to turn things very low and get a short edge of blue flame. This doesn’t provide much light as the carbon isn’t burning and incandescing. And when carbon isn’t burning in full, it’s undergoing partial combustion… which means carbon monoxide. At the low level, this isn’t very much, but it is there. At too high, there is soot and that also means incomplete combustion, and carbon monoxide. The soot is unpleasant, too. If your lamp reminds you of an older diesel, turn it down! A moderate to high yellow flame is about ideal for light production without soot or monoxide.

Lamps and lanterns come in varying wick widths. The wider the wick, the wider the flame and thus the bright the lamp or lantern. Wider wicks call for kerosene or a kerosene-alike.
Narrower wicks, and small round wicks, can use liquid paraffin but this comes at the price of brightness. The liquid paraffin will have less of an odor, but be only half as bright. The flame can only be brought about half as high before sooting.

Refueling must be done cold, and never, EVER when there is flame. Even if there is a
convenient cap so that the chimney and burner can be left in place. Why? Sure, you could
toss a lit match into a cup of kerosene (why are you doing that?) and, like with diesel, the
match would go out. But that’s liquid kerosene. That space above the liquid isn’t just air. It’s
air and kerosene vapor. The vapor can and will explode. The burner is made to keep the flame far enough away from the air-vapor mix to avoid problems. Adding fuel to running lamp or lantern means the liquid level rises. That pushes the fuel-air mix up out of the fuel reservoir and into… the flame that will set it off. BOOM!

A selection of lanterns:

These are all made by Dietz (now made in China…though “with original USA tooling” for what that’s worth). From left to right: Jupiter (#2500), Air Pilot (#8), #76, Comet (#50). Jupiter is the largest model and Comet the smallest Dietz makes. Some… more experienced… folks might recognize the Comet as what was standard for Scouting back when Scouts were still trusted with fire.

These all work the same way, with minor variation. The variation is which side the “globe lifter” lever is on, and if the burner cone rises with the globe or not. It’s not that important, all combinations work. Like with the lamps, the fuel is added to a cold lantern and given time for it to soak into the wick.

To light it, the wick is turned up just enough to be seen over the burner, the globe lifter is pressed down, moving the globe up. The wick can then be lit. A longer match or grill lighter can make this easier. The globe is lowered and the wick turned down to below the burner to get a low flame to allow the globe to slowly heat up so as to avoid thermal shock. After that, operation is similar to the lamps.

To extinguish the flame, the wick is simply turned down until the flame goes out.

All the warnings for lamps apply. NEVER refuel while burning. Take things slow and easy. Too high a flame means soot.

The advantage of this design is not just that the handle (which is NOT the ring on top) means it can be carried around or hung from a hook – which keeps it out of the way, but that the flame will not be blown out even in very windy conditions. That’s how the design got the nickname “hurricane lantern” as even severe winds wouldn’t blow out the flame. Another advantage is that if the lantern is toppled over, it goes out. You might get a mess and darkness, but that beats a fire. However, this “safety feature” is only partly true. If conditions are windy enough, even a tipped over lantern will continue to burn. I have experienced this.

Width of wick, again, determines greatest useful brightness. The Comet can put out maybe 4 candlepower, and the Jupiter up to 14.. maybe 18 if pushed.

The #76 might be the best “all rounder” with the Comet better for smaller frames and portability, the Jupiter best for the most light and heat (and burn time) at the cost of space. The Air Pilot seems a nice compromise between the #76 and the Jupiter – and being perhaps less popular, less tooling wear, and just feels a bit better than the #76. That said, if the #76 is your choice, you might wish to consider paying a few bucks more for the German-made nigh-equivalent “Baby Special” Feuerhand #276. The #276 has accessories available such as a reflector to aim more light downward, and a setup for warming (not cooking) food or beverages. I have such and water got to about 175 F and not a degree more. The globes and wicks for the Dietz #76 and Feuerhand #276 are interchangeable – though the Feuerhand globes are made of low-expansion borosilicate (less likely to crack from thermal shock) glass. There are warming plates available for other lanterns, as well. I have one for the Jupiter. Again, warming rather than cooking.

That’s the quick(?) overview for common kerosene lamps and lanterns. I’ve not covered a few things: mantle lamps, pressure lamps, a kerosene-electric (yes, really) lantern, nor butane or propane lamps or lanterns. Nor cooking oil lamps, which are older than candles.



[1] Under NO circumstance can gasoline (camp fuel, white gas) or alcohol be used – that would turn it from a lamp into a bomb – with you up close when it is lit and it will go off immediately. Despite some claims, cooking oils won’t work. They are too thick to make it up the wick in sufficiency.

This is a post from the Assistant, Holly. All is quite well with Sarah, she is off doing stuff with family and friends.

Yesterday: “Holly, can you put up a guest post?” “Oh, sure.”

Today: Tech hates me, and I hate it right back. There will be a quite interesting guest post at some point from our own David Bock, but it won’t happen until I solve tech.

Other than that, please wash your hands extra, there’s a stomach virus going around and I don’t want you all to catch it. I’m not quite clear how the virus transmission over the internet thing works, but I’m suspicious.