What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks....

Kerosene sounds to many people like the fuel of a bygone era, evoking an image of lamps flickering in dark, low-ceilinged rustic homes, howling winds without, smokey gloom within, only slightly abated by the dim illumination from the guttering flame within the sooty glass chimney.
Not quite. Kerosene, aka K-1, is alive and well, and providing light, heat and power in many Third World countries, such as Maine and Wisconsin.
Anywhere that you find population density drooping and tree density increasing, and with it the likelihood of downed power lines in a storm, there you’re likely to find blue plastic jugs full of pioneer era fuel, old tin lamps from Czechoslovakia or new glass lamps from China, both old and new as simple as dirt– a glass chimney over a reservoir, a wick, and a knob to raise and lower the wick, and in some homes heaters and generators too.
I suppose there were good reasons to switch from kerosene to gas and thence to electricity for producing light. Certainly piped gas required less bother than kerosene, and electric lights were not only brighter, but more convenient and safer to boot.
But safety and ease come with a cost, and that’s in the quality of light. From no other source of light are the words “warm glow” more appropriate than when speaking of light from a kerosene lamp. Of electric lights, incandescent beats halogen, and they in turn leave fluorescent in the dust. LED are efficient but highly directional and so expensive still that they aren’t worth fooling with unless there’s an application where it’s really hard to change the light source.
But kerosene light, warm and yellow, dancing ever so slightly as the flame moves on self generated thermal currents seems to produce serenity as well as light. If the glare from the awful fluorescent lights at the Post Office in our town can be fairly called “harsh”, then calling the happy glow from our kerosene lights “soothing” is hardly a stretch.