April 2022

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"This Just In..."

Do you remember the Twilight Zone?

Is it my imagination or are we living in some alternative universe? These last few years have a kind of a Rod Serling vibe. The Virus. The Election. Inflation. $5 gas. No toilet paper. Losing Betty White. Grocery shelves that mirrored the Soviet Union of the ‘70s, and now the horrible Ukraine mess.

We’re guessing, for April, there’s a volcano with our name on it.

Each month we try to deliver a bit of fluff to carry you through the regular ordinary toughness of work, family and the rising cost of basic cheese products. Five minutes escape.

It’s getting tougher. But when the going gets tough the tough…well, ya know. So, please…enjoy April, we packed it with Art Deco, a bit of luck, poetry and an absolutely amazing Mystery Link. Enjoy.

Quick, Robin... Into the Batmobile.

Click here for larger image.

But…which one, Batman?

The original TV series Batmobile sold in 2013 for 4.6 million dollars at Barrett Jackson auctions. The Batmobile was brought to the auction by famed auto designer George Barris who had it since new. In 1963 Barris was commissioned by Fox to build the car for the TV series with a total budget of $15,000.

Barris built the original Batmobile series car based on a Mercury Lincoln concept car he had made for Ford. Ford sold the concept car back to Barris when they were done with it for $1.00. It was in his garage when he got the job from 20th Century Fox. He figured since he wasn't doing anything with the car why not use it to make into the Batmobile. 

No matter how you look at it, Barris who up until his death in 2015 had made all of the Batmobiles for the movies was a hell of a businessman, entrepreneur, and designer. 

There Once Was A Young Man From Nantucket

Literary Limericks

Did Ophelia ask Hamlet to bed?

Was Gertrude incestuously wed?

Is there anything certain?

By the fall of the curtain

Almost everyone’s certainly dead.

— A. Cinna

Once a raven on Pluto’s dark shore

Brought the singular news: “Nevermore.”

‘Twas of useless avail

To ask further detail,

His reply was the same as before.

— Anthony Euwer

There once was a fellow called Hyde,

Whose twin self he couldn’t abide;

But Jekyll, the Devil,

Dragged Hyde to his level,

“Inside job,” cried Hyde, as he died.

— E.J. Jackson



When Ireland was bloody and leaderless,

The tedious, garrulous Daedalus —

Having failed both as priest

And as Glorious Beast —

Sailed away to write books that were readerless.

— Gina Berkeley

In 1962, Croatian music teacher Frane Selak was riding from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik when his train jumped the rails and plunged into a river. Seventeen people died, but he escaped with hypothermia.

A year later a plane door malfunctioned and he was blown into midair. The plane crashed and he landed in a haystack.

Three years after that he was riding a bus that skidded into a river; he swam to safety. (“By this time my friends had stopped visiting me,” he said.)

In 1970 his car caught fire as he was driving it. He escaped before the fuel tank exploded.

Three years after that, another car caught fire; his hair was singed but he was otherwise unharmed.

In 1995 he was knocked down by a Zagreb bus but sustained only minor injuries.

The following year he nearly collided with a United Nations truck; he crashed through a mountain guardrail but managed to leap clear of the car.

In 2003, two days after his 73rd birthday, he won a lottery jackpot worth a million dollars. He married and bought two houses and a boat, and in 2010 gave away most of the rest to friends and family.

Fuel savings tip to save you money on fuel and avoid unnecessary breakdowns -- we recommend getting a comprehensive tune up on your heating system after the consumption of roughly 1200-1400 gallons of fuel. So if you use between 600 & 700 gallons of fuel per year you should have a tune up performed every 24 months. 

Those using a 1,000 gallons per year or more, should have a system tune up done every year. Now is a great time to call to schedule a tune up, and we can get it done for you before the Spring turns warm. If you also have an air conditioning system, we can schedule to have both your A/C and heating tune-ups done at the same time.

Call us at 860 813 9122

These are, apparently, before and after photos of an actor who was semi-huge in the late ‘90s. Some of us were at work then and NEVER saw him. Others, however, I have been assured, will recognize him INSTANTLY. Meh.

Hint – he’s originally from Hartford and went to Avon Old Farms! You’re welcome. Tell us here who he is and you will…ya know. Last month we had a record. 206 total entries. Susann C and Kristin H recognized Robert Pattison as Batman and – astonishingly – 94 of you got the HARD quiz – Richard B and Tung L. knew that there were 20,000 people living in City B. 

Although some of your answers were soooo much better than correct ones. We love you all for playing. Good luck this month.

Effective this April Daniels will be blending B-10 bioheat fuel into standard #2 home heating oil throughout our service areas. We have already sold Bioheat along the shoreline area for a few years. This is a big step moving into the rest of our service areas.

Each day one of our tankers will pick up the special B-99 blend at the New Haven terminal. When they return to Portland we will fill each of our fuel trucks with approximately 10% Biolfuel into the load of heating oil, creating a B-10 or 10% blend.

Straight Heating Oil on the left.

B-10 Blended Heating oil on the right.

You can't tell the difference and neither will your heating system, except it burns cleaner with FEWER emissions.

This new blended fuel will not cost any more. More importantly, it will burn cleaner than fuels without B-10 and create less carbon emissions which clearly makes it an environmentally preferred fuel.

This decision is Daniels’ way of helping to eliminate our country’s reliance on foreign – specifically Russian – fuel supplies. Russia exports roughly 6% of the global supply of energy.

Although the USA did not import much Russian oil, it is a globally supplied market. By blending 10% Biofuel into our heating oil, we are more than doing our part to eliminate the need for Russian exports. 

Plus, it creates jobs for the American farmers and it is a renewable source of clean energy available today, not many years down the road. Gradually the percentage of Biofuel will increase as the supply of Biofuel expands to meet the demands of the fuel markets.

Our country has the capacity and the ability to be totally self-reliant in the energy markets of today and tomorrow. This is our small step to help keep us that way.

Art Deco   1920-1930

We’ve long been fascinated by the elegance of Art Deco design. So we thought we’d feature it, extensively, in this month’s epistle. The name came from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs Industriels et Modernes, held in Paris, which celebrated living in the modern world.

It is an eclectic style that combines traditional craft motifs with Machine Age imagery and materials. The style is often characterized by rich colors, bold geometric shapes, and lavish ornamentation.

Deco emerged from the Interwar period when rapid industrialization was transforming culture. One of its major attributes is an embrace of technology. This distinguishes Deco from the organic motifs favored by its predecessor Art Nouveau.

Art deco works exhibit aspects of Cubism, Russian Constructivism and Italian Futurism– with abstraction, distortion, and simplification, particularly geometric shapes and highly intense colors–celebrating the rise of commerce, technology, and speed.

It was popularly considered to be an elegant style of cool sophistication in architecture and applied arts which range from luxurious objects made from exotic material to mass produced, streamlined items available to a growing middle class.

During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour, exuberance, and faith in social and technological progress.

More here: https://www.1stdibs.com/blogs/the-study/art-deco-vs-art-nouveau/

1930 Air King designed by

John Gordon Rideout Van Doren

Zenith model 812 wooden radio 1935 

Spirit of the Wind, Hood Ornament

Porcelain Toastrite Blue Willow Electric Toaster. 

Toscano Art Deco Table Lamp

The Hood Ornament (aka: car mascot) the 1926 LaLique Archer

1930's Czech Purple Glass Perfume Bottle

Leaded Light Sunrise Window by Steven Cartwright

Chrysler Bldg. by William Van Allen

American Radiator Bldg. by Raymond Hood and Andre Fouihoux

Daily Express Building, London

Eastern Columbia Lofts, Los Angeles designed by Claud Beelman

Cochise County Court House, Bisbee, AZ designer: Roy Place

Railing Art inspired by Piet Mondrian

Eden Theatre in Lisbon, Portugal

Union Terminal Cincinnati, Ohio

Leon Bazile Perrault. (1832-1908) Catherine La Rose, The Patron of Painting.  1877

Léon-Jean-Bazille Perrault was a mid-nineteenth century artist who preoccupied himself with the treatment of subjects that reinforced the affluent bourgeoisie in their desire to have beautiful pictures adorning their homes.

He was born to a modest family. A student of William Bouguereau and François-Edouard Picot, he exhibited at the Salon from 1863 onwards, producing many genre works which were immensely popular.



Inspired by his teachers, master painters of the academic style of the nineteenth-century, Perrault continued emphasizing mythology and idealization found in their compositions, in his own paintings.

More here: https://bit.ly/34JCKBS

At least, one beautiful example.

Click for this month's Mystery Link

Friend John, whose (:) was removed,

When asked why he had lately proved

So free of caution and of fear,

Said, “I’ve no (*), my dear.”

— Willard R. Espy

A Genetic History of the Americas

By Jennifer Raff

It’s Anthropology 101.

At the end of the last ice age, around 13,000 years ago, retreating glaciers created an inland corridor connecting Siberia to the Americas. People from northeast Asia crossed the Bering Strait land bridge and entered a new world.

From there, these people — often given the name Clovis after the distinctive stone tools they made — rapidly spread and successfully adapted to the various ecologies they encountered. All Native Americans can trace their ancestry back to these First Peoples.

But, according to the University of Kansas anthropological geneticist Jennifer Raff, that’s not quite how it happened.

She builds a persuasive case with both archaeological and genetic evidence that the path to the Americas was coastal (the Kelp Highway hypothesis) rather than inland, and that Beringia was not a bridge but a homeland — twice the size of Texas — inhabited for millenniums by the ancestors of the First Peoples of the Americas. Quite a book!

• Of the doctor, the poet, and the fool we all have a small portion. (Mexico)
• Each of us bears his friend and his enemy within himself. (Costa Rica)
• The mother-in-law does not remember she was a daughter-in-law. (Venezuela)
• Halfway is 12 miles when you have 14 miles to go. (Panama)
• Diligence is the mother of good fortune. (Peru)
• Face to face respect appears. (Ecuador)
• You may believe every good report of a grateful man. (Guatemala)
• Many go for wool and come back shorn themselves. (Dominican Republic)
• He who marries prudence is the brother-in-law of peace. (Bolivia)
• Nothing is so burdensome as a secret. (Colombia)
• The vulgar keep no account of your hits, but of your misses. (Paraguay)
• Grief shared is half grief; joy shared is double joy. (Honduras)
• A “no” in time is better than a late “yes.” (Uruguay)
• When you mourn, you cannot sing; when you sing, you cannot mourn. (Argentina)
• Money is not advice. (Grandma…)

Bowden Spider Bike

1934 BMWr7

We didn’t say it would be easy. Which would you choose? Tell us here. (No, you don’t get the one you picked, we’re just interested!)

Leave em' Laughing

Available from the  Everyday Objects collection at Tiffany & Co. for $1,135 (engraving extra).

It's more expensive than the sterling silver golf tee ($205), but less than sterling silver dog bowl ($3,000).



More, sadly, here. https://www.tiffany.com/home-designs/shop/everyday-objects/

This is just part of the world we live in. 

Dinner, it would appear, for two.