Lumens

Photo courtesy Flickr

Until the other morning, I hadn’t thought of light as a commodity, but I bought a tent lamp and began to consider the lifespan of the batteries. The lamp wasn’t cheap, but the design pushes the borders of the envelope so elegantly that I couldn’t resist trying one. I thought it might be worth the price because it uses so little electricity to produce such elegant and variable illumination, cycling from reading light to barely visible glow to faux candle.

In The Next Economy, Paul Hawken discusses the value of what he calls “intelligence” in products, and my new little version of a flashlight is Mensa smart. It uses LEDs and a flexible, translucent softball-sized silicon globe to produce light from four AA batteries. I can run it off a laptop. I can toss it in my messenger bag when I move from room to room. I can hang it from the bedstead. Soon I will run it off rechargeable batteries.

What I did not anticipate was that this little light would make it easier to clean. All my life I’ve groused about the dust that accumulates around electrical cords, and in one swoop, the bedroom is free. I vacuumed yesterday with a handheld machine and whipped through four hundred square feet in seconds, because I didn’t have to play dodge’em with a floor lamp and the high-tech version of vines. The new light will pay for itself in a month with the trouble it saves.

High-tech is drifting toward fusion with no or low-tech, rendering the large wooden tent that is this 1890 structure ever more serviceable, elegant, and original. Before gas and electricity, houses were lighted with kerosene and candles. The ritual quality of artificial light disappeared when utilities came along, but before then, responsible adults managed kerosene lamps and candlesticks for safety and effectiveness. Sources of light were gathered up and stored in the pantry every day, taken out again only as needed. That practice leaves a house’s decks clear, spacious, and efficient to use and clean during the day, when light is free.

The last thing into the breakfast dishpan every morning were the glass lamp chimneys. They and the candlesticks from the night before were rinsed, like the dishes, with boiling water from a big kettle that bubbled quietly on the stove until the morning cooking fire died out. Wicks were carefully trimmed to burn clean.

It is gratifying to carry an immaculate lamp or candle into a social area as part of an evening’s visit, and it is a deeply gracious thing to light someone’s way afterwards. In the Middle Ages, it was the steward’s duty to lead the family upstairs when it was time to retire. People went to bed accompanied by “livery”, a box of snacks and drink. I don’t see any essential difference between that system and the new lamp, energy bar, and water bottle in my messenger bag. Things are getting interesting.

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