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Welcome to September - the start of the year.
Well, doesn't it feel like it? Summer's on the wane, school is open, the shorts are folded and put away and forget about the flip-flops til May! This month features a salute to American workers. Hard workers all. We never want to lose sight of their efforts, from the Sand Hogs to the waiters and waitresses who bring us that important first cup of coffee in the morning.
You'll see them sprinkled throughout as a simple honorarium from Daniels to all of you. Oh and we'll have a quiz or three, an offer or two and five minutes of escape.
Hope that you enjoy this month's issue.
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Good news, finally.
As of July 1, all home heating oil sold in Connecticut is now Bioheat ULSHO (ultra-low sulfur heating oil). It's approximately 7% biodiesel and has just 15 parts per million sulfur making it extremely cleaner and better for the environment.
So how does it help the planet?
All of Connecticut's independent fuel business serve more than 580,000 homes and deliver 514 million gallons of Bioheat per year. In one year that means we'll reduce carbon emissions by 365,000+ metric tons - or the equivelent of taking nearly 80,000 cars off the road!
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The rare break at the end of the day
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AC- Kaput?
Furnace Fried?
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"Out With The Old-
In With The New"
Is your home heating and cooling on its last legs?
Was it new during the Bush administration?
Are you wicked hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter?
Get A Complete Trane
Home Comfort System!
Time to Call Daniels Energy & Save!
*500 OFF on Systems older than 15 Years!
*750 OFF on Systems older than 20 Years!
*1,500 OFF on Systems older than 25 Years!
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Just Need a New Trane ™ AC or Trane Furnace?
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*250 OFF on Systems older than 15 Years!
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*500 OFF on Systems older than 20 Years!
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*750 OFF on Systems older than 25 Years!
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It's Hard To Stop A Trane™
New Trane TLF1 Furnace
and XR 16 AC System
This new Trane XR16 air conditioning system has a 16 SEER rating, making it an excellent choice for home comfort and earning energy efficiency tax credits. The Trane TLF1 oil furnace has an 85 AFUE rating for efficiency and has a ECM blower for quieter operation and more and even steady heat. Together this combined system will keep you cool all summer and toasty warm on even the coldest winter nights! Only new AC or a New Furnace - you can still save big with Daniels Energy!
Plus:
Special Financing*
Plus:
$200 Additional Rebate **
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Call
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Daniels Energy Today
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860.813.9122
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* Offer good on replacement of both air conditioning and furnace at the same time. Discount offer dependent on age of systems being replaced. Reduced offer available if customer chooses to purchase a single component rather than a full system. Subject to credit approval. **$200 rebate available on 16 SEER AC system with matching number air handler. Offer not valid on prior sales. See Daniels representative for details
Daniels Energy: CT License S1-385517 HOD#219 / Daniels Propane. LLC: CT License S1-302857
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Someone has to cut the grass at Stonehenge.
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"That's another pair of sleeves"
explained.
We encountered the phrase in a John Dickson Carr mystery, and decided the explanation was necessary. Herewith an excerpt from
Friends of Cama's Blog
.
"That's another pair of sleeves" is a colorful
expression that we use in Italian to describe something that is about a completely different thing with no connection to a previous one
.
The expression comes from the
Medieval and Renaissance use of interchangeable sleeves in men's and women's dress
...
The
interchangeable sleeve tradition in the Renaissance was also part of the lover's cup tradition of giving an engagement token of love to one's beloved for their wedding. Interchangeable sleeves could be so valuable that they were kept in safes. So the next time I'm tempted to say "another ballgame" or "another kettle of fish" I'll substitute this phrase.
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A clean dog is a happy dog.
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This ornate enamel and gilt bird is an example of a "kovsh" - a traditional Russian drinking vessel. Made in the last years before the fall of the tsars, the sandpiper kovsh was clearly for the elite. It even has garnets for eyes!
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Never forget their heroic efforts.
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6 Books For Fall
You're On An Airplane
Parker Posey
Arguably one of the most beloved actresses of her generation-Posey opens up about her iconic film roles and her extraordinary life in this candid memoir that includes intimate reflections of her Southern childhood, mediations on the absurdity of fame, her favorite recipes, and original collages.
Once again, she proves to be as original, refreshing, and funny as her most recognizable characters.
Bad Blood. Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
John Carreyrou
In 2015, Stanford dropout and founder of the biotech company Theranos Elizabeth Holmes was so ready to be the new Steve Jobs that she even wore the black turtleneck. Her intense unblinking stare and unbridled intensity convinced even the most seasoned investors, such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, that Theranos's blood testing machine-"the iPod of healthcare"-would revolutionize the medical industry.
After one particular round of fund-raising, Theranos was valued at more than $9 billion. During this period, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning
Wall Street Journal
reporter Carreyrou got a tip that the technology didn't work. He found that Holmes had been misleading investors and putting patients' lives at risk-
and she didn't care
.
She willfully deceived Silicon Valley in what's become one of the biggest corporate frauds since Enron. Carreyrou's book is a compelling account of how his dogged reporting brought her down.
How Are You Going To Save Yourself
J.M. Holmes
"
How many white women you been with?" is the opening line of Holmes's raw, sometimes disturbing debut novel. Let this be an indication of how directly Holmes tackles issues of race, class and sex through the lives of four friends Dub, Rolls, Rye, and Gio (our narrator).
From the pot-hazed living rooms of their teen years in postindustrial Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to high society Manhattan soirees and awkward BBQs with white girlfriend's parents-this wholly original book is a gripping examination of what it is to be a man in America.
Warlight
Michael Ondaatje
Ondaatji's new novel conjures the captivating immediacy of
The English Patient
, his beloved Booker-Prize winning post World War II epic. Set in foggy and drizzly London,
Warlight
explores the young lives of Nathaniel and his older sister Rachel, whose parents have all but evaporated in Singapore.
The children's dubious caretakers, fondly nicknamed by the teenagers the Darter and the Moth, are shadowy and inscrutable figures who expose the pair to a seductive underworld that quickly erases their innocence.
For Nathaniel, helping the Darter smuggle "shy travelers," otherwise known as shivering greyhounds, on barges toward hidden locations along the banks of the Thames, satiates his longing to be part of a family-of-sorts-for a moment. His real longing though is to find his mother and to make sense of the unraveling fate of his family.
Like Brothers
Mark & Jay Duplass
The creative duo and sibling team Mark and Jay Duplass are revered for their low-key realist TV- and movie-making style and all-around lack of pretension. Their memoir sheds light on their unique brotherly bond, from sleeping in the same bed as children to Jay's depression in college to their rejection of traditional Hollywood methods.
They also recall the day they decided to make a 7-minute movie,
This is John
, with their parents' video camera. Shot in one take and made for three dollars, it's the film that made it to Sundance and launched their careers.
What's most poignant about their compelling story is how they cope when forced to, quite literally, break up their bromance in order to preserve their friendship and their own new families.
Only To Sleep - A New Philip Marlowe Mystery
Lawrence Osborne
The setup is brisk and disarming. The year is 1988 and Marlowe is a retiree in Mexico -
Baja California
, which, at the end of the
Reagan
era, is "what all of California once looked like." His days are routine, although part of the routine is rather odd.
On weekends, he frequents a bar with a machine called El Electrucador - put your fingers on the pad, withstand the shock and get a free shot of Mezcal. "I figured the shocks were doing my intestines and hair roots some good. People said I looked much younger when I came back from my weekends. They said I looked 'returned from the dead.' At my age, I'll take any compliment."
This has been Marlowe's life for almost a decade. Then two insurance men "dressed like undertakers" walk into La Fonda's terrace bar. They've been told that Marlowe is the "best that money couldn't buy."
An American has died under mysterious circumstances in a remote coastal village, leaving $2 million to his much-younger wife. The insurance men think there might be mitigating circumstances that could affect the payout.
Now don't those sound like decent reads?
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Can't watch a game without them.
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Here's 40 Reasons to Call Today
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Call: 860 813 9122
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We don't need no stinking safety nets.
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Where Are We? Easy Quiz #1
Think you know? Tell us
and sure and by golly we'll be sending along a bit of the green. (Actually we'll send a $25 Visa gift card)
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Who are you calling "Roughnecks?"
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By age 14, Harry Truman had read every book in the Independence,Missouri, library.
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In honor of Ray Bradbury, a web page censored by a government returns HTTP error status code 451.
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Wyoming, Wisconsin, is in Iowa County.
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Vincent van Gogh and Salvador Dalí were both named after dead brothers who had preceded them.
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"Virtue is insufficient temptation." - George Bernard Shaw
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In ancient Rome, salt was paid out to soldiers as a monthly allowance, called "salarium," the root of the English word "salary." (Hence the phrase "worth one's salt.")
When iodine was first added to salt in 1924, a quarter of the US population saw their IQ jump 15 points, or one standard deviation. Today, iodine deficiency remains the leading cause of childhood brain damage. An estimated 1.88 billion people, including 241 million school-age children, are still iodine deficient.
Iodized: Salt fortified with iodine-or probably just "salt" or "table salt" to you. It was introduced in 1924 to curb iodine deficiency around the Great Lakes, Appalachia, and the northwestern US, known as the "Goiter Belt."
Kosher: These large, flaky, and typically iodine-free crystals are best for drawing out moisture from meat, an important step in the koshering process: "Ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast."
Sea: Crystallized salt from (wait for it) the sea. Not unlike that white stuff you might scrape off an exposed ocean rock, these evaporated marine salts are often unprocessed and retain their natural mineral hues. (The most expensive salt in the world is made by stuffing gray sea salt in a cylinder of bamboo, capped with clay, which is then thrown into a wood-fired furnace. A 2.3-ounce jar of "Bamboo Salt" goes for $62.)
According to mythology, throwing salt over your shoulder brings good luck because it does what?
Blinds the Devil
Louis XIV of France was born, and with him, the pairing of salt and pepper. He was a very picky eater and preferred food with little seasoning: salt, pepper, and parsley.
1789: The French Revolution is fueled in part by a tax on the consumption of salt, from which the nobility and other privileged French were exempt.
1858: John Landis Mason, the creator of the Mason jar, invents the first screw-top salt shakers. He saw little profit and was later accused of burning his house to the ground for insurance money.
1911: Free-flowing salt is born after Morton Salt adds magnesium carbonate, an anti-caking agent, to their crystals, allowing salt shakers to work. (The company now uses calcium silicate, but has maintained the slogan, "When it rains, it pours.")
1929: The Great Depression fuels the rise of novelty salt and pepper shakers, as ceramic companies shift production to lower-priced items.
1970s: Some of the earliest claims that salt causes hypertension are published by Lewis Dahl of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, who fed rats a lot of salt.
2005: The US Department of Agriculture publishes its 2005-2010 dietary guidelines, which first recommended that people limit daily sodium intake to 2.3 grams.
2018: Salt shaker emoji to be introduced.
If you're looking for a ridiculous way to entertain yourself-perhaps you should consider one of these items.
Bug-A-Salt: A plastic gun, which you load with salt and fire at bugs? OK.
Smalt: A "smart salt shaker" that's controlled by your iPhone-and Alexa. Oh, and it doubles as a Bluetooth speaker and a mood lamp, too, because why not.
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Neither rain, nor snow, nor hail, nor gloom of night...
but when it's hot...different story.
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If It Comes Up In Conversation....
This is Triple Divide Peak in Montana's Glacier National Park. It is the only mountain in the US that feeds three oceans. A drop of rain could travel to the Atlantic, Pacific or the Arctic. In case you were wondering.
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This Never Comes Up In Conversation But...
Ahh...typewriters. Remember those? In the early days of typewriting, this was usually the first thing typed on each new typewriter after it rolled off the production line:
Amaranath sasesusos Oronoco initiation secedes Uruguay Philadelphia
A worker known as an aligner typed it to check that the resulting letters were aligned correctly on the platen.
How does it work? 'Amaranath,' the misspelled name of an imaginary flower, checks the alignment of the vowel 'a' between a number of common consonants. 'Oronoco' checks the 'o' key, while 'secedes,' 'initiation' and 'Uruguay' check three vowels that are among the most commonly used of all letters, 'e,' 'i,' and 'u.'
'Sasesusos' not only compares four of the five vowels in the same word against the baseline of the letter 's,' but also 'includes several of the most common letter combinations in twentieth-century business English.' 'Philadelphia' checks the horizontal alignment of 'i' and 'l,' the narrowest letters on the keyboard.
What does "Amaranath sasesusos Oronoco initiation secedes Uruguay Philadelphia" actually mean? "Unlike most sentences, it was rarely spoken, and no one particularly cared what it might mean in the conventional sense." (The "quick brown fox" came later.)
(From Darren Wershler-Henry, The Iron Whim, 2005.)
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Who Is This?
Tell us here
and perhaps collect one of those memorable Visa gift cards!
Last month sent you all stumbling
along with wild guesses. John S identified Sarah Polly the actress/director, while Terry R located the Church of the Savior of Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg, Russia and Ron B (and many others) identified our library murderer as Miss Stella Swift, the nefarious junior librarian.
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Yeah...yeah....right there.
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A Russian coin-weighing puzzle:
You have 101 coins, and you know that 50 of them are counterfeit. Every true coin has the same weight, an unknown integer, and every false coin has the same weight, which differs from that of a true coin by 1 gram.
You also have a two-pan pointer scale that will show you the difference in weight between the contents of each pan. You choose one coin. Can you tell in a single weighing whether it's true or false?
Tell us how - here
and a new Visa card may come your way.
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Paul Klee (
18 December 1879 - 29 June 1940) was a Swiss German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included
Expressionism
,
Cubism
, and
Surrealism.
He and his colleague, Russian painter
Wassily Kandinsky
, both taught at the
Bauhaus
school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.
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You thought Charlie The Tuna did all the work.
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He Couldn't See The Forest For The Trees...
In 1670, Louis XIV's finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, ordered the planting of the Forest of Tronçais to provide masts for the French navy 200 years hence. His order established one of the principal stands of oaks in Europe, carefully interplanted with beeches and larches to encourage them to grow straight, tall, and free of knots.
By the time they matured, in the 19th century, they were no longer necessary. Historian Fernand Braudel wrote, "Colbert had thought of everything except the steamship."
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Dave, John & Bob
The Daniels Family says,
"thank-you for reading, This Just In."
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Daniels Energy, 8 High Street, Portland CT 06480
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